A Packard Bell desktop machine, currently in use by the third member of my family to own it, was purchased in 1996 and carried in a suitcase to become a Christmas present. That machine has a 500 MB hard drive and is insanely slow, compared to machines produced today. When I was using it (4 years ago), it was already slow but performed all the functions I needed it to (Word, chat, e-mail...). It is still running -- I think it has Windows 95 and can manage an AOL connection. Not the oldest machine in the world, but still fairly impressive. Especially since the machine I had after that one died after two years...
Your first two points make some judgements about the way e-mail "should" be that not everyone would agree with.
Make it illegal to give out free accounts. Having an internet account should cost money.(in otherwords abolish Hotmail, Yahoo, and other such accounts.
If e-mail exists primarily for business and commerce (and money-making for ISP's) then this is a valid point. However, there are people who would say that e-mail is a valuable communication tool, much like snail mail. Why deny someone the use of it if websites are willing to provide them with a free account?
Require verification and lots of it for establishing an account
This gets into all sorts of privacy issues. Legal precedents are being set (for example, in the case of DMCA and Verizon.net) where ISP's have to give out information about their subscribers. Who's to say that won't expand into other e-mail providers? There is a reason that providers of free, anonymous e-mail (such as cyber-rights.net) exist, and why people choose to use these accounts. Not because they're spammers, but because they want privacy, even in the virtual world.
From the article: "...scientists have discovered that the small brave act of cooperating with another person, of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the brain light up with quiet joy."
Several major world religions have taught for centuries that helping other people is a good thing, even if it is apparently detrimental to your own interests -- and the people who make the jump from listening to actually practicing this have noticed that it brings them joy.
Singapore has been using a system similar to this for around ten years now. They combine the sort of technology used for EZ-Pass in the Jersey/Pennsylvania/New York area with the camera snapshots.
When you go onto a tolled road, you pass under a gantry that checks your car for an electronic pass using a kind of card-reader (you would install a card-holder above your dashboard if you chose to do this). If it doesn't find an electronic pass, a camera a little ways down the road takes a picture of the front of your car. This would show both the license plate (required to be on the front as well as the back of the car) and your front windshield. If your front windshield shows a paper one-day or one-week toll pass, then nothing happens. If it doesn't, you get a ticket in the mail. It seems to work pretty well, and it's run by the government.
Of course, Singapore is not known for being the least controlling government in the world...
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A Packard Bell desktop machine, currently in use by the third member of my family to own it, was purchased in 1996 and carried in a suitcase to become a Christmas present. That machine has a 500 MB hard drive and is insanely slow, compared to machines produced today. When I was using it (4 years ago), it was already slow but performed all the functions I needed it to (Word, chat, e-mail...). It is still running -- I think it has Windows 95 and can manage an AOL connection. Not the oldest machine in the world, but still fairly impressive. Especially since the machine I had after that one died after two years...
Your first two points make some judgements about the way e-mail "should" be that not everyone would agree with.
Make it illegal to give out free accounts. Having an internet account should cost money.(in otherwords abolish Hotmail, Yahoo, and other such accounts.
If e-mail exists primarily for business and commerce (and money-making for ISP's) then this is a valid point. However, there are people who would say that e-mail is a valuable communication tool, much like snail mail. Why deny someone the use of it if websites are willing to provide them with a free account?
Require verification and lots of it for establishing an account
This gets into all sorts of privacy issues. Legal precedents are being set (for example, in the case of DMCA and Verizon.net) where ISP's have to give out information about their subscribers. Who's to say that won't expand into other e-mail providers? There is a reason that providers of free, anonymous e-mail (such as cyber-rights.net) exist, and why people choose to use these accounts. Not because they're spammers, but because they want privacy, even in the virtual world.
From the article: "...scientists have discovered that the small brave act of cooperating with another person, of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the brain light up with quiet joy."
Several major world religions have taught for centuries that helping other people is a good thing, even if it is apparently detrimental to your own interests -- and the people who make the jump from listening to actually practicing this have noticed that it brings them joy.
Singapore has been using a system similar to this for around ten years now. They combine the sort of technology used for EZ-Pass in the Jersey/Pennsylvania/New York area with the camera snapshots.
When you go onto a tolled road, you pass under a gantry that checks your car for an electronic pass using a kind of card-reader (you would install a card-holder above your dashboard if you chose to do this). If it doesn't find an electronic pass, a camera a little ways down the road takes a picture of the front of your car. This would show both the license plate (required to be on the front as well as the back of the car) and your front windshield. If your front windshield shows a paper one-day or one-week toll pass, then nothing happens. If it doesn't, you get a ticket in the mail. It seems to work pretty well, and it's run by the government.
Of course, Singapore is not known for being the least controlling government in the world...