From: James Black <black@sunflash.eng.usf.edu>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 04:50:46 +0800
To: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Subject: Re: key for Alice as promised (not)
In-Reply-To: <m0tKrau-00090tC@pacifier.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951129144031.25904B-100000@sunflash.eng.usf.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Hello,

On Wed, 29 Nov 1995, jim bell wrote:

> Wake up, idiot!  The purpose of encryption and signing and such is to REDUCE
> problems, ideally to zero but if not to some adequately small value.  To
> fail to use signing when there is no ongoing problem is risky; to not use
> signing when there is a  serious continuing problem is downright lunatic.
> That sets up an irresolvable contradiction:  On the one hand, you're willing
> to tolerate a continuing problem, yet on the other you claim that your
> standards are so high that you won't use a system unless the probability of
> security essentially precludes a loss of security.

  Unfortunately priorities are mixed up here.  Reputation should be more 
important, unless Alice is actually a group of teenagers that are just 
having fun at the lists expense, and could care less what they write as 
long as it gets a response.  If the writer actually cared about his 
reputation then a digital signature would be the best way to go, but a 
different encryption scheme should be used for the signature than the 
message.
  Just my $0.02, but if Alice continues to just not care about his 
reputation, and people can't verify that the same writer(s) wrote it, 
then maybe ignoring posts would be a good choice.
  Take care and have fun.

==========================================================================
James Black (Comp Sci/Comp Eng sophomore)
e-mail: black@eng.usf.edu
http://www.eng.usf.edu/~black/index.html
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