Folks,
it does not, however, justify a course of action that eliminates
legitimate uses of long-standing facilities.
I agree completely. I'm firmly on the side of "let's not break things."
YS> Some things are going to break. If the benefit of breaking them is much
YS> greater than the cost from the breakage that it might be worth it. We
There is an obvious and correct logic to your statement.
However it has some very serious, real-world problems with it.
Most of the problems involve perspective: The people who decide the
value of a trade-off -- that is, _us_ -- are not the same as the people
who must adopt the decision. In particular, the people who decide the
value do not get to dictate to the adopters. Add to this mix a third
group -- the people who must live with the results -- and predicting
success becomes indirect and obscure.
So, we have to worry very hard about the real incentives, not just the
"logical" incentives. Basically, this requires being extraordinarily
conservative in the assumptions we make about the rest of the world.
Internet technology has been easy to upgrade when it has paid very, very
careful attention to protection of the installed base. It has been very
difficult to upgrade when that attention has been insufficient.
d/
--
Dave Crocker <dcrocker-at-brandenburg-dot-com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking <www.brandenburg.com>
Sunnyvale, CA USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>