There are several scenarios where your proposal would be bad for the Internet. Say I want to put my competitor out of business, or at least raise his costs. I simply use a bot to sign up for a couple hundred thousand email addresses, sign up for his newsletters, then ask for all those 1 cents back.
It could be a tied deal: say, this user by accepting newsletter puts this 1 cent in deposit at trusted third party. User unsubscribes - this 1 cent goes back to company.
The financial powers that be might also foresee too much liability and risk in ventures that depend on email (since it is, as you say, gambling).
That's a feature, not a bug. If you send email to somebody, you better have reason good enough to risk 1 cent per email. Do you want to see increase in volume of email traffic or increase in meaningfullness of communication?
I'm serious - have you heard of "tragedy of the commons" or "overgrazing" problem?
Thus the end of any free service that depends on e-mail for verifying accounts including newsletters, bulletin boards, online banking, and online auctions among others.
Not at all! I think since it would involve money, unsubscribing from a list would be actually a lot more reliable: just don't send this 1 cent anymore to get another email.
Yes, there's some additional computing overhead, but come on, the serious problem is TREATING OUR ATTENTION AS IF IT WERE FREE AND UNLIMITED RESOURCE, while it is gradually becoming more and more scarce!
"Everyone would fudge refusals and pocket the cash" - and miss important email?
Refusal is refusal, this other guy will not talk to you unless YOU in turn send him his 1 cent back.
Just my 1 cent's worth.:-)
1. ONCE this gets implemented, the "NANOG mailing list" and "John.Doe@somewhere" are two entities that are identified unambigously, with certs and digital signatures. Make an exchange like: Doe:"subscribe me, here's 1 cent", NANOG: "here's email, have your 1 cent back", Doe: "I keep subscribing, here's 1 cent for you to send me another email from this mailing list, NANOG: "here's email with 1 cent back" and so on.
If users are afraid about NANOG being thief, they can use trusted third party "verificator if this guy is who he says he is" to whom they'll hand this 1 cent.
2. If this is business, they can spare a few bucks to populate sending budget. User then requests this "Yes, this is the spam I DO request" - they get the spam AND HAND THAT 1 CENT BACK BY GUARANTEETING 1 CENT BEING DEPOSITED AS COLLATERAL AT TRUSTED THIRD PARTY.
To sum up: this is about open source digital cash infrastructure. Given open source provides webservers and email servers and operating systems, why not this?
What's happening to slashdotters? Have we all turned into scared whiners a la "nothing can be done, let's all weep in unison"?
That idea above isn't mine (or this guy's either, I've heard it before), but it's not so bad.
This "simple yet elegant" layer would require far more work than the underlying SMTP servers do.
Exagerration. It is much work and it's not going to be here this year, but I think it will be here.
How exactly -- no handwaving, no fluff -- do you propose to implement this?
One email is defined as "incoming SMTP session". Attache some unique ID to it - say, "SMTP-server-IP.date.time.message-digest". Or anything else. There are lots of possibilities here.
You need to either tie bank account details to email account information, or maintain a separate "online only" bank.
You need to find some unforagable, unbreakable, untappable method of identifying individual emails to make your one penny claim.
Digital certificates + public cryptography guys have already done most of hard work here.
Say, you sign your claim (with your private key, so that it can be verified using your public key).
You need to retrofit all existing mail clients to keep track of this new header (because Message-IDs can be forged).
1. It can be done at server level, transparent to users (why should they be bothered with such stuff). Regarding problem "no more 'free to receive' mailing lists and email": make webpage on their smtp server for users where they indicate 'if they send me email with 1 cent and it gets verified positive as belonging to this mailing list/company newsletter/whatever give it back'. Users by signing up send this 1 cent to populate 'sending budget'. By unsubscribing they get this 1 cent back (obviously this requires trusted third party, but you need it anyway -- online bank -- for handling those cents). Or wait - they can even give this 1 cent into "custody", lasting as long as they are subscribed to the list.
2. It actually could be used to enhance email capabilities - say, for increasing email priority or for "consulting via email".
