Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Post Office and E-mail
PenguinRadio writes "The Post Office, masters of innovation and cutting edge technology, are now moving into cyberspace in a big way. The Washington Post is reporting a new effort to move the snail mail carriers into the electronic age, with a number of new proposals including assigning an e-mail address to every physical address in the United States." I'm reminded of that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer discovers that the Post Office is obsolete.
When I read the article, the first thing that popped into my mind was telegrams. I'm not sure if there still exists a telegram service (although I've always wanted to call Western Union and see), but I can see that the ability to send a message across the country or perhaps oversees to someone who is not 'online' can be quite useful, expecially if there were to be some guarantee that the message would be in the mailbox within 24 hours of sending, although there was no evidence to suggest that this was the exact intent of what the post office was intending.
Another thought that ran through my head was that right now (If I am remembering correctly from high school days) the post office is required to deliver, for free or very reduced cost, messages from political candidates. I wonder if they'll incorporate new electronic methods in such distribution of material...
What boggles me is why the Postmaster General doesn't execute a leveraged buy-out of the USPS. They'd have to lose the monopoly, but with the existing infrastructure of physical assets distributed throughout the country, their "footprint" is really impressive. As a private entity, the USPS would have much more flexibility (OK, and competition) and leeway in its behavior. Also, the top guys could get really rich if they were successful -- always nice to have incentives aligned.
The reason is politics. The Republicans have favored privatizing the P.O. for years, but as it is the largest provider of patronage jobs for democratic voters in the country, they have yet to successfully do it.
Civil servants - the best Democratic voters your tax dollars can buy!
I hadn't considered that.
Though I have pondered if spam I now get that contain US addresses could be considered an inducement to mail fraud.
All else of this proposal strikes me as incredibly silly, but siccing the postal Inspection Service on spammers.. I can think of no one more deserving of their wrath.
Are those nine out of work men going to sit around and do nothing?
Yes, they WILL sit around and do nothing. If the guy with a net is a nice guy, they'll all enter into an agreement with each other to take turns each day using the net, while the rest sit and play cards. If the guy with a net isn't so nice, he'll disappear and the nine remaining guys will rotate on a nine-day schedule rather than a ten-day one.
they'll probably mandate that you must send all email through the post office system, and only overnight email can go through private systems, kind of like the rules for using private carriers of standard mail. and the post office email system will take ten days to get it to your inbox.
no, they just have email addresses for all postal addresses. there is nothing hard about that. then you could get spammed easier, its *great*.
doesn't mean it should be handled by the USPS. They should stick to what they know best.
I'm reminded of the dorks who send E-cards for christmas. Some things will just never go electronic.
Such a mandate would would be for the good of society. Honest, just think: a law outlawing private carrying of e-mail. How would the public react? Well, they'd shit can the post office, that's how. I can't wait.
Here in The Netherlands there has been talk about this a few years ago too, I haven't heard anything about it again...
Free the code to Slashdot, now!
because if this is done then eventually all email will be required to move thru the USPS. Now, do we want all our email moving thru them? Not only can they charge you per email, but can MONITOR EVERY email that much easier. Welcome to the New World Order.
Your forgetting that the economy will have to take on the burden of "retooling" people. All those fisherman who have used there specialized skill for years on end now have to learn something new. It goes with the old saying "you can't teach an old dog new tricks".
Thanks for the URL. It's always good to start Monday off with a good chuckle.
No in a true modern economy the first guy would patent the net. He would then sit on his ass eating mangos fed to him by hula girls all day.
That might actually be cool, because then they could send an automatic email to the recipient telling them that snail mail is being delivered to them and from whom, and an email to the sender saying it has been processed and sent on its way. And all of those email accounts would be controlled by the USPS, allowing no outside email to be sent to the accounts, thereby avoiding SPAM.
To top it off, it would be a guaranteed spam account. Mr. Advertiser could call up the master list of residents@us.gov and send messages to all people in a city, state, or the country.
Forget charging per message delivered, charge a higher fee per message generated. The cost per end viewer is lower than snail mail, but the 'package deal' (say,$4 per 1000 messages sent) puts more money in Sammy's account.
Other problems: think you have trouble with spam now, jsut wait 'til your addy is listed at postoffice@town.gov for all to see and copy. The USPS could make a fortune selling the address list. Want to be unlisted? Fine. Just pay the "nominal fee" of $5 per month (or whatever revenue your account is generating).
Then, Sammy will charge you a "hookup" and possibly a "download" fee, maybe in the form of a monthly subscription. Don't log on? They'll charge you for printouts (not rain, nor snow, nor crabby users will keep these goons from their appointed rounds). Didn't accept the printouts? You'll get a "message archiving fee" that is per MB per month.
The e-mail is clearly a win-win situation for Uncle Sammy. Of course, the service will scoop future users into using USPS Online, as more and more get hooked up. Why pay for an independent provider when Sammy already has it hooked to your front door?
I got an email telling about USPS plans to charge 5 cents per email. Apparently, they would bill you through your ISP for each email sent. Is there any truth to this?
I've installed automation systems in postal centers across the country, including the TTC mentioned in a previous post. I don't do that anymore, in part because the travel really sucked. But I've seen how they operate and have sort of an insider perspective.
The PO's strength relies on the infrastructure that it has created over the decades: your address. This infrastructure gives them the ability to deliver to virtually any location in the country. All the other package carriers rely on the PO's infrastructure in order to survive. Besides trying to stay alive in a digital age, the PO is trying to figure out how to provide these services that everyone depends upon using the new technology/infrastructre, which is not mature or stable. Yes, it's pretty stable, but not like the utilities. At some point we will need a standardized, reliable mechanism to provide services that currently are handled by the PO, but using digital technology. And this needs to support everyone. If nothing else, the government will need a guaranteed way of sending you tax forms, summons for jury duty, and so on. All businesses want the benefit of low cost, speedy communications with their clients. And regular people want that as well for personal use. So here comes the post office, an expert at this sort of thing. Much of the that knowledge can apply directly to the electronic age. If anyone can figure out how to do it, it's the PO.
But at the same time, they will have a very difficult time of it because their structure is so monolithic and political. Remember when you worked in food services and the district manager would show up? The DM was usually an incompentent pinhead, intimidated by superiors and then tried to intimidate the employees in the stores in their district. That's what it's like in the midlevel managment at the PO. They lag behind the rest of us technologically by about 3-5 years. Plus they have this massive ball and chain - the union.
So we'll see how they do. What the PO wants, what we all need, will happen, but they may not be able to do it.
Duh! Fedex would love to be able to take a letter from you for $0.25 and deliver it the next day. But they can't, because that would be illegal. Read up on the history of the Post Office sometime, and how they got the government to ban cheaper competition.
And then you could explain just why postage *should* be the same regardless of distance? Why shouldn't I pay less for a letter which is only going ten miles to a letter which is going a thousand miles?
Umm, when was Bill Gates arrested? Are you referring to one of the numerous times he got in trouble with police or speeding in Albuquerque, New Mexico?(location of the famous Bill Gates mug shot)
IPO hype to me.
...they are subsidized by the cops moron. If the cops would bust any competitors to my business, I'd needn't any "subsidy" either. Think before you type. Please.
That hardware already exists. It just needs to be integrated into one machine. Take a trip to a printing house & see all the stuff they've got. I saw it a few years back and this was a small place. Basically they could fold letters faster than you could type "snail mail" :) (whatever that means). So the only other problem is stuffing the envelope, which obviously could be done if we can slice bread with a machine :).
The Post Office is going to boom because of the Internet... internet commerce is becoming a major part of their business. All that individual shipping, eBay, online shopping, etc. -Rob-
If they were to take this approach, they would no doubt develop hardware that could print out messages, and put them into properly addressed envelopes that get fed into the rest of the sorting system.
They could just use an address like 12345_6789@usps.gov
WOW! That link was the most insane crap I've read in a long time. Real Christian like. Such weirdos out there. I *DO NOT* like Gore, but this is why I will vote for him, and why I will work my ass off to make sure those freak republicans will not get into office. It was a good party before they decided that we all needed Jesus.
AFAIK, the USPS is not really a government agency, they're semi-private.
damn 14 year olds, shut the thuck up.
Been there....done that.......uggggggh!
and if there is a quicktime attached to my email will they render it to videotape and deliver that? or a director projector file? etc.etc
I can just see how they're going to create all these addresses too: john.smith.1234.5a@pine_st.anytown.ca.us Who the hell wants that as their regular email address???
Well, it may not be widely known, but postal security has very sweeping authority including the "right" to go into foriegn countries to persue "postal fraud", and to perform search, siezure and other things supposidly constitutionally prohibited. Most of this was put in place during the days of "railroading" (late 1800's), so that when a train robber went to Mexico or South America (Butch Cassidy comes to mind). Still, the Postal authority retains these "rights" to this day. I suppose, for a good conspiracy theory, one must consider that a postal authority with such unlimited powers, being granted an indirect "right" to investigate "cyber crimes" by defining them as postal fraud could become very scary....
>Duh! Fedex would love to be able to take a letter from you for $0.25
>and deliver it the next day. But they can't, because that would be
>illegal. Read up on the history of the Post Office sometime, and how
You seriously think that given a choice Fedex would actually deliver packages/mail to most inner-cities addresses or those in rual areas for 25 cents?!? Wake up *TREKKIE* As much as you losers wish, the US Postal Office isn't going anywhere, because the alternatives to it like Fedex are far,far worse.
I think I saw this suggested before but what the USPS should do is allow everybody to have a Personal address and every Company a personal address as well. Basically I could send mail to Transmeta trs-123-55323-5921123 or something like that and the post office would lookup the CURRENT address of 'trs-123-55323-5921123' and deliver the mail/package to them. This would mean that from birth you could be assigned an personal address and then people could always send stuff to you and you'd never have to tell them a new address. You'd only have to tell the USPS where your current actual address is (or the address you want stuff delivered.) In fact they could probably offer several things like this. They could: * Have multiple address * Letter delivery address * Package delivery address * They could expand to other info for example * home phone * work phone Yes I know some of that might be scary but generally most people want this stuff available. Maybe you could make it *private* but then when you sign up for a service (for example a Credit Card), just like you sign a contract that says you'll pay the bill the same contract would include giving them permission to access your "personal address" info. That way maybe you could kind of keep your information private (if you wanted to) Kind of like having an unlisted phone number. They should organize this database, have a website where you can update your 'actual' address, and distribute (or make accessable) that datebase so that UPS and FedEx etc and access it too. For example we just moved into a new office. We are still getting tons of mail for the old residence. If the system mentioned above was in place no mail would have been wrongly delivered. This would not only be convenient for everybody involved it would save the USPS tons of money because it would solve the problem of forwarded / return to sender type of mail. Maybe not all of it but probably most of it. It seems to me that really only the USPS is in a position to make this happen. If they sat down with some smart people and designed it I'm sure they could come up with something. -g
So, they want an e-mail address for every location in the US. Why?
