Question --- I haven't done much webdev stuff so this may sound silly, but --- why can't PMs work that way? Like, why can't I send markbao a private message by sending an email to markbao@news.ycombinator.com? And then the site could forward it on to his email address, or if the site wants to get fancy they'd store it in a database and display them as "comments" in the target user's "editing profile" screen (whenever you edit your own profile).

More than that though, I'd like to learn about the nitty-gritty of e-mail. As a game developer I do mostly C++ application code, so everyone else probably has way more knowledge than I... But for example I'd like to be able to embed the ability for my programs to send emails (as a debugging mechanism). Or even receive emails! (Imagine taking down some number of your servers, for patching purposes, by sending a "console command" as an email to servers+someadminpassword@yourservice.com. Or running queries on your servers by sending the query as an email, and then they email back the response.

How would I write a C++ function like:

  bool SendEmail( const tchar* destination_email_address, const tchar* subject, const tchar* body );