Note: lost mails: I became aware that in the last months some (many?) mails sent to me have been lost due to multiple reasons. In case you miss an answer, resend your mails please.

• People playing with the configuration of the central mail server at our computing center. Mails are then not delivered, but you (should) get an answer that I don't exist (well, bad luck that this happened e.g. exactly at the submission deadline of ESWC 07 where I was program co-chair).
• sometimes the network connection between GWDG and the institute is physically broken. People are sometimes playing with an excavator in the garden of the math institute and the (former) physics institute. After insufficient repairs, sometimes rain pours into the cables.
  Then the buffers seem to overflow with non-delivered mails. Not all mails are delivered later.
• mails wrongly marked as SPAM by overly critical spam traps (sometimes the mail is marked and delivered, sometimes, it is just removed without any notice).
  This occurs mainly in two cases:
  • mails sent via google or hotmail etc. Especially this happened to questions and enquiries from foreign students.
  • mails sent via mailing lists or conference management systems. The latter is a common problem that also concerns people at other universities (after my experiences as PC co-chair of ESWC 2007 with a fairly large PC; I estimate about 5-10% of all scientists).
• I assume that there are further problems when accessing the mail through the institute's and the GWDG infrastructure. Up to now, it has not been possible to trace these problems; enquiries at the technical services are not always answered in a satisfactory way.