Sender-ID Back From The Dead 221
NW writes "Microsoft's Sender-ID standard has been left for the dead since the rejection earlier this fall by the IETF. According to a Reuters story, it has been revised and will be resubmitted to the IETF. Along the way, Microsoft managed to pick up AOL's endorsement of Sender-ID. My humble analysis appears here."
AOL Endorses it, huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:AOL Endorses it, huh? (Score:5, Informative)
AOL (and their properties) is the single worst email provider on the planet. They routinely drop email and often bounce legitimate email. They may claim they prevent 10 million quadrillion spams or something, but I'd guess that a good percentage (though not a majority or anything) are legitmate emails falling victim to their "policies".
They use their large size to bully people around, like they did to you. If some small ISP was bouncing your mails for the same reason, would you have begged to get off their bounce list? AOL blocks mail from large swaths of IP space because they "might" be sending spam. Heck, I have RoadRunner (which is an AOL property), and I can't even send mail to other RoadRunner users because as a RoadRunner user I'm probably sending spam!
I've had AOL bounce emails because I PGP signed them, which IMO is the best form of "sender-ID" there is (and anyone serious about getting rid of spam would support this, but very few actually do, probably because it would mean taking responsibility for the problem). But according to AOL, it's probably spam, so it got bounced! (in this case, it was a user setting to bounce mail with attachments, but shame on AOL for not realizing what a PGP signature was and allowing/endorsing it)
AOL's policies are not conducive to a good Internet neighbor. AOL and their arrogant policies have always been bad for the Internet. Anything that AOL endorses automatically raises my suspicion. Nevermind the fact that as the OP stated, AOL popularized the idea of spam with their mass mailings and selling of email addresses (way back in the day before they realized what a bad idea that was).
If you really want your personal email account to be like AOL, just setup a procmail filter that deletes/bounces half your mail.
Re:AOL Endorses it, huh? (Score:2)
I was a RoadRunner customer for two years (until two months ago) and I regularly email other RoadRunner customers (my mother, for example). Next?
(in this case, it was a user setting to bounce mail with attachments, but shame on AOL for not realizing what a PGP signature was and allowing/endorsing it)
An attachment is an attachment is an attachm
Re: (Score:2)
Re:AOL Endorses it, huh? (Score:2)
Re:AOL Endorses it, huh? (Score:2)
Not exactly how you intuit that!
In fact, I suspect EVERY ISP will argue that they care a lot about spam. I know my local ISP cares (it sez so on their web-site!). I know that Cox Cable does (sez so on their website), yet when I tracked down spam FROM THEIR NETWORK and sent it to them what was the sound I heard?
Silence.
Yeah, they care. Very little.
Licensing changes? (Score:3, Insightful)
If we have learned nothing from watching AOL feast on Netscape's corpse it's that there are LOTS of execs at AOL with radically different ideas about ways to do things, and they change their mind on a weekly basis. Exert a modest bit of pressure and they can be made to bend over like the fitty cent whores they are.
Re:Licensing changes? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, just watch those stupid commercials they have about how their customers can "help them make the Internet better", like the one with the stupid lady who stands up on the executives table while they are having a meeting. As if they are "the Internet". I know there was a time when they were one of the only big ISPs on the block, and they brainwashed their customers into thinking that they were infact, the Internet. But those days are
Re:Licensing changes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Licensing changes? (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt it'll affect anything. They already blackhole so much of their incoming email, it's near impossible to talk to most AOL users except through AIM. AOL is their own little world.
Re:Licensing changes? (Score:5, Funny)
AOL is their own little world.
And... that is bad how?!?!
Do you really want them little tiny-tot AOLers coming at you?
It seems you've been leading two lives, Mr. Finch. In one life, you're a nice Slashdotter, with excellent Karma who even M2Ms reguarly. In another life, you're an AOL user. You use AIM, chat with 14 y.o. with teenage girls and help your landlord find his pr0n.
One of these lives has a future, one of them does not.
What do I think??? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What do I think??? (Score:2)
AOL is the 90 Chimp (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:AOL is the 90 Chimp (Score:2)
Perhaps their endorsement doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of driving sender-id forward, but given the sheer number of @aol.com mailboxes, their
Re:AOL is the 90 Chimp (Score:2)
Sendmail perhaps but not apache...