I can already receive e-mail, in my home, at work, or even on vacation. But, we don't need these silly ISPs, when we can get our own e-mail "free" from the USPS. If you're too stupid to log on, they'll even print them out. Why? Cui bono?
Simple: you charge the sender per message. Think of how much junk mail you get right now. Imagine how much cheaper it would be to produce online and send electronically. Multiply your present junk mail by a factor of 5 or so. Then charge 20-30 cents (as long as it's cheaper than regular paper mail!) per item sent. Now add up the additional revenue to the USPS. Paper not sent is miles not driven, gas not burned and carriers not paid. This is a substantial increase in revenue and decrease in overhead for the USPS.
E-mail addresses tied to mailboxes guarantee advertisers an audience. resident@123mainst.gov. The market share is equal to the number of addresses (since people can have multiple individual e-mail addresses, tying it to a location prevents redundancy). The lower cost per message and lack of paper drops the overhead on advertising. The growing number of users means the USPS will have to print out only a few messages, tiny in comparison to the revenues the system would generate.
What is it? A dedicated SPAM account, courtesy of the USPS. I think I like it. USPS gets more money, ad companies place more ads at lower cost, and I can toss it all into the trash without ever looking at it to see if it's a bill. Let's vote it in.
For those of you who think that $0.33 is too much for first class mail, checkout the rates in other industrialized nations like Germany, France, UK, etc. For $0.33, you can send a letter from Bangor ME to American Samoa, and have it delivered in a couple of days... now thats service!
1. Be doubleclick or some other banner add company.
2. Spam everyone using the USPS email addresses.
3. In the spam, include a 1x1 invisible gif with the USPS email address as an option.
4. Record the association between doubleclick or other ID and the USPS address.
5. Send real targeted paper mail to the suck^H^H^H^Hcustomers.
Snail mail is dead and gone for one reason and one reason only. The fully opensourced eCheese delivery system. It's long been held that the only reason for keeping such and archaic and proprietary system around was the convience of home-delivered Cheeses (believe it or not, there are STILL some people without thier own dairy!!!). All this has changed with the new eCheese system from Transmeta and LinuxOne. A small device resembling a toaster is hooked up via an unused USB port (in fact, there are those that believe USB was created for this reason and this reason alone), and is powered by Transmeta's new "insta-cheese" chip. The USB drivers and application software were written by LinuxOne, and have been in development since the get-go, while tossing out a red herring of a distribution in order to go public.
How the device works is simple. You select the cheese from a list of 350 varieties currently supported by the OpenCheese network, and almost instantly your cheese is delivered to your eCheese unit over your existing internet connection. Because it is open source, you are free to write your own drivers for cheeses currently not supported, or even to invent your own cheeses. This shall be a great boon to cheese lovers and computer users the world over.
With swift and open solutions such as eCheese, who would ever want to use the post office again? Oh, and I hear you can communicate with friends over an internet connection as well. But with cheese, who needs friends?
I thought of that. The problem is the hassle this involves for no apparent reason.
Yes, people could notify all their friends, and unsubscribe from all their lists, but what is the point? And why take the chance that they might miss someone important?
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
This one does have possibilities...
Unfortunately, it does promise to complicate things for the post office. Say 100 million people using the system. Everytime they move you have to add an address...
Not an impossible database to keep (including multiple forwarding addresses, and multiple moves) but a depressingly complex system for no real purpose.
Plus, I wouldn't count on US postal service actually managing to handle something like that.
Hm. Let's say the average person moves 5 times in their life.
100 million users, 500 million e-mail addresses with a significant amount of duplication.
Ouch.
Also, this doesn't take care of the problem of someone with the same name moving in at that address.
No, the idea of adding physical address information to e-mail is a non-problem.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Surely all of you have friends/relatives/acquaintences who still don't have email (older relatives, for example). What would be really useful would be the ability to send an email to say 'hand_deliver@uspostoffice.gov' and have it ultimately be printed out and sent to the person via snail mail. The email would need to contain the person's snail mail address (obviously) and possibly some encrypted credit card information so that I can be billed for the service but I for one would certainly pay more than 33 cents for such a service. I think the ability to send snail mail with the ease that one sends email would be a very handy thing.
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
But not completely so. The postal service is not going to become a competitive force in the internet economy per se.
But they could definitely enhance their value in what they already do. The idea of having the P.O. accept electronic documents and print them near their destination is cool. They could add electronic tracking to messages sent, or allow you to query the status of your P.O. box electronically. They could reduce stamp costs by supporting an e-cash like system for printing your own stamps, etc. There is definitely room for the postal service to improve themselves using the internet. Assigned e-mail addresses to every physical one is not, or course, one of them.
Am I the only one who would buy one of those nifty new stamp printers _IF_ they didn't charge you extra? What a bunch of crap. I'm paying for the gear and saving them time/money, but they are charging me more ... and they want to boost it even further. Bah!
dv
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
Mankind has always dreamed of destroying the sun.
I think I'd rather have my email sent to me, not to my house. I'm not sure why they'd choose to do it that way, except to reduce anonymity, and of course for targeted email marketing (AKA spam).
The real benefit is that people without email addresses will get them (The homeless are still SOL)... assuming that they have computers or know how to use a public library, which surprisingly few people do.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
I believe this is the logical conclusion of
:-)
snail://USA/33709-4819/63Way/4331
... an address I've always wanted to write on an envelope to see if it got delivered.
(though no doubt the USPS will choose a different protocol identifier...)
Cheers,
-- jra
-----
Let's just say that I'd rather trust the USPS with my secure documents than the typical ISP or, God help us, AOL or Microsoft...
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Well, the obvious thing they'd do to pay for the free email portion is the same thing as all the other free email accounts, sell advertising space along with the messages.
I'd like to know what business the US Post Office has trying to compete with the private sector.
Forgetting the fact that at least half of these ideas are completely hairbrained (printing email? Puhlease; and email is supposed to be discrete from physicality), USPS is getting Government backing for its work. UPS and FedEx are not and neither are any of the other smaller American courier companies that specialize in fast delivery. What right do they have to compete against the taxpaying managers of FedEx?
The United States Post Office serves one task: to ensure that anyone can send a letter anywhere in the country for a reasonable fee. They've proven they can barely do that job (I don't get mail delivery when it snows hard or hails), and I am downright afraid of what they'll do to the email system if they jump into this fray.
They should stay in the physical world where they've always been and, as email starts to push snail mail into the dustbin of history, fade out of existence willingly. The USPS is not chartered to pull a profit or compete in a free market.
The advantage of an e-mail address is that IT'S NOT TIED TO A STUPID PHYSICAL ADDRESS!. When I move, my e-mail address doesn't have to change. Are these geniuses suffering from a condition brought on by sitting on their brains or what?
And if I move I suppose their idea of convenience is for me to have take an afternoon off from work to stand in line at the post office to fill out a change of e-mail address form?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
My bet is that the smart fellow with the net has an unfortunate "accident" and the other nine men go back to fishing with spears.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Both UPS and FedEx have a few sorting stations throughout the country that ALL packages in that region go through, in this case the East. FedEx's main sorting complex, I believe, is in Memphis.
So if I sent a FedEx package from Pittsburg to Philadelphia via FedEx, it would go through memphis first. Obviously they have figured out that it is more cost effective to do it this way than to have hundreds of small sorting stations.
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
the swedish post office tried this a couple of years ago. you paid them to get an email address and the post office printed your mail and snailmailed (or maybe faxed, i can't recall if that was an option) it to you.
an interesting defect in their system was that their software couldn't handle @ signs anywhere in the messages, so in the printed copies of your email, email addresses would appear as foo(a)bar.com...
needless to say, this service didn't catch on. it was cheaper to buy a modem and an account with an isp.
yeah, i was referring to the mug shot incident...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
USPS factoids grabbed from a catalog that sells lists and stuff.
130 million delivery addresses in the US
38 million change of address per year
3.4 billion pieces of mail delivered every week
2.7 billion pounds of mail carried on commercial flights
1.1 billion miles driven to move the mail annually
24 pieces of mail for every household each week
The USPS is the nation's larges civilian employer with more than 765,000 employees
Handles 41% of the world's mail volume, 630 million pieces every day.
can anyone out there convert these #'s into trees?
--freq
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Can they learn from it? The post office (and ups and fedex and etc...) do some nice things. Package delivery is one. Message delivery is another. (although I haven't sent a piece of actual mail in three years, but I have received several) What I would really like is for the post office to start to learn lessons from the net.
I have an internet address. it is 209.116.217.40. It is also phoenix.hppc.com. If I change ISP's, my ip will change, but phoenix will not. We all take this for granted, and most of us know how DNS works, but it's pretty nifty nonetheless.
I also have a postal address. If I move, it changes. I can do the whole change-of-address form, and tell people my new address, and so on, but in the end, chances are I'll lose some mail.
Wouldn't it be nice if I just had a logical address that mapped to a physical one? If I move, I just contact the authority for my address, and let them know that my physical address has changed. My logical address continues to work. And even better, if I want to give someone my address so that they can send me mail, I don't have to let them know where I live.
The USPS seems like a logical place to keep this database of logical to physical mappings. Does anyone else think this is a good idea?
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
> and if there is no internet access to a mailbox, they'll print it out and hand deliver it to the address"
:-)
>
> Now, let's see how many ways this is a bad idea...
The post office _must_ charge someone for delivering printed email. I'm quite sure that the post office isn't a charity foundation.
I don't think they can charge the receiver without his/her approval, so just disagree and they can't do much about it. (can they? I'm no legal expert)
If the sender pays for sent mail, fine. Let the spammers pay. Sending 5 million emails $1 each is a nice retribution for the f***ers
Since I haven't seen SMTP support 'sending fees', I'd guess that the post office will use its own so-called email. Like a www-form you can fill your message (and credit card number) in. That can be more difficult to spam with.
The obvious extension of our current postal system would be a sender paid, by-the-piece price model. This would open up a new world of spamming, the crack spam. If you could crack a businesses email delivery system, send a million USPS.gov emails advertising your get rich quick scheme, and charge it to the business you cracked into, who is going to pay the $100,000+ charge you just racked up. Investigators would obviously know where to start looking, but if you were good enough at covering your tracks and kept your mouth shut, they wouldn't have any evidence and they couldn't do anything.
Wouldn't they have to provide tech support for people trying to read their USPS emails? That's a LOT of stupid people asking a LOT of stupid questions.
Basically, the system will cost in insane ammount of money to build, cause a ton of new headaches, and nobody with 4 brain cells is going to use it for anything important. That's not what I would classify as cost effective.
