IANAL, but isn't that a proof of "prior usage" and makes the patent invalid?
Courts make patents invalid - but only after long expensive legal battles. Until someone fights that battle (and has the money to do so successfully) then the patent stands, no matter how stupid, and anyone violating it can be sued.
Can somebody explain me why the "logo" for this article on Slashdot is "fork, knife and spoon"
For whatever reason, that's the/. logo for articles on patents. However, in this case, I think it is there because McAfee is telling everyone "Shut up and eat your spam".
Perhaps McAfee is secretly in league with spammers
Secretly? McAfee is one of the biggest spammers around.
I can't count how many spams I've received advertising their software.
I can't count how many times their software has detected a virus that spoofed a whitis.com address, at which point they spammed me to say "Your message was not delivered because it contains a virus! You need to purchase our software!". They know that the virus isn't putting legitimate info in the header, but that doesn't stop them from sending their advertising (unsolicited commercial email) to my inbox when it happens.
They aren't "secretly in league with spammers", they have been openly spamming for years. It's part of their business model.
If this is your idea of a flamewar, then you must be new to the net. Regardless, people like you will keep whining that the NYTimes asks people to register. I'll keep pointing out that the NYTimes doesn't sell off your information, and that the complainers are willing to register on slashdot.
Do not attempt to distract from the fact that you are wrong by accusing me of hypocrisy. Do not attempt to distract from the fact that you are wrong by accusing me of hypocrisy.
How am I wrong? Am I wrong that you are posting under a registered account? No. Am I wrong that many Slashdot users claim that registering for the NYTimes is Evil? No.
Despite the lead-ins that Slashdot uses, you do *not* have to give up your soul, your firstborn, or any kind of sperm/DNA sample in order to sign up with the NYTimes. They ask for an email address, just like Slashdot. And they don't abuse it, just like Slashdot.
You say that Slashdot is protecting their system - true. The NYTimes is, also. If they ignored advertising, as you seem to think they should, they wouldn't be in business, as the advertising is what pays for all the reporting. Don't want to register? Fine - there are several easy ways around that. And, as you say, similar articles can be found other places online, so you can read them there.
There are still no justifications for complaining that a service like the NYTimes asks people to sign up. And when you whine about sites that require registration using a registered account at Slashdot, you do look like a hypocrite.
Large prime numbers are useful in encryption. However, for the most part, the primes this large are just math-geek things. Keep in mind that a lot of the math used today were "just math theories" several hundred years ago. And a lot of the math problems that people still work on today have been math problems for a *long* time. Factoring large numbers is the basis behind several encryption systems - but if a mathmetician were to somehow find an quick-n-easy way to factor large numbers, those systems would be useless. The fact that people have *tried* to find a way to factor large numbers for a long time, with no luck, indicates that you can probably trust those encryption methods.
Most people don't care about big primes (or small primes, for that matter.) It's a fairly geeky thing.
You don't have to give up use of your computer. I've been running Prime95 in the background on my windows machines for 6-7 years now. It runs in the background, essentially automated. (Every so often, I make sure I have the current version - it doesn't auto-update, which surprises me.)
I run old hardware, but it runs at a low level, essentially only using CPU time when the CPU has nothing else to do. So I don't notice it - it's just in the background.
My stats are listed here. http://www.mersenne.org/top2.htm
4313 Stephen Whitis 21.26 57
That means I'm their 4313'th "most productive" user. Considering the old hardware I run, and the fact that some of the top producers have lots of machines running it, I'm surprised I rank that high.
The 21.26 is "Pentium-90 CPU years". The P-90 is their base (you can tell it's been going awhile) and it gives you an idea of how much time your system(s) have put into GIMPS.
Anyway, my point is, once you've set it up, you don't have to hold it's hand, and it doesn't tie up your computer, it just uses CPU cycles that would otherwise NOOP. I like it that my computer is *always* doing something useful. But then, I'm a geek.:^)
I guess these people trust the accuracy of these programs.
Personally I think someone should work this out on paper. Any volunteers/nominations?
GIMPS is a distributed processing system designed to look for very large prime numbers - Mersenne primes is all they look for. There are multiple reasons for that.
