Re: Re: Emailing via mail(), secondary servers

On 02/17/2004 11:11 PM, H Marc Bower wrote:

-----Original Message----- From: Manuel Lemos [mailto:mlemos@acm.org]

Obviously, the "knowledge s*ckers" will not provide any valuable feedback. Actually some of them even come in public just

to b*tch that

I require them to login to download my stuff. Some even threat to download similar packages from some other repository, as

if I care.

The world does not revolve around any individual alone,

even less KS.

If that requirement of login detracts some KS from even

accessing the

site, that is just perfect for me. That is not the main

reason to keep

that requirement for my classes but it is one reason more. I can justify spending time and effort to retribute the

feedback that

legitimate users provide. As for KS, sorry, they are not

helping me at

all, so I can't justify even to worry about the usual b*tching or threatning to use the TV of some other neighbour. ;-)

Instead of making harder for legitimate users to use your software, maybe you should think about why people are "knowledge

sucking" instead

of using your class.

When I say legitimate users, I am talking about those that do not have a problem to become subscribers of the site and download the package made available in the site by the authors. In general I observed that some people show an hostile atitude towards the site because they do not want to trust that when they subscribe they will benefit from a whole set of services for free. Instead, some assume that their e-mail addresses will be sold to spammers and other conspiration theories that have no foundation in any facts. Since I developed and manage this site, I can tell you that those objections are absurd. As you may imagine I cannot simpathize with people that on one side want my software but at the same time do not trust me. Everybody is free to disagree with me but I do not consider potential legitimate users all those that do not consider my site trustworthy. I can certainly live well without those users. As I said, if all they wanted was to s*ck my knowlegde, and so would not provide any valuable feedback in any circunstances, I am sure I am not loosing nothing. I certainly do not develop free software for people with hostile atitudes.

So... Here's a question: do you have your privacy policy on the site, or do you just expect people to pop in an email address without knowing what it's for? If you don't have a specific privacy policy, then it is

Of course there is a privacy policy. I the login page that appears when an anonymous user attempts to access to a file that requires authentication, it appears a link to the privacy policy page and another that explains why the subscription is required: http://www.phpclasses.org/login.html http://www.phpclasses.org/login.html?policy=1 http://www.phpclasses.org/login.html?why=1 These links are in bold but I think that people that do not want to subscribe do not even want to understand why it is required. I believe there is a lot of people that assume that everything on the Internet should be unconditionally free as if the authors that generate intellectual property have the sacred duty to provide those ungrateful users everything well server in a tray and in the end the authors even have to say thank you to the users. Obviously, users that think like that do not deserve any respect.

perfectly understandable that people don't want to provide some stranger their email address. Maybe you are blessed and get no spam, but you should see some inboxes - more spam than actual email content. A lot of that comes from unscrupulous sites that collect information and sell it to people who maintain huge lists of email addresses. If you don't think this is the case, then things must be a lot different in your

That line of thought is completely bogus. You are assuming that all sites that require an e-mail address to validate a subscription are guilty for all the spam you get in the world. The truth is that if the real spammers can harvest your e-mail address is because you are letting them as you for instance just did by posting this message. They just need to crawl public Internet sites like this: http://news.php.net/article.php?group=php.windows&article=22881

corner of the net. When it comes to sites like that, I usually just make up an email address. If you're actually going to send me something, I use a hotmail account that gets nothing but spam and silly signups, then go check it, delete everything and sign out again once I've gotten what I need to access the site.

Precisely because this site does not stop you from creating alternative acounts in Hotmail, it is silly to assume that it will use your e-mail address to send you spam.

I guess the question is.... Why bother with making people "sign up" for your site if you aren't going to do anything with the email addresses you do collect?

The main point of requiring a valid address has nothing to do with sending you spam, but rather to make it difficult for some authors to boost their top download ranking positions by creating many accounts and download their own packages. That is explained in the why page. http://www.phpclasses.org/login.html?why=1 -- Regards, Manuel Lemos PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ PHP Reviews - Reviews of PHP books and other products http://www.phpclasses.org/reviews/ Metastorage - Data object relational mapping layer generator http://www.meta-language.net/metastorage.html