From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 1 04:10:44 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA10354; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 03:58:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.ect.uce.ac.uk (mail.ect.uce.ac.uk [193.60.138.236]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA10345 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 03:57:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from ect.uce.ac.uk [193.60.136.24] by mail.ect.uce.ac.uk with Novonyx SMTP Server $Revision: 1.76 $; Mon, 01 Feb 1999 11:49:15 +0000 (BST) Message-ID: <36B5993B.D3A8EE88@ect.uce.ac.uk> Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 12:08:27 +0000 From: Richard Kay Organization: UCE X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ivan Pope , List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: diseconomies of spam References: Your message of Tue, 26 Jan 1999 10:18:17 +0100. Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ivan, Cc: list-managers I'm glad Paul's activities got you to tighten up your act, even if you seem to resent having been made to do this. Every spam sent is a 10 cent cost spread over all users of the Net. I make my money by supporting people to use the Internet too, but the more useful this is the better I can help them and the better this is for my job. Deny spammers these services (for whatever reason) and you become part of the solution. Provide them with any kind of help and you are part of a problem which has to be dealt with if those who make their living providing Net services are to provide useful services to end users. Without useful services there is no living to be made from the Net for any of us. How many spams does a person have to receive before the time sorting these and deleting them outweighs the usefulness of what they do want to receive ? I think most would give up somewhere between 10 and 100 a day. And how many people on the Net would pay service providers or support engineers to keep them on without a useful email service ? Paul Vixie is doing a great job in taking action to keep ISP and other support staff in a living by being able to provide services other people find useful. It's really got nothing to do with religious fundamentalism - as far as I can see this is all down to simple economics whether you choose to see it that way or not. Richard Kay Rich.Kay@uce.ac.uk Ivan Pope wrote: > > Oh, spare me from the Zealots. From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 1 05:09:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA11217; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 04:55:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.itw.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA11210 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 04:54:51 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) id HAA21075 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 07:54:03 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <19990201075402.B15047@gsp.org> Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 07:54:02 -0500 From: Rich Kulawiec To: List Managers Subject: Re: Spam definition References: <199901311803.MAA22001@celery.tssi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i In-Reply-To: <199901311803.MAA22001@celery.tssi.com>; from Mike Nolan on Sun, Jan 31, 1999 at 12:03:30PM -0600 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, Jan 31, 1999 at 12:03:30PM -0600, Mike Nolan wrote: > I prefer the designation UCE instead of spam, 'unsolicited [bulk] commercial > e-mail'. This includes get-rich-quick schemes, sex sites, and so forth. This is not a correct definition. UBE is preferable to UBE. Here's why: > The three major characteristics of UCE are that they are never requested > by the recipient and not often welcome, The "U" stands for Unsolicited; whether or not the mail is welcome is of no significance whatsoever. > that they are always sent to mass > quantities of people (generally at trivial costs), The "B" stands for Bulk. The cost involved is not relevant. > and they always have profit as a motive for the sender. The presence or absence of profit is not relevant. Why make these distinctions? Because the words "welcome" and "profit" involve analysis of the content, and the definition of spam (as UBE) is content-free, and must remain so. ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 1 07:24:52 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA12642; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 07:02:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from firefly.cisco.com (firefly.cisco.com [171.69.63.22]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA12635 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 07:02:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from kenny-pc.cisco.com (ricochet-17.cisco.com [171.68.11.209]) by firefly.cisco.com (8.8.5-Cisco.1/8.6.5) with SMTP id HAA22265 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 07:08:06 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199902011508.HAA22265@firefly.cisco.com> X-Sender: kenny@firefly.cisco.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.2 Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 07:01:03 -0800 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Kenny Paul Subject: Re: Spam Police (Give me a break!) In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19990131184123.03ecaab0@127.0.0.1> References: <3.0.32.19990131093210.00b61880@mail.netnames.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >At 10:09 AM 1/31/99 +0000, Ivan Pope wrote: >I am also still waiting for anyone's definition of 'spam'. This is about the lamest attempt at feigning innocence that I've seen, outside of the OJ trail and Clinton's lack of crotch control. Regards, Kenny Paul "live from the BART CART" From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 1 12:06:13 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA16904; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 11:36:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from cyberq.quality.org (cyberq.quality.org [199.181.80.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA16897 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 11:36:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (help@localhost) by cyberq.quality.org (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id OAA04987 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 14:42:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 14:42:07 -0500 (EST) From: "Bill Casti (System Admin)" To: List Managers List Subject: Re: Spam Police (Give me a break!) In-Reply-To: <199902011508.HAA22265@firefly.cisco.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk 1. Spam n : (trademark) a tinned luncheon meat made largely from pork 2. spam /vt.,vi.,n./ [from "Monty Python's Flying Circus"] 1. To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with excessively large input data. See also {buffer overflow}, {overrun screw}, {smash the stack}. 2. To cause a newsgroup to be flooded with irrelevant or inappropriate messages. You can spam a newsgroup with as little as one well- (or ill-) planned message (e.g. asking "What do you think of abortion?" on soc.women). This is often done with {cross-post}ing (e.g. any message which is crossposted to alt.rush-limbaugh and alt.politics.homosexuality will almost inevitably spam both groups). 3. To send many identical or nearly-identical messages separately to a large number of Usenet newsgroups. This is one sure way to infuriate nearly everyone on the Net. 3. Spam v. To abuse any network service or tool by for promotional purposes. 4. To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size {buffer} with excessively large input data. [From: http://work.ucsd.edu:5141/cgi-bin/http_webster?spam] Regards. Bill On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Kenny Paul wrote: > >At 10:09 AM 1/31/99 +0000, Ivan Pope wrote: > > >I am also still waiting for anyone's definition of 'spam'. > > This is about the lamest attempt at feigning innocence that I've seen, > outside of the OJ trail and Clinton's lack of crotch control. > > > > > > > > > > > Regards, Kenny Paul > "live from the BART CART" > > From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 1 12:48:34 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA17570; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 12:34:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA17563 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 12:34:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA25624 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 14:39:58 -0600 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA32707 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 14:39:56 -0600 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199902012039.OAA32707@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: Spam definition To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 14:39:55 -0600 (CST) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Rich Kulawiec wrote: > The "B" stands for Bulk. The cost involved is not relevant. Rich, I will defer to your expertise on UBE versus UCE, though I have to confess I have not seen that term before, or perhaps not recognized it. However, I am not particularly active in the anti-spamming effort, because I feel that playing an elaborate game of fox and hounds is for others, younger and more technically oriented than I, though I'm quite happy to benefit from their labors, so if that's where it comes from, I would probably not have seen it previously. (And I suspect the word 'spam' is here to stay, anyway, despite disagreements over its precise definition.) I disagree that the cost factor is irrelevant. If it cost bulk e-mailers 10 cents per message to do it, or even ONE cent, we probably wouldn't be having this whole discussion, would we? But if it cost one cent each for me to send out my mailing list traffic, with over 500,000 messages delivered (traffic x subscribers) in a busy month, I probably wouldn't be doing what I do, either, at least not the way it currently functions. That's why I'd like to see some kind of economic pricing model for net traffic. Unsolicited messages are paid for by the sender, solicited messages could be paid for by the recipient. I've asked, many of my subscribers would WILLINGLY pay one cent per message delivered, should such a facility be possible, though some would undoubtably go away and others would move over to my lower-volume news-only subset. Sender based content filtering would likely become more of a necessity under such a transfer of payments system, too. Example: I run two sports lists, and this Wednesday is national letter of intent signing day in football, so that topic dominates both lists ever January and early February. Yet there are some subscribers who don't have much interest in whether Joe High School is said to be leaning towards this school or that, they'd rather read about when spring practice starts, whether Notre Dame will be on the schedule in a few year, etc. So, a mailing list management system that recognizes which messages are about recruiting and sends them only to the subscribers who have requested recruiting traffic messages in their profile would seem highly desirable. (Actually, I'd like such a beast NOW, anybody know of one?) And if was somehow possible for the author of list traffic to share the cost of distributing those messages, I suspect a lot of the flamefest traffic would go away quickly, too. And the cost allocation information could be used as a sorting factor in mail readers, mail I _paid_ to receive would certainly go towards the top of my list, mail I didn't solicit towards the bottom. -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 1 13:57:55 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA18243; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 13:19:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from broccoli.graphics.cornell.edu (BROCCOLI.GRAPHICS.CORNELL.EDU [128.84.247.53]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA18235 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 13:19:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from graphics.cornell.edu (LOCALHOST) by broccoli.graphics.cornell.edu with ESMTP (1.37.109.16/16.2) id AA053064252; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 16:24:12 -0500 Message-Id: <199902012124.AA053064252@broccoli.graphics.cornell.edu> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: Rich Kulawiec Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: AOL is horribly broken this morning In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 31 Jan 1999 09:29:58 EST." <19990131092958.A12965@gsp.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 16:24:12 -0500 From: Mitch Collinsworth Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >> AppliedTheory [our network provider] has worked with Sprint [Applied >> Theory's network provider] overnight on the issue, >> as AT did not have a route to AOL networks on our backbone. Sprint >> informed AT that AOL is making software and routing changes on >> their network. This is causing significant changes in how Sprint >> and AppliedTheory are receiving the routes to AOL and ICQ. > >This appears to have no relationship to the problem that I (and others) >experienced. The information I provided clearly shows that mail was >received by AOL's mail server(s), and clearly shows that it was returned, >thus indicating a functional, if not optimal/robust network path. > >It's pretty obvious that AOL broke their mail servers; I'm waiting to >see if they acknowledge their error and provide an explanation for it. Rick, you may be right. I agree that on the surface it appears to have no relationship to the problem described. However depending on how AOL's e-mail is handled internally it is certainly possible that it does. I have no idea how their e-mail systems are engineered, but if the mailboxes are not kept on the systems that MX for the domain, and the routing problems kept the MX systems from communicating with the mailbox systems, then we have the makings for bouncing mail at the MX systems due to inability to verify mailbox status. -Mitch From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 2 01:29:10 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA27362; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 01:02:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id BAA27355 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 01:02:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from quill.thinkcoach.com (gate6-93.cyberlink.ch [212.55.195.93]) by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA02423 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 10:08:07 +0100 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill.thinkcoach.