[OT] Map of email origins to Python list

[Claire McLister]

On Nov 7, 2005, at 10:55 AM, Steve Holden wrote:

> Mostly I wonder what the point is. For example, given my own somewhat
> nomadic life I wondered what location has been used to map my own
> contributions.

Just for fun, really. We try to a best job of mapping the IP location 
closest to the origins of your email. Again, we are not saying that 
this is your location. All we are saying is that that particular email 
seems to have originated from that location.

> Nonetheless I'm sure that before long these maps will be used to prove
> some spurious facts about newsgroup readership to gullible members of
> the business community.

Well, we really don't know what the maps tell us. If they say something 
interesting, then it doesn't hurt to tell more people about it.

> If I've got you wrong then please forgive my slight hostility, but I am
> particularly suspicious of the "click to change" functionality. You are
> clearly expecting people to update their locations, and other
> information that might be related to their domains, and I can't help
> wondering what purposes that information is intended for.

Sorry, I should have made it clear why we are doing this. We have a 
service that allows people to mark their group of people or places on a 
Google Map.  So, the 'click to change' is for those maps, and really 
not meant to be used for these email list maps. It's just that as we 
were building those maps we saw some people offering services of IP to 
locations, and thought wouldn't it be interesting to find out where 
emails are coming from to various Open Source projects.

> Finally, considering email address from domains like "verizon.net",
> "aol.com" and other large ISPs I can't see that you have a chance in
> hell of extracting useful demographics. Which all leads me back to
> "what's the point?" - just because you can?

See my previous response. Sometimes we still can get better origins 
than just where the bulk server is. Yes, really, it was just an 
exercise to see what comes out of it.