[brlug-general] Google mail - aps etc... WAS Cox blocking email with numerical IP addresses.

[willhill]

Scott, what you said is both insulting and wrong.  I understand the issues but 
don't agree with you.  It is a matter of principles and I'm not ashamed of 
that.

Your dismissal of principles is more disturbing than your insult.  Technology 
use should be guided by principles rather than the converse.  The whole point 
of the exercise is to overcome limitations and improve the world for people.  
All of us must exercise moral judgment or we can be used as tools and do 
things we should be ashamed of.

I think I've got both technical and moral issues right on this one.  From a 
technical perspective, dumb networks are more efficient than "smart" ones.  
From a moral perspective, censorship is wrong and censorship to support 
monopoly software shortcomings is doing something wrong for the sake of 
something bad.  You can argue that this is the way things are but that only 
proves that things are not as they should be.  There's no difference between 
the bits I'm uploading here in this email and the same bits sent by my own 
mail or web server.  It's wrong for Cox to keep me from running either and 
that's one aim of their goofey email filter.  The problem you have pointed 
out is not caused by people like me, it's caused by an OS that's so easy to 
abuse that it's responsible for the majority of the world's spam.  As moral 
implementers of technology, we owe it to people to recommend software that 
works and eliminate software that creates problems.  Doing otherwise only 
makes things harder.  

Networks, like software, are better when they don't have owners.  Information 
is always better when you can get it from the source.  Network owners have a 
tendency to get in the way and exploit their position.  The most egregious 
example of that is state controlled, broadcast media.  The more control we 
allow network owners to exert, the less good networks will do.  

On Tuesday 29 January 2008 11:22 pm, Scott Harney wrote:
> You either a) don't understand what I am saying or b) don't want to
> understand what I'm saying because it conflicts with your beliefs in some
> way.  Whatever.

> The various other readers of the list will make their own judgements and
> discuss the technical aspects.