Marco Stefano Forghieri 23-09-1963 27-02-2010

Ciao, Marco.

"Non dire con dolore: non ci sono più, ma con riconoscenza: ci sono stati"

Machiavelli non sarebbe stato d'accordo

Il migliore dei capi è quello di cui il popolo conosce a malapena l'esistenza.
Meno buono è il capo che viene obbedito e acclamato.
Il capo pessimo è temuto e disprezzato.
Chi non onora il popolo, non sarà da esso onorato.
Ma quando il lavoro del migliore dei capi è compiuto, e il suo scopo raggiunto,
il suo popolo dirà "Questo l'abbiamo realizzato noi."

Lao-Tzu

Still Funny, After All These Years

First sighted on Slashdot on October 3rd, 2003.

(Inevitably, in every thread about spam, someone proposes a solution with one or more flaws. This is a handy form that passes the lameness filter and that can be reused for all such posts to save time! It does not specifically address all possible flaws and may be expanded in future versions.)

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based (x) vigilante

approach to fighting 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 vary from state to state.)

( ) 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
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
(x) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires cooperation from too many of your friends and is counterintuitive
( ) 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
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever worked
( ) Other:

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

(x) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) 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
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
( ) Other:

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) 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
(x) Countermeasures cannot involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures cannot involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) 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
( ) Other:

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Nice try, dude, but I don't think it will 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!

Chiaramente

"L'uomo è su questo pianeta da 32000 anni^[1]. Il fatto che ci siano voluti 100 milioni di anni per preparare il mondo per lui prova che la sua esitenza è il motivo per cui il mondo fu creato. O almeno penso. Non lo so di sicuro. Se l'altezza della torre Eiffel rappresentasse l'età del mondo, lo strato di vernice sulla punta della torre rappresenterebbe, in proporzione, il periodo per cui l'uomo è esistito: e chiunque vedrebbe chiaramente che quello strato di vernice è il motivo per cui la torre fu edificata. O almeno penso che lo vedrebbe chiaramente. Non lo so di sicuro."
- Mark Twain - "Il mondo è stato fatto per l'uomo?"


[1] Le durate dell'esistenza della razza umana e del mondo erano quelle accreditate all'epoca della pubblicazione dell'articolo.


"Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; & anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would. I dunno."
Mark Twain - "Was the World Made for Man?"

In effetti

"Compiere gli anni non è male, considerate le alternative" - Maurice Chevalier (forse)

Ironia involontaria?

Sistema di voice mail:

"Gli operatori sono momentaneamente occupati. La sua chiamata verrà inoltrata nel più breve tempo possibile"

Musichetta di sottofondo: "Sweet Dreams" (!!!!!) degli Eurythmics.