SpamAssassin (Score:3, Insightful)
> What reason would Apache have to do anything with Sender-ID?
Perhaps because of SpamAssassin [apache.org]?
Quoting ASF:
Since SpamAssassin is not limited to only one MTA and its purpose is to filter spam, the Apache Software Foundation need
Re:AOL is the 90 pound Chimp (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me first expand on my original statement. Wall Street does not look highly upon AOL: they dramatically overpaid for Netscape, a division that is, for all intensive purposes, dead; they were involved in one of the most under-reported merger scams of the past decade (Time Warner, a long-profitable company was, many believe, duped); and their growth prospects are extremely limited. They've proved their inability to display original content, and the slow atrophy of their user-base has begun.
The user community, too, has a seemingly endless list of complains--those who remember their growth problems (myself included), the constant busy-signals, buggy and bloated software, high prices, and extremely poor technical support--they place the blame soley with AOL, regardless of who is at fault.
But you argue that the anti-spam community respects AOL? I would disagree. True, they've pursued legal action against several high-profile spammers, but I would normally expect far more from a company with legal abilities such as theirs. They've acted in their own interest, and not in the interest of their users (not surprising, of course, as their obligation is to the shareholder, and not the consumer).
AOL could have, and indeed should have done more; they, however, have remained largely apathetic.
Re:AOL is the 90 pound Chimp (Score:2, Informative)
Re:AOL is the 90 pound Chimp (Score:2, Funny)
However, attacking the intended payload due to presentation issues (inability use a pat phrase correctly) is a classic Logical Fallacy. Some people spend so little time with authoratitive written material that the correct forms may never have been seen, and
Re:AOL is the 90 pound Chimp (Score:3)
Re:AOL is the 90 pound Chimp (Score:4, Funny)
Re:AOL is the 90 pound Chimp (Score:2)
2) Should of -> should have
3) All of the sudden -> all of a sudden
4) Deep-seeded -> deep-seated
5) Loose -> lose
6) Free reign -> Free rein
7) Authoratitive -> authoritative (probably a typo)
Do you think, maybe, this was supposed to be funny?
Re:AOL is the 90 pound Chimp (Score:2)
should of noticed
should have noticed (notice that this is grammatical and makes sense. "Should of noticed" makes no sense and is a result of listening to people who do not enunciate)
authoratitive written material
authoritative written material
Re:AOL is the 90 pound Chimp (Score:2)
Re:AOL is the 90 pound Chimp (Score:2)
have a deep-seeded hatred for such errors, they make me loose my mind.
Um, 'Deep seated' and 'lose'. Grammer flames must include an error - it's the law.
Re:AOL is the 90 pound Chimp (Score:2)
It's just a lame advertising division, with no intensive purpose.
Ok, ok...I'm stretching, there. His grammar sucks. Really.
Re:AOL is the 90 Chimp (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a spam ring operating *inside* of AOL in the late 1990s that routinely joe-jobbed the ISP I was working for at the time. Entreaties to AOL fell on deaf ears. This joe-job went on for about a year, almost non-stop. They seem to have chosen us because we were very effective at blocking their spew and our 550s weren't always polite
I believed then, and believe now, that the only way a spam ring could operate so brazenly for so long and in the face of all complaints, was if it was an inside job: a spam ring being run by AOL employees, possibly without the knowledge of AOL management, but almost certainly with the complicity of the AOL abuse department; it could even have been them doing it.
I freely admit that I cannot prove any of this and it is all conjecture based upon circumstantial evidence, but lest you start sniggering about tinfoil hats, let me tell you the final chapter in this saga.
After about a year of this almost constant joe-jobbing, my then-employer was bought by a much larger ISP and hosting company, one with enough guns/money/lawyers to make even AOL pay attention. We, the beleaguered engineering department of this smallish ISP, where I was at the time the especially beleaguered postmaster, took our plight to our new parent company's abuse department, who said they would try to help. After not getting much farther than we did, they put us in touch with our new parent company's legal department, who didn't say they would try to help. They said they *would* help.
And lo and behold, not long after the legal department got involved, the spam just stopped. Not just the job-jobbing, but also the large amount of spam directed at our customers from the same spam ring. It went from thousands of direct messages (for an ISP with less than 50,000 customers that was a lot) and thousands more joe-job bounces every day to nothing. Zero. Not a single mail from that ring ever reared its ugly head on our network again during the further three years I worked there.
