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Re: Stranded postmasters

2009-12-05 11:00:08

Hector Santos wrote:
Do RFCs contain more invitations to get out of the strand?

Alessandro, I am not entirely sure what the purpose of this discussion.

Honestly, neither do I :-) I just felt the impulse to recap.

But what is "Stranded?"

Run ashore, alone, clueless, and helplessly blocked.

Your first comment seem to reflect complexity which my quip was regarding "free" vs "commercial." People paying for packages that attempt to make it "easier." There is no concrete correlation but commercial packages exist for a reason.

Yeah, I had been trapped too. But money can't buy discernment.

Your second comment seem to reflect a sense of apathy, boredom or that "everything is working." The system is in autopilot, why break it? It may be a little of both.

Yes, everything is working, but not the way it should. That DKIM draft, at last, talks about "deterministic exchange of information". Just what we'd expect from a computer network, isn't it?

But overall define postmaster? What is a "postmaster" today vs yesterday?

Good question. Unlike HTTP, SMTP was already an old protocol when Internet arrived to the masses. Quickly revamped by adding HTML and MIME. Then, as in a Hemingway's novel, sharks began to attack. Postmasters are like that old man. They administer their mail servers as if they were alone.

"Collaborative exchange", says the draft. Yet it gives no hint about how to enter a trusted environment, except for high volume whalers.

There is also the factor that many people don't get involved until necessary, i.e. a problem perhaps. [...] Before that I put my trust and faith in the engineers involved with IETF protocols.

Ditto.

IETF standards convey the false impression that a matter has been thoroughly analyzed and the protocols described are a definitive solution. Actually, any establishment conveys that false impression. And, today more than yesterday, there is a pervasive feeling that exercising one's own judgment, initiative, and free will is not the best option.

That DKIM deployment draft is avowedly pining for ideas. There is even a figure where all arrows point to an "Identity Assessor". Yet, readers may fail to consider it a call for such objects: piously self-assured about IETF's soundness, they'll be at the mercy of the first one who'll contrive something that can be sold by that name. (I've duped myself like that several times, possibly in the hope to get the task done more quickly than it would take to understand how to do it.)

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