-B
Nail an all weather line printer on everyone's gatepost. That way computer-phobes can read e-mail, and the post office can send a guy round every morning to fill it with paper :)
+++++
+++++
The harder you look the less you see. That's what we're up against.
are you aware, how expensive it is, to deliver mail to rural areas?
in germany the firstclass monopoly mail fell just recently, and you know what happens?
competitors pick the raisins out of the cake, and only do downtown first-class, which they can do very very cheaply. this cuts away from the earnings of the postoffice, and may end in the postoffice being forced to raise prices to deliver mail out to the countryside.
this first-class mail monopoly, as bad as monopolies usually are, comes with a price:
the price of being required to deliver anywhere!(*)
greetings, eMBee.
(*)can somebody confirm that this is actually true for the US?
--
Gnu is Not Unix / Linux Is Not UniX
i don't think the UPS fee is unfair, but i do think claiming 33 cents is expensive, is unfair.
if you can't afford 33 cents, then you have other problems to worry about.
greetings, martin.
--
Gnu is Not Unix / Linux Is Not UniX
It's not a really stupid idea if done to include the name of the person:
john.doe.123main.9digitzip@usps.gov
This then opens up mail forwarding when you move. You could keep receiving mail even if you move and change isps and not worry about lost mail. (hopefully)
Now, anytime I change isps, I have to notify everyone, unsubscribe from lists and resubscribe with the new address. Wouldn't it be easier to just notify one place and have it forwarded to you new address. change notifications could be sent back and automatically processed by other sites to use the new address.
--jeff
This could be good, but watch the implementation very closely.
The Postal Service has a mandate to provide "universal service" to Americans, regardless of where they live. If the ability to receive e-mail is to be a "right", then the US Postal Service seems to be the best choice. This seems to be a case where a natural monopoly has desirable characteristics. "Universal service" means they have to serve the boondocks and can't just pick the highly profitable routes.
With the problems with domain registries, would the Post Office be a better choice?
Nope, the congressional offices must pay the post office to send the mail. There is no such thing as free mail anymore. Of course, Congress writes it into their bills that the taxpayers will pay for Congress' mail, but it is not free, the Post Office gets paid for every piece of mail it delivers.
Don
Remember that the tax money you pay goes in part to susbsidize the Postal Office.
There is no subsidy, since 1983, by law the Post Office must be self supporting. They can borrow money from the government, but they must pay it back. Even the government and military must now pay for their postage. Most likely what you saw was the payment by the government to the Post Office for the costs of all government mailings for the year.
Don
An email address for every physical address is not really do-able. It would be a pain, and, as has been stated, would lead to unheard-of amounts of spam. Which would mean the expenses for bandwidth that people would only complain about.
There are definately some issues here, but it is doable. In Australia, every postal address has a unique identifier. It wouldn't be that hard to translate it to an email address, like say n537_smith_st@north.perth.mail.gov.au
Legal documents, bank statements, bills, etc. would not only be before the prying eyes of the USPS, but untrusted nodes along the route between your computer and the USPS mail servers.
Let's not forget that while when we participate in e-commerce and do online banking, we're usually operating over an encrypted layer.
If the USPS is to take this idea seriously, they would have to encourage and provide support for encrypted POP3/IMAP and SMTP connections. Otherwise, all of your mail is at the hands of the 17-year old hacker-wannabe kids who tend to work at ISPs nowadays.
If this idea were taken seriously, it could encourage a more secure Internet. It could also expose your sensitive mail to people who really shouldn't be reading it.
Wow, the US is expanding its borders ... "anywhere in the 50 US states" ... those retrograde louts at the USPS still recognize Canada (and, depending on your view of what constitutes "North" America, Mexico) as international destinations and charges higher postage accordingly =)
Hadda mention this, though your basic point is, of course, quite sound. The Post Office does an amazing job most of the time.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
You just described what MCI Mail did around 1983. For $2 (IIRC), you could compose a message electronically and have it delivered via the good old USPS to any U.S. address. I actually held an account on this service long enough to try it out--they laser printed the letter (a big deal back then)!
Unfortunately while I think you are correct that email will eventually gain more and more importance, I think you are forgetting one fairly large group of Americans. That is, those who don't have $1000 for a computer plus $20-$30 a month for internet access. How, precisely, do you think we will ensure that they can send and receive mail in the 'new world' that you speak of? Will the government pay to get them all computers? Or will they just drop completely under the radar, forgotten since they can't compete in the new world?
--John
If you move, does the E-mail address go with you, or does it stay with the physical location? Then someone else would get your E-mail and v-v.
Of course, you could send in that Change-of-address card, and they'll have to figure out which E-mail to forward and which not.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
This is because UPS and FedEx are prevented by law from offering a simple letter-delivery service. They may only offer parcel delivery and "special", more expensive, letter-delivery services (next-day, express, etc). The USPO has a government-granted monopoly on ordinary-letter delivery, which is the only reason it still exists. (The only reason why anyone is ever impressed with the whole "They'll deliver a letter for $0.25...$0.30...$0.33 cents anywhere in the country!" thing is that no one seems aware of that fact. Great free propaganda.)
And now the Post Office wants to get into email. Can you say "dying government entity looking for a new lease on life?"
Gee. The post office is the only entity legally allowed to convey a one-ounce letter over the course of 3 or 4 days. Every other would-be mail carrier must offer this as an "next-day" or even "same-day" service. And, guess what, everyone else's service is inherently more expensive (compare the costs of physically conveying something any distance in one day or less versus three-or-four!).
Of course, because of that, they're evil bad private companies who can't do half the job of the shining government monopoly. Probably even better propaganda than the War on the Constitu-, oops, sorry, War on Drugs campaign.
The last time I heard about a government agency that wanted more revenue.
An arm of the US government using encryption to protect the privacy of the communications of ordinary citizens? Not on this planet, bub.
More like, "gee, now we can grep the post office".
I'm talking about the Private Express Statutes. No private entity in the United States may deliver a package for less than $3 or a letter for less than twice the cost of the United States Postal Service's price.
UPS offers a "Three Day Select" service, but skirts this law by requiring a minimum billing weight of one pound. FedEx offers the "Express Saver" service, which is three days. For a letter envelope weighing one ounce, FedEx in fact charges the legal minimum amount; UPS charges more. Of course, I did select "own packaging" when I priced it at UPS, so that might have raised the price. I'm on a slow link, so I don't want to retry. (Low Bandwidth Mode Slashdot all the way!)
I've never heard of a location UPS or FedEx wouldn't come to for package pickup. You just have to pay the fee. And yet, a lot of people in this country, mythology aside, do not get home delivery or pickup from the post office. If you do in fact live in Nowhere, AR, you'll probably have to drive to a dropoff box or the post office to send something or pick up a letter. As for dropoff, if the sender pays for it, UPS and FedEx will go virtually anywhere in the world and and hand-deliver it. The PO tends to leave yellow notes that ask you to drive to the nearest PO and pick up your package...during regular business hours, naturally.
Well, aside from the insurance you can get on any package you send by FedEx or UPS, if either goes backrupt, you could go to court to recover your property. I'm willing to admit that there'd be complications if either (incredibly successful in the real-world) company went under, though we'd actually have warning in the real world and be able to avoid a foundering mail carrier. I'd like to see a plan that forced the USPS to deliver its packages as reliably and with as few losses as UPS and FedEx, and with a money-back guarantee if it's as much as a minute later than the quoted time of delivery.
Here's a good analysis of some of the flaws of the USPS.
This is just such a bizarre claim. I used to live a fair ways out in the country and I'd see UPS trucks drive regularly around the area for deliveries. Pay the fees, and they'll pick up and drop off almost anywhere - without a legal mandate.
And, if you think the fee is unfair, tell me what exactly the USPS does for people who can't afford postage...
3) Begin closing the legacy Post Offices around the country and opening these Post Offices in strip shopping malls with lots of parking.
So I take it you have been to the 24 hour post office at the Minneapolis/St. paul international airport? Parking there is hurrendous(look out for the swarm of Semis), and no matter how late you go there, it always has a long line of customers. Plus, the place wouldn't let me use my debit card since I put "SEE ID" on the signature part, so they made me write a check. Uh, okay. The place needs to be revitalized. Yet I go there for all my postal needs since its 24 hours, since the post office closer to me(with awful parking conditions too) has inconvenient horus, and the place looks like it hasn't changed since 1962.
Given enough government backing, many of these ideas could succeed.
We need to keep the almost 800,000 postal workers employeed or this could have major repurcusions in the economy.
I believe there is a certain security issue with this. I remember in days of old, certain stores acted as a local post office, but robbing such a place could also be considered a federal offence.
I am under the impression that post offices today are isolated, partially to prevent it from being a direct target of crime( as would be the case in a grocery store ).
I'm sure it's possible to reside in a mall, but I get the feeling that there's a good reason to not.
-Michael
-Michael
I remember reading something about this on Slashdot a few years back. US Postal were complaining that the flow of snail mail was down, because of email and that they were taking some actions to prevent it.
Looks like their descions aren't made much faster then they deliver the mail. *grin*
Seriously, though, not everyone has a computer. I knwo it is strange in this day and age. But there are still alot of people who are not interested in learning how to use one of these things, let alone even purchasing one for that new email system. Maybe when the generation gets replaced, things might be different. Only time will tell.
I'm reminded of that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer discovers that the Post Office is obsolete
Actually he just got miffed at the post office because they kept sending him crap through the mail, and when he tried to send it back, they sent him more. So he eventually tried to cancel his mail altogether, and then Neman nearly had a heart attack like he was losing a most valuable customer.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Well, with the USPS wanting to have an email address for every postal one, and offering to print out and stuff your email into an envelope (for those who don't have a computer), it brings back a question that's been preying on my mind for a while, namely:
What exactly is the relationship between the USPS and the United States government? Not to start some sort of conspiracy theory or anything, but this raises some serious privacy issues.
Any comments?
I don't think so. What would really happen is that all those 10 men would all use nets and the village would catch 100 fish per day. For a while they would be rich from exporting the surplus, but eventually they would deplete the fishing stock and then the village runs out of fish.
I can see it now... An AOL/TW/EMI merger with the United States Government.
Hrmmm...Segfault is actually useful nowadays...
Look here.
Here's my copy of DeCSS. Where's yours?
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Here are a couple more thoughts. I would love to hear some feedback on these:
1 - Government is slow, realy slow. They will have a very hard time adapting to these changes for several reasons - most are outlined in the article.
2 - In the past (a long time ago), there were issues with infrastructure, cost etc of setting up and maintaining a national post service. This is changing. Now there are fewer barriers and there is competition.
3 - There is still a need for the service they are providing. However, if the service s not used as much, we should cut the budget accordingly and be happy.
4 - The USPS should not try to enter areas that are currently being addressed with provate business, which will naturally be more efficent. I do not see any problems with the post office downsizing. It is a bastion of the US, but we should be able to move on and advance and not have to hold onto old, outdated services just because uncle sam wants to.
ok i did not want to but
5 - Lets make the USPS a public certificate authority and start getting competion (even artificial - ie government) in that area. The USPS would have a great image that they could market and leverage that could compete against Verisign and their high prices and questionable procedures, they are soooo quick....
There was news about a year ago, that the USPS was interested in taking over the .us domain, for this purpose.
So they will end up using something like
something@123mainst.90125.usps.us
which would work fairly cleanly with what exists today in that domain.
The actual on-time performance (about 94%) of the post office on first-class overnight delivery can be found here:
http://www.usps.gov/news/press/99/99083new.htm
These are their own stats, and they don't reveal methodology, so I'll assume that these are best case statistics based on flexible interpretations of on-time.
While I think they way the USPS has hounded private mailbox companies is symptomatic of the way that any legally-enforced monopoly will act; I would have to agree that their advertising ("What's Your Priority"), emphasis on results and targetting profitable sub-segments of delivery, like $3 Priority Mail, have been very impressive for a gov't monopolist.
What boggles me is why the Postmaster General doesn't execute a leveraged buy-out of the USPS. They'd have to lose the monopoly, but with the existing infrastructure of physical assets distributed throughout the country, their "footprint" is really impressive. As a private entity, the USPS would have much more flexibility (OK, and competition) and leeway in its behavior. Also, the top guys could get really rich if they were successful -- always nice to have incentives aligned.
The Post Office is not even *remotely* obsolete; Seinfeld is just an insipid TV show, and people who think the Post Office is "obsolete" have a very myopic view of the world.
The vast, vast majority of humanity does not have e-mail, or fax machines, or cell phones, or any of the other techy devices we nerds take for granted. Even in the so-called "developed" countries, most people do not live and die by electronic communication.
Frankly, I'm very pleased to see the Post Office get into electronic mail, and I wish them the best.
I think this could be pretty neat.
:)
:)
:)
Dropping all my conspiracy theories, this would be a really good way to get mail immediately anywhere you want, for a lot cheaper.
Examples:
1) The USPS could be a proxy for delivering checks electronically.. pay by credit card on the web, they have a check there the next day. Imagine.. Your parents could get your tuition money to the college in one day for less than $15.
2) *Vanity alert* For a small monthly fee, you could have your email printed out and delivered..
3) The USPS could transfer official, authentic documents electronically.. contracts and such.. when faxes won't do.
I know there are lots of holes, so to speak, in these ideas.. but hey whatever.
I *just* printed out an email from my evil arch-nemesis and doused it in lighter fluid.. and then torched it! What a coinkidink.
--
rJames.org - illustration
1)hmmm... A giant database with everyone in the worlds address in it sounds interesting.
2)If the Post Office quits, a)who will we blame our brothers and sisters(who can't be totally related to us ) be called -- The Postman's Son won't cut it anymore b)what will our poor dog do with out the postman to fill his evening with excitement? c)what will become to the term Postal? 3)....
In all seriousness, this sounds like we are just making excuses to have low tech jobs.... Do we need that? Are we going to pay someone to hand deliver a message that could just as easily be delivered electronically? In the near future, are we going to pay people to hand us fast food when a machine could dispense it just as easily? Perhaps, what we need is to redirect our efforts. Instead of wasting money to pay people to do what a machine can do, we should pay to have people learn how to use the machines. (Of course we know that all or even most people do not have what it takes to control machines (Minus the small percentage represented by us), and no amount of schooling will change that.) It is an interesting question though, and one I think that will affect us even more in the future. What comes first? People or technology?There are several things that came to mind while I was reading the article. Mostly these things are issues of the post office not being able to change the way they think about what they do with regards to how the Internet impacts them. Some thoughts:
First, like a previous poster said, creating email addresses for each physical address in the United States is not the right thing to do. What happens when I move from that physical address? Does the next resident at that house continue to get all of the messages from the cool porn listserv I was subscribed to? What the Post Office should really consider doing is assigning every person an email address that stays with them for life. Sort of like your Social Security Number. How many of these "Yahoo Mail" type sites advertise that you should sign up with them because you get "a lifetime email address"? This is definitely something that people want.
Second, to that end, the Post Office could become the perfect entity to do Certificate Authority functions. Right now, companies like Verisign are trying to figure out how to digitally sign peoples' electronic certificates used to identify themselves online. But this market is just starting to develop and Verisgn certainly doesn't have a lock on it. The Post Office could.
Third, the Post Office doesn't "get" some issues with how the world does business electronically. For example, the article mentions that they'll print out any email that isn't deliverable to me and stuff it in a physical envelope to give to me. Who wants this? Not only does it really defeat the whole concept of electronic mail, but also it fails to take into consideration the fact that online access will be (if it isn't already) so ubiquitous that anybody can afford to be online.
Another example of how the Post Office doesn't "get it" is the example in the article of how they need to find ways to charge less to ship things like CD's, because if I pay $7 for a CD I don't want to pay $9 shipping. The reason I think this is an example of them "not getting it" in the new online world is that I'm probably going to be buying my music online within 5 years -- there won't be a physical CD to ship anyway!
"Top postal officials expect that any Internet-based ventures will require partnerships with the private sector in order to succeed. They have met with a number of companies, including America Online."
At that point, for the majority of Americans, what communications channel would not be owned by AOL? Head over here for the rest.
The Postal Service has value because it can deliver an envelope full of paper to any residence in the country for very little money per envelope. But that's a service of decreasing value to individuals: some 90% of mail carried by the Postal Service originates at businesses, and the vast majority of it is not sent first class. Bills are, because they have to be personalized, but advertising, coupons, and credit-card applications are bulk-mailed to everyone in the zip code for far less than $0.33 per piece: I believe it gets as cheap as $0.04 per piece for really huge mailings. Here in the electronic world we call that spam, and it's the majority of my snail mail every day (grump). First-class mail rates subsidize the costs of delivering all the rest of this: why should I pay extra mailing my Christmas cards just to ensure that my local crappy pizza place can send me coupons I'll never use all the rest of the year? Since the vast majority of bulk-rate mail gets thrown away unread and unused, delivering it at a subsidized rate can't be justified as an economic development activity. The USPS should increase the rates on bulk mail (hopefully that will cut down on the amount I get!) and quit raising the first-class rate.
JennyWL
The URL for the "e-post" system is :
www.epost.ca . (go figure?).
.------------ - - -
| big bad mr. frosty
`------------ - - -
Now, if we could just get the same thing with phone numbers also, we would be set
Well we do here in Australia, and elsewhere in the world. Mobile phones are assigned a non-geogrpahic number. I can move all over Australia and keep the same number.
I have moved around a bit. Changing postal addresses is a pain. I still get the occassional piece of mail forwarded from an address I lived in ages ago. I have always thought that the Post should offer a service of a non-geographic address. Any mail addressed this way would be picked up early in the sorting process and readdressed with my current geographic address. Current forwarding is usually done once the mail item reaches the final sorting step, where it is readdressed and sent through the same process.
This is a service I would pay for.
Umm... I don't know about you, but the USPS won't pick up mail from my house. Not that it's far to the nearest post office drop off box (maybe a 5-min walk), but still....
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
They also don't know how to sign the e-mails (they probably don't know how to set up the mails, and they'll end up using NT because there's no unix here).
Sorry, no links (the few I found are down/in spanish; but it's true.. really)
--
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Some companies use priority mail. I know back in the day CDNow mailed a lot of their CDs first class if you didn't pay for an upgrade. I'm not sure what they do know, I haven't used them for a while.
It would be nice to have a registered e-mail service. Perhaps with two versions.
Version one: post office prints out and delivers by hand to person.
Version two: you send your e-mail via the post office, the post office e-mails the recipient notifying them of of registered mail and if the recipient doesn't reply and read it on line via a web browser and password by a certain time, then it gets hand delivered (to help reduce waste).
All registered mail is archived by the USPO and is legally admissable in court cases. I could see many businesses and individuals finding this useful.
no sig.
Bad idea. First, just watch the rates go up. Yes, I said *up*. For a model just look towards Priority Mail vs. UPS Ground. Which one gives better value for the money? No contest. As a small e-commerce merchant I'll take Priority Mail any day.
2) Develop a next generation Post Office that would make practical the delivery of every thing one can buy via e-commerce, particularly perishable goods. These Post Offices will need to be open and staffed 24 x 7. You would get your packages stored there for a modest monthly fee based on your historical package volume and/or type.
Longer counter hours, especially weekend would be nice. OTOH if you need 24/7 get at box at a mail drop that has longer hours. Also, at least here in rural America UPS, and FedEx aren't open on weekends either and while you can get weekend delivery, it comes at a price. Saturday delivery from USPS is at no extra charge.
3) Begin closing the legacy Post Offices around the country and opening these Post Offices in strip shopping malls with lots of parking.
Hard to do where there are no strip malls. Yes, Virginia, there still are the parts of the country where there are no strip malls but where there are Post Offices. OTOH, where there are strip malls opening sub-stations has some merit.
I believe this will work as a strategy because a lot more people who do not have computers today can be convinced to get computers or internet appliances if they think e-commerce is useful.
Now we are supposed to use the Post Office to leverage folks into buying computers. Give me a break!
The problem is that large scale business-to-consumer e-commerce cannot be made practical until delivery of perishable and large items can be made secure and relatively inexpensive for the shipper.
While shipping perishable items will always be a prob, it is only solved the old fashioned way -- paying for the premium service that it requires. You won't ever get next-day-super-duper-delivery for the same rate as non-premium.
If people really bought into this, the Post Office could end up being a strip shopping center anchor tenant in many towns. By this I mean, the size of a supermarket. I'm not sure how this would work in cities, although I'm pretty sure that this would not be an issue in places like Manhattan, due to the fact that door-to-door delivery with extended hours.
If your not sure how this would work in the city, either. I'm even less sure how this would work in the country. Why do we go to a K-Mart over a small local store? Is it the ambiance? Is it the personalized service? I don't think so. It is price. The only reason for a Post Office the size of a Super-K is price. Other than that give me a small local office with a Postmaster and Clerks I know any day.
I still say, for them to deliver a physical piece of paper in a few days to any house, anywhere in the country is damn impressive.
Yeah, how would we ever do this without the government-insured monopoly of the USPS. Odin knows nobody else could ever do the job. That's why we're propping up UPS and FedEx with government subsidies, too. Oh, wait...
Sorry, but this article just screams "Another Government Bureaucray can't keep up with technology"
So, I have to pick between the trees and the mailpersons.
That's a tough one.
cheers,
1) Spam will kill trees and fill physical mailboxes.
