|
Monday, June 23, 2003
Previous topic
|
Next topic
|
|
 Monday, June 23, 2003
started 6/23/2003; 12:48:19 AM - last post 6/23/2003; 8:09:46 PM
|
|
Doc Searls - Monday, June 23, 2003 
6/23/2003; 4:48:19 AM (reads: 5351, responses: 6)
|
|
Caught between a ®ock and a hardon 
| | (Earlier on the phone, Dean Landsman was talking casually about "powercrats." Another fine word. Possibly related.) |
Better to blog the light than curse the darkness
| | Here's my point. When we talk about this Internet and this blogging software, this techno-magic that encourages each of us to be expressive voices in an open, universal network of across-the-board conversation, we are speaking of an essentially Emersonian device for an essentially Emersonian exercise.Starting with the electronics. "Invent a better mousetrap," as Emerson wrote, "and the world will beat a path to your door." Well, here we are. |
| | Was The Dial the first group blog? Chris thinks so: |
| | Emerson was himself a sort of group blogger in The Dial, a magazine he founded with Margaret Fuller in 1840. He designed it as a compendium of the "good fanatics," like Thoreau, Alcott and Channing in his Concord circle. ³I would not have it too purely literary," he wrote to Fuller, venting a blogger's ambition. "I wish we might make a Journal so broad and great in its survey that it should lead the opinion of this generation on every interest and read the law on property, government, education, as well as on art, letters, and religion." |
| | Makes sense. I also think the first blogger was Benjamin Franklin, and the first blog was Poor Richard's Almanac. (A sample.) |
They have ways of making us not talk
| | Seems my ISP (Cox High Speed Internet) is blocking outbound SMTP traffic to mail servers other than its own, which I don't use. New thing. I'm checking on it. |
| | Meanwhile I can receive email, but not send it. Been this way since Thursday, my wife tells me. |
| | Anyway, if you've been expecting to hear from me but haven't, meet my excuse. |
| | [Later...] It turns out that Cox did indeed start blocking Port 25 last Thursday. The workaround is to use their mail server. PITA, but I understand the issues. |
| | Trouble-shooting it cost half a day of time. |
| | Now I'm finally around to catching up on stuff. |
discuss
|
|
Dave Winer - Re: Monday, June 23, 2003
6/23/2003; 5:54:06 AM (reads: 453, responses: 1)
|
|
|
Doc would it be fair to assume that your answer to my invitation is yes?
discuss
|
|
Ross - Re: Monday, June 23, 2003
6/23/2003; 10:07:20 AM (reads: 425, responses: 0)
|
|
|
Port 25 blocking is becoming pretty common, as ISP's are being held responsible for spam that leaves thier network. Some ISP's do offer authenticated smtp, which you can use from anywhere because it works on a different port...
if you have an Earthlink account laying around, it's smtpauth.earthlink.net, user name is full email address, password is your normal mail password
discuss
|
|
Doc Searls - Re: Monday, June 23, 2003
6/23/2003; 3:28:58 PM (reads: 495, responses: 0)
|
|
|
|
Hamish MacEwan - Re: SMTP Port Blocking
6/23/2003; 9:09:38 PM (reads: 537, responses: 1)
|
|
|
If "the issues" are the possibility that some customers of Cox High Speed Internet might abuse the port, for spam, then its a sad day for freedom of speech that we are prepared to roll over and accept it, even though it is prior restraint and inconveniences the innocent majority as well as the guilty.
There's an interesting, if horrifying, discussion at Tech Review between Dave Crocker, who should know what he's talking about ("I am starting to suspect that our impatience to take some action against spam will turn out to be the most serious barrier to taking useful action against it. Rather than trying to gain control of spam by attacking it at its social and technical core, we seem to want to let the spammers define our response and, thereby, let them change the entire nature of e-mail."), and an ISP operator ("The current model of e-mail is doomed. It was a nice experiment but it didn't work out. What we need to do now is move to a sender-pays model, perhaps with some allowance for bona-fide personal usage.")
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/dialog0703.asp?p=0
Interesting to consider that ISPs per se didn't exist when RFC822 & SMTP based email was developed, everyone more or less rolled their own. Given this distributed model, its unsuprising that centralised aggregations (like the horror of @hotmail or @aol, making dictionary attacks worthwhile due to the large number of users in a single domain, rather like the World Trade Center in a way) are complaining the most about the problem.
I handle my own mail, and don't suffer much (mostly because I use disposable addresses, practice some simple email hygiene and have SpamAssassin tag the likely suspects).
Its generally better in my opinion, to wear slippers, rather than carpet the world.
Whatever "junk mail" costs us, I wouldn't lose the service over it... as Dave Crocker observes, however much bathwater there is, there's still a baby in there...
discuss
|
|
lou josephs - Re: Monday, June 23, 2003
6/24/2003; 12:09:46 AM (reads: 476, responses: 0)
|
|
|
The Emerson thing is a nice touch, but Emerson suffered from serious Alzhiemers in later years. He did found the school I went to college in Boston. Emerson College on Beacon Street...
discuss
|
|
Rob Schneider - Re: SMTP Port Blocking
6/24/2003; 5:03:38 PM (reads: 559, responses: 0)
|
|
|
There seems to be a lot more attention in legislative and medium forums on spam. I'm wondering if this is a paid campaign (overrt or subvert) by ISP's or other legitimate organisations to enable a switch from "free" email to "paid" email. The stated objective would be to eliminate spam, but the real objective is to increase revenue; hence the PR.
discuss
|
|
|
Copyright 2009 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
