At 2:22 PM -0700 5/29/03, Eliot Lear wrote:
Please indicate some historical basis for moving an installed base of
users on this kind of scale and for this kind of reason.
History is replete with examples. From the Internet Worm to Code
Red, consumers do install software when they perceive either a
threat or a benefit.
Tony's proposal is not for new software: it is for software that
*replaces* what they have now. Further, it is not a one-to-one
replacement. It requires new administrative actions by the sysadmin
and by the user to validate who they want to get mail from.
Getting rid of spam is a HUGE benefit.
And all the proposals so far have some amount of cost. The trick is
to come up with a solution whose benefit to at least half of the 100
million mail users overwhelms the cost. That is, the bother of using
the new system has to be less than the bother of getting spam.
Heck. What I've found so amusing is that people seem to upgrade
their Microsoft systems just 'cause, with no perceived benefit, but
merely protecting from Bit Rot.
This is because (despite history) people believe that the replacement
will be no harder to user than the previous version.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium