Michael Thomas <mat(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> wrote:
John Leslie writes:
Paul Vixie <vixie(_at_)vix(_dot_)com> wrote:
the principle i've always followed is that
"all communications must be by mutual consent"
...
Excellent principle, Paul. I'd like to put it at the head of the
list.
Ok, I'm dense. How do I meaningfully consent to
somebody for which I have no a priori information
about their consentworthiness?
Much the same as you do with the telephone: some people just pick up,
expecting to complain to the telephone company if it's an obscene call;
others check caller-ID, and let an answering machine take any calls
they don't recognize; still others hire a sectretary to screen their
calls...
I mean, I can blackhole them after the fact, but until I have some
information to inform my consent, I'm not sure what this principle
buys you.
It doesn't necessarily buy you anything: it's a way to look at what
we're trying to engineer.
I take it to mean that we should look at the system in terms of
informing the consent, rather than rules to cover every case; and
specifically that we shouldn't be communicating back any information
except by consent of the recipient.
(This is, after all, a _difficult_ problem -- some principles may
be in competition with others...)
--
John Leslie <john(_at_)jlc(_dot_)net>