How could such a thing happen, after constant whining from AOL that they were powerless to prevent it (that was before they started ignoring us entirely)? I can think of only one plausible way, with two scenarios. In both, it's an inside job.
Variation one: after our new legal department took up our cause, that got AOL's attention to a sufficient degree that an actual investigation was opened, the perps were caught, and they were all fired. The trouble with this scenario is, if they were fired, why did they not joe-job us even harder in retaliation for losing their jobs?
Scenario 2: after our new legal department took up the cause, words were spoken to the proper people and it was made clear that they had to leave us alone and find some other victim because we were no longer some piss-ant regional ISP in a niche market, but now part of a big, strong company that could and would sue them if they didn't back off.
Needless to say, I find one of these scenarios far more likely than the other, and I find my respect for AOL still a bit thin, even though they have gone after some spammers and successfully sued them. Their new embrace of the still patent-encumbered Sender-ID doesn't exactly raise them in my estimation.
Re:AOL is the 90 Chimp (Score:2)
AOL support for this is huge. (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft has one goal in all of this: To lock Open Source out of a standard, and then launch FUD campaigns about how Open Source refuses to support Sender-ID (because MS will charge an insane fee for licenses, but MS won't mention this) and thus helps spammers.
Re:AOL support for this is huge. (Score:5, Insightful)
because MS will charge an insane fee for licenses, but MS won't mention this
MS won't charge an insane fee. They won't charge any fee, and they'll use that as part of their argument that the open source community is a bunch of whiners with not-invented-here syndrome.
What they will do license their patent under no-fee terms that nevertheless exclude any Free Software from using it. Packages under BSD-like license, and commerical packages, will be fine but anything similar to the GPL will be incompatible with the MS patent license.
Basically, they're testing a new variation on the tried and true "Embrace-Extend-Extinguish" formula, only the incompatibilities are legal, not technical.
Or not... mabye with their renewed attempt to get Sender ID adopted they'll provide kindlier license terms? I'm not holding my breath.
Re:AOL support for this is huge. (Score:2)
Re:AOL support for this is huge. (Score:2)
A no-fee patent in exchange for BSD licensing sounds like a fair compromise to me.
It does? Sounds like a terrible deal to me, given that there are other options -- including the already-implemented SPF -- that don't require any patents at all.
Is this actually the case or are you speculating?
Assuming MS is offering the same licensing terms they were before, it's really the case. See Larry Rosen's analysis is included in the Apache Foundations position [apache.org].
Re:AOL support for this is huge. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:AOL support for this is huge. (Score:2)
What they will do license their patent under no-fee terms that nevertheless exclude any Free Software from using it. Packages under BSD-like license, and commerical packages, will be fine but anything similar to the GPL will be incompatible with the MS patent license.
Big whoop. Build a module that implements their patented juju and runs as a daemon, write another module that talks to the first module via some sort of IPC, and release the first module under BSD. We still have the problem of patent-encumbe
Re:Not that some skepticism isn't justified... (Score:5, Insightful)
What do they do? Play licensing shennanigans.
Sketpicism is very much justified.
Re:AOL support for this is huge. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:AOL support for this is huge. (Score:2)
They do, however, have a history of "embrace and extend", FUD, user lock-in, and other such business tactics. Heck - there are even publicly-available memos on some of these subjects.
It would seem that there IS more support for the parent than your comment. Unless, of co
Re:AOL support for this is huge. (Score:2)
AT: This is not the business practice history you are looking for.
AT: Microsoft is misunderstood.
Re:AOL support for this is huge. (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you call their current FUD campaign against Linux (the "Get the Facts" campaign) then, except as an attempt to dissuade people from using Linux and Open Source?
Are you trying to tell me that Microsoft would NOT like Linux and Open Source Software to disappear?
One of Microsoft's major business practices has classically been to lock people into their software through proprietary standards. A clever anti-spam standard would be a huge selling point towards using Microsoft's software
AOL's support is solid (Score:4, Informative)
That whole thing was rejected, thankfully.
Now, Microsoft seems to have actually taken a look at the concerns surrounding their original proposal and formulated a new Sender ID scheme that is inclusive of other existing schemes such as SPF. AOL put a lot of effort in developing this kind of technology and now Microsoft's proposal finally includes them too.
