I've had it with email.

Hello fellow REBOLers, [flame: on] Email has become useless to me. After 24 years of email, I think I'm qualified say that the situation with spam has recently grown totally out of hand. Each month I add ever more email filters to keep my email useful. Currently, there are over 300 filters preprocessing my email. But, as you know from the REBOL web site, we think there are much better ways to communicate. Email reminds me of general delivery postal mail. Anyone can send email to anyone. Plus, it's not reliable, it's not secure, it's easy to spoof, viruses poison attachments, it's limited in power (e.g. compare with X-Internet here), and there's no way to stop the flood of spam. It has become a tedious chore to deal with email (those of you who run web sites or openly post your email address know what I mean). At this rate, I think email will be "dead" in a few years. In fact, let me go on record saying that. A venture capitalist recently commented that this was a bold statement... but just watch. You watch. I'm not saying email will go away permanently. I'm saying that we'll have much better ways to communicate. Those of you who've tried IOS have a good idea what I'm talking about. IOS has been a great learning experience. Now, after more than 18 months of using IOS, the future has become more clear. But, this is not intended to be an ad for IOS... [flame: off] So... my new email address can be found on the contacts page of the REBOL.com web site. And, as always, if you've got something important to say about REBOL or IOS, I'm always interested in hearing it. Contact me. -Carl The REBOL guy.

Hi Carl, At 04:54 PM 7/28/2002 -0700, you wrote:

>Hello fellow REBOLers, > >[flame: on] > >Email has become useless to me. After 24 years of email, I think I'm >qualified say that the situation with spam has recently grown totally out >of hand. Each month I add ever more email filters to keep my email useful.

> Currently, there are over 300 filters preprocessing my email.

>But, as you know from the REBOL web site, we think there are much better >ways to communicate. >So... my new email address can be found on the contacts page of the >REBOL.com web site.

>And, as always, if you've got something important to say about REBOL or >IOS, I'm always interested in hearing it. Contact me.

Hi Carl, Carl> At this rate, I think email will be "dead" in a few years. In Carl> fact, let me go on record saying that. A venture capitalist Carl> recently commented that this was a bold statement... but just Carl> watch. You watch. I'm not saying email will go away permanently. Carl> I'm saying that we'll have much better ways to communicate. Carl I've said this stuff recently myself (instead of VCs it was work colleagues that looked at me as if I were insane). I had to turn off my longest standing email address (remove the alias from my mail server) because of the monumental amounts of spam it gets. The equivalent of moving house to get away from pizza flyers. As someone who uses email rather for work as well, one of the greatest failings of email is that you just don't know if anyone has read it or not. You send a letter, you send a fax, people treat this stuff seriously and in the latter case you get a delivery report and know they have a paper hardcopy. People just ignore email and that's such a huge problem that it makes email useless and forces you to interrupt people by telephoning. This is a real problem, only certain types of people are happy to conduct business on the phone and that's an inefficient communications mechanism at best, being real time and relying on how good people are at making sure the salient points are all covered. I think there's lessons to be learnt in the take up of instant messenger clients. I have no idea how one combats the momentum of email but at least the instant messenger clients managed to get installed and find wide use. Likewise a new email system where it was possible to see delivery status and see visual, perhaps automatic, status responses to your email. Having a proper binary transport mechanism that doesn't base86 encode to squeeze 8-bit data into legacy systems wouldn't hurt. But ultimately some sort of third party mediation may be required just to authenticate senders and receivers (and clients, since undoubtedly some will want to override the 'features' which made such a system attractive in the first place) - that'd be the only true defence against spammers. Regards, Mat.

Carl> At this rate, I think email will be "dead" in a few years. In Carl> fact, let me go on record saying that. A venture capitalist Carl> recently commented that this was a bold statement... but just Carl> watch. You watch. I'm not saying email will go away permanently. Carl> I'm saying that we'll have much better ways to communicate. http://www.prescod.net/rest/restmail/

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [Mon, 29 Jul 2002 01:33:49 -0500] Message from Louis A. Turk:

> because of the increasing volume and offensiveness of spam. Some spam is > absolutely sick. Spam is becoming a terrible problem for just about > everyone.

> I also have a large number of filters, plus I am forwarding spam to the > senders email provider when possible.

> Anton, I think you once mentioned having a lot of trouble with spam. Did > you ever find a satisfactory solution?

