"The End Of The Remove Storm..." (Hopefully) - as a service to this list and all of Internet-dom..

[Jim Witte]

'Anonymous' wrote something similar to this at some time(s) in the past:
> remove me..

   As a member of this list, and amused by this 'remove storm' (I have 
seen it before), I took about half a hour to write a little Applescript 
to automatically send the 'remove confirmation' email to anyone who 
writes to this list with the word 'remove' in the subject line (This 
will mean that my own script will send *me* a remove confirmation as 
well to *this* email..  Fitting it seems..  I will ignore the 
confirmation email..)

   If anyone who receives such a email, which will have a subject line 
consisting of the word 'confirm' followed by a long string of 
characters, in fact DOES want to get off the list, simply reply to the 
confirmation email keeping the subject line intact.

   If someone receives a 'confirmation' in error (my script is simple, 
not a mind-reader, and doesn't do any fancy NLP on the body text), 
simply delete the confirmation email and you will remain on the list - 
hopefully with fewer 'remove me' emails, so that an actual discussion 
of the use of Revolution in Education can start..

Hoping for an end to the Remove Storm..
Jim Witte
Indiana University CS

PS.  If this email seems just a *tad* playfully sarcastic, it is...

PPS.  I really think this is something (perhaps *with* the fancy NLP) 
which should be added to the standard Mailman package.  It is open 
source after all.  Perhaps this summer I'll write a patch and send it 
to the team...

PPPS.  If anyone cares what my script looks like (it's another useful 
example of how to write a "rule applescript" for use on MacOSX), here 
it is:

using terms from application "Mail"
	on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule theRule
		tell application "Mail"
			repeat with eachMessage in theMessages
				set tAddr to sender of eachMessage
				
				if tAddr does not contain "<" then
					set theSender to tAddr
				else
					set tbeg to (offset of "<" in tAddr) + 1
					set tEnd to (offset of ">" in tAddr) - 1
					set theSender to characters tbeg thru tEnd of tAddr as text
				end if
				
				set tCommand to "curl 
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/options/education-revolution -d \""
				set tCommand to tCommand & "email="
				set tCommand to tCommand & theSender & "\""
				set tCommand to tCommand & " -d \""
				set tCommand to tCommand & "login-unsub=Unsubscribe\""
				
				try
					tell application "Terminal"
						do script tCommand
						quit
					end tell
				end try
			end repeat
		end tell
	end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from