"What is the muck on the food?" Ginger spat at the departing guard. "Parmesan!" grated Biggles.
Graydon, there are -- I think the name is Tripoli -- proposals for cryptographically secure ways to check that the mail has indeed passed through one particular authenticating server, wcich is all my proposal needs.
Criminalising spam will only work if it is done on a global basis. That's not going to happen. It is or shortly will be, criminal within the EU. That hasn't done me any good.
As for the damage done to academic email -- there are lots of technical fixes possible. mass mailing lists could be replaced by RSS feeds or gated news servers. I read high-volume mailing lists through a news server anyway. That makes much more sense as an interface. And they are, at the moment, surprisingly free of spam. they're very easy to set up.
All this seems to me a lot easier and more practical than persuading corrupt governments like that of the Ukraine -- or Florida -- that they should do the right thing by us.
I really believe that the only long-term answer to spam is charging some small amount for emails. The system has to bye voluntary: all the charge buys you is the assurance (for recipients) that you have paid tohave your mail sent through the charging server. Again, there can be any number of such things. Let reputation sort them out. A filter at the far end -- and preferably at the ISP -- simply throws away all mail which has not been through this system, or does not come from a (small) list of known good mailing list servers. Again, you choose your own mailing lists. I posted something about this in my Guardian column, though it is not in the least original.
But the principle has to be sound. If it's not worth one eurocent to you to tell me something, I cdon't want to hear it. End of spam.
How about Quaker BSB? A completely blank 5x5 table. When it has been filled with the right sort of silences, you stand up and smile.
The Moravians are the ones who bury their dead in segregated cemteries: somen on one side, men on the other, to ensure that there'll be no hanky panky when all rise.
the last story I read about A-G man in the British press had him cutting down speed cameras. There is definitely a vigilante group that does that. I think the leader call shimself "Captain Gatso". I rather hope that a speeding lorry takes them out one night when they're at work.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2003 | 27 |
| 2002 | 2 |
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