What it sounds like from the Yahoo article is that Microsoft's Sender ID is at best a superset of all authentication schemes and at worst a compatible, though competing, technology. Neither of those are bad things. I think AOL realizes this for what it is, Microsoft actually trying to do something useful to help the ailing email system.
The Sender ID scheme seems to allow for further developments that may or may not be based on Microsoft technology but still be fully compatible nonetheless.
Re:AOL's support is solid (Score:2, Funny)
You must be new here
Re:AOL's support is solid (Score:3, Funny)
Re:AOL's support is solid (Score:2)
So when Dancing Santa says something that is so obviously not true he should be modded down.
Re:AOL's support is solid (Score:2)
In selling OSes. It's rather hard to sell a item that brings little more than annoyance, and when 99% of people do little more than browse or read email, spam can be a major deal breaker.
</advocate class="devil">
Yet the problem has not changed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately for Microsoft... (Score:4, Insightful)
SenderID is not perfect, but if a more 'neutral' company like Sun, Apple, Google, etc introduced it, it would have at least been given a fair shot.
Instead of saying "SenderID is bad because of XXX and, by the way, M$FT Blows" they would be saying "SenderID is bad because of XXX but here's how it could be made better"
Re:Unfortunately for Microsoft... (Score:4, Insightful)
Decison makers do not ignore a move by a company as rich and powerful as Microsoft, nor do they take at face value the neutrality of potential rivals like Google.
Re:Unfortunately for Microsoft... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course they don't "ignore" it, but they don't evaluate it fairly because they see everything thru their "anti-microsoft" filter.
Of course, most IT professionals don't think this way but you wouldn't know that by reading Slashdot.
I don't know what world you live in where all "Decision makers" balance everything fa
Re:Unfortunately for Microsoft... (Score:2)
I'd think that those are not the people taking decisions however.
Microsoft Deserves Scepticism (Score:2)
No, people say things more like, "companies, like Microsoft, Hashcash, and Goodwill Systems, are more interested in making money off of the volume than in solving the problem." [java.net] Microsoft has earned distrust again and again. It's not what they say, it's what they do that counts. People can see and remember how Microsoft performs. Th
Sender ID (PRA) is the wrong solution anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
Standards require implementors to implement (Score:5, Insightful)
If only AOL would use SPF or S-ID! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If only AOL would use SPF or S-ID! (Score:2)
Here's what bothered me... (Score:4, Interesting)
From Netwizard's Blog:
The FTC and NIST are holding a joint summit on email authentication in two weeks in Washington, DC (during the same week as IETF's 61st conference). They hinted earlier this year that if the industry does not come up with a standard for authentication, the feds might impose one.
Could the FTC actually do this? I wasn't aware that they had any authority over internet standards. The internet isn't some corporation, or the sole property of any business, even if some companies wish it were.
killing open source through hassles (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about the consequences of that. Even if Microsoft follows through on its promise to make the license available "for free" to anybody, it means that if you buy a Microsoft mailer or a mailer from a sublicensee, you can just install it and run it. If you install an "open source" mailer, however, your legal department needs to execute a licensing agreement with Microsoft's legal department. The costs and delays resulting from that alone make the "open source" mailer uncompetitive, no matter how much better it may be than Microsoft's products.
That is why the official open source definition does not allow such patents: if software implements such a patented invention and requires a licensing agreement with Microsoft, that software simply is not "open source", even if it it is distributed under the text of an open source license--the existence of the patent and licensing requirement makes it not open source.
it maybe a good solution (Score:2, Insightful)
I personally dont know of any ISPs that use exchange as thier ISPs platform. the only large scale internet exchange setup that I know of is hotmail...
So in microsoft and aol trying to adopt this sys
Maybe It Isn't... (Score:2)
Signatures only verify it comes "blessed" from a source. If the source is bogus then it doesn't matter if it is signed or not. Putting too much faith in "Sender-ID" opens a whole lot of problems. For instance "Sender-ID" from "spamste
Sender-ID back from the dead ... (Score:2, Funny)
noddy explanation (Score:2)
SenderID was never dead (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.imc.org/ietf-mxcomp/mail-archive/msg051 35.html [imc.org]
It appears that my predictions are coming true. Meng, MS and the IETF shut down the MARID WG so that they could more easily push the patent encumbered SenderID through. They no longer have to deal with a WG last call.
