Current mood:	pissed off
Current music:	Space Station SOMA

#$@^*@ email servers!
My Yahoo pop server has gotten ornery lately, insisting I prove my identity. I was accustomed to identifying myself in outgoing email by my alumni reflector address, not my actual address - as that changes every few years whereas my identity as an alum is forever!
So now I'm resigned to sending mail from my actual account, with reply-to the reflector, and a signature at bottom reminding people to use the alum account. Yes, this sucks.

At first glance, it seems like a way of keeping spammers from using the Yahoo pop servers to spoof other addresses, but I'm not so sure that's the real reason. It seems more symptomatic of our times in modern-day Amerika. (Who's old enough to remember that?)

Can I blame it on terrorist hysteria? Or is it the war on drugs? Or money-launderers?
At root, it is in all probability, in the immortal words of a Bermuda finance colleague of mine - "Uncle Sam's insatiable appetitite for tax revenue." There. That did it. Some NSA system will catch this post and log it along with countless terabytes of other data to be data-mined once the Feds nationalize Google's server farms. Hell, they don't even have to nationalize it - they can use it for free.

Remember, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're *not* out to get you.