3. Finally, once this infrastructure is in place, there will be a way to unambigously identify emails, parties and servers - so some, like coworkers or business partners could set policy like "make exchanges fulfilling requirements of this ruleset free of charge in both directions if other parties agree to the same conditions". Again, there's a lot of exciting opportunities here.
This scheme is gigantic and unworkable. Prove me wrong, with details.
Quit whining.;-)
On more serious note: the pieces to implement this are evolving independently anyway - OITP, financial XML, PKIs, online banks. At some point they just HAVE to become mature enough to use them in this way - and then it will be just a matter of working out software to glue it all together. I'm sure things like avamisd_new will include interfaces to it - it already has interfaces to spam scanners and antivirus scanners, why not this?
About unfeasibility of micropayments: yes, this guy has good arguments; but the issue is complex and the "metered services" are not simply going to die and be replaced by flat rate. Real world example are SMS messages - they're paid "per message" and still immensely popular (at least here in Europe).
One could even think of connecting this sort of service to flat rate somehow - say, an online bank that includes this sort of verification service as gratis in its monthly fee for online account, i.e. it exchanges "variable risk" from email-dealing for "fixed income". The model is already working in mortgages for real-estate, so I guess it
Predatory pricing doesn't work. You end up with more money spent on dumping than is eventually acquired later. The only workaround would be corruption of politicians in such way that allows multinational to keep high prices for very long time later. Not very practical or possible economically. And most definitely not in democracy when the opposition likes to undermine ruling party and they have other hungry multinationals, too.
You're an idiot. Total. Minimum wage does nothing to improve things for end user, the customer. Since it does not increase real value of the product, the real wages of other people remain on the same level. The nominal price of the product will be increased, though. Since the real incomes are finite, the only result will be people out of work. That's it. The living standard does NOT, repeat NOT depend on nominal wage. Only on productivity of economy. If that's low, and China and Afghanistan have it low, the REAL wages will be low. No matter how high you set nominal wage. Think $5,000 per hour minimum wage in US. The minimum wage is what inane propagandists brainwash ignorant people with. You're either propagandist or ignorant.
Slashdot Mirror
There are several scenarios where your proposal would be bad for the Internet. Say I want to put my competitor out of business, or at least raise his costs. I simply use a bot to sign up for a couple hundred thousand email addresses, sign up for his newsletters, then ask for all those 1 cents back.
It could be a tied deal: say, this user by accepting newsletter puts this 1 cent in deposit at trusted third party. User unsubscribes - this 1 cent goes back to company.
The financial powers that be might also foresee too much liability and risk in ventures that depend on email (since it is, as you say, gambling).
That's a feature, not a bug. If you send email to somebody, you better have reason good enough to risk 1 cent per email. Do you want to see increase in volume of email traffic or increase in meaningfullness of communication?
I'm serious - have you heard of "tragedy of the commons" or "overgrazing" problem?
Thus the end of any free service that depends on e-mail for verifying accounts including newsletters, bulletin boards, online banking, and online auctions among others.
Not at all! I think since it would involve money, unsubscribing from a list would be actually a lot more reliable: just don't send this 1 cent anymore to get another email.
Yes, there's some additional computing overhead, but come on, the serious problem is TREATING OUR ATTENTION AS IF IT WERE FREE AND UNLIMITED RESOURCE, while it is gradually becoming more and more scarce!
"Everyone would fudge refusals and pocket the cash" - and miss important email? Refusal is refusal, this other guy will not talk to you unless YOU in turn send him his 1 cent back. Just my 1 cent's worth. :-)
Just a few possibilities:
1. ONCE this gets implemented, the "NANOG mailing list" and "John.Doe@somewhere" are two entities that are identified unambigously, with certs and digital signatures. Make an exchange like: Doe:"subscribe me, here's 1 cent", NANOG: "here's email, have your 1 cent back", Doe: "I keep subscribing, here's 1 cent for you to send me another email from this mailing list, NANOG: "here's email with 1 cent back" and so on.
If users are afraid about NANOG being thief, they can use trusted third party "verificator if this guy is who he says he is" to whom they'll hand this 1 cent.