Anyone can join and help. People run a client program on their computer which "checks out" a number, checks to see if it passes the prime-test, and checks it back in with the results. The program runs at a very low level, so it uses your CPU cycles that would otherwise go to waste. (NOOP instructions would otherwise be run.)
When a new prime is found, it isn't instantly trusted. In theory, the program which tested it could be wrong. In theory, the user who ran that program could have kludged with things to give a false result. In theory, a hardware malfunction (especially on an overclocked machine) could cause an error that would report a false positive.
So, when GIMPS thinks they have a found a new prime, they don't *assume* they have found a new prime. They run another test. I think they have a mainframe that handles that testing. It gives them a controled situation, and a different machine to do the testing on. They also use a different algorithm to test for primality, to make sure that the program isn't simply saying "Yes" when it should say "No."
After that, once the number is announced, anyone that wants can check it for themselves - but they'll do it using a computer.
Checking it by hand is nonsense - you wouldn't live that long, and you are *much* more likely to make mistakes than multiple computers doing the math would be. Math is one of the things computers are very good at.
Keep in mind, there are over 7 million digits in this number. It's a BIG number. You aren't going to factor it by hand.
Does anyone know if a distributed computing project exists for finding large prime numbers? That would be a pretty cool way to spend some CPU cylces.
You obviously didn't read the article, or the lead in for this discussion, or any of the posts in this discussion. The largest primes found have *all* been meserenne primes found by GIMPS.
And some moderator modded you up despite the fact that you clearly haven't been paying attention... (sigh...)
Re:The DMA hates spammers (true)
on
NYT on Spam Cops
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Just grok this: the DMA hates spammers. No, really. I know someone who works for a company that's part of the DMA, and spam is her biggest headache. While we all hate commercial e-mail in general, the DMA is made up of companies who want to play by the rules. True, they want to have a hand in writing the rules as well, but the rules are pretty good ones.
The DMA wrote the Can-Spam law, which doesn't outlaw spam. That is because they want to send spam. They sued the US government over the recently enacted Do Not Call list, because they want to telemarket to people that don't want to hear it.
Yes, the DMA would love to chase all of the small time spammers away so that they can spam to their hearts content without the problems that they have in todays email environment - but anyone who thinks they are "good guys" or that they are "on our side" is totally, completely, whacked out crazy.
If all commercial mail conformed to the rules that the DMA advocates, no one would complain to ISPs about commercial mail because the power to prevent it would be in the hands of the recipient. Just click Unsubscribe and you're free and clear.
How many legitimate businesses are there in the US alone? Under the rules the DMA wants, every one of those gets to spam you until you beg them to stop. If 10% of the legitimate businesses in the US send 1 email per year, you'll spend hours every day jumping through their "opt out" hoops. Fuck that. I shouldn't have to tell them "I have no interest in doing business with you, which is why I have never contacted you."
It shouldn't surprise us that the DMA will do anything they can to prevent spam.
They won't tell their users "Do not send spam". They won't lobby for laws to make spamming illegal, and actively fight any that are proposed. They want to do anything they can to prevent spam by people outside the DMA, while preserving what they see as their "right" to send spam.
But at this point if I see registration required, I no longer bother.
So says Slashdot user robogun (466062), who has obviously regsitered here.
I think it's funny that so many/. users scream and yell "Ohh, they require registration they are EVIL, all while posting under their registered/. accounts.
The NYTimes doesn't have horrible policies. I've been registered with them for years, using a tagged address. No spam has ever come to that address, so I know they aren't selling them off. I get the NYTimes "Todays Headlines" emails every day, can read the articles at NYTimes without jumping through hooops, and see no downside. And if you don't want to register, it's quite easy to read the articles without registering. They are hardly the evil empire that/. users like to make them out to be.
What's worse, at least philosophically, is when "legitimate" sites spam the living fuck out of your addresses. Most of the time, this is because the guy who had the address before you signed up for all this crap, or because someone signed you up maliciously, or because someone typoed their address.
The first case, where you have an address which used to belong to someone else, should be solved by unsubscribing.
The other examples (malicious signups and typos) don't happen with legitimate mailing lists, because legitimate lists send a confirmation email when you first join. If you don't reply to that message, you don't get on their list. If they don't bother with confirmations, then they aren't running a legitimate mailing list, they are just spamming.