Email, dead? hmm - that's a tough one. I too get a lot of spam - probably about 20 messages a day are "spam", some of which a signed up for, some of it unsolicited. By and large it hasn't been too much of a problem, with a combination of inbox rules which sort my mail into folders - family, work, personal, lists, etc. Usually the only thing left in my inbox is stuff from someone/thing I don't already know. However, I've been investigating intermediated interfaces to the internet lately. Initially I downloaded and modified the REBOL proxy server, and added a little bit of logic to it to log out what I was browsing. I have since moved over to a Java based proxy - as I was able to acquire a framework for bots and spiders which was very useful. What I am hoping to do is write an agent which helps classify the content of various links. Things like HTML pages could be analyzed for their content breakdown, and eventually some crude media analysis done on non-text assets. In a similar vein, Email could be "proxied" - and to a certain extent already is. Many of us have more than one email address, which is collected by the same mail agent to present a unified inbox. One of the things I'm trying to work out is a mechanism like that found in Black and White. Essentially the agent functions in the background crawling the web for things you might like. You can then positively or negatively reinforce it's findings. By keeping a catalog of page analyses, and a positive/negative rating for "found" pages an agent could be "trained" to bring back things you're likely to find interesting. Another aspect of this process is aggregating and slicing and dicing this information retrieval. A default "home page" if you will, which is generated by the agent for you - clipping headings, and tracking changed links - all within one "dashboard". Clicking on a link could result in a customized page view after parsing by the local agent. Etc. However, there are several dangers inherent in this sort of approach. 1> Metaphore shear. When I say go to http://... you know exactly what I mean. As our interface to web assets becomes more mediated, it may be more difficult to communicate directly. 2> As our interaction becomes less direct, so to does our ability to verify the source and truth of a web asset. 3> If "direct" channels such as email become mediated (whether for autotranslation, or other purposes) there exists a chance for misunderstanding - or malicious corruption. 4> Acquisition of a persons mediation agent profile could reveal a lot of information about them. In short - I don't see email, or web disappearing - but rather the ways in which we interact with them changing. - Porter

Erm, I haven't tried IOS yet, so I/we can claim I have partial ignorance. I'm not the programmer I wish I could be, so haven't been able to make fruitful certain ideas, like this one that I think has big potential. If not via REBOL, then via something else? A REBOL script, distributed all over the country/world on rebol-friendly servers, the only purpose of which would be to report the headers of suspect (spamish) email to a more central rebol-friendly server. Ie, a hierarchical system of reblets on servers that instantly detect likely-spam email, or at least email originating from an unfamiliar source, so that a centralized (rebol) spam-detector can notify constituents of current spam-attacks. Perhaps one main server could at the top to determine which email is spam, or perhaps several, cooperative servers could share the job. The easiest way to filter out spam is to only accept email from known (or automatically verified) legitimate senders, ie those in your address book or who pass a password test, but sometimes legit email gets blocked. But, if mass-mailings could be automatically detected worldwide via distributed rebol applets, and then subscriber reblets could be instantly notified to ignore the mass-mailings... Oh well, still just a dream. IOS might "replace email" in the case of some corporations (is that really in the cards?), but I see a lot more potential in just distributing a hierarchialisable (whataword) system of rebol applets, worldwide, that can detect suspect spam email, and automatically go back down the tree to notify constituents of which emails on their pop servers are highly-probably safe to automatically delete. Come on, 'replace email' with IOS? Aw man, if only I were a programmer... --Ken.

>Those of you who've tried IOS have a good idea what I'm talking about. IOS has been a great learning experience. Now, after more than 18 months of using IOS, the future has become more clear. But, this is not intended to be an ad for IOS... >[flame: off]

>-Carl >The REBOL guy.

> Carl> At this rate, I think email will be "dead" in a few years. In > Carl> fact, let me go on record saying that. A venture capitalist > Carl> recently commented that this was a bold statement... but just > Carl> watch. You watch. I'm not saying email will go away permanently. > Carl> I'm saying that we'll have much better ways to communicate. > > http://www.prescod.net/rest/restmail/

> I think there's lessons to be learnt in the take up of instant > messenger clients. I have no idea how one combats the momentum of > email but at least the instant messenger clients managed to get > installed and find wide use.

> One of the things I'm trying to work out is a mechanism like that found in > Black and White. Essentially the agent functions in the background crawling > the web for things you might like. You can then positively or negatively > reinforce it's findings. By keeping a catalog of page analyses, and a > positive/negative rating for "found" pages an agent could be "trained" to > bring back things you're likely to find interesting.

Hi Charles,

>> I think there's lessons to be learnt in the take up of instant >> messenger clients. I have no idea how one combats the momentum of >> email but at least the instant messenger clients managed to get >> installed and find wide use.

