Re:Maybe no security at all
on
Real Security?
·
· Score: 0
So I guess, the software equivalent of that would be to not leave expensive data that could interest people on networked box,
I can just imagine what this would do to the accounting department.
"Did you finish invoice 200359302?"
"Yup, it's filed in folder 200359 in the left cabinet, but I think janet took it out, so you'll have to ask her."
Of course the cabinet would get jammed every once in a while and they'd have to call tech support to unjam the door.
and make as much as your sensitive data as possible less sensitive, by simply publishing it.
Like publishing a list of customers, projects, passwords and leads onto a website. Good thinking. You'll eliminate the competition with that mentality in no time... Oh, wait...
GPL code, for example, doesn't have to be protected.
GPL code is in fact protected because derivated works have to be GPL as well. But you'll protect your CVS tree from hackers to insert malicious code, won't you?
I'm not saying everything should be released, far from it, but there's a lot of "hidden" data that could just be left readable by everybody, by changing some company policies and being a tad more open about everything, thus removing the desire/need to hack the box it's hosted on.
Sure, the joke document Joe or Jane sent you yesterday doesn't need to be saved under some secret folder, but imagine all your company email being available to the general public.
Take a look at the documents that you keep at your company: invoices, offers, customers, projects, budgets,... This is all data that you don't want to give to the general public, and sometimes not even to your coworkers unless they need it.
Really sensitive data like VISA card numbers, identity card data, etc surely aren't meant to be passed around in the open.
Ah, the endless loop. When employed, certs are not needed, when unemployed they are not affordable...
You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Simply walk up to your boss and have the following conversation:
You: "I was talking to a customer and he was wondering if we have any certification to prove that we are as good as we claim to be."
Boss: "Does anyone at our company have certification?"
You: "Employee X has Cisco, and Employee Y has MSCE, but the rest of us are all uncertified."
Boss: "Hmmmm, that should be good enough."
You: "You know, a few weeks back I read about LPI certification, and a lot of our customers are showing intrest in linux as of late. I checked out the example exams and they're not that difficult. It might be handy to have that in our company as well."
Boss: "Let me think about it."
Then stay on his good side, and make regular inquiries about the certification. If all goes well, you should be able to enroll for the exam in about a week or 2.
This gives you two advantages:
You are less likely to be fired next crisis, as the company has invested in your certification, and that certifaction goes with you if they throw you out.
If you should get fired, you can always mention it on your resume, as many employers love the free certified staffmember to improve the company image.
And you were wrong before, and you are wrong now... Allow me to demonstrate
The main problem here is that we have millions of hosts connected to the Internet that just aren't robust or secure enough to be connected to a public network (I'm mostly talking about Windows machines here, if you hadn't guessed).
Various research has shown that most boxes to be hacked are badly set-up linux machines, and not windows machines. While I agree that a well set up linux box is far more secure than a well setup windows box, the thing that has been plaguing MS is now moving to linux: the so called "experts". People who have nill skills claiming to be network engineers and security gurus. Anyone who read (and then those who didn't) the iptables manpage is a security expert nowadays. I've met tons op people who didn't know what FTP was, but they sure knew how to set up a firewall.
Unless you're hell-bent on running a mailserver on your DSL line, there's no reason for you to go out on port 25.
How about network analisys? My provider blocks port 25, and whenever I have a customer on the phone complaining he can't send mail I have to log into another machine. While it effectively blocks spam coming from this provider, it also makes my job harder and doesn't allow me to set up my own mailserver anymore, unless I relay through them, with all the problems their mailserver brings with it.
Do you honestly think that "professional" spammers use their dailup servers to send spam? No, they have servers in collocation, and ISPs (not the home-kind BTW) welcome the money and ask no questions. It's only after one after another complaint starts rolling in that colo-ISPs say "We were unaware of the problem. We will contact our client as soon as possible". What it comes down to is that in these economically dire times, no ISP can afford to refuse a customer who is willing to pay good money for bandwidth. If they refuse, the competition will get the deal. Now you choose, if your company is fighting not to go belly-up, and you have to choose between no income for god knows how long, or send spam. Which would you choose?
