[Baypiggies] C/R Scaling

Ross Parlette ross at pcnt.com
Mon Jun 19 07:29:31 CEST 2006


In all the discussion of Challenge / Response I have not seen what I regard 
as the non-scaling flaw.
 
A long time ago, I read that one should conduct one's life in such a way 
that if many (or all?) others did likewise, disaster would not result. 
Perhaps my analysis is in error, but I believe that C/R fails here.
 
Now I currently get my BayPiggies mail via the daily summary, so all mail is 
from baypiggies-request at python dot org. I changed over to this because 
the mailing list was flooding my inbox and my pathetic mail system does not 
have good means for handling this.
 
But prior to this, I received individual messages, which served before the 
discussions of name-change and similar topics produced a plethora of mail. I 
have looked back at those messages and they did not come from baypiggies dot 
org, but appeared to come from people like Aahz, Donna Snow, w chun, etc. 
Presumably these were spoofed by the forwarder (note discussion of SPF).
 
Now consider what would happen if all on a Sunday, 90% of the members of the 
list were to adopt a C/R system. At the time I was receiving individual 
messages, I did not reply to the individuals, but rather to the list (as 
Aahz has indicated it the proper thing to do), so by default the members of 
the list would not go on my white list thereby. However, those fools who 
posted to the list would be met by a flurry of C/R from everyone else on the 
list (who had C/R) and this would happen to every person who posted (at 
least once; I'm not sure I understand the full panoply of C/R options). As 
new persons joined the list or added C/R to their e-mail program, a new 
bucket of C/R would flow across the net.
 
Consider also that the BP list is not primarily used for "Can you, in 
particular, help me out with this specific task?" Rather is seems to be 
(when working properly, not something I have seen a lot of lately) an area 
for persuasion and encouragement.
 
Sorry that I don't have 25 prior messages and sigs embedded in this letter, 
but I hope you all can overlook that.
 
Ross
 
At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar. 
 
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