It was a dark and stormy night when PAT wrote:
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But landlords can (or not, as they
> wish) choose to rent an apartment to someone. If they get bad vibes
> about it, prior to rental, then they just don't rent. Landlords can
> also consult credit bureaus to detirmine the wisdom of renting (or
> not) to someone.
Around here, landlords also charge an "application fee" of $40 or so
to cover the cost of making those checks (or, in some cases, just to
pocket the extra money), nonrefundable and no guarantee that they'll
rent to you. How much would you be willing to spend to apply (no
guarantee of acceptance) to register "telecom-digest.com"?
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As I have always said, if you can't win
points any other way, then always get personal about it, and that
_should_ work. It won't in this case however, since (a) I _already_
have http://telecom-digest.com and have it aliased to its ".org" version
instead. Same with http://telecom-digest.net . Try them and see where
it gets you. I prefer to use, and only publish the '.org' version of
my name space, and (b) if I thought for forty dollars and no guarentees
I could buy my way out of the horrible spam infestation I deal with
each day, I'd be glad to do it. It always amazes me how people feel
by 'getting personal' -- that is, taking the real life circumstances
of the person speaking, they can 'prove' the person is being hypocritical
by not wanting what he suggests for others should apply to himself.
In other words, 'they' should be subject to regulation X and fee-plan
Y and rule Z, but oh, wouldn't 'I' feel just awful if those same rules
and regulations and fees, etc applied to me. If regulations and rules
were such that it was impossible to comply with and continue to
publish Telecom Digest, then I would regretfully close it down. (and I
have come >thisclose< to doing just that in the past mainly on account
of how trashy the entire net has become in recent years, so I doubt
there would be _that much_ regret in the long term.
I have enough of an 'anarchist spirit' in me that I _would_ regret
very strongly any efforts to reform the net _to the fullest extent_
possible, but I can see that happening sometime sooner or later,
probably sooner, when the government (and after all, who is more
likely) gets a belly-full of the nonsense and decides a _total
crackdown_ is called for. Like many others, that would totally shock
me, but if you are intellectually honest with yourself and others, you
could not say it was unexpected or uncalled for. So many netizens have
not only _refused_ to submit to any form of voluntary clean up
efforts; always providing much obtusification in 25-30 K 'replies' to
messages from those who ask -- beg -- for some relief; gladly
explaining over and over why (plan X) will not work. You make up plan
X however you like: many of the long term netters will insist it will
not work, but like ICANN and Vint Cert, I honestly do not think many
of them want it to work. After all, if we can get the private little
club we used to have here by using the spammers/scammers as tools to
drive away the others, why not do it? Let the spam/scam people do
thier thing, we can sit here and use 25-30 K 'replies' to obtusificate
as needed. PAT]
Dave Garland (dave.garland@wizinfo.com)