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id JAA00657; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 09:48:42 +0100 Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 09:48:42 +0100 Message-Id: <199902020848.JAA00657@quill.thinkcoach.com> From: Norbert Bollow Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-reply-to: <199902012039.OAA32707@celery.tssi.com> (message from Mike Nolan on Mon, 1 Feb 1999 14:39:55 -0600 (CST)) Subject: Re: Spam definition References: <199902012039.OAA32707@celery.tssi.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Mike Nolan wrote: > But if it cost one cent each for me to send out my mailing list traffic, > with over 500,000 messages delivered (traffic x subscribers) in a busy > month, I probably wouldn't be doing what I do, either, at least not the > way it currently functions. > > That's why I'd like to see some kind of economic pricing model for > net traffic. Unsolicited messages are paid for by the sender, solicited > messages could be paid for by the recipient. Yes. And those who still send me unsolicited mail should be made to pay me something like $1 per message for my giving the message so much attention that I decide to press the 'delete' key. (Yes, my time is valuable.) Of course when I appreciate someone's mail I'll be happy to press a 'refund' key which pays them back the money they had to pay for getting my attention. It should be easy enough to build an email program which will not go to the next message until the 'delete' key or the 'refund' key has been pressed. The tricky part is to design and implement protocols for automating these payments in a way which is secure and still reasonably efficient. I'll be happy to hear from anyone who is willing to invest some time into thinking this through. May blessings from the eternal God surprise and overtake you! Norbert. -- Norbert Bollow, Zuerich, Switzerland. Backup e-mail address: NB@POBOX.COM From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 2 06:03:23 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA03068; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 05:45:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.itw.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA03061 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 05:45:47 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) id IAA04102 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 08:52:35 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <19990202085233.A3874@gsp.org> Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 08:52:33 -0500 From: Rich Kulawiec To: List Managers List Subject: Re: Spam Police (Give me a break!) References: <199902011508.HAA22265@firefly.cisco.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i In-Reply-To: ; from Bill Casti (System Admin) on Mon, Feb 01, 1999 at 02:42:07PM -0500 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Feb 01, 1999 at 02:42:07PM -0500, Bill Casti (System Admin) wrote: > 3. Spam v. To abuse any network service or tool by for promotional > purposes. This is an incorrect definition: it's overinclusive, because it covers a broad range of abuses other than UBE, and it's underinclusive, because it does not cover UBE sent for non-promotional purposes. One correct definition is the one I provided yesterday. It is narrowly written, it is context-free, it excludes questions of motivation, and it defines spam in terms of action, not in terms of speech, which is a necessary precursor toward an effective discussion of spam issues. (Otherwise, the discussion wanders off into irrelevant areas such as censorship.) ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 2 06:46:12 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA03652; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 06:34:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from mercury.rev.net (mercury.rev.net [206.67.68.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA03645 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 06:34:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from bernie.rev.net (bernie.rev.net [206.67.68.5]) by mercury.rev.net (8.9.2/8.9.1) with SMTP id JAA28467 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 09:40:33 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199902021440.JAA28467@mercury.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 09:44:51 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Spam definition Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com In-reply-to: <199902012039.OAA32707@celery.tssi.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 1 Feb 99, at 14:39, Mike Nolan wrote: > I disagree that the cost factor is irrelevant. If it cost bulk e-mailers > 10 cents per message to do it, or even ONE cent, we probably wouldn't be > having this whole discussion, would we? I certainly agree. I think that the cost-recovery model NSF left us with has been a REAL double-edged sword. UCE/UBE is clearly the bad part of it, and... > But if it cost one cent each for me to send out my mailing list traffic, > with over 500,000 messages delivered (traffic x subscribers) in a busy > month, I probably wouldn't be doing what I do, either, at least not the > way it currently functions. In addition to things like FTP archives, online software/patch distribution (and IRS tax forms :o)). YMMV as to whether web pages with 1 meg of graphics or streaming video and audio are good things or not, but they probably would hardly exist if the sender had to pay. > That's why I'd like to see some kind of economic pricing model for > net traffic. Unsolicited messages are paid for by the sender, solicited > messages could be paid for by the recipient. This is the obvious solution and the only problem with it is that there's no real infrastructure for it [and everyone will jump up and down and complain that "the net has always been free"]. If the net switched over to some kind of "pay for what you use" structure, the direct implication would be that you'll get a bill from your ISP for all of the bandwidth you generate and the resources you use. Indirect implication: things like TUCOWS and the various real-audio sites and document archives and such won't be able to work the way they do any more. What'll have to happen in that case is just like it is with every other medium: you would have to "subscribe" and just as you have to pay the bill to receive Scientific American in your USMail, you'd have to pay the bill to receive your favorite mailing list via email. Folks running mailing lists would have to handle billing and cost-allocation in a means very much like the way in-print publishers do. For simple stuff [FTP and email] it seems simple enough. The web would be a different matter [although, maybe it would be better if folk actually had to think twice about putting multi-hundred-K images on their $@#$%@#$% web pages :o)], but you'd have to do something to put in bandwidth limits [else some hacker could run you broke by just running a bot to access your web page ten million times]. I've never understood a useful pricing model for usenet, but the thought of some kind of 'poster pays' to make those cretins flooding it with hundred-meg copyright infringements have to actually PAY to do it couldn't be bad. there'd be a lot of changes in the various details [e.g., unrestricted mailing lists would probably be a thing of the past: no matter who pays for it, when someone actually has to *pay* if some bozo sends a megabyte attachment to a list that goes to a thousand people, folks will want to have some kind of control] I've been associated with the Internet for a VERY VERY long time, and it has -never- made sense to me that it has never had a proper cost recovery model that involved paying for what you use (I lay this problem on NSF's doorstep; the situation was arguably different for DCA and ARPA, but there was never any excuse, IMO, for NSF not to put in proper accountability/accounting). What's interesting is that it'd be relatively easy to do: every router and gateway already keeps enough statistics to be able to generate bills for the next person 'downstream'. Scary/intriguing thoughts, but it ain't gonna happen, more's-the-pity, and so we're still left with the mess... /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 2 07:01:08 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA03756; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 06:46:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from mercury.rev.net (mercury.rev.net [206.67.68.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA03749 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 06:46:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from bernie.rev.net (bernie.rev.net [206.67.68.5]) by mercury.rev.net (8.9.2/8.9.1) with SMTP id JAA30825 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 09:52:47 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199902021452.JAA30825@mercury.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 09:57:06 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Spam definition Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com In-reply-to: <199902020848.JAA00657@quill.thinkcoach.com> References: <199902012039.OAA32707@celery.tssi.com> (message from Mike Nolan on Mon, 1 Feb 1999 14:39:55 -0600 (CST)) X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 2 Feb 99, at 9:48, Norbert Bollow wrote: > Yes. And those who still send me unsolicited mail should be made to pay > me something like $1 per message for my giving the message so much > attention that I decide to press the 'delete' key. (Yes, my time is > valuable.) Oh, PULLEEEZ. This is a hard enough topic to discuss without this kind of rhetoric. It takes one second, maybe two, to delete a mesage. Are you gonna try to argue that your time is REALLY $2k+/hr valuable? Even if you spend a princely ten seconds to decide to dump something, your $1 works out to >$300/hr. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 2 11:01:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA06672; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 10:37:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from cyberq.quality.org (cyberq.quality.org [199.181.80.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA06665 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 10:37:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (help@localhost) by cyberq.quality.org (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id NAA04608 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 13:43:32 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 13:43:31 -0500 (EST) From: "Bill Casti (System Admin)" Reply-To: "Bill Casti (System Admin)" To: List Managers List Subject: Re: Spam Police (Give me a break!) In-Reply-To: <19990202085233.A3874@gsp.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Take it up with the site that provided the definition (it was noted at the end of the definition listings), not with this list. Bill On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > On Mon, Feb 01, 1999 at 02:42:07PM -0500, Bill Casti (System Admin) wrote: > > 3. Spam v. To abuse any network service or tool by for promotional > > purposes. > > This is an incorrect definition: it's overinclusive, because it covers > a broad range of abuses other than UBE, and it's underinclusive, because > it does not cover UBE sent for non-promotional purposes. > > One correct definition is the one I provided yesterday. It is narrowly > written, it is context-free, it excludes questions of motivation, and > it defines spam in terms of action, not in terms of speech, which is a > necessary precursor toward an effective discussion of spam issues. > (Otherwise, the discussion wanders off into irrelevant areas such as > censorship.) > > ---Rsk > Rich Kulawiec > rsk@gsp.org > From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 2 11:16:19 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA06713; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 10:41:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA06706 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 10:40:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA10075 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 12:47:01 -0600 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA20604 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 12:46:58 -0600 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199902021846.MAA20604@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: Spam definition To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 12:46:58 -0600 (CST) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Bernie Cosell wrote: > In addition to things like FTP archives, online software/patch > distribution (and IRS tax forms :o)). YMMV as to whether web pages with > 1 meg of graphics or streaming video and audio are good things or not, > but they probably would hardly exist if the sender had to pay. For most webpages, FTP sites and mailing lists, I think the receiver would have to pay the transaction fee, but that could vary as well. I would think most sales.com sites would be more than willing to pay or split the access cost to get the business. And if I can buy from foo.com and they pay the web access charge, or from bar.com and I pay it, and the merchandise price is essentially the same, who do I buy it from? Next question? This might put streaming audio and video at risk, but they represent rather high bandwidth-per-user use of the Internet anyway. And I should add that I'm a _user_ of streaming audio, to do things like listen to sportcasts and classical music, I'm just not sure what pricing model makes sense for these, or what transaction fees would work. But I'm willing to pay $12.95 to watch a PPV football game on TV, would I pay $2.00 to listen to it on realaudio? Probably. And would I pay that same $12.95 to get a streaming video feed of it when my %$#@ cable company chooses not to carry that game? You betcha! But I think the satellite folks will lock up the video/audio segments of the streaming feed marketplace in the long run, so it may become a nonissue through the evolution of technology. > This is the obvious solution and the only problem with it is that there's > no real infrastructure for it [and everyone will jump up and down and > complain that "the net has always been free"]. Of course the net has NEVER been free, it's just that for most users the big bills go to somebody else. But I remember widespread predictions of the death of the net when the NSF funding dried up, and that didn't happen. > Folks running > mailing lists would have to handle billing and cost-allocation in a means > very much like the way in-print publishers do. Not if a true transaction based transfer of payments system could be set up, like long distance phones. If I run a website or an information repository of some kind I get a fraction of a cent per hit from the user, then the business of PROVIDING information starts to pay for itself, even for some mailing list owners, most of whom aren't in it for the money. The Chicago Tribune is apparently in the process of changing its website, articles more than a day old will cost $1.95. At that price, they'll never get any money from me. But even at a couple of cents per article, I'd be more than willing to continue to browse through their archives daily. > bandwidth limits [else some hacker could run you broke by just running a > bot to access your web page ten million times]. On a recipient-based payment site, let 'em, and when the bill arrives by Brinks truck at the end of the month, that's the end of that! On a sender-based site, some kind of limits would need to be in place, but I believe that web server techology has already addressed this issue somewhat. And since the END USER needs to be identified somehow as part of the billing process, rather than just the IP address, it should be possible to discriminate between a horde of AOL users and a hacker. There are privacy issues to deal with, as well as identification, authentication, and security issues, but I think they are all resolveable. Most are issues that people are trying to solve anyhow, it just requires enough people with a vision of what to do with all the pieces and enough people who have influence to make this the next generation of the net. And there WILL be a next generation, for a variety of reasons, and a generation after that, and in one of these transformations maybe we can make this part of the model. I'm patient, the net isn't going away, nor are the problems this attempts to address. > there'd be a lot of changes in the various details [e.g., unrestricted > mailing lists would probably be a thing of the past: no matter who pays > for it, when someone actually has to *pay* if some bozo sends a megabyte > attachment to a list that goes to a thousand people, folks will want to > have some kind of control] Somebody has to pay now, it just isn't always me or my subscribers. And yes it will require beefing up mailing list software, but that's not a bad idea even under the current pricing model. (And that's a different thread.) > relatively easy to do: every router and gateway already keeps enough > statistics to be able to generate bills for the next person 'downstream'. > Scary/intriguing thoughts, but it ain't gonna happen, more's-the-pity, > and so we're still left with the mess... I'm not so sure it's an impossible task, but it is going to be perceived as an unreasonable one, especially at first. But as someone once said, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. I'm kind of a broad concept guy on this, I have little if any of the technical knowledge or skills to make it actually work, and am probably too old to master all the internal details, too. But I think I see the possibilities here, and will even be in a position in a few weeks to devote some time to structuring the concept to the point where the real technicians can start to think about it. And it's interesting, the last time I floated this idea on this list I was roundly shot down by most everyone else. Either they've given up on me as being a crackpot or just maybe the idea isn't so stupid sounding this time around? Norbert Bollow was willing to set up a forum for discussing this idea last summer, but I was tied up on some other projects and unable to do it justice at the time. It sounds like we've got two or three other people willing to be involved, maybe we can start to get something going this time, at least to the point where we can attract the interest of people who do have enough influence or see the commercial potential here. (The person who figures out how to make it work and lands the contract to run the transfer of payments clearing center could be the next Bill Gates.) A question for those of you who are academics or conference attendees on a regular basis. Is there some technical or academic conference where this might be a viable session topic? -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 2 14:02:02 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA09198; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 13:49:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from maximpact.net ([151.196.219.220]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA09191 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 13:49:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (ken@localhost) by maximpact.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA16056 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 16:47:34 -0500 Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 16:47:33 -0500 (EST) From: Ken Gourlay X-Sender: ken@maximpact.net cc: List Managers List Subject: Re: Spam Police (Give me a break!) In-Reply-To: <19990202085233.A3874@gsp.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Why don't we just use "UBE", since that's self-explanatory, instead of the vague (and trademarked) term "spam"? I've been keeping my mouth shut mainly because I didn't feel my contributions were worth further clutturring your mailboxes, but since I'm doing exactly that now, I'll tell you a story. I've only had one encounter with UBE as a system administrator and Internet resource reseller. One of my clients resold some web space and an e-mail POP box to another gentleman who immediately proceeded to send out several thousand (or more?) unsolicited messages (amusingly with the title "RE: Information you requested"). Neither myself, my client, nor my network service provider, had any idea that this was going on. Yet, when I checked the next day, I had an insulting message on my voicemail, and a couple dozen canned threats, form letters, or simple insults in my mailbox. My client woke up with 400 such messages. Fortunately, we were able to simply deny the genlteman further access to his POP box or web space and the threats stopped. But I was rather distressed, frustrated, and annoyed by the response from the public and their ISPs. It seems that every one of them was fighting spam with spam. I did getone or two polite and well-considered threats, but most of the responses to the bulk e-mail were merely insulting and generally not well-thought out. In many cases they were generic responses to bulk e-mail with a copy of the message they received tacked on to the end. Now, I know that I can't expect people to spend a long time sending a customized formal complaint for each message they receive, but it's frustrating to me the type of responses I got. Personally, I've never had a problem with unsolicited e-mail (less than 5-10 a week usually). the problems I've had are with people complaining (like on a ne-mail list when someone posts something off-topic and I get 50 messages saying "don't post that stuff" and then "don't respond to everyone on the list" and finally "don't tell everyone to stop responding to everyone on the list"). I'm sure I'm not an adequate cross-sample of the net population, but to me it seems that the problem is not spam but rather people's lack of tolerance. ---------------------- Ken Gourlay Chain Communications ---------------------- On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > On Mon, Feb 01, 1999 at 02:42:07PM -0500, Bill Casti (System Admin) wrote: > > 3. Spam v. To abuse any network service or tool by for promotional > > purposes. > > This is an incorrect definition: it's overinclusive, because it covers > a broad range of abuses other than UBE, and it's underinclusive, because > it does not cover UBE sent for non-promotional purposes. > > One correct definition is the one I provided yesterday. It is narrowly > written, it is context-free, it excludes questions of motivation, and > it defines spam in terms of action, not in terms of speech, which is a > necessary precursor toward an effective discussion of spam issues. > (Otherwise, the discussion wanders off into irrelevant areas such as > censorship.) > > ---Rsk > Rich Kulawiec > rsk@gsp.org > From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 2 21:23:34 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA14915; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 21:11:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA14908 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 21:11:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA40688 ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 21:20:33 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <19990202085233.A3874@gsp.org> Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 21:16:28 -0800 To: Ken Gourlay From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Spam Police (Give me a break!) Cc: List Managers List Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 4:47 PM -0500 2/2/99, Ken Gourlay wrote: > Now, I know that I can't expect people to spend a long time sending a > customized formal complaint for each message they receive, but it's > frustrating to me the type of responses I got. > Personally, I've never had > a problem with unsolicited e-mail (less than 5-10 a week usually). I'd guess that if you had more of a UBE problem personally, you'd understand why you get form letters and other less pleasant stuff. I don't *like* getting that stuff, but I understand where most of these folks are coming from. I have been known to send out an occasional "if you really want this fixed, you need to learn how to ask appropriately", but to be honest, it's not worth the time and hassle. As Bill Cosby once said, "Parents don't want justice. They want quiet". As a receiver of UBE, I want quiet. As someone who deals with UBE complaints from the other side, I also want quiet. Which means just resolving issues and not getting into arguments about the message with the messenger. Some folks deal with things less rationally than others -- some with cause, some because they're idiots. Just like real life, where sometimes disagreements get talked out, sometimes people get into fights, and sometimes people get shot over parking places. I don't plan to prove myself ethically right, but unable to say so because I got shot (real or virtually). Life's too short. > someone posts something off-topic and I get 50 messages saying "don't post > that stuff" and then "don't respond to everyone on the list" and finally > "don't tell everyone to stop responding to everyone on the list"). Thats' why all my list rules are very explicit about others not playing topic cop,a nd why I enforce that very heavily. It can upset the folks who pull that stuff, but it also keeps those meta discussions from getting out of control. And as I point out to them, if they want to enforce the rules, they better know the rules, and the first rule is, "don't do that" -- and since it's part of the formal rules, they can whine, but ignorance is no excuse... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano! From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 3 00:22:59 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA16960; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 00:12:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from beat.kiss.fi (beat.kiss.fi [193.65.198.40]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA16949 for ; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 00:12:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost by beat.kiss.fi (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA21746 for ; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 10:18:01 +0200 (EET) X-Authentication-Warning: beat.kiss.fi: tuupola owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 10:18:00 +0200 (EET) From: Mika Tuupola To: List Managers List Subject: Re: Spam Police (Give me a break!) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Ken Gourlay wrote: > out several thousand (or more?) unsolicited messages (amusingly with the > title "RE: Information you requested"). Neither myself, my client, nor my > network service provider, had any idea that this was going on. Yet, when > I checked the next day, I had an insulting message on my voicemail, and I had a bit same kind of encounter. A spam was sent through a company I used to work for before. I was still mentioned as Technical Contact in ripe data so whois gave my name, address and phone number. This whois data was posted by some antispam activist to one antispam USENET newsgroup suggesting that people should not email the company but to call these phonenumbers. Personally I dont find this any better than spamming itself. -- Mika Tuupola tuupola@appelsiini.net Appelsiini Networks http://www.appelsiini.net/ From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 3 02:37:41 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA19800; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 02:31:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from minbari.netnames.net (minbari.netnames.net [195.40.150.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA19790 for ; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 02:30:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from [195.40.150.140] (ivan.netnames.co.uk [195.40.150.140]) by minbari.netnames.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA05562; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 10:34:15 GMT X-Sender: ivan@human.netnames.net Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199902021440.JAA28467@mercury.rev.net> References: <199902012039.OAA32707@celery.tssi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 10:29:19 +0100 To: bernie@fantasyfarm.com From: Ivan Pope Subject: Pay for use? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >I've been associated with the Internet for a VERY VERY long time, and it >has -never- made sense to me that it has never had a proper cost recovery >model that involved paying for what you use (I lay this problem on NSF's >doorstep; the situation was arguably different for DCA and ARPA, but >there was never any excuse, IMO, for NSF not to put in proper >accountability/accounting). What's interesting is that it'd be >relatively easy to do: every router and gateway already keeps enough >statistics to be able to generate bills for the next person 'downstream'. >Scary/intriguing thoughts, but it ain't gonna happen, more's-the-pity, >and so we're still left with the mess... I think that if there had been a 'pay for all use at the individual point' system, there would be no Internet. There would of course be proprietory networks for business etc and people would still be trying to get us to subscribe to various services and no doubt we would. Of course, every business does pay for its traffic. One of the reasons the Internet has worked so well is because its made us all think very hard about how to pay for the services that we know the Internet should provide. That's not to say there shouldn't be restrictions on some activities, but again this forces us to be creative. But, to say that we should have had 'pay for what you use' from the start misses the point that there would be no Internet if that had been the case. Ivan From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 3 06:36:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA24557; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 06:17:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from ctc.swva.net (ctc.swva.net [165.166.123.19]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA24549 for ; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 06:17:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from default (pem-43.swva.net [208.140.224.155]) by ctc.swva.net (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id JAA20321 for ; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 09:23:09 -0500 Message-Id: <199902031423.JAA20321@ctc.swva.