John Leslie writes:
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.
Well, I don't understand because it sure seems to
me that the principle requires omniscience in
isolation which is, well, IRTF territory at the
very least. Or is this just a covert way of saying
that we need an e-Yentl?
Note that I'm not against e-Yentl per se. I just
question what this principle actually serves from
an engineering/design perspective. It would be a
lot clearer if the intent is to say that third
party introductions are a necessary possibility,
that it come out and say that instead of leaving
the possibility of oracles explicitly open.
Mike