2. If this is business, they can spare a few bucks to populate sending budget. User then requests this "Yes, this is the spam I DO request" - they get the spam AND HAND THAT 1 CENT BACK BY GUARANTEETING 1 CENT BEING DEPOSITED AS COLLATERAL AT TRUSTED THIRD PARTY.
To sum up: this is about open source digital cash infrastructure. Given open source provides webservers and email servers and operating systems, why not this?
What's happening to slashdotters? Have we all turned into scared whiners a la "nothing can be done, let's all weep in unison"? That idea above isn't mine (or this guy's either, I've heard it before), but it's not so bad.
;-)
This "simple yet elegant" layer would require far more work than the underlying SMTP servers do.
Exagerration. It is much work and it's not going to be here this year, but I think it will be here.
How exactly -- no handwaving, no fluff -- do you propose to implement this?
One email is defined as "incoming SMTP session". Attache some unique ID to it - say, "SMTP-server-IP.date.time.message-digest". Or anything else. There are lots of possibilities here.
You need to either tie bank account details to email account information, or maintain a separate "online only" bank.
Cavalry's incoming: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/trade-charter.ht ml
You need to find some unforagable, unbreakable, untappable method of identifying individual emails to make your one penny claim.
Digital certificates + public cryptography guys have already done most of hard work here.
Say, you sign your claim (with your private key, so that it can be verified using your public key).
You need to retrofit all existing mail clients to keep track of this new header (because Message-IDs can be forged).
1. It can be done at server level, transparent to users (why should they be bothered with such stuff). Regarding problem "no more 'free to receive' mailing lists and email": make webpage on their smtp server for users where they indicate 'if they send me email with 1 cent and it gets verified positive as belonging to this mailing list/company newsletter/whatever give it back'. Users by signing up send this 1 cent to populate 'sending budget'. By unsubscribing they get this 1 cent back (obviously this requires trusted third party, but you need it anyway -- online bank -- for handling those cents). Or wait - they can even give this 1 cent into "custody", lasting as long as they are subscribed to the list.
2. It actually could be used to enhance email capabilities - say, for increasing email priority or for "consulting via email".
3. Finally, once this infrastructure is in place, there will be a way to unambigously identify emails, parties and servers - so some, like coworkers or business partners could set policy like "make exchanges fulfilling requirements of this ruleset free of charge in both directions if other parties agree to the same conditions". Again, there's a lot of exciting opportunities here.
This scheme is gigantic and unworkable. Prove me wrong, with details.
Quit whining.
On more serious note: the pieces to implement this are evolving independently anyway - OITP, financial XML, PKIs, online banks. At some point they just HAVE to become mature enough to use them in this way - and then it will be just a matter of working out software to glue it all together. I'm sure things like avamisd_new will include interfaces to it - it already has interfaces to spam scanners and antivirus scanners, why not this?
About unfeasibility of micropayments: yes, this guy has good arguments; but the issue is complex and the "metered services" are not simply going to die and be replaced by flat rate. Real world example are SMS messages - they're paid "per message" and still immensely popular (at least here in Europe).
One could even think of connecting this sort of service to flat rate somehow - say, an online bank that includes this sort of verification service as gratis in its monthly fee for online account, i.e. it exchanges "variable risk" from email-dealing for "fixed income". The model is already working in mortgages for real-estate, so I guess it
Predatory pricing doesn't work. You end up with more money spent on dumping than is eventually acquired later. The only workaround would be corruption of politicians in such way that allows multinational to keep high prices for very long time later. Not very practical or possible economically. And most definitely not in democracy when the opposition likes to undermine ruling party and they have other hungry multinationals, too.
You're an idiot. Total. Minimum wage does nothing to improve things for end user, the customer. Since it does not increase real value of the product, the real wages of other people remain on the same level. The nominal price of the product will be increased, though. Since the real incomes are finite, the only result will be people out of work. That's it. The living standard does NOT, repeat NOT depend on nominal wage. Only on productivity of economy. If that's low, and China and Afghanistan have it low, the REAL wages will be low. No matter how high you set nominal wage. Think $5,000 per hour minimum wage in US. The minimum wage is what inane propagandists brainwash ignorant people with. You're either propagandist or ignorant.
p ://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/hotdog.html
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