IMHO ISPs have a responsibility to protect the backbones from their lame-ass customers with compromised machines.
I agree on this, but isn't it the users responsibility to keep their machine clean? While every now and then you will hear me utter words like "They should have a minimal set of skills before being allowed on the internet", realise that it's impossible to arrange this. ISPs who block their customers off from internet because they were infected will soon enough find lawsuits and people unsubscribing.
IMHO, the true problem is the underlying infrastructure. People misdesigned SMTP, and the worst part of it is that because there is no better alternative, we are stuck to this for at least another 5 years. If we are ever to design a "new internet", lets make sure that we never assume to trust anyone anymore. In that spirit, I welcome those who will not be able to use their computer again because "new internet" has become too complicated to use.
Security and userfriendlyness do not go hand in hand often. And when they do, the former is often very lacking, and the latter is ofter very confusing.
Hah. When/if IPV6 becomes available to the all of us (instead of just the few who use it now)
Hah, when that book of grammar hits you in the face repetitively, I'll be sure to compile my kernel with IPv6 and roll out my IPv6 box in a matter of a couple of hours. But until then, I'll stick to NAT.
Excuse me? The Internet doesn't know I have this address. The Internet doesn't need to know. There are ranges reserved for private internal use, and if you use Internet addressing space in your LAN you should be spanked.
- Breaks address stability
Please explain this... Do you mean that if more than 10 million people use NAT that they will cause internet to come down on itself?
- Breaks some applications
True, but these applications are mostly of bad design. Is it a matter of fixing the application or implementing a workaround in NAT?
- Breaks some security protocols
Please explain this. If you don't want people to access the Internet, don't NAT them.
- Introduces a false sense of security
That's why you _ALWAYS_ need a firewall, anti-virus software, and keep an eye out on what exactly you're installing.
- Introduces hidden costs
Again, please elaborate...
NAT is one of the ugliest and most widespread Nasty Hacks in the history if the Interweb.
Wow, the "Interweb"... Last time I checked it was still called the InterNET. While I'm a fan of IPv6 being deployed to help the growth of Internet, NAT is a great solution to a real problem. Reading a couple of slides from a powerpoint presentation and not being able to explain the problems except for the bullet-items will not help you in the discussion.
I try to avoid powerpoint presentations for exactly that reason. Bullet-item lists filled with complicated sounding words to impress spectators generally don't help solve the problem, but help marketoids sell their products, and make the lives of those who have to implement it a nightmare because the material is too thin to be meaningful.
Your post was nearly as bad as answering the question "Why is NAT bad?" with "Because... and that's why... Don't ever ask it again."
20% of the people in the world do not have enough to eat. Want something interesting to do? Help feed one or more of the hungry.
<rant>
You want to have something intresting to do? Travel to Africa and help them. Don't tell me how to live my life, live yours the way you want to, or at least the way you tell others to live theirs
So what if I want to rev up my C64 with an ethernet port? It's money I worked for and I will spend it the way I like it. Rather selfish as it may be, I'd rather not have some arrogant little do-gooder tell me what I can and cannot do. If I want to send money to help poor people I'll make sure that I won't tell anyone that they can't have nifty gadget X because unknown ethiopian boy #38298531 is starving.
You see, almost every day I get kiddie porn spam. Young russian girls, y.o.u.n.g BOYZ!, girls and horses, all kinds of crap.
For some reason I think you are confusing child pornography with the *HOT HOT TEENS TEENS* mails that everyone receives every once in a while. If I'd receive spam for child pornography I'd make damn sure that that account is killed off, and my mailclient is squeeky clean of "backup" files.
could something like this be used as a form of entrapment?
Entrapment from who? The government? The law? If someone plans on sending you child pornography as an elaborate skeem to get you in jail, then you have made an enemy of someone in ways that I'd never like to make enemies.
