At 14:52 -0400 5/1/03, Ken Hirsch wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean by "nothing else works that way." Certainly
telephones work that way. Your local phone company is responsible for
identifying you, billing you, and investigating complaints against you.
The police investigate complaints against telephone customers, not the phone
companies. the company only identifies me far enough to satisfy itself that
I can be found if I owe them money, nothing more. "I" might be a corporation,
"I" Might even be a person who pays cash in advance every month for an
anonymous telephone (e.g. prepaid cellulaR)
Your phone does not directly contact the phone of the person your are
calling. It does not even contact the local exchange switch of the person
you are calling. In a long distance call, there are generally _three_ other
companies involved.
You're only going to be able to push this analogy so far before it breaks.
I think with that, it's starting to break... these technologies are
not the same.
I haven't been following IM interoperability, but doesn't IM work more like
the telephone system and less like SMTP?
What if it's IM that can receive file attachments and log special
messages when you are away? IM that includes several people in one
discussion? Now what is it like?
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