From an IM conversation:

friend

BTW: the new outlook is pretty awesome – EMAIL IS EMAIL AGAIN

me

outlook on what ? [I genuinely had no idea what “Outlook” might mean in this context]

friend

outlook.com – omg – you should camp out a username there

me

oh, e-mail ?

friend

yes, it’s so easy [that] Microsoft might make a comeback

me

Meh, I have a mail address but thank you for thinking of me

friend

I recommend just camping your username; it’s a useful tactic and you can always set things to go on autoforward

me

I get the theory but it would be hypocritical of me

friend

On what grounds?

me

I already criticise (say) Apple for booking out apple.{every TLD in the known world} and argue that the most important thing is to have a brand and stick to it; though Apple are less bad – Sun was very bad

Sun’s UK website was sun.co.uk – completely disjoint from the main Sun website for quite a lot of its existence.

Apple gets branding but still chooses to redirect (eg:) http://www.apple.de to their .com website; it’s better but I still dislike it.

So I can’t in good conscience go around chasing aliases and mail addresses that I will never use

I’d rather it be known that I make no attempt to control them and that people who want to contact me just work out how to do it.

I own alecmuffett.com just to prevent arseholes grabbing it for spoof sites; aside from that, I cannot be bothered.