"Look, we found KIDDIE PORN in his TRASH FOLDER!!!"
"Oh, and look, he's also a collector of viagra ads, herbs that increase stamina, and Nigerian business opportunities..." Please, I think that law enforcement agencies are more active in finding people who actively distribute and download child pornography than this.
Of course, since the moderation system on Slashdot was meant to censor anyone with an even slightly unpopular opinion.. this will be posted at 0. Oh well..
I think I found the trick to getting a positive score on slashdot. Just say that you disagree with moderators, and they'll mod you up like crazy, even if you're producing drivel.
Re:There's one good thing about it.
on
Perl 1.0?
·
· Score: 1
Perl's not that bad a language, once you've added the pragma use strict;. I love using perl for most quick and easy to automate tasks. If I had to run back to C every time I needed to look for "Foo" in a database or "Bar" in a logfile to replace it with its lowercase equivalent I wouldn't get any work done.
I'm all for strictly typed languages, with tons and tons of possibilities that perl doesn't have, but those languages don't save me time on small things. Perl is ideal for "quick shell scripts and CGI", but if you asked me to write something larger I'd grab back to C or C++ (depending on the nature of what you're asking).
Most people that use perl (nowadays) will tend to agree with me on this. If it has to be done quick and dirty, use perl and make good friends with CPAN. If you have the time and the project is bound to grow, use a different language.
Re:Some things to point out.
on
Perl 1.0?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
bah, switch is for people who are scared of using if... Incidentally, perl does have a nice alternative. Prepare a hash with all the possible values used as keys, and then use references to functions to do what you want to do.
For instance:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
sub reply_y { print "You code too much perl!\n"; } sub reply_n { print "You don't use enough perl!\n"; }
print "Would you use a hash as a switch statement? (y/n) "; my $answer = <STDIN> if (!$switch{lc $answer)) { print "You've reached the default\n"; } else { &$switch(lc $answer)); }
I however don't recommend things like this to fellow programmers that have to maintain this sort of code in the near/far future. Things like this tend to become unreadable. I can't say I miss switch that much in perl. Switch always seemed a bit syntacticly unpure in some way, but that's just my twisted mind.
Including them lying about not having a linux compatible video player? Hey, they finally did it, so no complaints on that department, but I doubt that they planned on actually supporting linux from the start, as it took them nearly a year. I'm all for games being ported to linux, but if you're the least bit serious about cross platform code it won't take you a year to achieve a port.
IMHO what happened was that they marketed the game for several platforms, noticed that they were biting the hand that fed them, and then started working on it.
So what? I played the game using good old crash-o-matic (windows), got a game that was below par compared to some of their other titles (eg Baldurs Gate, Torment). That aside, I spent countless evenings tinkering with it to create my own adventure. But in retrospect, this game was completely overhyped. They spent so much attention to making grass move that a battle between an elf and orc army even ran slowly on a P4 with 512M RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 4. I spent many hours looking for a reason when I turned on or off lights in an area, only half of them would turn on or off. It was a bug in the RecalculateStaticLighting() function in their engine (which is still not fixed BTW). I spent an equal amount of time figuring out why factions sometimes didn't work the way they explained it.
Am I upset with Bioware? Yes. Why? Because they promised me a game that would allow me to do virtually anything, run a client on linux, and I got a (at the time) windows only game, that had trouble adjusting lighting on an area larger than 5x5, an ran slowly if there were more than 10 people in one scene. And because I don't like to get screwed by companies when I spend money that I worked for and don't deliver on their promise.
And that why I'm so wary about companies that promise something that I've heard before and got nothing out of.
Oh my, just had some weird flash back from another game that boasted full linux support. Eventually it only took them just long enough for the neverwinter nights discs to disappear under the pile of junk nobody dares to touch on my desk.
I'm sorry, but I've given up on corporations that make games and claim linux support. I think it's more of a marketing strategy than a goal for game developers (and their employers).
Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl
on
Perl 6 Essentials
·
· Score: 1
You're full of it it! \$a isn't a pointer, it's a reference... Oh wait, nevermind.:-)
True, but won't pictures perhaps "inspire" other paedophiles to commit such acts? How about the victims? I wouldn't like to be a teenager who has pictures of him/herself being abused as a child circulating the net.
Wow, a comma or a full stop would've been nice... But seriously
This isn't just about people who are molesting children, but also about the people who are trading pictures and movies of people molesting children. Do they come into contact with children? Not really.
But it is true that you could locate people who are doing this sort of thing by schools watching out for children that are showing signs of abuse or stress.
So basicly what you're saying is, that every person who wants to set up a mailserver should have a license for it? And who gets to issue these licenses? The government? What will these licenses cost me (as I'm sure they will cost me, there is no government that did anything for free unless they planned on getting something out of it later)?
What would be the criteria for getting this license? Being able to set up sendmail, or perhaps being able to set up qmail, MS Exchange server perhaps? The first two alone would start a holy war of unknown proportions, and adding the last one would make the holy war go nuclear. If my government had a choice, they'd definatly go for the incentive MS would give for making their mailserver a standard one on the license test. After all, it's a good investment to make an entire nation take the dreaded MX-licensing-test on your MTA.
I care about my privacy just enough to want to be able to critisize the government over e-mail without having to be tagged as a subversive element. I care enough about my privacy to know that there are better ways of being anonymous than registering a yahoo.com email address (such things as anonymous remailers come to mind).
The whole thing that upsets me is the fact that when the government is planning on doing something intrusive to your rights, they immediatly grab the worst kind of people from society (terrorists, child molesters) and tell people "Look who we can stop if you just give up that little bit of freedom". Of course I care about the fact that thousands of paedophiles are using internet as a way to distribute child pornography. But does that minority of internet (ab)users justify that no one is allowed to send mail anonymously anymore?
If people in some countries were to critisize their government openly in e-mail, and they were to be found out they'd most likely be held accountable for their actions in ways that we would describe as inhuman. I'd rather not have my government know that I'm critisizing them, or cheating on my wife, or anything else you can think of.
Someone once told me that internet is a mirror of our society. If I were then to considder e-mail to be the electronic equivalent of the postal services or phona companies, doesn't that scare you? Soon I'll need a license to own a phone, or send a letter. And if the government considders me a subversive element they'll be able to tap my phoneline, open my mail and won't even need a warrant for that. That's not the kind of country I'd want to live in. It would make me a citizen of a country I'd be ashamed of naming.
Again, if internet is a mirror of society, then in our society these individuals exist, and it should be in our society that we find them. Children should be taught about sexual abuse, and schools should look out for children that seem to have problems. That would be a more effective way of fighting child abuse than scanning inboxes.
Slashdot Mirror
I can just imagine what this would do to the accounting department.
"Did you finish invoice 200359302?"
"Yup, it's filed in folder 200359 in the left cabinet, but I think janet took it out, so you'll have to ask her."
Of course the cabinet would get jammed every once in a while and they'd have to call tech support to unjam the door.
Like publishing a list of customers, projects, passwords and leads onto a website. Good thinking. You'll eliminate the competition with that mentality in no time... Oh, wait...
GPL code is in fact protected because derivated works have to be GPL as well. But you'll protect your CVS tree from hackers to insert malicious code, won't you?
Sure, the joke document Joe or Jane sent you yesterday doesn't need to be saved under some secret folder, but imagine all your company email being available to the general public.
Take a look at the documents that you keep at your company: invoices, offers, customers, projects, budgets, ... This is all data that you don't want to give to the general public, and sometimes not even to your coworkers unless they need it.
Really sensitive data like VISA card numbers, identity card data, etc surely aren't meant to be passed around in the open.
You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Simply walk up to your boss and have the following conversation:
You: "I was talking to a customer and he was wondering if we have any certification to prove that we are as good as we claim to be."
Boss: "Does anyone at our company have certification?"
You: "Employee X has Cisco, and Employee Y has MSCE, but the rest of us are all uncertified."
Boss: "Hmmmm, that should be good enough."
You: "You know, a few weeks back I read about LPI certification, and a lot of our customers are showing intrest in linux as of late. I checked out the example exams and they're not that difficult. It might be handy to have that in our company as well."
Boss: "Let me think about it."
Then stay on his good side, and make regular inquiries about the certification. If all goes well, you should be able to enroll for the exam in about a week or 2.
This gives you two advantages:
Hey, no fair, I get -1, Troll, while this guy isn't even first post and doesn't get modded down at all.
woohooo, the prize is mine... Bye bye karma
And you were wrong before, and you are wrong now... Allow me to demonstrate
Various research has shown that most boxes to be hacked are badly set-up linux machines, and not windows machines. While I agree that a well set up linux box is far more secure than a well setup windows box, the thing that has been plaguing MS is now moving to linux: the so called "experts". People who have nill skills claiming to be network engineers and security gurus. Anyone who read (and then those who didn't) the iptables manpage is a security expert nowadays. I've met tons op people who didn't know what FTP was, but they sure knew how to set up a firewall.
How about network analisys? My provider blocks port 25, and whenever I have a customer on the phone complaining he can't send mail I have to log into another machine. While it effectively blocks spam coming from this provider, it also makes my job harder and doesn't allow me to set up my own mailserver anymore, unless I relay through them, with all the problems their mailserver brings with it.
Do you honestly think that "professional" spammers use their dailup servers to send spam? No, they have servers in collocation, and ISPs (not the home-kind BTW) welcome the money and ask no questions. It's only after one after another complaint starts rolling in that colo-ISPs say "We were unaware of the problem. We will contact our client as soon as possible". What it comes down to is that in these economically dire times, no ISP can afford to refuse a customer who is willing to pay good money for bandwidth. If they refuse, the competition will get the deal. Now you choose, if your company is fighting not to go belly-up, and you have to choose between no income for god knows how long, or send spam. Which would you choose?
I agree on this, but isn't it the users responsibility to keep their machine clean? While every now and then you will hear me utter words like "They should have a minimal set of skills before being allowed on the internet", realise that it's impossible to arrange this. ISPs who block their customers off from internet because they were infected will soon enough find lawsuits and people unsubscribing.
IMHO, the true problem is the underlying infrastructure. People misdesigned SMTP, and the worst part of it is that because there is no better alternative, we are stuck to this for at least another 5 years. If we are ever to design a "new internet", lets make sure that we never assume to trust anyone anymore. In that spirit, I welcome those who will not be able to use their computer again because "new internet" has become too complicated to use.
Security and userfriendlyness do not go hand in hand often. And when they do, the former is often very lacking, and the latter is ofter very confusing.
On the other hand, what was that Java interpreter (oh excuse me, "environment") written in? Think that that thing is bugfree? What about speed?
Imagine a world where everyone runs everything java... Now imagine today. Wow, that pentium 4 seems awfully fast now if I compare it to your utopia.
Hah, when that book of grammar hits you in the face repetitively, I'll be sure to compile my kernel with IPv6 and roll out my IPv6 box in a matter of a couple of hours. But until then, I'll stick to NAT.
Some of your arguments deserve a comment
Excuse me? The Internet doesn't know I have this address. The Internet doesn't need to know. There are ranges reserved for private internal use, and if you use Internet addressing space in your LAN you should be spanked.
Please explain this... Do you mean that if more than 10 million people use NAT that they will cause internet to come down on itself?
True, but these applications are mostly of bad design. Is it a matter of fixing the application or implementing a workaround in NAT?
Please explain this. If you don't want people to access the Internet, don't NAT them.
That's why you _ALWAYS_ need a firewall, anti-virus software, and keep an eye out on what exactly you're installing.
Again, please elaborate...
Wow, the "Interweb"... Last time I checked it was still called the InterNET. While I'm a fan of IPv6 being deployed to help the growth of Internet, NAT is a great solution to a real problem. Reading a couple of slides from a powerpoint presentation and not being able to explain the problems except for the bullet-items will not help you in the discussion.
I try to avoid powerpoint presentations for exactly that reason. Bullet-item lists filled with complicated sounding words to impress spectators generally don't help solve the problem, but help marketoids sell their products, and make the lives of those who have to implement it a nightmare because the material is too thin to be meaningful.
Your post was nearly as bad as answering the question "Why is NAT bad?" with "Because... and that's why... Don't ever ask it again."
Have you ever considdered a career in ethnical erradication? You're about as cold as they get
<rant>
You want to have something intresting to do? Travel to Africa and help them. Don't tell me how to live my life, live yours the way you want to, or at least the way you tell others to live theirs
So what if I want to rev up my C64 with an ethernet port? It's money I worked for and I will spend it the way I like it. Rather selfish as it may be, I'd rather not have some arrogant little do-gooder tell me what I can and cannot do. If I want to send money to help poor people I'll make sure that I won't tell anyone that they can't have nifty gadget X because unknown ethiopian boy #38298531 is starving.
</rant>
darn, there goes my karma... what carma?
first post
Hah, like you have sex... You're posting slashdot.org
<cough>openldap</cough>
But seriously, there isn't anything directory-like you can't do with LDAP. It's not a perfect system, but it's pretty sweet.
For some reason I think you are confusing child pornography with the *HOT HOT TEENS TEENS* mails that everyone receives every once in a while. If I'd receive spam for child pornography I'd make damn sure that that account is killed off, and my mailclient is squeeky clean of "backup" files.
Entrapment from who? The government? The law? If someone plans on sending you child pornography as an elaborate skeem to get you in jail, then you have made an enemy of someone in ways that I'd never like to make enemies.
"Oh, and look, he's also a collector of viagra ads, herbs that increase stamina, and Nigerian business opportunities..." Please, I think that law enforcement agencies are more active in finding people who actively distribute and download child pornography than this.
I think I found the trick to getting a positive score on slashdot. Just say that you disagree with moderators, and they'll mod you up like crazy, even if you're producing drivel.
Perl's not that bad a language, once you've added the pragma use strict;. I love using perl for most quick and easy to automate tasks. If I had to run back to C every time I needed to look for "Foo" in a database or "Bar" in a logfile to replace it with its lowercase equivalent I wouldn't get any work done.
I'm all for strictly typed languages, with tons and tons of possibilities that perl doesn't have, but those languages don't save me time on small things. Perl is ideal for "quick shell scripts and CGI", but if you asked me to write something larger I'd grab back to C or C++ (depending on the nature of what you're asking).
Most people that use perl (nowadays) will tend to agree with me on this. If it has to be done quick and dirty, use perl and make good friends with CPAN. If you have the time and the project is bound to grow, use a different language.
bah, switch is for people who are scared of using if... Incidentally, perl does have a nice alternative. Prepare a hash with all the possible values used as keys, and then use references to functions to do what you want to do.
For instance:
I however don't recommend things like this to fellow programmers that have to maintain this sort of code in the near/far future. Things like this tend to become unreadable. I can't say I miss switch that much in perl. Switch always seemed a bit syntacticly unpure in some way, but that's just my twisted mind.
Including them lying about not having a linux compatible video player? Hey, they finally did it, so no complaints on that department, but I doubt that they planned on actually supporting linux from the start, as it took them nearly a year. I'm all for games being ported to linux, but if you're the least bit serious about cross platform code it won't take you a year to achieve a port.
IMHO what happened was that they marketed the game for several platforms, noticed that they were biting the hand that fed them, and then started working on it.
So what? I played the game using good old crash-o-matic (windows), got a game that was below par compared to some of their other titles (eg Baldurs Gate, Torment). That aside, I spent countless evenings tinkering with it to create my own adventure. But in retrospect, this game was completely overhyped. They spent so much attention to making grass move that a battle between an elf and orc army even ran slowly on a P4 with 512M RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 4. I spent many hours looking for a reason when I turned on or off lights in an area, only half of them would turn on or off. It was a bug in the RecalculateStaticLighting() function in their engine (which is still not fixed BTW). I spent an equal amount of time figuring out why factions sometimes didn't work the way they explained it.
Am I upset with Bioware? Yes. Why? Because they promised me a game that would allow me to do virtually anything, run a client on linux, and I got a (at the time) windows only game, that had trouble adjusting lighting on an area larger than 5x5, an ran slowly if there were more than 10 people in one scene. And because I don't like to get screwed by companies when I spend money that I worked for and don't deliver on their promise.
And that why I'm so wary about companies that promise something that I've heard before and got nothing out of.
Oh my, just had some weird flash back from another game that boasted full linux support. Eventually it only took them just long enough for the neverwinter nights discs to disappear under the pile of junk nobody dares to touch on my desk.
I'm sorry, but I've given up on corporations that make games and claim linux support. I think it's more of a marketing strategy than a goal for game developers (and their employers).
You're full of it it! \$a isn't a pointer, it's a reference... Oh wait, nevermind. :-)
True, but won't pictures perhaps "inspire" other paedophiles to commit such acts? How about the victims? I wouldn't like to be a teenager who has pictures of him/herself being abused as a child circulating the net.
Wow, a comma or a full stop would've been nice... But seriously
This isn't just about people who are molesting children, but also about the people who are trading pictures and movies of people molesting children. Do they come into contact with children? Not really.
But it is true that you could locate people who are doing this sort of thing by schools watching out for children that are showing signs of abuse or stress.
So basicly what you're saying is, that every person who wants to set up a mailserver should have a license for it? And who gets to issue these licenses? The government? What will these licenses cost me (as I'm sure they will cost me, there is no government that did anything for free unless they planned on getting something out of it later)?
What would be the criteria for getting this license? Being able to set up sendmail, or perhaps being able to set up qmail, MS Exchange server perhaps? The first two alone would start a holy war of unknown proportions, and adding the last one would make the holy war go nuclear. If my government had a choice, they'd definatly go for the incentive MS would give for making their mailserver a standard one on the license test. After all, it's a good investment to make an entire nation take the dreaded MX-licensing-test on your MTA.
I care about my privacy just enough to want to be able to critisize the government over e-mail without having to be tagged as a subversive element. I care enough about my privacy to know that there are better ways of being anonymous than registering a yahoo.com email address (such things as anonymous remailers come to mind).
The whole thing that upsets me is the fact that when the government is planning on doing something intrusive to your rights, they immediatly grab the worst kind of people from society (terrorists, child molesters) and tell people "Look who we can stop if you just give up that little bit of freedom". Of course I care about the fact that thousands of paedophiles are using internet as a way to distribute child pornography. But does that minority of internet (ab)users justify that no one is allowed to send mail anonymously anymore?
If people in some countries were to critisize their government openly in e-mail, and they were to be found out they'd most likely be held accountable for their actions in ways that we would describe as inhuman. I'd rather not have my government know that I'm critisizing them, or cheating on my wife, or anything else you can think of.
Someone once told me that internet is a mirror of our society. If I were then to considder e-mail to be the electronic equivalent of the postal services or phona companies, doesn't that scare you? Soon I'll need a license to own a phone, or send a letter. And if the government considders me a subversive element they'll be able to tap my phoneline, open my mail and won't even need a warrant for that. That's not the kind of country I'd want to live in. It would make me a citizen of a country I'd be ashamed of naming.
Again, if internet is a mirror of society, then in our society these individuals exist, and it should be in our society that we find them. Children should be taught about sexual abuse, and schools should look out for children that seem to have problems. That would be a more effective way of fighting child abuse than scanning inboxes.