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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
Over the weekend I went to Playa del Fuego, which is a mid-Atlantic offshoot of the annual Burning Man festival: http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/playa-del-fuego-may03.html http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/playa-del-fuego-burn-may03.html http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/playa-del-fuego-pavilion-may03.html http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/playa-del-fuego-camps-may03.html Like Burning Man, there was a heavy geek contingent and also a substantial Politech nexus too. Rob Carlson -- a longtime Politech subscriber -- has some links to other writeups: http://epistolary.org/rob/ -Declan --- http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1009745.html Spam blockers may wreak e-mail havoc By Declan McCullagh May 27, 2003, 4:00 AM PT Here's an unhappy prediction: The explosion of spam-blocking technology could herald the death of much legitimate e-mail. I wrote about patents relating to this technology, known as challenge-response technology, last week. Basically, when your mailbox is protected by a challenge-response system, people who try to contact you will be greeted with a response saying something like "click on this link to deliver this message" or "type in the word you see in the box above." The idea is to block increasingly obnoxious spam bots but still let actual humans get in touch with you. In theory, well-designed challenge-response utilities won't challenge mail from known correspondents or mail that you've actually asked to receive. Unfortunately, many current challenge-response systems are poorly designed, which could wreak havoc on mailing lists and other legitimate communications. This could make e-mail far less useful than it is today. It's already starting to happen. SpamArrest.com began challenging mailing list messages last year. Recently Mail-block.com and iPermitMail.com followed suit. When that happens, the operator of the mailing list receives a message--from each subscriber using the poorly designed challenge-response utility--that asks the list operator to respond to the challenge. Replying to a handful of challenges is no big deal, but if many subscribers start using poor challenge-response software, it will pose a serious problem for mailing list operators. Big corporations may be able to afford to hire someone to sit in front of a computer and spend all day proving they're not a spam bot, but nonprofit groups, individuals and smaller companies probably can't. [...remainder snipped...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------