Re: spam

Oops, editing error.

Enterprises have revenue, too. And cost structures that are substantially
different (with respect to email) from similarly sized ISPs.


This should read "And cost structures that are _NOT_ substantially
different..."

                --Dean

On Tue, 27 May 2003, Dean Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 27 May 2003, Vernon Schryver wrote:

From: Dean Anderson <dean(_at_)av8(_dot_)com>

...
No one has demonstrated any cost to spam, other than annoyance and
infrastructure costs which are passed on to users[1], and it seems there
is very little to add.


That's a ridiculous overstatement.  Spam may be too cheap to meter
for an individual user, but if you have 30,000,000 users or only
30,000, you'll find that the total costs are substantial, particularly
when you need to double the size of your systems to deal with a doubling
of spam.


Whether you have 30 million or 30 thousand, the costs are passed on to the
user. At 30 million, economies of scale make the cost of spam (to the ISP)
even less.  It doesn't usually change the price to the user, so big ISPs
tend to make more money at the same price level.

Enterprises have revenue, too. And cost structures that are substantially
different (with respect to email) from similarly sized ISPs.

Vixie and other radicals also continues to ignore Shannon's theorems. ...


While it's true that proving the non-existence of covert channels
is hard, you've not related that theorem to anything related to spam.
Even if covert channels or the relation among power, noise, bandwidth,
and information have something to do with spam, you've not shown
any connection to dealing with the spam problem.


Its not hard, its impossible.

I've pointed out the spam is a covert channel, with regard to Shannons
theorem.

A good rule of thumb is that only people who don't know much about
major theorems like Shannon's and Godel's quote them as proofs in
discussions like this.  I think you should have chosen some other
beautiful bit of archana such one of the fixed point theorems or
Fred J. Cohen's Forcing and Generic instead of something that more
than a few people around here know about such as covert channels.


This is a fine exposition, about what I'm not sure.. It does not seem to
demonstrate that I am wrong, or that spam isn't a covert channel, or that
Shannon's theorem (somehow) doesn't apply.

Apparently, you don't understand anything about covert channels, so
perhaps you should let the ones who do try to dispute my assertions.

              --Dean