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 09:23:05 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Pay for use? Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com In-reply-to: References: <199902021440.JAA28467@mercury.rev.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 3 Feb 99, at 10:29, Ivan Pope wrote: > >I've been associated with the Internet for a VERY VERY long time, and it > >has -never- made sense to me that it has never had a proper cost recovery > >model that involved paying for what you use (I lay this problem on NSF's > >doorstep; the situation was arguably different for DCA and ARPA, but > >there was never any excuse, IMO, for NSF not to put in proper > >accountability/accounting). What's interesting is that it'd be > >relatively easy to do: every router and gateway already keeps enough > >statistics to be able to generate bills for the next person 'downstream'. > >Scary/intriguing thoughts, but it ain't gonna happen, more's-the-pity, > >and so we're still left with the mess... > > I think that if there had been a 'pay for all use at the individual point' > system, there would be no Internet. It is water long over the dam, but I think you're wrong. If, when NSF started up CSNET [and later set up the NSFnet backbones and the regionals], they had set up a billback scheme, so that schools got billed according to the traffic they generated, I don't think the Internet would have died at all, any more than that schools don't provide phones because the phone company bills them for usage, or that they don't subscribe to journals because they have to pay to receive them. I think it would have worked out just fine, but certainly been different. While the 'billing machinery' was small and a the community relatively closed [since in the end NSF was picking up most of the bills anyway via grants] there would have been ample time to sort out various policy matters [how to pay for mailing lists... how to pay for FTP archives, and then later how to pay for IRC, how to pay for usenet, how to pay for the web, etc]. I don't think the per-transaction cost for normal things would have worked out to being very large [how much can it cost to send a 1K email message on a T3?] and would have only discouraged the applications that were REAL bandwidth hogs and were arguably useless [like the clowns at MIT who walked around with video cams on their heads all day, or the real- time-video of some student's pet iguana]. Even then, schools could get grants to research whateveritwas and just pay for the bandwidth [just as they have to actually budget for, and pay for, every OTHER resource they consume, from pencils to photocopies to trips to conferences] for research they fund. The MIT media lab had to pay for *EVERY*OTHER* resource it consumed, -except- the network communicatiosn bandwith its applications ate; why should that one addition resource/expense have been a show stopper? Places like Amazon and buy.com and friends would trivially pay the minor transaction costs to run their web sites [although they might thing twice about the fancy graphics]. Just think how it would've been if the folk that designed X-windows had been doing so with a mindset of pay-for-the- bandwidth-it-uses rather than "everyone using X will be on a 100meg LAN". Places like NPR [and other 'real audio' providers like ABC, CNBC, etc] routinely *expect* to pay for all of their other communications costs [satellite links, 800-dialins, etc], why would having to pay for their internet services be a make-or-break situation? My guess is that personal accounts would end up being like today's cell- phone accounts are: there woudl be a LOT of different plans, but instead of having just "connect hours" [and sometimes "web page storage"] bundled in, they'd also have some "base bandwidth". For your $19.95 a month, you get 5 megs/month of data transfer or some such. I think it all would have been doable [indeed, just barely, conceivably _still_ could be doable] and I don't think it would've killed the internet at all. The key things that make the internet work are *NOT* [IMO, of course] the huge bandwidth hogs. > ... There would of course be proprietory > networks for business etc and people would still be trying to get us to > subscribe to various services and no doubt we would. I think you've got this wrong. There already *WERE* proprietary networks pre-CIX/pre-regionals. Prodigy, CIS, etc. They were *dieing* to interconnect with the "real net" and I just don't believe that a pay-for- usage model would have deterred them. THey might have some kind of two- tier setup [which, in fact, AOL had for quite a while: AOL-local email was free, but you paid for internet email [but they got it wrong, of course, since you paid to *receive* internet email]]. > Of course, every business does pay for its traffic. One of the reasons the > Internet has worked so well is because its made us all think very hard > about how to pay for the services that we know the Internet should provide. Foo!!!! One of the reasons the internet has worked so well is *just*the*opposite*. Folks approached it with a "bandwidth is free, how can I make a buck" attitude or at the least with a "bandwidth is free, what neat/fun/useless thing can I *do* with that bandwidth" [and so you get InternetPhone and the Fax handlers and folks selling software and discovering that they can save $10 on each item in handling/admin/shipping costs because sending their stuff out over the internet "is free", not to mention iguanacam and friends]. > But, to say that we should have had 'pay for what you use' from the start > misses the point that there would be no Internet if that had been the case. I think we're doomed to disagree on this, but you might expand on why you think that's the case rather than just saying it ex cathedra. I actually think the Internet would have progressed *exactly* as it did, only perhaps a bit more slowly, a bit more deliberately, and with a bit more attention to utility/bandwidthconsumed. The gov't sites would've been on the net anyway, and their internet costs would just be budgeted just like every other cost they incur now [printing, phones, personnel, etc]. the schools certainly would've been on, as I outlined above. Maybe we wouldn't have MUDs, maybe not IRC [or perhaps it woudl've been different], but they'd all be there. The schools that leaned on NSF to start CSNET would certainly not have backed off if they were just given a bill for what they used --- schools already had to deal with that for EVERY other resource they provide for their students and staff, from photocopiers to journal subscriptions to conferences to research projets. BUT: what it woudl have done would have almost certainly made schools be -responsible- for their use, and cut down on the really crazy "let's eat more bandwidth because it is fun and free" hacks they pursued [where iguanacam is probably my favorite exemplar for that kind of thing, and just think that there might not have been as much of a "september effect"] Businesses were *dieing* to get connected and they would surely have connected right up as soon as it became legal. It would have been a bit different of course: more services like the handful of "subscription" services we have now and fewer of the "take all you want for free" ftp/document sites, but even for that many companies would realize that their handling/shipping costs would be so much lower via the Internet they'd probably eat the costs anyway. Certainly the 'retail' places would [the buy.coms, amazons, cdnows, etc]. The only potential question for me is "civilian" presence. Would there be the flood of everyone and their aunt to the Internet? I think the answer is yes: I think that "ISP accounts" would come bundled with more "free" bandwidth than almost any normal user would use and I also don't think [because I have a LOT of faith in the resourcefulness of the business world] that they'd be put off because everything *on* the internet would be so expensive. Maybe they'd have to pay a small fee to "browse the Louvre", but what's the problem with that? And think about some other things: if sysops got *billed* for their net usage, do you think there'd be many open/anonymous servers misconfigured out there? And so in addition to [IMO] doing a lot to cut down on spam, it'd also [again, IMO] have put a BIG crimp in the hacker-attack problems. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 3 18:50:12 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA04222; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 18:23:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA04193 for ; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 18:22:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id SAA37600 ; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 18:32:35 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Message-Id: Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 18:26:38 -0800 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: More on ListZone. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Well, I checked ListZone and my lists were still there, so I fired off a second, less-friendly note. Which they answered within the hour with a fairly snotty response. The key piece being: > Your assumption is completely incorrect. We did not ignore your first > request. Your lists are removed from our production database. > > We just have not sent out an e-mail yet to those who, like you, made this > request. I'm sorry that you were too impatient to wait another a week or > two for your acknowledgment. (note of record. I mailed my first request to be removed on the 22nd. today is the third. Just under two weeks. I don't think that's being impatient. I think that's being kind...) > > On another note, it is unfortunate that you do not wish the large number of > internet users that will access our site to be able to find your mailing > lists, which might be of interest to them and help your beleagured company. > I might also add that your lists are in other mailing list databases, > including LISZT.com and Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists > (www.neosoft.com/internet/paml). Boy, these folks REALLY make me want to work with them... My response to their response was: >>Your assumption is completely incorrect. We did not ignore your first >>request. Your lists are removed from our production database. > > I checked five minutes before sending the second message. They were > there at that time. > >>On another note, it is unfortunate that you do not wish the large number of >>internet users that will access our site to be able to find your mailing >>lists, which might be of interest to them and help your beleagured company. >>I might also add that your lists are in other mailing list databases, >>including LISZT.com and Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists >>(www.neosoft.com/internet/paml). > > Yup. They're there because I agreed to put them there. Ask first > next time. And you should get your act together. The first list you > added to your database of mine had been dead for months. The next > two I checked had significant data errors that made the entries > useless. > > If you can't get it right, don't bother doing it. And don't do it > without asking first. > > If you'd gotten at least SOME of the basics right, I wouldn't have > been nearly as unreceptive. But you're doing me no favors here, so > don't feel bad that I don't feel grateful for whatever it is you're > thinking you're doing, because right now, all I know is it's some > unknown group of people who haven't identified themselves who > screwed up their data entry and didn't ask permission. > > Not a good first impression, Andy. So far, no good impression at all. And assuming they aren't lying about removing me from their database, I guess that's it. But just between you and me, I'll go back in a bit and check.... If you haven't gotten satisfaction from these folks, I guess rattling their cages is going to be necessary. My first note was a polite request. My second note was a formal cease and desist. I guess that caught their attention. Still not at all impressed (and no, they haven't responded to my last note, nor do I expect them to. I also still have no clue who they are, what they plan on doing with this date, why the site exists, and how they got the data in the first place, but....) -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano! From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 3 19:21:16 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA04787; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 19:04:50 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA04779 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 19:04:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from darius.concentric.net (darius.concentric.net [207.155.198.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA20715 for ; Sun, 31 Jan 1999 11:57:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from mcfeely.concentric.net (mcfeely [207.155.198.83]) by darius.concentric.net (8.9.1a/(98/12/15 5.12)) id PAA00913; Sun, 31 Jan 1999 15:02:34 -0500 (EST) [1-800-745-2747 The Concentric Network] Received: from wildchild (ts004d37.tul-ok.concentric.net [206.173.148.193]) by mcfeely.concentric.net (8.9.1a) id PAA10235; Sun, 31 Jan 1999 15:02:31 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199901312002.PAA10235@mcfeely.concentric.net> From: "Angus" Organization: Down On DaFarm To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 14:02:53 -0600 Subject: Re: Spam Police Reply-to: angus1@cris.com In-reply-to: <199901310918130950.0077236B@pcc.net> References: <3.0.32.19990131093210.00b61880@mail.netnames.co.uk> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01a) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > It's a very grey area, IMO, and probably scares legit people away from > setting up newsletters, some that I might like to be on. Jeanne, I don't quite understand why people would be scared away from staring newsletter type lists.. all they would have to do, is what many organizations and people have done.. allow people to subscribe if they are interested and unsub if they find they aren't.??? ...Cleo angus1@cris.com From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 3 19:36:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA05126; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 19:15:19 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA05116 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 19:15:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from triceratops.com (triceratops.com [206.83.162.235]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id WAA15924 for ; Tue, 2 Feb 1999 22:40:05 -0800 (PST) From: johnjohn@triceratops.com Received: (qmail 406 invoked by uid 100); 3 Feb 1999 06:43:24 -0000 Message-ID: <19990202224323.D21737@triceratops.com> Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 22:43:23 -0800 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Spam Police (Give me a break!) References: <19990202085233.A3874@gsp.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i In-Reply-To: ; from Ken Gourlay on Tue, Feb 02, 1999 at 04:47:33PM -0500 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, Feb 02, 1999 at 04:47:33PM -0500, Ken Gourlay wrote: > Why don't we just use "UBE", since that's self-explanatory, instead of the > vague (and trademarked) term "spam"? Ummm... because that would mean that the topic was still being discussed? -- John White johnjohn@triceratops.com PGP Public Key: http://www.triceratops.com/john/public-key.pgp From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 3 19:50:56 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA04987; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 19:12:21 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA04977 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 19:12:19 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id NAA18514 for list-managers; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 13:37:48 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199902012137.NAA18514@honor.greatcircle.com> From: mcb@greatcircle.com (Michael C. Berch) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 13:37:48 +0000 X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: list-managers Subject: The spam discussion Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk While the discussion of political and legal issues involving spam have been interesting, I think it should be pointed out that List-Managers is not a general-purpose spam/anti-spam discussion forum. There are a number of such forums on the Net, both mailing lists and newsgroups, and much of the recent discussion really belongs there. Discussions of spam and anti-spam techniques and policies as they affect the management, maintenance, and use of Internet mailing lists are of course welcome. General political/legal/policy arguments about spam should be taken elsewhere. When this issue has arisen in the past, this has been the overwhelming consensus of the list members. (Needless to say, the above remarks are not directed toward any particular individual, faction, or position.) Thanks, -- Michael C. Berch List-Managers list manager mcb@greatcircle.com / mcb@postmodern.com From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 3 20:05:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA04860; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 19:07:16 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA04850 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 19:07:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.networkone.net (mail.networkone.net [209.144.112.75]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA03989 for ; Sun, 31 Jan 1999 22:36:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from jet (assured-01-106.ln.networkone.net [209.144.118.107]) by mail.networkone.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id WAA16927 for ; Sun, 31 Jan 1999 22:42:40 -0800 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990131224142.01021910@ptw.com> X-Sender: juniper@ptw.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 22:41:42 -0800 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: jet Subject: Re: Spam Police In-Reply-To: <199901312310.PAA23087@honor.greatcircle.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 03:10 PM 1/31/99 -0800, you wrote: >I am also still waiting for anyone's definition of 'spam'. >Thanks, >Ivan > I'd much rather hear why netnames has seen fit to send their advertisements, -repeatedly- to several non-commercial mailing lists to which I subscribe. I believe that satisfies any common definition of 'spam', so I doubt any of us need to give any further explanations of your actions. You provide a haven for spam drop-boxes. People, in general, don't like it. You've chosen your profession so, quit whining that some of us disapprove and live with your choice, as we live with our choice to block out some of the domains you house. Ultimately, it's the decision of an ISP's users, whether they wish to stay with an ISP who blocks spam. If they want to receive it, they'll go to an ISP who accepts it, don't you think? From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 3 20:22:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA04875; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 19:07:52 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA04867 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 19:07:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA12458 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 06:48:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from patroon ([160.43.47.9]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id HAA29057; Mon, 1 Feb 1999 07:53:43 -0700 (MST) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: Memo on the spam issue Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 09:53:56 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2212 (4.71.2419.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.0810.800 Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <199902010900.BAA05643@honor.greatcircle.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I was away for a week and it was interesting to read this whole debate at a sitting. You have my permission to reproduce what follows anywhere you like, as long as you do it in entirety or at least in context. --------- MEMO ON THE SPAM ISSUE Let me state at the outset that I dislike spam as much as anyone here, and specifically in a List-Managers context, I hate its being sent to my lists -- or to individuals whose addresses have been harvested from my lists. While I agree that an excuse-laden "spammer speak" exists, I notice that what you could call "spambuster speak" is also being perfected by well-meaning folks who have, in effect, declared jihad over the issue, and gird for battle each day, ready to browbeat anyone stupid enough to get into an argument with them on this subject instead of doing something useful like spamming fraudulent stock offers or sorting the sock drawer. For example: "The Internet" is not really threatened by spam, a/k/a unsolicited commercial email (UCE), not in five years or five decades. "The Internet" is just IP traffic using a set of application protocols, of which SMTP (email) uses a small bandwidth fraction, even with spam included. Infrastructure is being built at a breakneck pace to accomodate Web and post-Web traffic whose volume dwarfs that of older protocols, no matter what it's used for. Email gets a free ride, now and for the indefinite future. If it were turned off completely -- and who can say for sure that it won't be -- the Internet would keep on mushrooming. What _is_ threatened by "spam" is the old-fashioned, unspoiled privilege of having a real-world email address that's publicly known and discoverable throughout the Net by any nice person who needs it, and yet when you open your In-box in the morning there's nothing there except friendly personal and business messages from people you actually want to correspond with. As the ALL IN THE FAMILY theme went, "Those were the days." (Of course those really _weren't_ the days, because most people didn't have email yet as they do now - it was basically an interesting and promising toy, unless you were lucky enough to work in one of the little academic-industrial circles where the Net was born. I don't begrudge those folks their good fortune, but we should realize the limitations of the model they worked under.) When I go to my US Postal Service mailbox in the morning, probably 60% of what's there is unsolicited, and another 20% is sheer boilerplate (oh great, another J.Jill catalog, why did we ever order that turtleneck?). Even the stuff I "expect" seems to be mostly waste paper (Reaching Out To You: A Colorful Monthly Newletter From Your Electric Company -- GAAACK!); actual personal or business mail from people I know would be lucky to break the two-percent mark, except at Christmas - and even those are often xeroxed "family newsletters" lately. But I don't declare war over it -- why not? Because (1) postal commerce is REGULATED. I know I won't get HOT STEAMY PORN NOW brochures, because an expensive army of postal cops sees to it; and (2) I'm not PAYING to receive mail by the piece or the pound. More junk mail from Pennysaver and Hold Everything just means I don't have to buy starter logs for the fireplace. By comparison, Internet commerce is unregulated; and while I don't like listening to sleazeball operators defend "free speach[sic]" any more than the next person, I worry about what babies we would end up throwing out with their bathwater. As any of us list managers who have received silly "No relaying, die spammer" Sendmail error messages from some overzealous net.paranoid's site (in response to a perfectly good Digest or membership probe) can attest, one person's Useful Content can all too easily look like another person's UCE Spam when the suspicion level rises high enough. Here's a question: if the Net were so tightly regulated that spammers were automatically busted by an expensive army of content cops, could YOU get anything useful done without wallowing in red tape and cautious triple-checks of every word you said? More to the point, should the small fraction who answer that question today with a light-hearted "yes, no problem!" - because for them the Net basically still IS a toy - automatically have the right to call the shots? I'm just asking. If the answer's yes, then email ultimately remains a toy -- and the market will find another protocol. If the answer's no, then we need some solutions. The argument that users shouldn't have to pay extra to download unsolicited junk email is more persuasive, but why should it apply just to commercial messages? I shouldn't have to pay to download 15K re-quoted Digests that bounced off some yokel's misconfigured mailer. I shouldn't have to pay to download urban-legend FCC petitions or "I know this is off topic but you just have to laugh at this one!" mailroom humor that's chain-forwarded from clueless semi-strangers who happen to have my address. I shouldn't have to pay for any email I didn't specifically expect, request, or pre-authorize. But who IS going to pay for it - Oprah Winfrey? A slush fund at MAE-EAST? Until and unless we adopt some kind of sender-pays model that supports preauthorized COD for subscribing users, we are always going to have this problem. And I'm not sure that kind of model will ever happen. More likely, Web-induced bandwidth explosion is going to finesse the issue by making it so cheap to get ANY amount of mail, solicited or otherwise, that the postal-mailbox analogy once again applies: you may grumble at the junk, but it's not impoverishing you. In the meantime, we are in a chaotic interregnum with a few recognizable features, and a few things we can do. One, users do have some options to protect themselves against spam, like publishing a Bigfoot or Pobox address and letting those services do the filtering. Unfortunately, (a) configuring this properly with a garden variety ISP like Netcom or AOL or MSN is just tricky enough to be out of the reach of most users; (b) the well-meaning cabal of net demigods who call the email shots today didn't invent that approach, don't use it themselves, and generally hold it in dim regard; and (c) it is actually subject to occasional abuse by hit-and-run spammers, which means that your own legitimate stuff may stop being delivered. There are also spam protections in recent versions of Sendmail, but this is an arms race and users seldom have any choices over how it's being waged in their name. Two, there is a code of conduct for ISP's, partly self propelled but also partly "enforced" by a volunteer strike force of net.cops who watch for abuse. Vanity domain forwarders (like our friend at NetNames) should remember that virtual hosting is still hosting: if someone uses your machines to forward spam mail OR spam responses, you are abetting spam and you should stop it lest you put your legitimate customers at risk. Arguing about it here will do no good whatsoever; the domain will be added to the watch lists and undoing it will take months. Having said this, I must admit (and the soldiers of the jihad should realize) that it's MUCH harder to catch a receive-side drop box than a send-side spam forwarder. You end up playing fireman to every user's complaint -- usually after the fact and after the damage has been done. Hardened spammers hit once and move on. What can we do? (1) Create more resources for users, like help on installing spam protection and info on where to report abuse. Teach rather than browbeat. (2) Create more resources for list managers and net admins to share, like registries of legitimate list publishing points so that our distribution can survive as the barriers keep rising, and libraries of configuration tricks and explanatory message texts for use in handling spam/noise issues. Beat your swords into FAQ files. (3) Pressure companies to incorporate flexible spam protection in their own products - and to prevent unnecessary junk email on their own services. (One example is warranty registrations and free-trial surveys that bury a sneaky "Please send me junk mail" checkbox down at the bottom, turned ON by default, and sometimes even RE-enabled after you turned it off, when you have to correct an entry before submitting!) (4) Read more, learn more, think more, reinvent the wheel less, re-argue the flat earth less, and just generally behave like good people when we can. Life's too short. As I say, pass this on at will. Happy Groundhog Day. -- Tom Neff tneff@panix.com From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 3 21:36:01 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA06626; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 21:08:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA06613 for ; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 21:08:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA10684; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 23:14:28 -0600 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id XAA19692; Wed, 3 Feb 1999 23:14:26 -0600 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199902040514.XAA19692@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: Pay for use? To: bernie@fantasyfarm.com Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 23:14:26 -0600 (CST) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <199902031423.JAA20321@ctc.swva.net> from "Bernie Cosell" at Feb 3, 99 09:23:05 am Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Bernie, thanks for a much better written synopsis of Internet history and alternate theories of reality than I could have come up with on my own. > Places like Amazon and buy.com and friends would trivially pay the minor > transaction costs to run their web sites [although they might thing twice > about the fancy graphics]. If anything, I think a transaction pricing model might have sped up the development of commercial traffic on the net, and the acceptable use guidelines might have gotten modified quicker, though perhaps it wasn't large-scale viable until the killer app, the web, came along. > Businesses were *dieing* to get connected and they would surely have > connected right up as soon as it became legal. Which might have happened a bit faster, since the backbones would have seen commercial transaction billing as a revenue source. > And think about some other things: if sysops got *billed* for their net > usage, do you think there'd be many open/anonymous servers misconfigured > out there? And so in addition to [IMO] doing a lot to cut down on spam, > it'd also [again, IMO] have put a BIG crimp in the hacker-attack > problems. And just because it's always been that way (even if it hasn't, really), that's no reason to say that it must forever stay that way. The one lesson we never seem to learn in the computer industry is that limits of any kind exist mostly to be exceeded or made archaic, whether that be 640K memory, the IP address space, or in this case the pricing model. -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 4 10:00:34 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA19665; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 09:41:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA19658 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 09:41:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from quill.thinkcoach.com (gate6-65.cyberlink.ch [212.55.195.65]) by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA13151 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 18:47:36 +0100 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill.thinkcoach.