As if it doesn't already. Most of my mail is spam already. I take piles of the shit to the recycler every month.
cheers,
If they're going to assign addresses, they should do it for every PERSON and COMPANY in the U.S., not every physical address
Now, if we could just get the same thing with phone numbers also, we would be set.
cheers,
Wouldn't they have to provide tech support for people trying to read their USPS emails? That's a LOT of stupid people asking a LOT of stupid questions.
No reason to be nasty. It's a lot of ignorant people asking a lot of ignorant questions.
Basically, the system will cost in insane ammount of money to build, cause a ton of new headaches, and nobody with 4 brain cells is going to use it for anything important. That's not what I would classify as cost effective.
A cost effective "business" run by the government... somebody's dreamin'.
cheers,
Granted the post office does do a good job for the price. And there are some things that will always be sent in the mail. Legal documents, financial statements, etc. will always go through mail. I personally wouldn't want any financial statements sent in email. I would just print out a copy.
The proposal that the USPS should assign email address is unfeasible as stated above. But this idea is worse because SPAMers could abuse this. You would have to _pay_ to receive email. Not much probably the same as a letter. However, I get a modest amount of SPAM a day. My friends get more. I wouldn't enjoy paying $3.30 for ten SPAM emails per day.
IMHO, the USPS should not try to get involved with the email. They should concentrate on e-commerce. The idea of mailing CDs and other small or large packages for much less than UPS or other private companies is a great way to get ahead. If USPS can get the package to your door faster and cheaper than UPS, then people will use USPS. And if they can pick up that package from my house I want to send to my brother in another state, then I would pay more than UPS so I wouldn't have to go send it off myself.
I keep thinking there needs to be a solution to the the domain name bit of email addresses. If you have a university or business address you address means something but otherwise your address is yourname@the-first-ISP-you-used.net/com/whatever. These addresses aren't intuative, are hard to remember and impossible to guess. Maybe there should be domain names like town/city.country and everyone gets a free redirection service from their town/city?
I rethought this issue and realized it would be beneficial if the USPS offered a free 'e-mail box' to every US address. By 'e-mail box' I mean the ability to get and send e-mail: a computer wired to the Internet. The domain would indicate USPS but the username would be discretionary (just like any other ISP). This way every address would be tied to email and email would be as ubiquitous as electricity and phone service.
Requirements: simple email appliance with low-bandwidth Internet connection. (Minimum; resident may supply own equipment, but must support it himself [that's not sexist, just correct English]).
Options:
USPS provided upgrades at reasonable cost (they need profit, too).
User choice for permanent username (first come, first serve).
Opt Out (because Opt In would be to wonderful) of targeted marketing.
Benefits:
Universal access to email.
Demographically-rich database for target marketing (benefits business and the USPS).
Permanent email address for life for non-professional students (you know, the never-grads who claim, "I've had the same email address for 25 years!").
Everyone needs access to the new medium of intellectual and commercial exchange.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Is this really any different in concept than ZIP+4?
Extremely. People would complain that the USPS wasn't forwarding the mail meant for them to their current address, etc. They would have to do it by name at least. As it stands now, paper mail can be forwarded. If you move, you file the form and the PO will forward every piece of mail that goes to you to the new addy. In theory anyway. I've moved a _lot_ in my life. They usually get it right, though some things tend to get lost in the transfer. Doing that with email? How would you manage it? If it's done only by address then emails would go to the wrong person, or the wrong place, all the time. Not a solution. Names work for that - file the paper or whatever, and they can simply change the physical address to which your name-mail is tied to.
-Elthia
(((Wouldn't they have to provide tech support for people trying to read their USPS emails? That's a LOT of stupid people asking a LOT of stupid questions.)
No reason to be nasty. It's a lot of ignorant people asking a lot of ignorant questions. ))
It's both, actually. There are ignorant people who call tech support, but there are also a LOT of very _stupid_ people who do it.
It was a good point, however. Do we really want to work for the USPS? No? Didn't think so. So where are they going to get the geeks to do the job - the many, many, many geeks it would take? *snort* Not going to be an easy task, that.
((A cost effective "business" run by the government... somebody's dreamin'. ))
*cackle*
Another good point. Why in heck are they considering this, anyway? They'll never catch up to ISP's in popularity, and by the time they could implement the system all their hardware will be obsolete - and probably very very overloaded, they'll underestimate it almost without doubt. It's not like the system they've got, the main parts of it DO go obsolete within a few years rather than 20 or more. *sigh*
-Elthia
What happens when you move and you have your mail forwarded to the new address? Oh wait. That works... A change of address form is a change of address form...
Off-topic from the reply:
What happens with all the laws regarding normal mail? Would those apply to your email address? Do they already apply? Curious...
Does this mean that we would have to pay so much for each out-going e-mail or something? The internet is best how it is, untouched.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
"and if there is no internet access to a mailbox, they'll print it out and hand deliver it to the address"
Y'know, before I read the article or comments, I said to myself, "Hey, y'know, I'll make a joke about how if you don't have a computer, they'll print out the email and give it to you, like that one Dilbert strip!"
God damn.
Seriously.
---
"Music is music, but anarchy is stupid." -- Eli Armen-Van Horn
As.. hard as this may be for you to imagine.. Not everyone will always have a computer.. And until they become more reliable I wont trust it with anything critical. You seem to a litttttle blindly trust email? I dont send anything in email I dont mind for the rest of the world knowing.. Because thats all it is a big huge open door. Nuff Said.. Email has problems.
Firstly, a sceme to allow companies to send electronic content to near point of delivery printers. Electronic information can be sent via e-mail or fax. The only advanage of this may be to areas where these services are not available, but a scheme of telecottages would probably be a better answer. As for attaching e-mail address to addresses, this will be a very difficult one to impliment. It could be done with unique addy's for all locations, but this would lead to all the peole who had the potential to use it to have dual e-mail addresses. Alternatively I guess people could register their e-mail with the postal service and have that attached, but the advantage would be minimal, they could send documents electronically, but it would only be possible if it is a paper based medium and would the scanning, etc. time be worth it... Maybe with a globalised partnership between postal services. Although again, those who are online have e-mail and they can contact others on line with that... I think in many ways this is a company groping for ideas rather than one with a direction.
Working for the (other) man
take two...
Isn't the zip+4 unique for any given address and/or PO box?
So one could have an address like:
chris@80230.6918.usps
or more likely
chris@6918.80230.usps
to put the (sub)domains in the right order.
(I hate Mac programs that use the KP enter key as 'SEND')
Nothing to say here... move along
Would the USPS forward mail to E-Mail boxes for free, or would it cost money per message to deliver, even if not printed?
Would that mean that everyone who wanted to send a USPS mailbox E-Mail would have to get an account and keep a positive balance (like postage machines now)?
Nothing to say here... move along
...to every physical mailbox in the US? Isn't that a tetch like trying to fit jet engines on the Wright Flier?
That's odd because he seemed to indicate it was basically to help pay for services that would not normally be self supporting -- some sort of special programs the USPS provides. It sounded like a subsidy to me. But I guess if they have to pay it back, it's not as bad as I thought.
I'd be the first to say that I think the Postal Office has improved greatly over the past five years. It used to take six days or more for me to get a piece of mail from WI to MA. Nowdays, it takes maybe three days to get mail from WI to CA.
However, I don't think it's right to say that postage of thirty-three cents is all you ever have to pay to mail a letter. Remember that the tax money you pay goes in part to susbsidize the Postal Office.
I did a quick search on the approperations committee web site, and I see a document that has the Postmaster General asking for $100,195,000 for Fiscal Year 1999. That's quite a chunk of change, and it comes from tax dollars. I'll assume they didn't actually get all they asked for, but I'm sure there are reports available that show exactly how much was given to the Postal Office to help them keep running. But my point is that it is NOT just thirty-three cents.
Jim
Spam will kill trees and fill physical mailboxes. I hope "postage" is charged back to the sender and not delivered "postage due"
Cool ! You can now spam your enemies into bankruptcy !
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
actually, as i recall, the postal service wanted to set up an electronic mail system back in the '80s, but the idea was nixed by congress. probably under pressure from phone and telex interests.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
A mailman once said "that isn't junk mail, it's my job security"
__
Sigs are like arse-holes, everybody has one
Encryption (a la PGP) and envelopes are just different means to a similar end. I wonder if they would support some kind of "electronic envelope" technology.
Of course, the e-transmitted document would still have to be printed in a human-readable format before it's put in a envelope.
But is this really any different than trusting a few dozen strangers (from beginning to end) to handle your envelope without opening it? Of course, Federal law prohibits just such action. I would imagine that similar laws would be passed if this initiative goes forward. Besides, isn't what prevents more snooping right now (besides ethical considerations and illegality) sheer volume? I can see the USPS, if this catches on, acquiring newspaper-press-type machines that print the letter and envelope, fold it, and stuff it, all without ever being touched by a human hand.
I can see more interesting applications, though. For example, if you buy an item at auction (say, on eBay), and the seller is not a business, you cannot pay by credit card. If you don't have a checking account, or do not want to use a personal check, you must purchase a money order for ~$.60. Add $.33 for the stamp, and you've spent around a dollar to get the money to the seller, and you still have to wait for your mail to get to them, and for your item to get back. Now, imagine instead, you go to the USPS web site, type in your letter, enter the address and your credit card number, and the information is transmitted electronically to the closest post office to the receiver. There, they print the letter and the check, stuff them in an envelope, and deliver them for you the next day! You've just cut delivery time on your merchandise by approximately half, and if they could do it for ~$.50-$.75, they'd have the market on this one. This would work if you didn't have a credit card, too, by simply going to the post office and paying by cash.
How about having a terminal where you can read your email at the post office (and print to take home, if you choose) for those people who don't have computers and don't want the postal workers printing out their email?
Someone else said that a lot of corporate types like to send email to addresses in the format 'John.Smith@domainname.tld', but this would cause problems with common names. How about a format like 'JohnSmith.123MainStreet@AnytownCA.90210.usps.gov' ?
Just random thoughts...
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
Up in Canada, we got this new service a couple months ago. It's called EPOST and apparently you can get your businesses to send bills and stuff to your epost address. I haven't used it and probably never will. The post office is DEAD!
With about 15% (guestimate based on AOL 20 Million) of the US population online, there really is no point in assigning email addresses. The USPS loves email! More to the point, they love E-Commerce! Larger packages are far more cost efficient than regular mail. Remember, the USPS is not a profit hungry corporation. Sounds like this rumor just came out of the digital stamps that the USPS is incorporating into there centers. No worry at all, faxes were never seen as a threat, as email is not either.
The punishment for sending mail like this wouldn't be $50 an email or anything like the current anti-spam laws. You'd be tampering with the USPS, which has specific laws covering it, and you'd almost certainly go to jail.
Even sending fraudulent mail with the USPS is specifically covered in laws, so even without cracking the system, simply sending pyramid-scheme mail is illegal, and those laws are enforced.
