[ih] Unhappy with the free service (was Re: The UCLA 360/91 on the ARPAnet/Internet)

[Jack Haverty]

As Tony pointed out, I simply yearn for an environment where I can
send something to another person (or computer program), with some
reasonably high level of confidence that the content will get to the
addressee intact, be kept from prying eyes along the way, and that the
recipient can be confident that it came from me.  And same for the
reverse.

Some such technology exists today.  For example, I'm using GMail right
now, but I can bring up Evolution instead.  By simply clicking a
checkbox, it will send my email signed, so the recipient can believe
it's from me and/or encrypted so that only the recipient can read it.
Similarly when I receive such email, I can be confident of its content
and source.  However it seems that few email users have embraced such
technology, and few if any organizations promote it.

As others have pointed out, "we" - the Internet community - have a lot
of work to do.  But I think time is running out.  There are
alternatives.   I've noticed lately that people like my relatives -
very non-techie - are enraptured with their new-found ability to
communicate with each other and their friends and neighbors.  It looks
like email, but it's actually social networking layered on top of the
Internet.  They have email accounts, but they prefer using the social
network.  They can send text, pictures, videos, etc., and not worry
about malware, phishing, or other such frightening Internet
"features".  Of course, they all have to be inside the same "walled
garden" to interact - but that constraint is preferable to the
perceived risks of the wild and wooly world of Internet email.   They
are at best dimly aware of all the robots watching over their
shoulders, and don't seem to care - at least as long as everyone they
want to interact with is inside the same garden and therefore
accessible.   Email, and even the Web, may be overshadowed by The
Garden(s).  Soon.

---
In the 1980s, I would have been soundly flamed if I sent an email with
graphics.  In 2012, millions of people are constantly snapping photos
and shooting videos and emailing them to all their friends.  So, it
seemed reasonable to expect that my email with a few pages of a
document attached wouldn't be a problem.  When I receive email with
large attachments, I can simply choose not to download the attachment
- the recipients' decision, rather than some server somewhere along
the route.  That's why I sent my notes as an attachment, but described
what they were in the message body.   Sorry if that caused anyone
problems.

---
Email, or any "free" service for that matter, is not free.   Capital
and labor are used to move those bits and that costs money.  It's
virtually impossible in Internet email to "follow the money", but
eventually it reappears somewhere for you to pay - perhaps in your
taxes or in the price of the products you buy.  That lack of tying the
service to its costs makes it impossible to demand your money back.
You don't know who to ask.   The advent of SmartPhones is wreaking
economic havoc in the carriers' "unlimited data" services - they're
scrambling to reroute the flow of money back to the user, and they
have the mechanisms to do so.  We tried to put into the Internet a
foundation for tying resource usage to user starting back in the late
80s - see RFC1272 et al.  I've lost track of that effort though, so I
don't know how much "follow the money" infrastructure is in place by
now.

---
BTW, I agree with the philosophy that email Subjects should match the
content.  Unfortunately we're very much in the minority.  That
previous message thread had lost it's theme of 360/91 long before I
sent my email.  I've learned to mostly ignore the Subject especially
after a thread has gotten more than a few messages long.  It does make
it much harder to find old messages that you seek.

---
Getting back to the realm of Internet History...  I think that the
historical record of what *did not* happen can be as interesting and
enlightening as what *did* happen.   With all the technology and
expertise that's been working on The Internet over the last 3+
decades, why haven't we made more progress in email?    What happened,
or failed to happen, to cause the world of spam, phishing, malware, et
al that we suffer today?  That might be an enlightening history topic,
if anybody's interested.

/Jack


On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 9:54 PM, Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net> wrote:
> On 5/13/2012 11:13 PM, Jack Haverty wrote:
>>
>> Wow - you mean that because I happened to use an unexpected address,
>> the mail server rejected my message and, for extra security, lied to
>> me and told me my message was rejected because it was too big?
>
>
> Are you saying that you would prefer that anybody that can spell your name
> correctly ought to be permitted anything they any on any subject and include
> a load of malware in your name from anywhere on the planet?
>
> Really?
>
> As for the lie, I have no interest in gathering what I need to make a
> professional analysis, but I will telly you that when I saw your first
> screed I said to myself something along the lines of "Wow!  Almost a million
> and half characters--I'll bet that is a load of trojan they got stopped".
>
> As I used to say to folks, Demand you money back and take your business
> someplace else.
>
> And as an outsider let me say that I am fond of the "if you change the
> subject, change the Subject: notion.
> --
> Requiescas in pace o email           Two identifying characteristics
>                                        of System Administrators:
> Ex turpi causa non oritur actio      Infallibility, and the ability to
>                                        learn from their mistakes.
> ICBM Data:  http://g.co/maps/e5gmy        (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)