Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 16:59:03 +0100 From: Brad Knowles <blk@skynet.be> To: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com> Cc: "FreeBSD" <freebsd@gtonet.net>, "freebsd-current@FreeBSD. ORG" <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: load spike strangeness Message-ID: <v04220804b49e5e58b17d@[195.238.19.152]> In-Reply-To: <200001091248.EAA23038@rah.star-gate.com> References: <200001091248.EAA23038@rah.star-gate.com>
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At 4:48 AM -0800 2000/1/9, Amancio Hasty wrote: > For instance, just because someone has an email name which resembles > a real name lets say "Brad Knowles" does not necessarily mean that the > real "Brad Knowles is sending the mail assuming of course that there > is a Brad Knowles. I've built up enough history over the years (all the while using my real name and a real e-mail address, although the address has changed over the years as I've changed employers, etc...) that you can go do some AltaVista or Hotbot searches and find enough stuff that I've written that we can be reasonably sure that this really is me. I may not be proud of some of the stupid things I've done or said over the years, but I'll own up to them regardless. I'd say that the same is probably true of most of the people posting to the various lists. > Let me put another way I sure hope we don't assume that any given email > truly identifies the individual and that the person is legally responsible > for his email handle. No more than you can be sure that a particular PGP key belongs to the person it claims to belong to, or that a person who presents you with a drivers license that claims to tell you their name or address. However, in the case of electronic discussions, there is likely to be enough history available that you can be reasonably sure you're dealing with the same person who claims to go by the same name, even if that isn't their real name. It's hard to make the same kinds of connections with an alias. Yes, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton published the Federalist Papers under assumed names, because that was necessary at the time in order to avoid the potential legal consequences of the British finding out who the real authors were. However, I sincerely doubt that any such claim can be made today for posting to one of the FreeBSD mailing lists. Claims of "needing" anonymity in cases like this just aren't likely to be very well received, and the more strident the claimer becomes in their "need" to remain hidden, the more likely people are to either try to unmask the jerk or to decide to simply start ignoring them. If you want to post in a public place like this, and you want other people to be able to help you or carry on an intelligent conversation with you, I would suggest that taking the extremely anti-social approach of using an alias is one of the worst possible things you could as a first step. It won't help stop the spam, and it will just annoy the people you'd want to be talking to. -- These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy ____________________________________________________________________ |o| Brad Knowles, <blk@skynet.be> Belgacom Skynet NV/SA |o| |o| Systems Architect, News & FTP Admin Rue Col. Bourg, 124 |o| |o| Phone/Fax: +32-2-706.11.11/12.49 B-1140 Brussels |o| |o| http://www.skynet.be Belgium |o| \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ Unix is like a wigwam -- no Gates, no Windows, and an Apache inside. Unix is very user-friendly. It's just picky who its friends are. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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