Throw away the Internet and start over?

[Jeff Bone]

On Monday, Apr 21, 2003, at 23:59 US/Central, Mr. FoRK wrote:

> If you have an email-like application that is immune to spam, just 
> build it
> & in a couple years (or months) the network effect will swing your way.

BTW, just to be clear:  I'm not endorsing this idea.  I think it's 
worth some consideration / exploration.

Think about this:  a significant amount of all mail messages are being 
read today through Web-based interfaces e.g. Hotmail, Yahoo, and 
others.  These things already impose (different) resource models on top 
of the venerable mailbox.  How tough would it be to abstract / 
standardize this, close the "sending" loop and gain substantial 
functionality in the process?  Not too tough, IMHO.

Paul Prescod, I, and others noodled on this a while back, and Paul 
wrote up a sort of sketch:

	http://www.prescod.net/rest/restmail/

jb

PS - just to torment Tom:  HTTP, the Highlander Protocol.  There can be 
only one... ;-)  BTW, "Highlander Protocol" T-shirts can be had at 
CafePress, courtesy Mike Dierken IIRC:

	http://www.cafeshops.com/rest