Of course, because they're "legitimate" sites, nobody places them under any obligation what so ever to remove my address from their lists, and they're free to spam me with impunity because it was supposedly requested.
In the US, the Can-Spam act requires them to remove you if you request it. They *are* under obligation to remove you. I can't speak for other countries.
US companies - but you'll still find that they are using web servers in China to hide who they are and keep the website going. I'll not deny that the US is the instigator of most spam - but doesn't change the situation. A US spammer often sets up a site with "bulletproof hosting" in China or Taiwan, sends the spam via another method (trojaned machines, open relays, stolen accounts, or just toss-away accounts.) The money still comes back to the US, since it's a a-hole in the US that is running things. The US certainly deserves a lot of attention - we are a large part of the problem. But the servers in China that ignore spam complaints (which most US servers won't do, though there are exceptions) are still part of the problem.
I think the first problem you need to solve is to get rid of that guy holding a gun to your head making you use email. You mean nobody's forcing you to use email?
Nobody is forcing me to use electricity either. Your argument is that if we want to use email, we should have to let other people fill our email boxes with crap, and that we have to pay their advertising costs when they do so. Fuck that, and fuck you.
Spammers are just people looking to make money.
So are the rest of the conmen, thieves, and muggers in the world. What's your point?
How is banning SPAM any different than banning VoIP
Consent.
How is it different from criticizing politicians?
How is filling my email box with crap I don't want and won't read related to criticizing politicians? I criticize politicians every day. (I'm a republican from Texas - and I hate George Bush and everything he's done since being elected.) Did you catch that? I just criticized a politician, and I didn't have to send a million unwanted spams to do it.
I want to SPAM to go away.
Bull shit. If you did, you wouldn't be pretending that spammers are honest taxpayers who are just trying to earn a living, when you know damn well they are crooks and thieves.
Your idea of a "free internet" is that anyone can do anything they want, any way they want, to whoever they want, with no limits. But, just as in real life, your right to swing your fist ends just before it reaches the other guys nose. Spammers bloody millions of noses a day, and you want to protect their "freedom" to do that. Fuck that, and fuck you.
For years, USA's unwitting ignorance of the spam issues they have with the rest of the world has been a major stumbling block in the fight to control spammers who operate from countries where spamming for some reason is legal.
So says the AC. But I notice that he didn't mention any of these countries which made spam illegal years ago? Why would that be? Perhaps because there are none? I call bullshit.
You should take those same 243 spams and look at the websites that they spamvertise. You'll find most of them in China. The problem with China isn't the spam that comes from there - that's a fairly small amount. The problem with China is hosting spamvertised websites and not giving a shit about it.
I am an atheist, in China, I will be normal, in the U.S. I would be considered a freak and ostracised.
Most would call me an athiest. I'd be more likeley to call myself a bright/. I live in the US. In Texas, deep in the bible belt. And your claims about how you would be considered a freak and ostracised are simply not true.
In other words, I don't have any qualms about your being an athiest - but it pisses me off that you will outright lie about the US just because you don't like Americans. And you are lying, no question about that.
That's my biggest worry. Anything done under a "MS owns the patent, you can only use it with their permission" leaves everyone working under the good will of MS.
Software patents suck. Software patents on something as basic as "Email works like this" are even worse.
SPF doesn't block spam unless the mail system makes it mandatory, after all, so until 100% compliance is reached, non-SPF mail will still have to be accepted.
However, SPF compliant mail can still be scored as much more likely to be legitimate.
Spammers can still create new domains on a hit-and-run basis, and they'll pass SPF.
Spammers using SPF comliant mail are going to quickly be blacklisted, at which point mail from those domains can be auto-dumped. Spammers who continue to forge domains are going to find their mail auto-dumped when they forge a domain that uses SPF authentication. Domains which don't support SPF can still be forged - but that will simply increase pressure on those domains to get their shit together.
Spammers can register tons of new domains - which greatly increases their costs. And each new domain will help them for only a short period of time before the blacklists pick up on them.
So it's another blast-proof vault door stuck onto a grass hut, a silly waste of time.
Your theory seems to be that since this will effect only 90-95% of spam, and that spammers can get around it if they spend enough money, we shouldn't bother. Your theory aids the spammers, not the rest of us. I'll pass.
