messaging (Or "snailmail", "smail" from "US Mail" via
"USnail"; "paper mail"). Bits of
dead tree sent via the
address is, correspondingly, a "snail (mail) address". There
have even been parody USnail posters and stamps made.
The variant "paper-net" is a hackish way of referring to the
postal service, comparing it to a very slow, low-reliability
header just before the sender's postal address; common
variants of this are "Papernet" and "P-Net". Note that the
standard
netiquette guidelines discourage this practice as a
waste of bandwidth, since netters are quite unlikely to
casually use postal addresses and if they really wanted your
snail mail address they could always ask for it by e-mail.
(1995-01-31)