On Fri, 2 Aug 2002, Eric A. Hall wrote:
If that were the problem at hand, this might even be a reasonable point.
The problem at hand -- the one that started this thread -- is forgery, and
the lack of protection against it.
<aside>
It is interesting that this seems to be so much worse with email than
with paper mail. Or at least, that seems to be the perception.
In the world of paper mail, very few people go to the trouble of
checking that what they receive is genuine. At least, most of the time.
I get letters from my bank signed "squiggle", and as long as they seem
to be saying reasonable things, I trust them. If I received a sudden
demand for a large sum of money, I'd question it, of course.
I think that a lot of life is like this. It would waste a huge amount of
time if everything had to be verified or validated. Naturally, there are
forgeries from time to time, but society seems able to tolerate them,
and the vast majority of paper mail is genuine.
However, in the world of email, people seem to be a lot more worried
about forgeries. Is this because email is cheap, leading to
proportionately more forgeries, or because it's more likely to be
destructive (viruses, worms), or what?
</aside>
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10(_at_)cus(_dot_)cam(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk Cambridge, England. Phone: +44
1223 334714.