How will I be able to send mail using my own business' domain, as I do today, when it is going out via an ISP server?
You haven't even read how SPF works, have you? All you have to do is register your ISP's mail server as a valid sender for your domain. This is going to be quite common. Most people do not run their own mail servers. Many who have their own domains, like myself, do not run our own mail servers. But I know which mail servers have legitimate reason to send mail using my domain. The others that stick my domain in the "From" field are just forgeries. SPF will allow others to see the forgeries and dump the mail.
SPF seems to make this a lot harder, thereby forcing more people to put their ISPs' name in the From: field, rather than their own.
It's sad that you believe this, and worse that you got modded up for spouting completely false information. It's utter bullshit.
Will SPF kill mydomain?
Maybe - are you a spammer? If not, it's going to help protect your domain from being spoofed by a spammer. That happens to my domain daily.
I repeat what I've said before. The only way to kill spam is to stop having all email be totally, absolutely, "free" of charge in any quantity. This is not the topic to discuss solutions, but they are certainly possible, and they aren't SPF.
And I'll repeat what I've said before. Pay-to-Email isn't a good solution. It has a lot of bad side effects, and it simply isn't necessary. In order to charge per-email, the first step is to figure out who is sending the mail. You can't charge for email if you can't figure out who is sending it. And if you try to charge for email, you can damn well bet the spammers will try to figure out ways to send tons of email and make someone else pay for it. They haven't shown any interest in honesty in the past, and that isn't going to change.
You're arguing against a system that makes it easy to tell who actually sent the mail, yet arguing in favor of charging for email, despite the fact that you *can't* charge for email if you don't know who to charge. You seem to think that the spammers will stop forging other peoples domains, or that people will pay for spam sent that forged their domains. And it ain't gonna happen. The very idea is lunacy.
Once you can verify who is sending the email, then blacklists, whitelists, trustlists, all become much more useful (and less prone to abuse) than they are currently. And therefore pay-to-email is likely to be unnecessary.
Pay-to-email also has a lot of drawbacks. Slashdot sends me several emails a day. I have no idea how many they average a day, but it's bound to be a lot. Under pay-to-ema
How wrong you are, my friend. Do you not think that the legions of entities that are asking for these things to be sent out don't want them?
Have you ever seen someone that didn't want it buying a bag of pot or a whatever of cocaine? This is pretty simple. People *want* to buy drugs. That means that law or no law, there is likely to be a market for drugs, and a profit for those that sell them. People do *not* want to receive spam. Other people want to send them spam - but they do not have a willing audience.
I looked at OptInBig's website, and it's very professional.
A nice looking website and claims that he only sends email to people who have choosen to receive it doesn't change the fact that he harvests and buys addresses and sends out tons of spam.
I believe it is still legal to send marketing spams as long as the recepients have given consent, no?
This is insightful? It's just plain wrong. It is currently legal, under CAN-SPAM, to send unsolicited marketing spam. No consent is required.
You question isn't even logical. Marketing spam, as long as they've given consent? If I join a mailing list (ie, give consent) then any mail they send to me is, by *definition*, not spam.
Slashdot Mirror
Courts make patents invalid - but only after long expensive legal battles. Until someone fights that battle (and has the money to do so successfully) then the patent stands, no matter how stupid, and anyone violating it can be sued.
Can somebody explain me why the "logo" for this article on Slashdot is "fork, knife and spoon"
For whatever reason, that's the /. logo for articles on patents. However, in this case, I think it is there because McAfee is telling everyone "Shut up and eat your spam".
Secretly? McAfee is one of the biggest spammers around.
I can't count how many spams I've received advertising their software.
I can't count how many times their software has detected a virus that spoofed a whitis.com address, at which point they spammed me to say "Your message was not delivered because it contains a virus! You need to purchase our software!". They know that the virus isn't putting legitimate info in the header, but that doesn't stop them from sending their advertising (unsolicited commercial email) to my inbox when it happens.
They aren't "secretly in league with spammers", they have been openly spamming for years. It's part of their business model.
So you are part of the problem.
No thanks. They claim that Spam is "Free Speech", and are not on my side. I donated to http://spamcon.org/.
If this is your idea of a flamewar, then you must be new to the net. Regardless, people like you will keep whining that the NYTimes asks people to register. I'll keep pointing out that the NYTimes doesn't sell off your information, and that the complainers are willing to register on slashdot.
