I guess I don't understand what the problem is here. There are numerous ways to do this yourself, using imwheelrc for example, but there are others. I don't see the big controversy.

Exactly.

This all goes back to our ridiculous and broken excuse for a health care system in the US. If we had proper, accessible mental health care, we'd have a lot less homeless people and also a better system of determining who is actually unable to work a steady job due to mental health issues, and who is just milking the system.

I work at a public library and we deal with homeless people every day, lots of them. To say that they are simply lazy is completely inaccurate. Sure, there are a few people that just don't want to work but they are in the very small, infinitesimal minority. Then there are the ones who simply fell on hard times, where I've been myself, and those ones never stay homeless for long (however, without what little social assistance they do receive, they would stay homeless a lot longer). The vast majority of homeless people are incapable of functioning in, and dealing with, normal society. Holding down a job is impossible for these people because they can't deal with any sort of schedule, structure or even the smallest amount of stress/pressure.

With proper mental health care, a great deal of those people could be medicated, counseled and otherwise treated to the point where they could become contributing members of society, and the ones that are too far gone for that, could be off the streets and getting proper care somewhere.

A great many problems in this country could be solved with properly accessible health care. However, due to our dog-eat-dog, every man for himself attitude, combined with the out of control corporate greed that maintains our economy, that will probably never happen.

Good lord, I don't think I've ever heard a better description. :)

There are so many things that make this whole idea impossible to implement, that I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll just go down your list:

1) What? I'm not even sure what you're saying here. Mailing lists are illegal? They're used by thousands of legitimate businesses, for legitimate purposes, all over the world, every day. That's not accounting for non-profits and things like LUGS and hobby groups. The idea that they're useless and/or illegal is completely ignorant, if that is in fact what you're getting at here. Like I said, I'm not really sure what you're saying with this.

2) How are we going to get this code into the email? A the server level? Who is going to write this code and how is it going to be implemented into the myriads of different mail server software for every platform and OS out there? What's to keep it from being spoofed, faked or removed from the header (I'm assuming that's where it would go) by malicious programs? What happens when a mail server gets infected and sends out hundreds of thousands of emails containing this "legal code"? This idea has way too many holes. It would never work.

3) Good for you. You are a user of a product that you clearly know very little about.

4) Power? Like it or not, and I definitely hate it, MS is the wealthiest and most influential software company in existence and this is the USA. That's all the power one needs. As far as MS having the right, again, this is the USA. The people with the money have all the rights. Period.

5) This seems to be more of a meaningless rant and you didn't finish it. I have no idea how to respond.

6) A display of your "email software" ignorance. See response to #2.

7) #6, and by the transitive property, #2, all over again. You clearly have no idea how mail servers or open relays work. If your "code rejection system" doesn't affect or apply to other countries, any business in the US could set up a mail server in another country, route all mail over a VPN to that server to be sent out and there ya go, completely bypassing your system and there would be no way for anyone to know or prove it without going on a legal fishing expedition. We know how much judges love those.

8) Right, including all of those Nigerian asshats that are responsible for a huge portion of spam. We'll just "send them to jail" huh? Good luck with that.

9) People that write virus code for spammers are annoying but not stupid. So totally easy to get around this. See VPN example in #7.

10) Even if #9 didn't apply to this as well and some how, spammers were paying taxes on the spam that their illegally obtained botnets we're spewing out, at 1 cent per hundred emails, the reduction in profit would be barely noticeable to them.

11) Um... what? A technically illiterate person, TRYING to coming up with a solution to a highly technical problem, is smarter than, just for example, me, who has been managing networks and email servers for more than a decade? Um... OK. If you say so.

12) Yes, and where do you think ISPs get money to pay for that? They charge us for it. WE'RE ALREADY PAYING FOR IT.

13) It is a feel good measure, because that's all it would do. It would not at all solve the problem because it is impossible to implement.

14) Again, rather than come up with a thought out, rational response, you resort to personal insults. How very mature and intelligent of you.

Reasons why this hasn't actually been tried yet:

1) Us idiots, that know exactly how email servers work, know that there is no way to implement this.

2) Again, how are mailing lists close to criminal? The library I work for uses them all the time and, get this, you'll love it, the recipients ASKED TO BE ON THE LIST and they can opt out at any time.

Ya, nuff said.

Also not providing us with insurance. We also can get fired or otherwise disciplined for taking too many days off when we're sick. Like say, three solid days of vomiting and diarrhea that they feel would have been much better spent at work. This is the norm in the US, not the exception.

...and you don't get, what you don't pay for.

That's really what it boils down to.

Oops, didn't mean to post that as anonymous coward. That was me that posted this.

While I'm quite interested, in a morbid curiosity kind of way, I won't go anywhere near this website out of fear of my own, ridiculously paranoid government.

God Bless America.

I'm so sick of hearing this one, it's right up there with that birth certificate bullshit. Check your facts. Obama refused to sign until an exemption was made for American citizens. That exemption is there only because of the threat of Obama's veto.

It's really frightening how many "free" countries are proposing similar legislation now. The US has been doing similar things since the Bush administration and is still trying to legalize it. The Canadian government has something similar in the works and now the UK. What is the deal with this trend?

My last little experiment with hotmail was about 7 years ago. Perhaps things have improved since then but I opened an account, then didn't log into it again for a month. I never sent mail from it, never used it to sign up for anything and never gave it to anyone. When I logged in a month later it was full of spam. That pretty much killed hotmail for me.

After twelve years in the IT industry, working for four different companies, three large and now one small business, the most important thing I've learned is this:

Users don't listen and they don't want to learn.

Sure, the idea of educating users and management about what we do sounds great and we all start off trying to do just that but after a year or so it becomes clear that 99% of your users don't listen to you. They find it boring, they don't think they should have to learn because it's not their job to know that crap, it's my job to know that crap. It's not their job to learn to fix their computer, it's mine. Trying to explain to them that there are very simple things they can do to prevent their computers from needing to be fixed is a waste of time, they don't want to hear it. They say they do, they might even mean it when they say it, but when it comes down to actually doing it, they won't. They never do.

The company I work for now does only IT and we do it for more than one hundred businesses. All of them are the same as I've described above. ALL OF THEM. So it's best for us to explain as little as possible, just enough to placate them, do what we can behind the scenes, restrict as much as we can get away with so they have less ways to hurt themselves and present everything in the form of dollar signs.

"Here is how much money you spent with us this year. Here are the disasters we averted/fixed. Here is how much money it would have cost you if we hadn't done our job or will cost you if we don't do it."

That's something they do understand.

You're right. In the last decade the Dems have become cornered but still, they allowed themselves to get in to that position. I will add though that the democratic party has not just been this way in last few years. They've been like this for decades, ever since the Reagan administration. I'll probably get flamed for daring to impune the honor of "The Ray-gun", but it's true. We've been on a steady decline since he took office, with the republican party cracking the whip behind us, like cattle drivers herding us all out of the middle class with the democratic party standing on the sidelines, shouting about how wrong it all is and not doing a damn thing to stop it. But I'm not so foolish as to think that it's just the government's fault, we the people allowed this to happen. We did this to ourselves.

Ya, I hate the republican party but the Dems are no better. They refuse to hold their ground on anything, completely spineless. The system IS completely broken and like it or not, the USA is a corporate state now. The will of the people is totally irrelevant, the only will that matters is that of large corporations.