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA03857; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 18:46:55 +0100 Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 18:46:55 +0100 Message-Id: <199902041746.SAA03857@quill.thinkcoach.com> From: Norbert Bollow Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-reply-to: <199902041547.QAA03402@quill.thinkcoach.com> (message from Michael C. Berch on Mon, 1 Feb 1999 13:37:48 -0800) Subject: Re: The spam discussion References: <199902012137.NAA18514@honor.greatcircle.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Michael C. Berch , the List-Managers list manager wrote: > There are a number of such forums on the Net, both mailing lists and > newsgroups, and much of the recent discussion really belongs there. Yes... last time this topic came up I was the one who suggested this, and I created a mailing list named 'rationet' for discussing this idea of rationally designing a new suite of protocols which would allow every network service to be associated with an exchange of some "virtual money". Unfortunately the discussion died intead of moving to the new list. Maybe we'll have better luck this time? Anyone who is interested in discussing this further, please send a command 'subscribe rationet' to majordomo@thinkcoach.com - please help to keep the discussion alive :) -- Norbert. From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 4 10:42:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA19691; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 09:43:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from minbari.netnames.net (minbari.netnames.net [195.40.150.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA19683 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 09:43:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan3.netnames.co.uk (ivan3.netnames.co.uk [195.40.150.142]) by minbari.netnames.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id RAA15634 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 17:46:55 GMT Message-Id: <3.0.32.19990204173922.0099a100@mail.netnames.co.uk> X-Sender: nnuk-ip@mail.netnames.co.uk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1999 17:39:49 +0000 To: list-managers@honor.greatcircle.com From: Ivan Pope Subject: List tool question Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk If anyone still wants to talk to me after that Spam thing that just happened, I have a question. It's really why I joined this list in the first place. We all know that the tools available to us for running and managing lists are inadequate. Spam is just one facet of this. I have always found the absoluteness of lists a pain: what I mean by this is the existence of lots of semi-parallel lists on subjects that cross over a lot. I don't really want to belong to all of them, but cross posting is an art, not a science. And then there are those times when lists go all pear shaped and I'd rather not be on them (spam debates anyone?). But I'm nervous to sign off in case I don't get back on again (memory lapse etc). And then there is the knowledge that there are probably a lot of people out there who I would like to see on this list, but I don't know how to invite them (or even who they are, and its not my list even). All in all, I think we are missing a large part of the potential of the Internet because our tools are primitive. So what tools would you like to see added to mailing lists? How do you see mailling lists evolving? Where do we go from here? Will lists merge with other forms (eGroups for example has done something to evolve the form, if not much). I ask these questions because its been bugging me for a few years now and I want to think about solutions. Thanks in advance for your input. Ivan From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 4 18:56:44 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA25985; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 18:40:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from isns2.shasta.com (isns2.shasta.com [207.16.64.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id SAA25976 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 18:40:23 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 24699 invoked from network); 5 Feb 1999 03:42:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO J) (207.16.67.12) by mail.shasta.com with SMTP; 5 Feb 1999 03:42:58 -0000 Message-ID: <000c01be50b2$616d33e0$064310cf@J.R.Molloy> Reply-To: "J. R. Molloy" From: "J. R. Molloy" To: , "Ivan Pope" Subject: Re: List tool question Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 18:50:25 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3155.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3155.0 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ivan Pope wrote, >All in all, I think we are missing a large part of the potential of the >Internet because our tools are primitive. Do inferior craftsmen blame their tools? The Internet misses a large part of our potential when we fail to create sufficiently compelling content. Cheers, J. R. Molloy ><((((º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><((((º>¸. ·´¯`·.¸. , . .·´¯`·..><((((º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><((((º> Evolution of Complex Adaptive Systems: hyperplexity-subscribe@onelist.com ·´¯`·.¸. , . .·´¯`·..><((((º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><((((º> ><((((º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><((((º>¸. From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 4 22:24:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA28147; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:48:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA28140 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:48:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA39446 ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:59:06 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Message-Id: Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:54:58 -0800 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: A bit of a gloat. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Excuse me for a bit of a gloat, but I hit a nice milestone today. The number of subscriptions on the lists I operate broke one million today. Which is truly fun, since I remember when there weren't a million people on the net, worldwide. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano! From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 4 22:40:57 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA28138; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:48:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from isns2.shasta.com (isns2.shasta.com [207.16.64.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id VAA28131 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:48:27 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 13667 invoked from network); 5 Feb 1999 06:51:14 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO J) (207.16.67.11) by mail.shasta.com with SMTP; 5 Feb 1999 06:51:14 -0000 Message-ID: <000601be50cc$aee8dec0$0b4310cf@J.R.Molloy> Reply-To: "J. R. Molloy" From: "J. R. Molloy" To: Subject: Re: List tool question Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:58:50 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3155.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3155.0 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach wrote, >The big problem is, we built hammers years ago, and put a lot of >effort into making really good hammers. But we're just now doing the >same for screwdrivers and table saws, so we tend to use the hammer >for everything, even if other technologies make more sense. "other technologies"? Name three. --J. R. From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 4 22:58:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA27949; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:26:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA27942 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:26:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA08722 ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:36:45 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <000c01be50b2$616d33e0$064310cf@J.R.Molloy> Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:27:07 -0800 To: "J. R. Molloy" , , "Ivan Pope" From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: List tool question Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Do inferior craftsmen blame their tools? The Internet misses a large part of > our potential when we fail to create sufficiently compelling content. On the other hand, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. Mailing lists are a really nice hammer, but not everything lends itself to being a nail. For many years, we've used mail lists to distribute information because mailing lists were what we had. Lists are very good for some things, but that doesn't mean they're appropriate for all things. The big problem is, we built hammers years ago, and put a lot of effort into making really good hammers. But we're just now doing the same for screwdrivers and table saws, so we tend to use the hammer for everything, even if other technologies make more sense. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano! From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 4 23:02:08 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA28156; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:49:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA28149 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:49:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA33330 ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:59:33 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19990204173922.0099a100@mail.netnames.co.uk> Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:52:55 -0800 To: Ivan Pope , list-managers@honor.greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: List tool question Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:39 PM +0000 2/4/99, Ivan Pope wrote: > I have always found the > absoluteness of lists a pain: what I mean by this is the existence of lots > of semi-parallel lists on subjects that cross over a lot. I don't really > want to belong to all of them, but cross posting is an art, not a science. This is in reality a feature, not a bug. The parallel aspect of lists is wonderful, because of its encouragement of diversity. Imagine living in a city iwth one bar, where both the bikers and the sports fans have to live together (along with the gays, the singles, the drunks, the cops, and everyone else). How well does that work? Not very. Instead, even though all of these bars are parallel, in that they serve the same basic purpose (people go there to drink and socialize), nobody suggests we should do away with all those bars, nor do people feel they should be in all of the bars, in case they miss a conversation they might want to be part of. One of the realities of the internet you have to learn to deal with is that there are going to be discussions going on you won't run into, just like the discussions going on in bars around the city. the positive of the Net is that you literally CAN be in dozens of "bars" at once -- then the trick comes to finding time to soaking up all of the conversations (and dumping the ones you don't care of). Rather than complain about the sheer number of conversations, since that's tilting at windmills, rejoice in it, and use it to your advantage -- find those bars that you find most interesting adn useful, stay in those, and jetison the rest. > So what tools would you like to see added to mailing lists? How do you see > mailling lists evolving? Where do we go from here? First, much of what goes on as far as discussion lists is moving to the web, and will continue moving to the web. But second, the web is going to suck up mailing lists as it does. I've spent a good chunk of time on this with a web-forum vendor, and there's some really nice web-discussion/email integration over the horizon. If it works the way we expect it will, it's gonna be fun. Stay tuned, since I can't talk about details yet. But if you don't like how mailing lists work, web forums are the next step forward. But be aware, it won't solve your basic complaint -- there are still going to be dozens of bars you wish you had time to spend time in. But that diversity is a good thing, not a bad thing. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano! From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 4 23:13:46 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA28702; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 22:37:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from kachina.jetcafe.org (kachina.jetcafe.org [205.147.43.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA28695 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 22:37:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from ee-nt (eckert@netcom11.netcom.com [192.100.81.121]) by kachina.jetcafe.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id WAA17817; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 22:44:13 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990204215700.00a8dc80@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1999 21:57:00 -0800 To: Ivan Pope From: SRE Subject: Re: List tool question Cc: list-managers@honor.greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19990204173922.0099a100@mail.netnames.