On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 10:46:10 -0800 (PST)
Larry Price <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003, Tim Howe wrote:
>
> > > > And I love the idea that anyone with mechanical skills can build a
> > > > functioning car in their basement workshop; but I'm glad that there
> > > > are laws that govern the minimum standards a vehicle must meet before
> > > > being allowed on public roads...
> >
> > Here's another one! Speech, ideas, and information should be allowed to flow
>freely; thousands of pounds of steel should not.
>
> Point taken, the analogy was a poor one.
But a fun one! I've made worse =P I think it does point out how this issue
can be easily misconstrued. I could elaborate but I think that'll do.
> A better analogy could be drawn from neurophysiology, signals are
> propagating with insufficient damping, the global brain needs to grow some
> dopamine receptors.
I think this analogy could represent almost any method discribed so far.
Perhaps analogy is not the correct tool here...
I would like to say that I have a hard time seeing spam as the huge threat
that some people have made it out to be. First of all, most people seem completely
unwilling to do anything about it themselves, wanting instead that some solution be
magically put in place by the gov or businesses... This is simular to the Outlook
virus threat: people bitch and moan and claim $millions in damages, spend thousands on
virus protection, but are completely unwilling to simply not use outlook. If not
using Outlook is more of an inconvenience than dealing with viruses, then I have a
hard time taking these complaints seriously.
At the risk of making another bad analogy, I often open the door and listen
for a few minutes to people who try to sell things to me at my door (be it religion or
magazines). I wish they weren't there. I wish they knew not to come to my door.
However, I'm not mean enough to put up a sign, slam the door, sick the dogs on them,
or anything like that. They waste my time, disrupt my day, sometimes ruin my day, but
obviously not enough for me to really do anything about it. I don't think it should
be illegal for them to go door to door. I don't think people should have to know a
code or have their finger prints scanned to get to my door. I don't want to live in a
gated community. It would probably make my life easier to stop these intrusions, but
c'mon! I don't want to live in a world where a person can't go up to another person's
door and knock.
Spam is many times less intrusive, IMHO.
If waisted bandwidth is a concern, there are many things that can be done to
help that. Configure DNS correctly (world wide), a much more beneficial activity, I
think. Close those open relays! Correctly configure firewalls! (Our mail server was
recently brought to a crawl by a poorly configured PIX, which was configured by a
person who makes a living by poorly configuring PIX firewalls...)
I guess I could sum up my entire stance by saying that I don't know what to do
about spam (and I don't think anybody else does either from what I have heard and
read), but I do know what I would find worse than spam, and I can think of lots of
things to try that wouldn't upset me at all. In the meantime, there are many things
that CAN be done to make the internet more friendly that seem to be getting ignored or
taking a back seat to this whole spam thing.
Yeah, I'm done.
-- TimH
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