www.sixfingeredman.net
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24.07

So I'm reading about, and trying to understand im2000.

It's a new internet-mail protocol based on the idea that the sender stores the message until the recipient decides to retrieve it. This is in contrast to the "store and forward" mechanism of SMTP, where the message physically moves from server to server until it arrives at its final destination, there waiting to be picked up. Let me explain how it works by analogy to a physical postal system. SMTP is pretty much like our current US Mail, so keeping that in mind:

First imagine that you have a mailbox that only accepts little notification slips like the kind that UPS or FedEx leave behind when they can't deliver a package -- it just has the name of the sender and an address where you can pick up the package. And, because we don't want just anybody showing up and claiming your mail, there is a little key attached that you can use to pick up the package when you get there. So someone who wants to send you mail comes by your house and puts one of these notification slips into your mailbox. They know you're going to be the only one getting it because only you have a key to your mailbox. You check your mailbox one morning and get a note telling you to go to 2132 Foo Place. Now here we immediately see one advantage of im2000 over smtp -- in normal mail, anyone could put a package in your mailbox saying it came from that address. But with im2000, you're actually going to pick the package up from that address, so you know it came from there.

So, for example, if you notice that 2132 Foo Place sends you a lot of spam, you can just start ignoring all notifications pointing to it. You can't do this with regular mail because spammers can write any "from" address they want.

Once you get to Foo Place (and since this is the internet, it's instantaneous), you use the key you got to open your mail there, and then you can decide to just leave it there if you don't like it, or take it home with you if you want.

The owners of Foo Place are going to be careful about sending you frivolous notifications, because they can't control how you read your mail. They can't just send a million messages one after the other and then disappear -- they have to stick around, holding on to the messages (or at least the delivery records), and if they send a lot of mail, they can expect at any moment a huge rush of people coming to pick it up.