How am I wrong? Am I wrong that you are posting under a registered account? No. Am I wrong that many Slashdot users claim that registering for the NYTimes is Evil? No.
Despite the lead-ins that Slashdot uses, you do *not* have to give up your soul, your firstborn, or any kind of sperm/DNA sample in order to sign up with the NYTimes. They ask for an email address, just like Slashdot. And they don't abuse it, just like Slashdot.
You say that Slashdot is protecting their system - true. The NYTimes is, also. If they ignored advertising, as you seem to think they should, they wouldn't be in business, as the advertising is what pays for all the reporting. Don't want to register? Fine - there are several easy ways around that. And, as you say, similar articles can be found other places online, so you can read them there.
There are still no justifications for complaining that a service like the NYTimes asks people to sign up. And when you whine about sites that require registration using a registered account at Slashdot, you do look like a hypocrite.
Large prime numbers are useful in encryption. However, for the most part, the primes this large are just math-geek things. Keep in mind that a lot of the math used today were "just math theories" several hundred years ago. And a lot of the math problems that people still work on today have been math problems for a *long* time. Factoring large numbers is the basis behind several encryption systems - but if a mathmetician were to somehow find an quick-n-easy way to factor large numbers, those systems would be useless. The fact that people have *tried* to find a way to factor large numbers for a long time, with no luck, indicates that you can probably trust those encryption methods.
You don't have to give up use of your computer. I've been running Prime95 in the background on my windows machines for 6-7 years now. It runs in the background, essentially automated. (Every so often, I make sure I have the current version - it doesn't auto-update, which surprises me.)
I run old hardware, but it runs at a low level, essentially only using CPU time when the CPU has nothing else to do. So I don't notice it - it's just in the background.
My stats are listed here. http://www.mersenne.org/top2.htm
4313 Stephen Whitis 21.26 57 That means I'm their 4313'th "most productive" user. Considering the old hardware I run, and the fact that some of the top producers have lots of machines running it, I'm surprised I rank that high.
The 21.26 is "Pentium-90 CPU years". The P-90 is their base (you can tell it's been going awhile) and it gives you an idea of how much time your system(s) have put into GIMPS.
Anyway, my point is, once you've set it up, you don't have to hold it's hand, and it doesn't tie up your computer, it just uses CPU cycles that would otherwise NOOP. I like it that my computer is *always* doing something useful. But then, I'm a geek. :^)
The orignal find was made with one algorithm, the verifications were done on different machines using a different algorithm.
Personally I think someone should work this out on paper. Any volunteers/nominations?
GIMPS is a distributed processing system designed to look for very large prime numbers - Mersenne primes is all they look for. There are multiple reasons for that.
Anyone can join and help. People run a client program on their computer which "checks out" a number, checks to see if it passes the prime-test, and checks it back in with the results. The program runs at a very low level, so it uses your CPU cycles that would otherwise go to waste. (NOOP instructions would otherwise be run.)
When a new prime is found, it isn't instantly trusted. In theory, the program which tested it could be wrong. In theory, the user who ran that program could have kludged with things to give a false result. In theory, a hardware malfunction (especially on an overclocked machine) could cause an error that would report a false positive.
So, when GIMPS thinks they have a found a new prime, they don't *assume* they have found a new prime. They run another test. I think they have a mainframe that handles that testing. It gives them a controled situation, and a different machine to do the testing on. They also use a different algorithm to test for primality, to make sure that the program isn't simply saying "Yes" when it should say "No."
After that, once the number is announced, anyone that wants can check it for themselves - but they'll do it using a computer.
Checking it by hand is nonsense - you wouldn't live that long, and you are *much* more likely to make mistakes than multiple computers doing the math would be. Math is one of the things computers are very good at.
Keep in mind, there are over 7 million digits in this number. It's a BIG number. You aren't going to factor it by hand.
You obviously didn't read the article, or the lead in for this discussion, or any of the posts in this discussion. The largest primes found have *all* been meserenne primes found by GIMPS.
And some moderator modded you up despite the fact that you clearly haven't been paying attention... (sigh...)