Expect more steps to happen after IETF-61 when the individual drafts will be "reviewed".
Re:What is a standard? (Score:3, Informative)
From what I can tell, it looks like MS want their idea to be the standard, yet they also want their idea to be one that you have to pay for a license to use.
Basically having what everyone uses and getting paid for it. Plus if, as it seems, the license is incompatible with F/OSS MTAs then suddenly any non-commercial offering has a damn hard time competing with "what everyone else uses".
It's like MP3 or ISO-MPEG4. Both are, I believe, published standards. Both also require a license to use. Which is why so
from senderid faq (Score:3, Informative)
This is getting dumb (Score:2)
SPF, while not perfect, is already used in production servers (AOL anybody?) and with the advent of SRS, works pretty well.
My meaningless, insignificant, 2 domain email system:
Most are AOL, earthlink or netzero. Funny how I don't see SPF records for microsoft, hotmail, etc.
but there _is_ no point. (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't that hard to do. sender-id, spf, etc, does nothing. We already know most semi-legitimate spammers are publishing SPF records on their throwaway domains which takes care of the other 10% of spam...
Fix this properly. Declare it within the law to assassinate anyone who sends a piece of spam. Then merely wait.
Re:but there _is_ no point. (Score:2, Insightful)
These most certainly aren't total solutions, but they are gradual steps in the right direction (and really SMTP has always been the most absurdly abusable protocol. It's time to harden it a bit).
When a company like AOL or GMail commits to schemes like SenderID, SPF, or DomainKeys, they are effectively de
Re:but there _is_ no point. (Score:3, Interesting)
Since 90% of spam is being sent by zombie PC's these days;
The really big spamhauses have dedicated facilities, TYVM. Makes you wonder exactly why they are so hot for SPF.
Re:but there _is_ no point. (Score:2)
"resubmitting" means nothing to IETF (Score:5, Informative)
Not just AOL (Score:2)
You can see a list here [microsoft.com]
Funny thing to see AOL is not in that list.
Well, it does show their true colors (Score:2)
The fact that Microsoft is pushing this is one of the reasons it will never work. No one will trust Microsoft not to abuse their own system. If some company were taking on Microsoft all they would have t
Re:First Post (Score:5, Interesting)
SenderID is Microsoft's name for its patent-encumbered variation on SPF.
Too bad spammers will just start registering domains and using them semi-legitimately.
The real point of SPF and Sender ID is to make it hard for spammers to forge their "from" addresses, so that blacklists and whitelists can be more effective. Adoption or lack of adoption by spammers doesn't really have much impact on the success of SPF.
Re:First Post (Score:5, Informative)
It was covered on Slashdot a little while ago, under the heading that GMail has started to use DomainKeys. Link. [slashdot.org]
Re:First Post (Score:3, Informative)
Re:First Post (Score:2)
<Sarcasm>Your so right. Lets put off deploying something that might be able to make a dent until we have the ultimate uber solution that solves all the worlds problems and will get me a date.</Sarcasm>
One thing this could do would be to stop the flow of spam/worms from broadband customers. That right there would have a huge impact on everyone.
The problem that kills simple things like blacklists from working is that most mail comes forged, if you can kill the forged mail, blacklists become
Re:First Post (Score:2)
Sender ID handles nothing that DomainKeys cannot handle better.
To slow down the spread of viruses/worms, the service providers need to: 1) Block all outward SMTP connections that do not originate from their own mail servers. 2) Scan outbound e-mail through their mail servers for viruses/worms.
The ISP where I work already does the first. We were also one of the early ISPs to close our open relays. We also make sure
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:First Post (Score:2)
Re:First Post (Score:5, Informative)
What utter tosh.
Just because you can't use SNTP AUTH because of a firewall don't try to dictate how everyone else should use SPF.
Re:First Post (Score:4, Informative)
5. You can just add an SPF record for your IP address and you're set.
And a falsehood:
SPF doesn't tag spam, and has nothing to do with it. It just makes it impossible to fake a sender address from a domain with proper SPF records.
Re:First Post (Score:3, Interesting)
Come back when you know how SMTP works. I can set any domain in the from address when I connect to your SMTP server. You have three options: use the SPF records of that domain to block or tag the email, or do nothing.