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At last, something useful. At 05:39 PM 2/4/99 +0000, Ivan Pope wrote: >So what tools would you like to see added to mailing lists? How do you see >mailling lists evolving? Where do we go from here? I'd like to see more done with sublists and superlists. Listserv has the idea of "topics", that allow people to pre-filter list traffic at the server (but only if posters agree to use topics properly). Anyone with a capable mail client can do similar filtering (based on subject line syntax) at the receiving end but that's less efficient. Anyway, topics to pre-filter msgs aren't enough. What you really need is a way to logically group recipients without the artificial boundary of who is on which list. Here's a real example: I run Climber.Org, which currently has over 20 email lists and over 700 people subscribed (some to many lists). How do I send a message to all 700 people? If I send to all the lists, some people will get 10 copies. I'll get 22 copies. Ouch. In this case I need a super-list that avoids duplicates if you are on more than one list to which I send the message. With 22 lists, it's not reasonable to pre-determine all possible combinations... with fewer lists it would be possible to have a periodic update job that created combo lists, but then how would you determine when a post should go to which list? The best way would be to have list management software "notice" the set of lists being copied, and auto-create the combo list on the fly. Even if you had THAT, how would you catch the posts that are sent to each list one at a time instead of with a long CC or TO list? If anyone has implemented anything CLOSE to what I described, I'd love to hear about it. SRE mailto:eckert@climber.org | http://www.climber.org/eckert/ Info on peak climbing email lists mailto:info@climber.org Before email, five carbon copies were the maximum extension of anybody's ego. From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 02:46:15 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA03123; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 02:24:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from minbari.netnames.net (minbari.netnames.net [195.40.150.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA03116 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 02:23:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from [195.40.150.140] (ivan.netnames.co.uk [195.40.150.140]) by minbari.netnames.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA05392; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:27:10 GMT X-Sender: ivan@human.netnames.net Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <3.0.32.19990204173922.0099a100@mail.netnames.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:26:46 +0100 To: Chuq Von Rospach From: Ivan Pope Subject: Re: List tool question Cc: list-managers@honor.greatcircle.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >At 5:39 PM +0000 2/4/99, Ivan Pope wrote: ... the existence of lots >> of semi-parallel lists on subjects that cross over a lot. I don't really >> want to belong to all of them, but cross posting is an art, not a science. > >This is in reality a feature, not a bug. The parallel aspect of lists >is wonderful, because of its encouragement of diversity. > >Imagine living in a city iwth one bar, >One of the realities of the internet you have to learn to deal with >is that there are going to be discussions going on you won't run >into, >Rather >than complain about the sheer number of conversations, since that's >tilting at windmills, rejoice in it, and use it to your advantage -- >find those bars that you find most interesting adn useful, stay in >those, and jetison the rest. I'm not complaining and I do rejoice in the number of conversations. If anything, I want to encourage more. But - it is often difficult to get the real value from lists because of their rather blunt nature. I have often seen very interesting people leave lists in disgust because they don't want to deal with the noise. I think my issue was with the rather blunt nature of lists - one is either on them or off them. This is a bit different to bars where you can drift around, pick up on conversations, move from place to place. Anyway, I don't like to use real world analogies when talking about the Internet - its such a potentially different environment that it seems we should try to invent new tools. Of course, there are many perfectly fine mailing lists and then there are lists that are like panning for gold. >But if you don't like how mailing lists work, web forums are the next >step forward. But be aware, it won't solve your basic complaint -- >there are still going to be dozens of bars you wish you had time to >spend time in. But that diversity is a good thing, not a bad thing. I think my basic complaint is that we can't take advantage of the diversity out there without killing ourselves with traffic noise in the attempt. Of course moving the same concepts to the Web isn't going to solve that. I think we need much more subtle tools to do that. I was trying to think out loud about what they might be. Cheers, Ivan Ivan Pope ivan@netnames.com NETNAMES * The INTERNATIONAL DOMAIN NAME REGISTRY http://www.netnames.com UK Freephone 0800 269049 180-182 Tottenham Court Road London W1P 9LE UK +44 171 291 3900 +44 171 291 3939 Fax It's not about building a better mousetrap, it's about redefining the mouse. From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 08:19:02 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA09042; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 07:53:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from kirkwood.hoosier.net (kirkwood.hoosier.net [206.106.64.12]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA09035 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 07:53:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (lev@localhost) by kirkwood.hoosier.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id KAA07148; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:56:38 -0500 Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:56:38 -0500 (EST) From: P Kayak X-Sender: lev@kirkwood.hoosier.net To: Ivan Pope cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@honor.greatcircle.com Subject: Re: List tool question In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Ivan Pope wrote: > >At 5:39 PM +0000 2/4/99, Ivan Pope wrote: > I think my issue was with the rather blunt nature of lists - one is either > on them or off them. This is a bit different to bars where you can drift > around, pick up on conversations, move from place to place. Newsgroups, for some of us, are the not so hard-edge option. > > >But if you don't like how mailing lists work, web forums are the next > >step forward. But > >there are still going to be dozens of bars you wish... This may be misleading. It steers us away from established, tradition-or-habit/known channels. A friend of mine - at least a couple years ago - was participating in large chat groups. (He is a teacher of electronics & finishing an advanced degree in sociology.) Was asking me about telephone lines - since his connection out in the countryside was weaker than mine. His group, besides exchanging typed commments and file file transfers, was starting to want to pick up a telephone and call someone - while modem contact was maintained. Of course this is not in the direction of multi-conversations in a bar, where it is easy to turn off and leave - but multiconversationss at one table. > I think my basic complaint is that we can't take advantage of the diversity > out there without killing ourselves with traffic noise in the attempt. > Of course moving the same concepts to the Web isn't going to solve that. I > think we need much more subtle tools to do that. I was trying to think out > loud about what they might be. I agree noise is a serious concern. And I enjoy hearing you say subtle tools could be to get through it. ('Get through' can be a ham radio phrase.) > Cheers, > Ivan > The terse is sometimes poetic. - Paul To have doubted one's first principles is the mark of a civilized man. : - Oliver Wendell Holmes : :....................................................................: From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 09:17:04 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA09802; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 08:43:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp.america.net (smtp.america.net [199.170.121.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA09786 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 08:43:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from Margy (max1-9.shoreham.net [208.144.253.11]) by smtp.america.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id LAA27990 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 11:49:55 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <4.1.19990205112003.00b46750@wingate> X-Sender: margy@wingate X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Fri, 05 Feb 1999 11:24:34 -0500 To: From: Margaret Levine Young Subject: Re: List tool question In-Reply-To: <000c01be50b2$616d33e0$064310cf@J.R.Molloy> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ivan Pope wrote, >All in all, I think we are missing a large part of the potential of the >Internet because our tools are primitive. I agree! I realized a few months ago that I want an e-mail program that will display by mailing list messages in a very different way that my personal messages. I want to be able to track who posts on what topics, who posts how often, who I've decided to ignore, who I particularly like, etc. Yes, yes, I know that Usenet newsreaders have most of those features, and that I can hack together such an e-mail program with UNIX tools, but that's not the point. If programs were widely available that were designed to make it easy to participate in an e-mail-based discussion -- supporting the user's efforts to keep track of who's who and what we're talking about -- mailing lists would be far more useful. Margy Levine Young Coauthor of "The Internet For Dummies," 5th Ed. and "Windows 98: The Complete Reference" Looking for kids' videos? Check out From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 09:17:04 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA09801; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 08:43:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp.america.net (smtp.america.net [199.170.121.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA09788 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 08:43:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from Margy (max1-9.shoreham.net [208.144.253.11]) by smtp.america.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id LAA27993 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 11:49:58 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <4.1.19990205112629.00b4b3d0@wingate> X-Sender: margy@wingate X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Fri, 05 Feb 1999 11:28:53 -0500 To: list-managers@honor.greatcircle.com From: Margaret Levine Young Subject: Re: List tool question In-Reply-To: References: <3.0.32.19990204173922.0099a100@mail.netnames.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > So what tools would you like to see added to mailing lists? How do you see > mailling lists evolving? Where do we go from here? I'd love to see much better tools (probably web-based) for list managers and site managers. As a site manager, I'd like to be able to see current and historical statistics for all the lists, be flagged when a list manager changes certain list settings, be flagged when lists fall below set thresholds of subscribers and/or traffic, and be able to ask questions like "Which lists are moderated?" or "Which lists does John Smith manage?" easily. Margy Levine Young Coauthor of "The Internet For Dummies," 5th Ed. and "Windows 98: The Complete Reference" Looking for kids' videos? Check out From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 09:34:20 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA10175; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 09:02:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA10168 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 09:02:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id JAA36422 ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 09:12:33 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <3.0.32.19990204173922.0099a100@mail.netnames.co.uk> Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 08:42:44 -0800 To: Ivan Pope , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: List tool question Cc: list-managers@honor.greatcircle.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:26 AM +0100 2/5/99, Ivan Pope wrote: > But - it is often difficult to get the > real value from lists because of their rather blunt nature. I have often > seen very interesting people leave lists in disgust because they don't want > to deal with the noise. What you consider blunt others would consider energized. The best lists are ones with strong character and personalities. That's because the best lists have people who are interested in them and involved in them. And that implies an energy level. And when you have people with strong interest and feelings in a subject, there are going to be disagreements. And disagreements get blunt. Lists without aspects of this bluntness tend to be rather boring, and to be honest, don't tend to have a lot of interesting material. To stick to my bar analogy and see if I can push it to a level of silliness way beyond it deserves, what you're asking for is the excitement of a biker bar, but you're demanding the bikers be polite in your company. Life just doesn't work that way. The best information comes from people with the knowledge of the subject, and with that knowledge comes a opinion and attitude. And trust me, you can't get the knowledge without getting some of the opinion and attitude that comes with it. You also get people with strong opinions and no knowledge, but that's also part of real life. Just spend time in a sports bar and you'll see them all over the place. > Anyway, I don't like to use real world analogies when talking about the > Internet That's too bad. Because the internet IS part of the real world, and comparing on-line paradigms to real world ones helps us understand them. Both by how the comparison works and where it fails. > Of course, there are many perfectly fine mailing lists and then there are > lists that are like panning for gold. And isn't that just like the real world? > I think my basic complaint is that we can't take advantage of the diversity > out there without killing ourselves with traffic noise in the attempt. Sure you can. But I think you're looking in the wrong place. you're looking at server technologies to solve your problem. What you really want is an intelligent client agent to sift through this and give you the parts you want. No server will solve that -- every user will want their own version of it. Customized agents were hot three or four years ago, but faded, because they are amazingly tough to build well (and you can't put clickads on them). But go take a look at Apple's Sherlock as one small step in that direction. It's truly cool. One long term system I'm working on is a way to allow us to mass-distribute information customized on a per-user basis. You'll NEVER do that via mail lists, but once other technologies mature we'll be able to do it. But even THAt doesn't solve your problem on a global scale. you'll still need client technologies both to filter and sift and evaluate, but also to go searching for information sources to add to the input stream for your filters. (and none of this is new. Go read Shockwave Rider, published back in 1976, and see just how close he got...) > Of course moving the same concepts to the Web isn't going to solve that. I > think we need much more subtle tools to do that. I was trying to think out > loud about what they might be. You want an electronic personal secretary, who reads your inbox, throws out the junk mail, and files everything else in mailboxes marked "urgent", "useful" and "I don't know".... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano! From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 09:48:26 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA10467; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 09:29:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.ect.uce.ac.uk (mail.ect.uce.ac.uk [193.60.138.236]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA10460 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 09:29:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from ect.uce.ac.uk [193.60.136.24] by mail.ect.uce.ac.uk with Novonyx SMTP Server $Revision: 1.76 $; Fri, 05 Feb 1999 17:20:11 +0000 (BST) Message-ID: <36BB2CE6.AF681D48@ect.uce.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 05 Feb 1999 17:39:50 +0000 From: Richard Kay Organization: UCE X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ivan Pope CC: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@honor.greatcircle.com Subject: Re: List tool question References: <3.0.32.19990204173922.0099a100@mail.netnames.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I think my basic complaint is that we can't take advantage of the > diversity > out there without killing ourselves with traffic noise in the attempt. > Of course moving the same concepts to the Web isn't going to solve > that. I > think we need much more subtle tools to do that. I was trying to > think out > loud about what they might be. > I heard of a proprietary discussion list server used internally within ICL to discuss tech support with an interesting feature in this connection. Everyone on the list gets to see the first posting for a new thread and if they are interesed in this registers the fact with the list server by asking to have further messages in that thread sent to them. Possibly this could be handled by forwarding an empty message with same or similar (within certain bounds) subject line to the listserver. So if the list generates say 10 new threads a day, recipients need only receive 10 messages - plus followups to the threads which interest them. Usefulness of this protocol would depend upon those continueing a thread renaming it when the topic discussed diverges sufficiently to justify a new named thread. Richard Kay From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 10:24:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA11077; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:03:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA11070 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:03:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA33090 ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:12:03 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <000601be50cc$aee8dec0$0b4310cf@J.R.Molloy> Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 08:49:41 -0800 To: "J. R. Molloy" , From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: List tool question Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:58 PM -0800 2/4/99, J. R. Molloy wrote: >>effort into making really good hammers. But we're just now doing the >>same for screwdrivers and table saws, so we tend to use the hammer >>for everything, even if other technologies make more sense. > > "other technologies"? Name three. Web-based discussion forums. Real-time chat. Whether web based or whatever. Streaming audio. Streaming video. That's off the top of my head. Some of these, like web forums, are now maturing. Some, like the streaming technologies, are just starting to be looked at seriously. I could probably toss a few more in there if I stopped to think about it for a while, but what the heck. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano! From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 12:48:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA12878; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 12:00:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from maximpact.net ([151.196.219.220]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA12869 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 12:00:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (ken@localhost) by maximpact.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA14457; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 14:58:43 -0500 Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 14:58:43 -0500 (EST) From: Ken Gourlay X-Sender: ken@maximpact.net To: "J. R. Molloy" cc: list-managers@honor.greatcircle.com Subject: Re: List tool question In-Reply-To: <000601be50cc$aee8dec0$0b4310cf@J.R.Molloy> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Yes, J. R., there are other technologies besides mailing lists. web pages web-based discussion boards search databases FAQ sheets FTP sites chat rooms and those are only some of the well-developed technoligies. The really exciting stuff comes in when you look at technologies that haven't been used much, or technologies that haven't been used at all. Consider, for example, the following sorts of questions: what would it be like if subscribers could search or filter list content to get only the information they want, rather than wading through thousands of irrelevent messages? How could we combine real-time chat rooms with ongoing list discussions, and with what benefits? How can we use "superlists" and "sublists" to make communication with the right people easier and more effective? How can web technologies benefit online discussions more? How might an interactive and dynamic FAQ sheet work? With the speed that technology changes, it seems short-sighted at best to assume that any one technology is the best for any particular task. ---------------------- Ken Gourlay Chain Communications ---------------------- On Thu, 4 Feb 1999, J. R. Molloy wrote: > > Chuq Von Rospach wrote, > >The big problem is, we built hammers years ago, and put a lot of > >effort into making really good hammers. But we're just now doing the > >same for screwdrivers and table saws, so we tend to use the hammer > >for everything, even if other technologies make more sense. > > "other technologies"? Name three. > > --J. R. > From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 17:59:07 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA16642; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:14:23 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA16632 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:14:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from exchange.di.com (exchange.di.com [209.64.54.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA29558 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 23:24:08 -0800 (PST) Received: by exchange.di.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2232.9) id <1HS6DF4H>; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 23:30:32 -0800 Message-ID: From: Todd Day To: "'List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM'" Subject: flat rate world Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 23:30:31 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2232.9) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk If SPAM is the penalty I have to live with for living in a "flat rate" world, I'll take it. Flat rates are what allow some of the coolest websites out there to ride invisibly on the coattails of corporate and educational sites. Flat rates are what allow the "little guys" to reach a wide audience. Long distance is just 3-5 years from going to a flat rate system. Hell, it has kinda sorta happened already. Why take the net in the opposite direction, just to stop SPAMmers? -todd- From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 18:08:32 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA16404; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:09:10 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA16396 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:09:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from FSM-1.PICA.ARMY.MIL (fsm-1.pica.army.mil [129.139.96.87]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id FAA16000 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 05:17:35 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 99 8:26:56 EST From: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: A viral issue for you to be aware of Organization: SADARM SPICE Team, US Army ARDEC, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ Message-ID: <9902040826.aa04448@fsm-1.fsm-1.pica.army.mil> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk One of my lists got hit yesterday by the so-called Win32/Ska.A worm . This sucker slipped by our attachment filters because it replicates by uuencoding itself and making that uuencoded (ie, text file) the BODY of an outgoing mail msg. No MIME or other info is included with it. You can filter on the header line it adds: X-Spanska: YES Or on the beginning of the uuencoded data, which reads: begin 644 (I'm filtering, in majordomo, on /^begin 6/i) Just FYI... Tom Coradeschi, Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer http://k-whiner.pica.army.mil/info-labview/info-labview.html From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 18:22:41 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA16498; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:11:24 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA16488 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:11:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from darius.concentric.net (darius.concentric.net [207.155.198.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA24118 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 15:55:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from mcfeely.concentric.net (mcfeely [207.155.198.83]) by darius.concentric.net (8.9.1a/(98/12/15 5.12)) id TAA17233; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 19:01:45 -0500 (EST) [1-800-745-2747 The Concentric Network] Received: from wildchild (ts002d18.tul-ok.concentric.net [206.173.148.78]) by mcfeely.concentric.net (8.9.1a) id TAA28165; Thu, 4 Feb 1999 19:01:42 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199902050001.TAA28165@mcfeely.concentric.net> From: "Angus" Organization: Down On DaFarm To: list-managers@honor.greatcircle.com Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 18:02:08 -0600 Subject: Re: List tool question Reply-to: angus1@cris.com In-reply-to: <3.0.32.19990204173922.0099a100@mail.netnames.co.uk> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01a) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > managing lists are inadequate. Spam is just one facet of this. I have > always found the absoluteness of lists a pain: what I mean by this is the I've had so little spam come via the lists I own or subscribe too.. that for me, anyway, it's not a problem. I think Listserv seems to offer some pretty good protections from that... or as good as it can get on the net... and of course making use of those protections are up to the listowner and the subscribers too I guess. Spam I get in spades from web access harvesting and from those #$#(&% that harvest web pages themselves ... but in all these years.. I can easily count on one hand I think.. the spam I've gotten because of email lists. ...Cleo angus1@cris.com From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 18:38:01 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA16653; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:14:34 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA16645 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:14:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from exchange.di.com (exchange.di.com [209.64.54.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA00275 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 00:12:55 -0800 (PST) Received: by exchange.di.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2232.9) id <1HS6DF4Z>; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 00:19:20 -0800 Message-ID: From: Todd Day To: "'List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM'" Subject: RE: flat rate world Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 00:19:19 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2232.9) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk BUT: what it woudl have done would have almost certainly made schools be -responsible- for their use, and cut down on the really crazy "let's eat more bandwidth because it is fun and free" hacks they pursued [where iguanacam is probably my favorite exemplar for that kind of thing, and just think that there might not have been as much of a "september effect"] Sorry for my previous post that was clearly off topic. I'll try to tie it in here. How many of us list managers would run their lists if they had to pay for every message they sent? I know I wouldn't. I would have to actually start running a business, billing everyone on my list for receiving the message so I could recover my costs. Then I might not feel like letting just anyone browse my list archives for free, either. I don't see this economic model being very compatible with advancing a powerful form of communication. When you don't have to worry about paying for every letter you type, you are much more likely to express yourself better and more completely and in ways you might not have thought about before. It is my firm belief that the vast amount of bandwidth available on tap to all comers is what makes the Internet such an exciting communications device in the first place. -todd- From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 5 19:15:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA18318; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 18:34:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA18311 for ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 18:34:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id SAA15428 ; Fri, 5 Feb 1999 18:43:55 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Con