The DMA wrote the Can-Spam law, which doesn't outlaw spam. That is because they want to send spam. They sued the US government over the recently enacted Do Not Call list, because they want to telemarket to people that don't want to hear it.
Yes, the DMA would love to chase all of the small time spammers away so that they can spam to their hearts content without the problems that they have in todays email environment - but anyone who thinks they are "good guys" or that they are "on our side" is totally, completely, whacked out crazy.
If all commercial mail conformed to the rules that the DMA advocates, no one would complain to ISPs about commercial mail because the power to prevent it would be in the hands of the recipient. Just click Unsubscribe and you're free and clear.
How many legitimate businesses are there in the US alone? Under the rules the DMA wants, every one of those gets to spam you until you beg them to stop. If 10% of the legitimate businesses in the US send 1 email per year, you'll spend hours every day jumping through their "opt out" hoops. Fuck that. I shouldn't have to tell them "I have no interest in doing business with you, which is why I have never contacted you."
It shouldn't surprise us that the DMA will do anything they can to prevent spam.
They won't tell their users "Do not send spam". They won't lobby for laws to make spamming illegal, and actively fight any that are proposed. They want to do anything they can to prevent spam by people outside the DMA, while preserving what they see as their "right" to send spam.
I think it's funny that so many /. users scream and yell "Ohh, they require registration they are EVIL, all while posting under their registered /. accounts.
The NYTimes doesn't have horrible policies. I've been registered with them for years, using a tagged address. No spam has ever come to that address, so I know they aren't selling them off. I get the NYTimes "Todays Headlines" emails every day, can read the articles at NYTimes without jumping through hooops, and see no downside. And if you don't want to register, it's quite easy to read the articles without registering. They are hardly the evil empire that /. users like to make them out to be.
The first case, where you have an address which used to belong to someone else, should be solved by unsubscribing.
The other examples (malicious signups and typos) don't happen with legitimate mailing lists, because legitimate lists send a confirmation email when you first join. If you don't reply to that message, you don't get on their list. If they don't bother with confirmations, then they aren't running a legitimate mailing list, they are just spamming.
Of course, because they're "legitimate" sites, nobody places them under any obligation what so ever to remove my address from their lists, and they're free to spam me with impunity because it was supposedly requested.
In the US, the Can-Spam act requires them to remove you if you request it. They *are* under obligation to remove you. I can't speak for other countries.
US companies - but you'll still find that they are using web servers in China to hide who they are and keep the website going. I'll not deny that the US is the instigator of most spam - but doesn't change the situation. A US spammer often sets up a site with "bulletproof hosting" in China or Taiwan, sends the spam via another method (trojaned machines, open relays, stolen accounts, or just toss-away accounts.) The money still comes back to the US, since it's a a-hole in the US that is running things. The US certainly deserves a lot of attention - we are a large part of the problem. But the servers in China that ignore spam complaints (which most US servers won't do, though there are exceptions) are still part of the problem.
Nobody is forcing me to use electricity either. Your argument is that if we want to use email, we should have to let other people fill our email boxes with crap, and that we have to pay their advertising costs when they do so. Fuck that, and fuck you.
Spammers are just people looking to make money.
So are the rest of the conmen, thieves, and muggers in the world. What's your point?
How is banning SPAM any different than banning VoIP
Consent.
How is it different from criticizing politicians?
How is filling my email box with crap I don't want and won't read related to criticizing politicians? I criticize politicians every day. (I'm a republican from Texas - and I hate George Bush and everything he's done since being elected.) Did you catch that? I just criticized a politician, and I didn't have to send a million unwanted spams to do it.
I want to SPAM to go away.
Bull shit. If you did, you wouldn't be pretending that spammers are honest taxpayers who are just trying to earn a living, when you know damn well they are crooks and thieves.
Your idea of a "free internet" is that anyone can do anything they want, any way they want, to whoever they want, with no limits. But, just as in real life, your right to swing your fist ends just before it reaches the other guys nose. Spammers bloody millions of noses a day, and you want to protect their "freedom" to do that. Fuck that, and fuck you.
So says the AC. But I notice that he didn't mention any of these countries which made spam illegal years ago? Why would that be? Perhaps because there are none? I call bullshit.