Re:First Post (Score:2)
So, you can block mail that comes from a 'not authorized to send' smtp server, you can tag it (for exampel for usage by a spam filter later on) or do nothing..
In none of those cases you tag spam, in 2 of those cases you deal with the forged sender issue, and in the 3rd you do nothing.
Wh
Re:First Post (Score:3, Informative)
Re:First Post (Score:2, Interesting)
what about people like me who use my domain address for sending mail? I send my mail via horde at the domain, via Yahoo! Mail interface, via Opera M2 with my email (not return) address set to my domain address and even sometimes at mail2web.
Yahoo would use Yahoo SMTP servers, Opera would use my ISPs and only Horde would use the real mail.domain.com IMAP server. If they unblocked ISP STMP servers for this sort of thing... wouldn't that just defeat the purpose? Because they're u
Re:First Post (Score:2)
Re:First Post (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:First Post (Score:4, Informative)
If you connect to me I do a bunch of dnsBL checks. If you pass those then I'll do an SPF lookup. If, in your case, you don't have an SPF record then the mail goes though (to spam assassin). If you fail an SPF check because you're "spoofing" a from address for a domain which has valid SPF lookups then you get rejected.
Your cases where your MTA has no SPF has no effect, the mail gets passed through because you did not fail. I'm not blocking on a "must pass", that would be insane. So why is blocking like this bad in your eyes? You seem to think that people only tag, wrong. People reject on *fails*. A domain which does not have an SPF record is not a fail.
Re:First Post (Score:2, Informative)
No I'm not. If you don't have control over the firewall or DNS then you don't have the ability to produce an SPF entry anyway.
I am assuming that if you have the technical ability to have an SPF entry then you also have the ability to setup SMTP AUTH, a VPN to your server or any other way to su
What does Sender ID add to SPF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What does Sender ID add to SPF? (Score:5, Informative)
In other words: the sender ID allows you to do almost everything you always did with your MTA but adds some authentication to the process. SPF alone would limit you to a single host or network, or force you to clearly specify which addresses could forward messages from your domain, which is not practical if you are using your ISP's domain to communicate with the Linux Kernel Mailing List, for example. Sender ID addresses this limitation.
Re:What does Sender ID add to SPF? (Score:5, Informative)
When you send a message from the authenticated host A to host B there may be forwarding agents (such as mailing lists, relays, etc.) routing your message, the message is not always direcly sent from host A to host B. With SPF you would be limited to that. You would have to mention (for example) all mailing lists in whom you are subscribed, which is not practical if you are not controlling the domain from where you send your messages. Sender ID addresses this limitation with PRA, an algorithm that computes the last responsible token, which may or may not be the sender MTA, thus allowing messages to be routed the same way they always have been.
For more information about the PRA algorithm, check this PDF [microsoft.com]. I am sorry for my last post. Should use the preview button more often. Please do NOT mod my last post up.
PRA side issue (Score:3)
Can I suggest this approach to handle relayed mail:
It doesn't matter if a message from A to B goes via C.
When you accept messages from 'C' and the header says its relayed mail, it is either:
1. A known blacklisted spammer relay.
2. An unknown relay in which case content filtering is used.
3. A relay that implements SPF itself and so messages from it can be treated as already having passed the SPF check.
Re:First Post (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First Post (Score:2, Insightful)
+4 Insightful?
I'd have thought this might make 'Funny' by the admittedly lenient comedic standards of this forum, but... insightful!?
Oh lordy!
Patents are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone at Microsoft already stated they liked the idea of email stamps, paying a nominal charge per email.
Re:Uh oh...What's that sound? (Score:5, Funny)
What are you talking about? Why is that relevant? Didn't you see "Microsoft" in the article summary? And, as if that wasn't a clear enough message what to think, it also said "AOL." Sender ID is bad bad bad. Not only won't it work, it represents the most insidious kind of fascism. An open source solution would obviously be better, and more liberating.
Slashdot.... Fuck yeah!
Matt Daemon.
Re:Uh oh...What's that sound? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually irrelevent. The problem is not with the technical details but the legalities. So long as there is a patented technology included without a universal right to use for any purpose, the proposal stinks and needs to be kicked in the head.
Re:Tax dollars at work (Score:2)
Naw. That'd be too much to ask.