Subject: RE: Sarcarm and intimidation

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 07:18:14 -0700

> From: Iljitsch van Beijnum [mailto:[email-masked]] 

> On 21-jul-2005, at 15:23, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
> 
> > The intellectual successors of Plato's faction gave us the 
> dark ages, 
> > fascism and communism, argument from authority trumps all else. The 
> > intellectual successors of Aristotle's faction gave us the
> > renaissance,
> > science, medicine, engineering.
> 
> Yeah right. Aristotle only paid lip service to emperical research.  
> One of his "observations" was that a stone that's twice as heavy,  
> falls twice as fast. Interestingly, during the middle ages they  
> couldn't get enough of Aristotle. (And nobody noticed that he was  
> wrong about falling stones, or much else for that matter.)

Aristotle used scientific method, his medieval successors did not.
Aristotle was wrong in many of his observations but he did assert that
knowledge comes from observation.

It was the slavish adherence to his statements by his 'followers' that
did his reputation in.

> As an engineer, I'll take my cues from Galileo any day. As a writer,  
> there is a lot I can learn from Plato. But Aristotle...?

There are three versions of Plato, what he intended to say, what he said
and how it was read. I suspect that what he was intending to say in the
cave metaphor was that empirical measurements can be affected by more
than the thing we intend to measure. What he said was that ideal forms
are more real than observation. For the next two thousand years his
argument was used to assert the primacy of reason over observation.

> > Empirical observation of the state of Internet security trumps
> > argument
> > from authority in my view.
> 
> So what insights does your empirical approach to internet security  
> provide?

The Internet does not provide the necessary type of security for the
majority of its billion+ users.

Spam, phishing, DDoS extortion are all serious Internet security
problems. Attempting to change the subject, pretend that they are
someone else's concern, pretend that they are insoluble and so should be
ignored, all these evasions have to stop.

Helping to stop Internet crime is the IETF's responsibility. If the IETF
wants to remain an important player in Internet security standards it
has to address these issues.

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---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 17:08:21 +0200

> argument was used to assert the primacy of reason over observation.

No need to overcompensate, though. For instance, look at Galileo's  
experiments: they barely support his theories, because is tools were  
so crude. But Popper et al. covered this ground extensively.

> majority of its billion+ users.

Hm, then why do they use it?

> has to address these issues.

Please don't reuse the word "security" for all three of these issues.  
They're very different. I agree that the IETF should do more against  
spam and DDoS. The trouble with spam is that there is simply no  
consensus to be reached, and the IETF doesn't have any mechanisms to  
move forward when there is a long-term lack of consensus. So despite  
being a bad precedent, it's good that Microsoft is throwing its  
weight around in this area.

As for misspelled "fishing": I haven't seen this myself, so I can't  
be sure what the deal is, but it sure looks like people are way too  
gullible and not using the mechanisms that are available today. Why  
doesn't any business sign its messages with S/MIME, for instance?  
Yes, you can ask Boeing and Airbus to make their cargo holds bomb  
proof, but maybe the planes don't fly too well that way and scanning  
baggage on the ground makes more sense. (I.e., fix this outside the  
IETF.)

DDoS: there hasn't been any real effort to do something against DDoS  
except tracing it back to the source(s). I agree that we can and  
should do much more in this area.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 17:27:48 +0200

> move forward when there is a long-term lack of consensus. 

The reason that there is no consensus in the spam area is that most 
proposed "solutions" are claiming to solve the whole problem (or at 
least a big chunk of it) but are grossly overstating their 
applicability.  To some degree this is because people want to have the 
prize of creating _the_ anti-spam solution, which is counterproductive.

If we instead look at each of the proposals and say "what does this do 
well, and what does it not do well", then modify the proposals so that 
they can work well together (and to get rid of the harm that several of 
the proposals would do to the email system if widely adopted), then we 
will be able to identify the missing pieces.

> So despite being a bad precedent, it's good that Microsoft is throwing its  weight 
> around in this area.

As far as I can tell this is just adding to the confusion, and delaying 
a solution.  People are asking "will it be Microsoft?" and therefore 
failing to realize that they are no closer to a solution than anyone else.

Keith