You should take those same 243 spams and look at the websites that they spamvertise. You'll find most of them in China. The problem with China isn't the spam that comes from there - that's a fairly small amount. The problem with China is hosting spamvertised websites and not giving a shit about it.
Most would call me an athiest. I'd be more likeley to call myself a bright/. I live in the US. In Texas, deep in the bible belt. And your claims about how you would be considered a freak and ostracised are simply not true.
In other words, I don't have any qualms about your being an athiest - but it pisses me off that you will outright lie about the US just because you don't like Americans. And you are lying, no question about that.
Software patents suck. Software patents on something as basic as "Email works like this" are even worse.
However, SPF compliant mail can still be scored as much more likely to be legitimate.
Spammers can still create new domains on a hit-and-run basis, and they'll pass SPF.
Spammers using SPF comliant mail are going to quickly be blacklisted, at which point mail from those domains can be auto-dumped. Spammers who continue to forge domains are going to find their mail auto-dumped when they forge a domain that uses SPF authentication. Domains which don't support SPF can still be forged - but that will simply increase pressure on those domains to get their shit together.
Spammers can register tons of new domains - which greatly increases their costs. And each new domain will help them for only a short period of time before the blacklists pick up on them.
So it's another blast-proof vault door stuck onto a grass hut, a silly waste of time.
Your theory seems to be that since this will effect only 90-95% of spam, and that spammers can get around it if they spend enough money, we shouldn't bother. Your theory aids the spammers, not the rest of us. I'll pass.
How will I be able to send mail using my own business' domain, as I do today, when it is going out via an ISP server?
You haven't even read how SPF works, have you? All you have to do is register your ISP's mail server as a valid sender for your domain. This is going to be quite common. Most people do not run their own mail servers. Many who have their own domains, like myself, do not run our own mail servers. But I know which mail servers have legitimate reason to send mail using my domain. The others that stick my domain in the "From" field are just forgeries. SPF will allow others to see the forgeries and dump the mail.
SPF seems to make this a lot harder, thereby forcing more people to put their ISPs' name in the From: field, rather than their own.
It's sad that you believe this, and worse that you got modded up for spouting completely false information. It's utter bullshit.
Will SPF kill mydomain?
Maybe - are you a spammer? If not, it's going to help protect your domain from being spoofed by a spammer. That happens to my domain daily.
I repeat what I've said before. The only way to kill spam is to stop having all email be totally, absolutely, "free" of charge in any quantity. This is not the topic to discuss solutions, but they are certainly possible, and they aren't SPF.
And I'll repeat what I've said before. Pay-to-Email isn't a good solution. It has a lot of bad side effects, and it simply isn't necessary. In order to charge per-email, the first step is to figure out who is sending the mail. You can't charge for email if you can't figure out who is sending it. And if you try to charge for email, you can damn well bet the spammers will try to figure out ways to send tons of email and make someone else pay for it. They haven't shown any interest in honesty in the past, and that isn't going to change.
You're arguing against a system that makes it easy to tell who actually sent the mail, yet arguing in favor of charging for email, despite the fact that you *can't* charge for email if you don't know who to charge. You seem to think that the spammers will stop forging other peoples domains, or that people will pay for spam sent that forged their domains. And it ain't gonna happen. The very idea is lunacy.
Once you can verify who is sending the email, then blacklists, whitelists, trustlists, all become much more useful (and less prone to abuse) than they are currently. And therefore pay-to-email is likely to be unnecessary.
Pay-to-email also has a lot of drawbacks. Slashdot sends me several emails a day. I have no idea how many they average a day, but it's bound to be a lot. Under pay-to-ema
Have you ever seen someone that didn't want it buying a bag of pot or a whatever of cocaine? This is pretty simple. People *want* to buy drugs. That means that law or no law, there is likely to be a market for drugs, and a profit for those that sell them. People do *not* want to receive spam. Other people want to send them spam - but they do not have a willing audience.
Nonsense.
A nice looking website and claims that he only sends email to people who have choosen to receive it doesn't change the fact that he harvests and buys addresses and sends out tons of spam.
This is insightful? It's just plain wrong. It is currently legal, under CAN-SPAM, to send unsolicited marketing spam. No consent is required.
You question isn't even logical. Marketing spam, as long as they've given consent? If I join a mailing list (ie, give consent) then any mail they send to me is, by *definition*, not spam.