Way off topic talk about email

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 12/31/05, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> > I know, it's a pain in the ass to do all this just to get subscribed
> > to a mailing list.  Personally, I hate email - I think it's a horribly
> > designed technology that unfortunately a lot of people insist on using
>
> If it hurts, you're doing it wrong. Email is self-archiving and
> self-admining (Mailman), creates multiple redundant realtime-searchable
> archives at each user's end (mailboxes) uses your favore editor and MUA,
> supports encryption, authentication, anti-spam filtering, and
> is sufficiently quick yet not realtime for in-depth discussions
> (you won't find this on IM/IRC) -- and half a dozen other things
> I haven't mentioned.
>
> If you compare this to any other medium, you'll notice none of them
> have all of those features. There are media complementary to email --
> nobody will prevent you from using them.
>
If it hurts, I'm doing it wrong?  Maybe you can point me to a perfect
spam filter, because I haven't yet found one.

Your list of "features" essentially defined email, as one was that it
"creates multiple redundant realtime-searchable archives at each
user's end (mailboxes)".  If you eliminate that "feature" there are
plenty of alternatives, and I don't really see it as a useful feature,
more of a horribly inefficient implementation.  Some of the other
features I'm not even sure I agree about.  Email supports
authentication and encryption?  Only in the sense that you can easily
build authentication and encryption on top of any digital distribution
mechanism.

If I had the opportunity to post replies to this mailing list using a
web form instead of email I'd definitely use it.  Creating a gmail
account to subscribe to mailing lists is the next best thing.

I guess it's true that no one is *forcing* me to use email.  But
without an email address I can't access my bank's online banking, or
pay my student loans through the web, or post to or-talk, or subscribe
to slashdot, or receive paypal payments, or a whole host of other
things.  That doesn't really make sense to me.  In fact, using the
From: field of an email for authentication (which is what the or-talk
listserver does) makes about as much sense as using an IP address.

Anthony