• namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
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    4 months ago

    Oh goody. I’ve been wanting to use this since my slashdot days… today is my first chance!

    Your post advocates a
    
    [x] technical
    [ ] legislative
    [ ] market-based
    [ ] vigilante
    
    approach to fighting (ML-generated) spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why
    it won't work. [One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea,
    and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad
    federal law was passed.]
    
    [ ] Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
    [ ] Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
    [ ] No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
    [ ] It is defenseless against brute force attacks
    [ ] It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
    [ ] Users of email will not put up with it
    [x] Microsoft will not put up with it
    [ ] The police will not put up with it
    [x] Requires too much cooperation from spammers
    [x] Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
    [ ] Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
    [ ] Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
    [ ] Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
    
    Specifically, your plan fails to account for
    
    [ ] Laws expressly prohibiting it
    [x] Lack of centrally controlling authority for email^W ML algorithms
    [ ] Open relays in foreign countries
    [ ] Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
    [x] Asshats
    [ ] Jurisdictional problems
    [ ] Unpopularity of weird new taxes
    [ ] Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
    [ ] Huge existing software investment in SMTP
    [ ] Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
    [ ] Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
    [ ] Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
    [x] Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
    [x] Extreme profitability of spam
    [ ] Joe jobs and/or identity theft
    [ ] Technically illiterate politicians
    [ ] Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
    [x] Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
    [ ] Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
    [x] Outlook
    
    and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
    
    [x] Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
    been shown practical
    [ ] Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
    [ ] SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
    [ ] Blacklists suck
    [ ] Whitelists suck
    [ ] We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
    [ ] Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
    [ ] Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
    [ ] Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
    [ ] Sending email should be free
    [x] Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
    [ ] Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
    [x] Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
    [ ] Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
    [ ] I don't want the government reading my email
    [ ] Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
    
    Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
    
    [x] Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
    [ ] This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
    [ ] Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
    house down!