Charles, et al << Another problem with IM clients is like phone - you *have* to deal with the person *now*, or ignore them. Email, you can get to it when you have time. If you take 5 minutes to respond to an IM, the other party tends to get antsy, and start bugging you. >> This is the beauty of IOS messaging. It's persistent. People can leave conference or private messages and they're waiting for you the next time you log on. You have a complete history of conversations but only a slight delay in sending and receiving. --Gregg

On 28-Jul-02 18:54:11 Carl at REBOL <[carl--s--rebol--com]> wrote: CaR> Hello fellow REBOLers, CaR> [flame: on] CaR> Email has become useless to me. After 24 years of email, I think CaR> I'm qualified say that the situation with spam has recently CaR> grown totally out of hand. Each month I add ever more email CaR> filters to keep my email useful. Currently, there are over 300 CaR> filters preprocessing my email. But, as you know from the REBOL CaR> web site, we think there are much better ways to communicate. lol good thing you can't write a filter for each piece of junk mail you get in your USPS mail box. Hitting a key combination to delete an email and then every so often purging my system (empting the trash) is still easier than taking the mail out of my USPS mail box and sorting thru it to remove the junk and eventually having to take out the garbage or later sort thru it. But if you could write a filter for your USPS mail box, how many filters would you have today, Carl? Besides, with the DRM and such being thrust upon us, there are perhaps more serious things to be concerned about. Like where are the laws to protect rights to be innovative and creative. Or how are Rebolers going to distribute their programs? http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-946890.html And likewise ...DRM.....that aught to cause a reduction in spam.... :) --- Timothy Rue Email @ mailto:[timrue--mindspring--com] Web @ http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/

Hi, Rebol seems to be very powerful. I bought The Official Guide and have been trying to understand it all. One disconcerting thing is that there are no GUI chapters which go hand in hand with the chapters on a database management system. Has anyone coupled a GUI to that database management system? Thanks, Dick

Hi Charles, On Monday, July 29, 2002, 2:43:41 PM, you wrote: C> number of tools out there designed to spoof ICQ? It's not a small number. And C> there's very certainly a good load of ICQ spam roaming around. Plus, AIM, C> Yahoo, MSN... you name it. They are not immune. And just because AIM etc give IOS is different. However, I don't think Carl was really suggesting to have IOS' Messenger (or Conference) globally replace email, since IOS is not something designed to be "global"... C> Another problem with IM clients is like phone - you *have* to deal with the C> person *now*, or ignore them. Email, you can get to it when you have time. If You can send a message to me in IOS, even if I am not online, and I'll get it as soon as I am online; then, I can leave it there, and answer when I want to; the message does not disappear, and is always available for future reference. Regards, Gabriele. -- Gabriele Santilli <[g--santilli--tiscalinet--it]> -- REBOL Programmer Amigan -- AGI L'Aquila -- REB: http://web.tiscali.it/rebol/index.r

Hi, There is (IMHO) one item missing to make IOS the ultimate in communications, and that is to be able to delete the messages I am no longer interested in. ;-) Enjoy!! Ammon A short time ago, Gregg Irwin, sent an email stating:

I've been dreaming of this stuff for years, now. What'd really be cool would be a web-based, imap email system written in REBOL (rebol web email, or just say RWE for now) with (at least) the following features. 1) Periodically check or retrieve headers or headers and bodies from POP. 2) Instantly report suspect (or all unfamiliar From:) email header data to an RWE system higher up in a hierarchy, which summarizes and passes up header data to the next higher RWEl server, etc, quickly detecting mass spam attacks and notifying lower RWE servers back down the tree to delete the emails. 3) When an unfamiliar From: address is suspected, automatically reply to the sender, asking them to authenticate with a password. (Do this in text. If/when RWE really became a threat to spammers so that they started automatically responding with passwords, change the text password to a graphic, or anything machine non-readable. Can even require senders to authenticate via web url. RWE will be quickly updatable.) Other features can come later. (This could become very scalable, from simple endu-user to high-end provider features... eg IMAP features, im notification & rules, address book import/export, mail list options, etc. Um, IOS integration?) The anti-spam feature alone would be enough to get it started, and popular among end users and webmasters (and even ISPs) wanting to provide service to end users, worldwide. --Ken.

>But ultimately some sort of third party mediation may be required just >to authenticate senders and receivers (and clients, since undoubtedly >some will want to override the 'features' which made such a system >attractive in the first place) - that'd be the only true defence >against spammers.

> But >ultimately some sort of third party mediation may be required just to >Regards, >Mat.