It can still be argued that one has to still accept (possibly download)
and look at the mail before one can delete it. One major difference between
snail junk mail (junk mail to your physical mailbox) and ejunk mail
(eletronic junk mail) is that under certain circumstances, ejunk mail comes
postage due. What I mean, is that the user incures a cost in receiving that
email.
There are still systems that charge by time usage, and going through ejunk
mail takes time. Even if it takes 1 second to recognize and delete a ejunk
mail message, it will still take several minutes to burn through hundreds of
unwanted messages.
There is also the storage charge. The ISP I use allows each user 5M of
disk storage, with mail counting against that. It is not inconceivable that
a person may receive 5M of mail in a day (I have).
> >From an environmental standpoint, far from trying to prohibit *junk email*
> it should be a national imperative and a congressional mandate that all
> commercial marketeers *must* use electronic messages and immediately cease
> and desist the planet destroying snail mail practices. All net citizens
> should accept as a moral imperative the *hassle* of having to delete even
> 100s of unwanted/uninteresting emails per day.
See above.
> ISPs should require it in
> their service contracts, that all users, in order to take an active and
> positive step in mitigating one of the major environmental crisis' today,
> must willing receive (and delete) all commercial email. If each and every
> netzien had to delete 100s of messages daily as a requirement of membership
> in the internet community, it would be a very, very small price to pay in
> exchange for the priceless benefits associated with this.=20
Okay, sounds good. But let's do an actual cost/benefit analysis here. A
typical ISP will have around 4,000 users, and let's say that each person
receives 128 ejunk mails/day, and each message is 2K (it's a small message).
That means that each user requires 256k of storage space just for email
for one day. With 4,096 users, that's 2^12 * 2^7 * 2^11 = 2^30 bytes/day
just for email, or to put it in regular terms: 1,073,741,824 bytes. Per
day. Just for email.
Now, for an individual user, they typically have to download their mail.
They have to download 262,144 bytes. If they use a 28.8k modem, it will
take them about 91 seconds. Doesn't sound too bad, until you realize they
aren't using a straight modem download. Most people now use SLIP or PPP,
which adds overhead due to both the IP protocol and TCP protocol, with each
packet using 40 bytes of overhead. The average line is 80 bytes long (over
estimate), so with that, we then have (262,144 / 80) * 40 additional bytes,
or 131,072 for a total of 393,216 bytes, which at 28.8k, takes approximately
137 seconds, or over two minutes of connect time.
At best.
You may have upwards of 40% of the user base on at any time (maybe more
during prime time). Which means the hypothectical ISP I'm using has to
support upwards of 1700 people at once. The smallest, useful (that is,
actually has data being sent) TCP/IP packet is 41 bytes (40 bytes of header,
1 byte of data), plus the overhead of the ethernet packet (smallest, 56
bytes). Ethernet also runs at 10Mbit/second, or 1,310,720 bytes a second.
If you do the math, it seems like you can send 23,405 packets (or each
person can receive 13 packets), but you will hardly ever see this done.
But let's say you do. Each person then can receive 13 packets/second (and
remember, these are the smallest packets). That's 13 * 41 (bytes in a
TCP/IP packet) or 533 bytes/second or 5,330 bits/second (1 start bit, 8 data
bits, 1 stop bit), so a 28.8k can handle it (heck, so can a 9600). So now
we go back to downloading that 393,216 bytes: it now takes 738 seconds, or
over 12 minutes. At prime time. A nice increase of over 600%.
An ISP can add equipment to handle the load, but it takes energy to
manufacture the equipment (guess what? Computers don't grow on trees). It
also takes energy to run the equipment, like computers, routers, phones,
modems, terminal servers and network hubs. And don't forget all the large
drives required to store the 1G/day of email. And not everyone checks their
email every day (I know plenty of people that don't).
Also, what about non-ISP companies that are on the Internet? Do they have
to accept 100s of ejunk mails? I already receive close to 100 email
messages a day at my work account (and most of those I'm interested in, plus
the ones that are from other coworkers at the company I work at) that take
about an hour or so for me to process. I now have to spend two or three
hours?
It would take government intervention to force ISPs to enforce this. It
isn't worth the time, money or effort to do it (I feel). If that's the
case, the ISPs go bye-bye.
Hell, if the ISP I use did that, I'd drop it in a second. I don't need
that hassle.
And if my company is forced to do that, we'll find something else to do.
Let me ask you this: Do you enjoy getting unsolicited phone calls from
telemarketers? You have a phone. You are publically available.
If you think that just abolishing the use of paper will solve all the
environmental problems, you are sadly mistaken. It takes energy to run our
society. Electricity just doesn't happen. It has to be produced, just like
paper, ink, mail trucks, and computers.
> Exactly, if you don't want public contact, don't give public access. Its
> called *setting permissions* - hello? Any sysops remember that chapter...?
You have a phone, right? And I was never a sysop.
-spc (What was your user name again? <clickity click>)
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