Re: [Asrg] Re: Answering a lot of questions about e-postage in afew sentences

[Barry Shein <bzs at world.std.com>]

On April 25, 2004 at 16:22 mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) wrote:
 > > At any rate, no system I can think of outside of e-mail is purely
 > > geared towards resolving some sort of receiver pays other than some
 > > much-maligned, relatively recent cell-phone systems and even on those
 > > there's much activity to either block or change the charging for
 > > marketing calls.
 > 
 > > But telephone in general, postal, sender pays.
 > 
 > This is because no other system outside of e-mail has the same
 > underlying cost structure that e-mail does.  The phone system perhaps
 > comes cloest - and, surprise surprise, that's the system where the
 > analogue of spam is most hated and most acted against.

Electricity too cheap to meter!

GE used to use that slogan, in the 1960's, to sell the idea of nuclear
power plants.

It's always suspect, tho not a priori false, and certainly suspect
here, for the very reason we're here; it becomes abused.

 > > This fiction seems to only exist on this list.
 > 
 > It's not a fiction.  It's a fundamental difference between e-mail and
 > all those analogies people seem to like so much, a difference that is
 > in large part why the analogies are flawed.

I'm not sure using the two words "fundamental difference" as an
emphasizer clinches it, maybe "literally" different, nah that grates,
um, ...

It's not "fundamentally different", it's mostly different as a matter
of a degree, different costs, which would seem to argue "fundamentally
the same".

Amazing what a slippery thing the truth is.

But, an infrastructure capable of carrying millions/billions of
individual communications events etc at a relatively low-cost to the
end-users, which can be flooded by abuse.

Fundamentally the same, different cost factors, but the same can be
said about a lot of similar things.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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