Here's a Linux Journal article about the post office and optical character recognition.
(*)can somebody confirm that this is actually true for the US?
Yes the USPS has to deliver first class letters to every postal address in the US for the same price, which may not neccessarily mean home delivery in rural areas where people may live a mile or so from their mailbox (I'm not sure the limit).
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Isn't linking your e-mail address to a physical location a really, really, stupid idea?
Doesn't this mean that every time you move you have to update your address? What about the person who gets yours? Do they promise not to read the mail? What about passwords?
The great thing about e-mail is that so long as your account exists, you can be anywhere in the world. I even have one of my more stable addresses printed on checks instead of a phone number.
The Post Office should just face up to it's obsolescence and move on. Some restructuring to specialize in efficient parcel delivery might work, but they would be competing with more trustworthy companies like UPS and FedEx there.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Since several years ago, the Spanish post have been providing the Burofax service. You can send a fax from the Post Office and if the receiver can't receive it, the Post Office will print and deliver it. You can get receipt confirmation.
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Maraist dun said:
Kentucky must be simultaneously advanced AND in the past, then. :)
Where I live in Louisville, they actually DO have a post office in a strip mall; I've seen other post offices in strip malls around here, too, though not quite the size of a grocery store around here.
Conversely, until around six months ago there was a grocery store where I used to live in Louisville (specifically Melton's, which was a meat-market/grocery chain which is now sadly defunct except for one store) that had a post office inside (no PO boxes, but they did sell stamps and one could get registered mail services, etc. through them--it was considered a branch office of the main branch office in Okolona). Also, I've seen post offices in "hypermart" type stores, such as Meijer's and Wal-Mart Supercenters, both here in Louisville and (at least for Wal-Mart Supercenters) in Sevierville, TN.
As for why they typically don't go to strip malls--I would guesstimate one reason is (due to parking needs for USPS vehicles, sorting, etc.) because it is actually cheaper in some areas to buy a piece of land and build a building than to attempt to get frontage space in a strip-mall. (Most of the strip-mall post offices I've seen are either where the post office was one of the first tenants, or where a strip-mall is so impoverished that about the only places that WILL rent it out are ethnic food supermarkets, bingo halls, Big Lots (odd-lots "salvage" store), smaller salvage stores, and the USPS.) This is especially true in areas where there are a lot of stores and limited space--most companies will hire out to an established company that is working for profit rather than to the USPS. :P
As a minor aside--I can't speak for other areas of the US, but among three of the major shopping areas in Louisville (along Hurstbourne Lane, along Outer Loop by the Jefferson Mall, and along Shelbyville (?) Road by two large malls, Mall St. Matthews and Oxmoor) there are literally SO many shopping centers along the sides of the roads that in truth the roads can be considered extended strip-malls. In all three of these areas it's literally gotten so bad that movement in traffic is next to impossible starting around a month before Christmas...it is just a bit surreal to see nothing but strip-malls and "real" malls for over a mile or two in most of these areas (and n the case of Hurstbourne, a good five miles--and Hurstbourne Lane is widely regarded as having the worst rush-hour traffic in Louisville, hands down (even though it's a four-lane highway...so many strip malls have built around it that it is impossible to expand the road any further :P).
And people wonder why I hate suburban sprawl :P
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Let's see...something like 75% of the US population is *not* on the Net, some people *like* things like cards, and letters, and then, of course, it's sorta hard to squeeze jars of jam, or canned hams, or sweaters, or ...even books, like userfriendly, over the wires of the net.
No, guys, information is not quite everything. It's what you *do* with it, which, at some point, comes back to the physical world. If FedUps, and the other delivery services aren't obsolete, then neither is the Post Office.
mark
For the deliver of anything other than actual physical objects or documents with 'real world' signatures, snail mail is obselete. Eventually once a good digital signature standard is worked out and legally recognized only parcel post will survive. I see no reason anyone will be sending actual 'letters' in twenty year's time.
There are those few old-timers that claim 'nothing is better than a real letter' - I've got news for you, the upcoming adult generation has teethed on email and holds no such warm fuzzies for the printed word.
The Post Office's days are numbered. When it comes down to delivering pure information there are myriads of companies that are in a better position to do it faster, better, and cheaper than the Post Office.
About the only thing that could allow the Post Office to survive is for it to morph into a FedEx/UPS parcel delivery competitor. In this way it could leverage it's huge, already established physical distribution network.
The next big 'public service' to fall prey to technology will be the Library. Imagine, a world without libraries and the US Postal service. What will civil servants do?
-josh
For 33 cents, you can put a letter in a box out in front of your house. A person will drive to your house, pick up the letter, take it to the airport, fly it to anywhere in north america, and drive it to the recipients house. For 33 cents.
Actually, it's more like: A person will drive to your house, pick up the letter, stick it in a big sorting machine, put it on a series of trucks (unless it's Priority or Express mail or going to Alaska/Hawaii or it just happens to end up on a plane), and drive it to somewhere near the recipient's house, for 33 cents if and only if it weighs less than an ounce.
I say "somewhere near" because at least 25% of the time I receive mail for one of my neighbors.
OTOH, UPS has this annoying habit of shipping ground packages from Memphis to Oxford, Mississippi via Philadelphia (yes, the one in Pennsylvania), on an apparently-regular basis. FedEx seems to actually know it's ass from a hole in the ground, but you pay through the nose for it. Maybe RPS (now FedEx Ground) can extend their cluefulness into ground package delivery.
But, to get back on target, isn't anyone else concerned about the privacy implications of giving out your snail-mail address on the internet? Unless your address is going to be mangled by a one-way hash function (whcih seems to defeat the purpose), I'd be leery about associating my physical address with an email.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
I guess I forgot to mention that UPS has a major sorting station in Memphis (Oakhaven Hub; you'll see it if you ever track stuff from Buy.com, since one of their main warehouses is just north of Memphis).
That, and Oxford is about 60 miles from Memphis.
About 3/4 of my packages via UPS arrive before I even know they've been shipped (Buy.com seems to wait several days before figuring out that things have been shipped). The other 1/4 seem to go on a long sojourn first.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
The post office is the only entity legally allowed to convey a one-ounce letter over the course of 3 or 4 days
I can send a one ounce letter 3-day fedex any time, so what the heck are you talking about? I believe it's called "economy 3 day" delivery or such.
Of course, because of that, they're evil bad private companies who can't do half the job of the shining government monopoly
You're the only one saying they're evil. All I said was that they'd like to have their cake (profits from easy deliveries) and eat it to (not have to deliver to or from less profitable areas). Show me a plan that fedex has to deliver the mail even if they go bankrupt and I'll support letting them do first-class mail. Show me the commitment fedex has to do daily pickup and delivery in nowhere, arkansas, and I'll support them. Until such time I suppose they'll have to be happy making gobs of money the way they are now...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Duh! Fedex would love to be able to take a letter from you for $0.25 and deliver it the next day. But they can't, because that
would be illegal. Read up on the history of the Post Office sometime, and how they got the government to ban cheaper
competition.
Perhaps you should do the same -- the problem is that the USPS is required by law to deliver mail, from anywhere to anywhere. Fedex and UPS (and other, earlier competitors) don't want to HAVE to deliver mail. They want to deliver mail where it's profitable and not deliver it where it isn't profitable for them. Good deal for the stockholders, bad deal for citizens of the country who are left without mail service.
And then you could explain just why postage *should* be the same regardless of distance? Why shouldn't I pay less for a letter
which is only going ten miles to a letter which is going a thousand miles?
I never even addressed variable rates in my first response -- simply stated that fedex charges 30 times what the post office does. The fact that fedex will charge you a hundred times that rate for a delivery further away simply proves what a good job the USPS does.
However, I believe that -- like flat-rate calling plans and unlimited internet access -- it's simply easier to deal with a single price for all domestic mail (keeping in mind you can pay less for 2nd or third class mail, or for postcards, or pay more for international, so it isn't quite as "flat rate" as it seems). For the volume of mail the USPS handles it's just a headache they don't need to have to deal with calculating rates on a case-by-case basis (keeping in mind they were handling fedex's volume of mail manually in the 1800s and currently process an order of magnitude more than fedex or UPS does).
I'm personally quite glad I can just buy a roll of stamps and know that my letter will get there without having to write my credit-card number on the letter (ala fedex/ups) or wait in line for a person to tell me what it'll cost. Stick on a stamp, drop it in the mailbox.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Why? Because it could make many forms of spamming fall under the jurisdiction of the Postal Inspectors...
Just think, every annoying type of spam from MLM to "lose weight fats...." that are fraudulent would be investigated by the post office!
Sign me up!!!!!!
e to the i pi equals negative one
Hey man, how much do musical cards cost in the store? What $3 minimum? Ok, now take that and multiply it by the number of relatives and friends that a person sends an E card to (for free), lets go with 20. At three bucks a pop, the cards in themselves are $60. Tack on the postage and the cost of an envelope and you have $7 more. ($0.32 for the stamp and $0.03 for the envelope). Now that's $67 spent plus 3 days of wait. Sending an E card that plays music and is animated (Still dont have animated paper) costs nothing, and gets there within minutes. Best of all, its FREE!!!
:P
There is still one thing that will keep the post office in business though. Pictures. Ever try to send a picture to someone who uses AOL? (Personally I hate AOL, but millions of people out there still use it) I have, three times, it's a bitch. AOL doesn't like pictues as email attachments. The last time I finally gave up, went and got a free geoshitties account, coded the page and uploaded the pictures for my friend to see. A lot of work? Yes. Could most users figure out how to do it? No. Would a normal person just give up and mail the pictues with an actual hand written (or printer printed) letter? Yes. Does that keep the post office happy? Yep.
Plus what about shipping packages? Are you going to scan my mail order items and send them to me? My printer doesn't print large enough paper for me to wear dammit!
Just my two cents and the other three because I dont like pennys.
1 - Government is slow, realy slow. They will have a very hard time adapting to these changes for several reasons - most are outlined in the article.
Accually the USPS isn't a governmental entity. They have monopoly protection, like many utility industries had in the past. But they are privatized now. Accually I think they are virtually a non-profit orginization. The US government doesn't give them any money, and they are only allowed to charge for stamps to cover the cost of operation. (Now that doesn't mean part of the cost of operation isn't in paying the management a lot of money)
It applies to US Congressmen and Senators who can keep in touch with their constituents without paying postage. There was, maybe still is, reduced postage rates for sending newspapers and such.
5. E-mail requires a computer!
This should be pretty obvious, but one of the real advantages of paper in general is that it's portable, consumes no power (heck, it's even a power *source*!), requires little in the way of special care to preserve the data it's carrying, and doesn't tie you to a box on a desktop or a $illy laptop with a ridiculously short battery life.
