Subject: Re: The utilitiy of IP is at stake here

From: Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 13:07:21 -0400

Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]> wrote:

 > > From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
 [snip]
 > > Red, consumers do install software when they perceive either a
 > > threat or a benefit.
 >
 > Do you really intend to say what those words mean in context, that
 > Microsoft products were replaced wholesale by other software.

Unfortunately, most consumers perceive neither the threat of using 
Microsoft products, nor the benefits of most alternatives.  They only 
perceive that Windows is what is being pushed at the store, what their 
workplace probably uses, and what their friends and family probably use.  
They therefore often believe that in order to be compatible, they must 
drink MS Koolaid as well, therefore perceiving a large negative benefit 
to using pretty much anything else, except possibly a Mac.

-- 
David J. Aronson, Unemployed Software Engineer near Washington DC
See http://destined.to/program/ for online resume, and other info

---

From: Kurt Erik Lindqvist <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 08:36:07 +0200

>> How about the cost of legitimate emails that get filtered and never
>> read. Not everyone scans the list to check for false positives.
>
> In a major example of false positives, we already have examples of one
> real cost of spam. AOL (as one example of many) has declared ranges of
> IP addresses marked 'residential' as invalid for running a particular
> application. In this case SMTP, but which app is next? There is a 
> 'guilt
> by association' presumption here by the operations community, which 
> when
> carried into other applications results in substantially limited value
> in the core IP protocol.

I can see the operators POV. If you have no hammer, take bulldozer. 
Sort of works, doesn't look pretty but is fast. The cost of handling 
spam is huge and there isn't much else they can do.

OTOH, I do agree with you that this is a threat to IP. I know small 
ISPs in Sweden who filter out a number of applications such as Kazaa 
and certain on-line games "as they use way to much bandwidth". This is 
very dangerous.

- kurtis -

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From: "Clint Chaplin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 11:07:09 -0700

From the ISP.

Clint (JOATMON) Chaplin

>>> "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]> 5/31/03 08:29:18 >>>
Terry writes:

> At least one of them is a combination of letters
> and numbers that I would have expected to
> resist most dictionary spam attacks.

To whom have you sent e-mail from that address?

If they didn't use a dictionary attack, and they didn't harvest the address,
how did they get it?

________________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned for computer viruses.

---

From: "Clint Chaplin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 11:09:20 -0700

Oh, please.  My MSN account (28.8K dial up) got spam from day one, and I only used it for private email.  MSN, at the time, had their directory wide open for anybody to vacuum up.

Clint (JOATMON) Chaplin

>>> "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]> 5/30/03 18:57:31 >>>
Valdis writes:

> I'm glad that you have such a high-speed connection
> that you can connect, download hundreds of messages,
> and filter/delete them all in a minute or two.

I have a broadband connection, and my perpetually-open Outlook Express
client checks my e-mail every sixty seconds.  So I just delete the junk mail
in my inbox when I come across it.  I'd say that it actually takes 10-15
seconds each time I do it.

> My mother doesn't have that luxury - a 56K modem
> connection from Earthlink and Hotmail is as good as
> it's going to get on Social Security.

In that case, she isn't likely to be posting to USENET, participating in
mailing lists, or putting her e-mail address on Web sites, either, so she
probably won't receive much spam.

> And as long as spam doesn't find her, it's *sufficient*.

Exactly.  See above.

> But if she has to start worrying about more than a
> dozen spams a day, e-mail will become useless for her.

How will the spammer's find her address?

> I suggest that you keep in mind that my mother
> is probably a lot more representative of the net
> population at large than you are.

Yes.  A slow connection, and little or no spam.

> Unless you're a television critic, there's no real
> cost to the time commercials take up.

How can time spent watching television commercials be free, if the same time
spent deleting spam costs money?

> But who's getting the benefit from unsolicited spam
> that neither the user nor the provider agreed to?

The people who reply to the spam, apparently.  The only reason spammers send
it out is that some people reply to it.