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+---
+date: "2004-05-20T20:59:24Z"
+title: Please Check All That Apply
+---
+
+<p>
+<a href='http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=108269&cid=9205570'>Here's</a> a funny comment from <a href='http://www.slashdot.org/'>Slashdot</a>:
+</p>
+
+<blockquote cite='http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=108269&cid=9205570'>
+<pre>
+Your post advocates a
+
+( ) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) 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 used to vary from state to state
+before a bad federal law was passed.)
+
+( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
+( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
+(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
+(x) 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
+( ) The police will not put up with it
+(x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
+( ) 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
+
+Specifically, your plan fails to account for
+
+( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
+(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
+(x) 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
+(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
+(x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
+( ) Extreme profitability of spam
+( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
+(x) Technically illiterate politicians
+(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with
+    spammers
+(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
+( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
+(x) Outlook
+
+and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
+
+(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have
+    ever been shown practical
+( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
+( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
+( ) Blacklists suck
+( ) Whitelists suck
+(x) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
+( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card
+    fraud
+( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
+( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
+( ) Sending email should be free
+( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
+( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
+(x) 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
+(x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
+
+Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
+
+( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
+( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
+(x) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn
+    your house down!
+</pre>
+</blockquote>
+