(Believe it or not, there are documented cases of paper documents sucessfully retaining their data for dozens of centuries or more!)
6. Magazines!
The "killer app" for Postal Services worldwide. It will be a very, very long time before we can electronically represent the visual and pixel density richness of a simple good-quality magazine. Oh, and then there's the unparalleled browsability of magazines, something that our programs called "browsers" are notoriously poor at...
The more I use E-mail, the more I HATE IT - but not as much as I'm beginning to hate people who say we should do everything "electronically"!
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Just through I'd give my opinion on the matter after reading as much as I could get my hands on.
Pros:
Allows me to communicate with my grandparents, or any known non-techno savy people.
Allows me to contact relatives I don't know the email of, or to people I haven't contacted in years and can not be sure of their email address( and don't feel like making a phone call ).
What I find interesting is that the USPS is probably in a better situation to do this than commerical companies, since they already have access to the address of every man-woman and child, so to speak.
Cons:
If not done properly, it can lead to spam, unwanted charges, or wasted use of paper. It is essential that they do it right the first time.
Even worse would be the exploits that we ( or their committee ) don't think of.
You now have a new form of a publicly viewable Social Security Number. It's only a matter of time before companies REQUIRE your private / personal email address for services.. Simple string parsing would validate the request. Now, just like the Pentium III Serial ID, or your social, malicious companies could exploit known shared info. Possibly credit history would be attached, medical records, etc. In fact, all SSN info could be mirrored by your USPS ID. Heck, some sites would probably try and link SSN to USPS ID. The solution to this, I believe is to not allow a per-person email address, even though this doesn't fully eliminate the problem ( now we just track house-holds, instead of individuals.. But it's a house-hold that buys a product, so it's still valuable info ).
Additionally, since USPS is federally subsidized, any significant innefficiencies are partially passed along to the people. It is important that this not become a huge multi-million/billion dollar flop which requires federal bailout. Thankfully I doubt the system would allow a perpetually innefficient system to exist.
Proposals:
Optionally allow mail forwarding to existing address. Their site would simply provide a consistent address. This minimizes their cost, since they wouldn't have to store the mail long term if we didn't regularly log in. Also doesn't require us to have yet another email account to check daily / weekly.
As with USPS mail, the sender is billed. This alleviates much junk mail / spam. The downside to this is in auto-reply email, where a person registers with a web site, then puts their USPS-email address which for some reason is mapped for printout. Now my poor free web site is being charged for many "potential customers". Additionally, it provides for a seriously expensive DOS attack. You now have the ability to rake up millions of dollars worth of USPS bills if a target email-responder site is repeatedly hit.
The solution, in my opinion is to set up a billable account with USPS, and then potentially billable email would have to be authenticated and authorized ( just as in any e-commerce transaction ). The default auto-response web-site would obviously not provide a mechanism to send billable email. Unfortuntaely, this would either require a client side program ( possibly in java ), or to make use of CGI's that require either cut-paste, or browser-file-uploading. None of these are ideal, since they don't make full use of your existing email programs.
Another method would be to simply send the email, then if it requires payment, a notification is returned, requiring you to log onto their web site and authorize the transaction.. Unfortunately, this makes it easier to spam, since everyone can be mailed, and the payment-based transactions would simply be ignored.
In order to alleviate spam, the central site could possibly monitor mail volume, and automatically charge accounts that exceed a certain volume, with the notion that spam/ junk mail is the intention. High volume is expensive for the central web site in any case ( due to excessive local storage, etc ). Another thing I like about this, is that it minimizes chain mail, since you'd be addressing dozens, or hundreds of people regularly. I don't consider this stiffling of free communication, since you'd still have your other email addresses to use for such time-wasting things. I'm not a big fan of email-based mailing lists anyway. That's what bulliten boards are for. If it's supposed to be daily, then they can regularly check the bulliten board, with little or no excuse.
I definately think this issue deserves attention, since there is a lot at stake; Our privacy, financial obligations( for both sender, receiver and USPS ), and our dear forests. I do not, however believe that ostrige-like-fear should hamper progress.
-Michael
-Michael
I'm thinking the most likely way for them to be doing this is to offer a free receiving-account for every person who is willing to give their social security number (NOONE is supposed to use that but the SSA, but everyone does). Probably lastnamefirstinitialnumber@postoffice.gov or something like that. Or perhaps just number@postoffice.gov, to make it easier on them. Yes, very predictable. However, you charge for _sending_ an email.
Being the post office, they could charge whatever they wanted, though they'd do better with it if they charged less than a stamp to do it. (snip)
I wouldn't send anything other than 'Hi, Mom, how are you?' type letters though. Sending anything through a government agency that you don't want them to see is just asking for it. Not that I have anything to hide, I'm just really paranoid.
A much better option would be to use it for a Hushmail type system. Tons of encryption built into the system. Anything from one @postoffice.gov address to another is guranteed secure, no one but the sender and recipient could ever see it, and it is treated the same as regular postal mail. People could use it for official mail, stuff that right now requires certified mail, stuff like that. If it got the same federal protections as regular mail and was electronically secure, people would use it.
Communication is only possible between equals
Actually, if the post office can charge the sender at the normal rate of postage for the "junk e-mail", then this probably wouldn't be too bad - a couple of million junk e-mails at $.33 per message would probably discourage a lot of junk e-mailers from sending to those particular e-mail addresses.
Who do you usually use to ship stuff? Every E-Commerce site I've been on has used UPS, FedEx or Airborne. None of whom are related to the Post Office.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Then we could incorporate the GPG encryption into mozilla and do decent E-Commerce, though you still have to worry that the company you're doing business with doesn't have a good security policy.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is not supposed to replace snailmail completely, it's just an addition, and I think it would actually do some good.
When I want to send a message to someone in the US who doesn't have a working e-mail address (believe me or not, there are some people like that!), it usually takes about 2 weeks to get there (I'm in Europe).
Now if I sent an e-mail to
john_doe.1_linux_ave@linuxcity.snailmail.com
It would probably get there in a day or two - I'd call that an improvement. Also, eliminating the stupid monopolist and over-expensive European post-offices from the chain, it would be a lot cheaper.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Everything can be abused - if it gets introduced, all we need to do is completely outlaw spam at the same time, and problem #1 is gone. (So even if you never use e-mail-to-snailmail, that would be beneficial... ;) )
Problem #2 is IMO not a real problem, because people aren't forced to use this.
I'd prefer having the possibility to drop someone with a broken computer an e-mail nevertheless over actually having to write snailmail.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
I disagree with you. I have written a little scenerio to illustrate me point
Let's say that you live in a tropical village with ten men in it. These ten men spend all of their day at the edge of the water catching fish with their spears.
On day, a smart fellow invents the net. Now, one man can catch as many fish as ten men used to catch. Are those nine out of work men going to sit around and do nothing?
No.
Now those nine men are free to go out and build huts, invent ovens, invent fences, etc. The "net" will have a positve impact on the ecomony because it will improve productivity.
This is true for the modern economy too. The "net" will free us from walking or driving door to door and it will allow us to take on other productive tasks.
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
It's hard for me to understand why the US Post Office is so worried about their business while UPS and FedEx are so excited about theirs.
Each of those companies are crowing about the increase in package deliveries and they are seeing increased profits in the face of higher fuel costs.
The US Post office is doing the right thing by building a web site that allows you to see the status of your shipment. However, they are years behind FedEx and UPS and shouldn't brag about that too much.
In short, it good to see that they have recognized that the Internet will change their business but I won't be handing out any awards until they stop playing catch up.
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
An email address for every physical address is not really do-able. It would be a pain, and, as has been stated, would lead to unheard-of amounts of spam. Which would mean the expenses for bandwidth that people would only complain about.
:)
I'm thinking the most likely way for them to be doing this is to offer a free receiving-account for every person who is willing to give their social security number (NOONE is supposed to use that but the SSA, but everyone does). Probably lastnamefirstinitialnumber@postoffice.gov or something like that. Or perhaps just number@postoffice.gov, to make it easier on them. Yes, very predictable. However, you charge for _sending_ an email.
Being the post office, they could charge whatever they wanted, though they'd do better with it if they charged less than a stamp to do it. They will get spam - from the companies that would be spending more on paper ads. However, I don't think the internet spammers, who could get it for free, would be as likely to switch over to a per-email charge system. Not to mention that a credit card would be the most likely payment system, _verifying_ the sender of the spam and letting the lawsuits begin.
I wouldn't send anything other than 'Hi, Mom, how are you?' type letters though. Sending anything through a government agency that you don't want them to see is just asking for it. Not that I have anything to hide, I'm just really paranoid.
The fact that it is an enforced government monopoly is a different issue, and one that I don't think is really on-topic, though interesting. And scary.
-Elthia
We _are_ headed for Shadow-run, or perhaps a combination of that and the states in Snow Crash. The advantage: remember what the United States looked like in Snow Crash? *giggle*
there's even a story somewhere in the archives on it. that said this is a bad idea, email is crap. that and these things would mostly just be spam accounts anyway(that you would be forced to check)
is Jesus your personal savior? click here
yeah, that link is some of the funniest shit there is, i found it at redmeat : )
is Jesus your personal savior? click here
1. E-Mail can't replace the shipment of physical parcels.
Email doesn't deliver my computer to my doorstep. It doesn't ship boxes of tools around the countryside. It can't get your locally-bought Christmas present to your loved ones (don't talk to me about on-line shipping - guess what happened this year when people tried to make e-returns. Didn't work too hot, eh?) Until we find a way to create matter out of energy (Star Trek, anyone?) it just isn't going to happen any time soon. (Even the energy-to-matter scenerio wouldn't work too hot...you would need a full-time nuclear reactor at each residence to send something the size of a deck of cards.)
2. Email is (incredibly) insecure
Email is incredibly insecure, the equivelent of an old-fashioned postcard. It's so insecure that I don't trust it for much more than a "Hi there, how are you" type message. Nosy system admins, hacker wanna-bes, private investigators, and my neighbor's overgrown chia-pet can all easily read my email, provided that I don't take the precation of encrypting it. Sure, I can understand encryption, but do you think Joe Average will? Do you trust Joe Average to use it correctly (ie. not do something stupid like send passwords, social security numbers, etc. over unsecured channels?) When I send a letter, it's normally covered with an envelope. If I'm concerned about privacy, it will be a privacy envelope (the inside is covered with a quasi-random dark pattern that prevents see-through attempts - and yes, I know about the "letter visualizers" that make paper transparent). Physical concerns? Well, let's just say that the only way to read the letter is to open the envelope - a sure sign that someone has compromized the letter along the delivery route. (What's that? You mean you thought envelopes where merely for holding all the contents? Acutally, envelopes were an assurance of privacy from centries ago, in a time when sending controvercial material could get you hanged or worse. The envelope was the assurance that the materials presented to the recipient were from the original sender, UNTAMPERED. The closest we could come to in a digital world would be something like quantum crypto packets)
3. The USPS has it's hands tied.
The USPS is a government agency. It means that it must answer not to just the public but to all the people in power who think they "know better" but really don't. The next time you grumble about the postal service being a quasi-competitive industry, you should thank Mr. Regan (48th US President) for the current state of affairs (and the people that put him in office, namely the "baby boom" generation - you know who I'm talking about, it's our parents). (we'll politely avoid all of the other brain-damaged things he did while in office - never mind the suspicion that he had alzheimers while IN office...)
and lastly...
4. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
What saddens me the most is that the younger generation of people in the USA seem to think, "well, we embrace a new way of life and living, therefore we should not only discard the old way of doing things, but completely forget why we did them that way to begin with". There are REASONS for why things are the way they are, and assuming that the old way is "the stupid way" really shows just how ignorant, gullible, and thoughtless American youth have become. In fact, I'll probably have several attacks on this point of interest - it'll be a shame, because each attack will simply validate my point (ie. I'm trying to say that understanding the history of something will allow you to understand why things happen today, and give you a better perspective of what will happen tommarrow).
Forgive the spelling and gramatical errors, frankly, I don't have time to correct them this morning. The essence of this diatribe was to get a clear message across to those who are "historically challenged" (er, that's PC-speak for ignorant and under-educated).
Thoughtful opinions graciously accepted, especially well-thought-out counterpoints that attempt to refute these statements. Flames, especially thoughtless ones, are given a tidy arrangement in /dev/null.
Oh, I don't believe in login accounts for things like this. Personally, I feel Slashdot needs cookies vs. the clumsy login system.
Signed,
- Avery Payne.
jd asked "Last, but not least, what problem is this supposed to be solving? If it's the transfer of information, then they'd be better off buying ultra-fat pipes and selling space on them."
Good question.
If it is the transfer of information (and that seems the only reasonable) answer, then by all means, let the post office kindly slither back into its corner and let my ISP, my phone company, my cable company, my electric company, my cellular provider, Hughes satellite, and anyone else who cares to join the fray hash it out. (Will the local water / sewage utilities offer IP packet delivery over a very fat pipe?)
The post office has enough trouble with delivering postcards from my brother. Why should we subsidize the same US post office which undercuts competitors with the surplus it earns on first-class mail? (Remember, they're the only ones who can deliver it -- by law. That's a real monopoly.)
The business of "establishing" post offices (the part the constition Mentions) I'm fine with the PO doing -- but until and unless the actual work of mail delivery is privatized, they have no business getting to the broadband market. (As in, no Constitutionally established right.)
Just thoughts,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Hey, they may be obsolete, but I really like their www.stampsonline.com site for buying stamps online. I can pick the ones I want (unlike the local office) and shipping and handling is only $1! Try it once, it's cooler that you'd expect at first.
--LP
Now, let's see how many ways this is a bad idea...
You forgot that the addresses will certainly be derived by some obvious algorithm (e.g., 123_main_st@9-digit-zip-code.usps.gov) or they will simply be a sequence of nonsense addresses that fit an obvious pattern (e.g., e-mail-box-74351a@usps.gov). Either way, building spam lists with hundreds of millions of addresses will be trivial. Those e-mail addresses will all be in a single domain. I can just imagine the volume of spam that will start hitting them days after this scheme starts.
Oh, and the mailbox will effectively carry the name Resident and will be passed on to the next occupant of the house. That raises the possibility of people subscribing other people to all sorts of exciting mailing lists.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I have to argue that the post office is really going anywhere soon. While they might not be sending "Hey, How you doing?" letters as much as they used to, they (along with UPS, etc.) as benefiting from the internet boom along with the rest of us. Someone's got to get all those books from Amazon out to us, and somebody's got to deliver me the money orders from Ebay bids.
This sentence hurt my brain so early in the morning. Email transcends one's physical location (especially with POP3 accounts) and allows me to move around the country without changing anything. Making my email address based on my physical address would be analogous to attaching a RJ11 to a cell phone.
In the past year and a half I have moved 4 times, twice across the country. (Please send condolences to my poor wife). My US Mail is hopelessly confused and mis-redirected. Moreover at each new residence I received 3 generations of previous occupants' mail. Ugh! Imagine receiving the email meant for previous occupants from people or companies about whom those now-departed (but not dearly...) didn't care enough to update their whereabouts...
Worse, it seems to me the only advantage in a physically-tied email address is demographic clustering for targeted advertising, or, can you say "SPAM ME ALL DAY LONG"?
How many of you would give up the personalization (and anonymity) of a true "e"-mail address for a re-packaged target-market adverstising box (UPSP Mail Box)?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The idea of creating email addresses for every physical address in the U.S. is just the latest "reengineering" mistake of applying automation to an outdated process.
It's quite simple... people get mail, not houses. Nobody sends mail to a physical address -- they send it to a person or company. The physical address is just the only way the post office had to identify a particular location where that person or company was to receive its mail.
In this age, that addressing scheme is taken care of and the physical element is worthless.
If they're going to assign addresses, they should do it for every PERSON and COMPANY in the U.S., not every physical address. Of course, I don't know of an addressing scheme that would make this easy (sounds like we need PIDs of some sort -- like social security numbers but not usable to trace health records and the like).
The Post Office was actually originally offered the first crack at Internet mail way back when the Internet was first being developed. They passed on it saying it didn't interest them. So this is hardly a new idea.
Dantelope
(who STILL cannot figure out how to get through the DaimlerChrysler firewall to find his password that goes to an email address he no longer has access to -- *sigh* -- weren't computers supposed to make my life EASIER???)
"and if there is no internet access to a mailbox, they'll print it out and hand deliver it to the address"
Now, let's see how many ways this is a bad idea...
1) Spam will kill trees and fill physical mailboxes. I hope "postage" is charged back to the sender and not delivered "postage due"
2) The benefit of paperless communication with someone is short circuited
Then, there are some letters which would become very complicated (if they aren't, already). Legal documents, for example, go through an obscenely complex process, to ensure that everything is as it should be. If some nutcase in the post office can tamper with it, electronically, that would make things very awkward. (And, yes, I know it's possible to prevent things like that, eg: PGP. But how many lawyers would -you- trust to use anything more complex than a quill pen correctly?)
Then, there's the fact that they'd be printing the e-mails out. Ummm - that means they'd also get to read them. The reason I use an envelope is to stop that. This seems a very retrograde step.
Next, there's the problem of assigning that many unique e-mail addresses. Your average PHB likes to use the firstname.lastname@somewhere format. This won't work, when you've thirty John Doe's on the same street.
Last, but not least, what problem is this supposed to be solving? If it's the transfer of information, then they'd be better off buying ultra-fat pipes and selling space on them. They could probably manage that, without making a mess of it, and it might give the backbone a decent capacity for a change.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Are you kidding me?
Here we have a government organization that recognizes its present limitations and is working hard at finding new and unique ways to serve the taxpayers of this country and we complain?
Have we become that cynical?
When was the last time you heard about any government agency calling large scale attention to the fact that it needs to update itself for the times and serve its paying public better than ever, with new functionality and features?
C'mon. This is something to be proud of--an agency that doesn't deny its faults.
And, incidentally, we kinda *do* need their help.
Lets not forget for a moment that while email *is* the killer app, it's also the most insecure system in wide deployment by an immense degree. I can't easily forge your identity on websites using cookies, and your credit card transactions are reasonably secure, but all I need to know is your email address and I'm sending mails as you.
There are lots of competing standards for digital signatures--which, incidentally, will become a globally accepted technology long before encrypted email content worms its way into public acceptance--but whatever wins, I guarantee you we can expect the USPS to be involved.
And I'm happy to have them. Folks, I actually think it's kind of an interesting concept to have Email to Physical Address gateways--given the cost of a postcard, I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see advertising agencies start trading the right to gateway for the right to display advertisements to both the sender and the receiver. But I see something beyond that...digital signatures, authenticated by government agencies and valid in court, set into paper by the nearest available USPS printing center, and couriered ASAP to a final destination. Sounds cool to me.
It's not my job to think up new and cool uses for postal service technology, but I'm proud to see that someone, somewhere within the USPS, has taken up that role.
More power to him!
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
1) Get Congress to modify the laws so that the other express carriers can deliver to P.O. Boxes.
2) Develop a next generation Post Office that would make practical the delivery of every thing one can buy via e-commerce, particularly perishable goods. These Post Offices will need to be open and staffed 24 x 7. You would get your packages stored there for a modest monthly fee based on your historical package volume and/or type.
3) Begin closing the legacy Post Offices around the country and opening these Post Offices in strip shopping malls with lots of parking.
I believe this will work as a strategy because a lot more people who do not have computers today can be convinced to get computers or internet appliances if they think e-commerce is useful. The problem is that large scale business-to-consumer e-commerce cannot be made practical until delivery of perishable and large items can be made secure and relatively inexpensive for the shipper.
If people really bought into this, the Post Office could end up being a strip shopping center anchor tenant in many towns. By this I mean, the size of a supermarket. I'm not sure how this would work in cities, although I'm pretty sure that this would not be an issue in places like Manhattan, due to the fact that door-to-door delivery with extended hours.
--
Dave Aiello
-- Dave Aiello
Perhaps you missed the point--
For 33 cents, you can put a letter in a box out in front of your house. A person will drive to your house, pick up the letter, take it to the airport, fly it to anywhere in north america, and drive it to the recipients house. For 33 cents.
Fedex and UPS will charge you at least 30 times that amount (about $10 for a letter), and they won't pick it up unless you are a business. If there's no UPS or Fedex near you, you're SOL.
Of all the monopolies in the world to complain about the USPS is about the last that deserves it. For as insanely inexpensive as the service is, the fact that 99.99999% of mail gets to its destination on time, and that it is available even in the most remote parts of the country, is an amazing accomplishment.
As the first poster pointed out, it's one of the only government agencies (and indeed one of the first companies ON EARTH) to completely embrace technology and automation to save time, money, and reduce costs. The USPS has been using automated systems to sort mail since before Bill gates was arrested and Fedex was a gleam in a venture capitalist's eye.
Save your attitude for the phone companies...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
My dad is retired from the Technical Training Center here in Norman, OK and they had some neat stuff. Post Office (along with Pitney Bowes (sp?)) did some pioneering research on Optical Character Recognition for auto-sorting letters. This HUGE fricking computer/letter sorter thing that took up this giant room. These letters flying (lots a second, I don't recall the number) through a scanner reading the addresses and sorting them.
People bad mouth the postal service all the time. My success rate at sending packages through the mail is still way higher than my sending attached files in an email to any non-geek. I still say, for them to deliver a physical piece of paper in a few days to any house, anywhere in the country is damn impressive.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE