On 2/20/02 5:36 PM, "Jay R. Ashworth" jra@baylink.com wrote:
So, you're saying because you protect yourself from the spammers, that EVERYONE should, too?
As a matter of fact, yes, I am saying that. There are cost-free, not especially difficult to set up, facilities for all environments
Okay, what system exists for AOL users? How do you set up a system if you live on a corporate account with an imap mail box and no shell access to the server? What about a hotmail or yahoo account?
Show me the systems, jay, that work for real people, not us geeks that run our own boxes on our own desks.
To move back to the burglary analogy, you've just told me that (a) if you do get burgled, you won't call the police, and (b), the police department should be shut down, because everyone should take care of themselves. Which, I guess, means if you get burgled, you'll pull out the gun, find the burglar, and shoot him yourself, right?
Actually, yes. Gun control is being able to hit your target. Anyone foolish enough to burgle my house in the middle of the night is running (hopefully knowingly) the risk of getting shot.
Only if you're home. And if he's IN your home, be my guest. But your analogy implies that you don't believe in the police, you believe in hunting him down and shooting him whenever you find him. Once you leave the confines of your property, your rights change radically here.
Because I've been around long enough -- not that you haven't certainly -- to see the value in the way things are if the tool does *not* circumscribe useful things, and I do not see fit to let the Bad Guys make that utility go away. Aren't we having this argument with John Ashcroft right now about US civil rights?
We? No, actually.
Cause my way is right? :-)
Nope. Don't buy that. Especially for all those list admins in the three cases I gave you above. Once you solve THOSE problems, though, maybe we can start to talk. I'm really curious how you'll solve the problem of my mother doing her own anti-spam processing on her earthlink account. Because if you can't solve that problem, or the AOL problem -- you can't solve the problem, except for us geeks, and we can't write Mailman just for geeks.
See, that's the other failure of your analogy. You assume everyone WANTS to have a gun and hunt down their own burglar. The vast majority of the public doesn't. They want to call the police.
No, I merely don't value the email address's privacy as highly as you do.
Fair enough. But I think that disqualifies you from making design decisions about privacy issues then. It's Barry's call, but I'd argue that you take a position that is unacceptable in the design of this software for these issue.
That's nice. But -- does that override the need to protect the admin from spammers? Again, do we only do things that you approve of, or for the common good, is this something where you compromise your position?
The admin works for me. Not the other way around.
Apologies if you think that sounds snotty or self-important.
Yes, it does.
Again, apologies. If you can convince me that one Right outweighs the other one, for a sufficiently statistically significant number of possible cases, I'll change my outlook. I don't claim to be perfect.
Solve the problem for real users (the AOL account. The corporate IMAP account. The earthlink account. The hotmail account) and then maybe we'll talk. Until then, your solution only works for geeks, and is unacceptable for a tool designed to be used by regular people, not JUST geeks.