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Re: [Asrg] Email Postage (was Re: FeedBack loops)

2008-11-19 13:56:04
On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 10:33 AM, Steve Atkins <steve(_at_)blighty(_dot_)com> 
wrote:



You need to explain how a global epostage system scales, and scales
reliably, before making that assertion.


Why?  One need not verify that the Pitney-Bowes postage meter is working, or
the Post Office has paper stamps in stock to know that their letter needs a
stamp and that if you had one it goes on the upper right hand corner of the
envelope.



Avoiding both a single point of failure and an N x M problem, while still
having acceptable performance, using infrastructure and staffing that can be
funded by stamps that are a "reasonable" cost is a minimum there.


These questions do need to be answered for a particular implementation,
although there's no reason that all implementation details must be globally
identical.  That would only be necessary if all recipients were forced to
accept the same "type" of stamp.   Only the framework of how to recognize
the need for stamps and the method of affixing them to a message needs to be
global.  The rest of the questions related to required infrastructure and
risk of failure and staffing concerns should be answered by the
implementor, i.e., the recipient, by their choice of stamps they choose to
accept.

 Certainly, not every recipient places the same value on assured delivery of
messages, or would require the same level of effort for an unknown sender's
message to be delivered successfully, so how would we ever come to a
consensus of "acceptable performance"?  I suggest we separate the
discussion of how to "use" a stamp from the discussion of how
reliable/affordable/scaleable/secure stamp franking/verifying routines are.

Gerald
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