On Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 11:25:08PM -0800, Tony Godshall wrote:
> According to Jason W.,
>> Welcome to the reality of life.. If you decide to live in a
>> neighborhood known for crime, don't be surprised if you're labeled a
>> criminal at some point...
> Sorry to say this, but you sound like one of those cops in
> the suburban white neighborhood who blocked, with shotguns,
> the refugees fleeing New Orleans with shotguns. It's not a
> big step from your train of thought to racism.
>
> Perhaps Dr. King would say today, that "I have a dream...
> yes, I have a dream ... that one day, people will not be
> judged by the neighborhood of their IP address ... but by
> the content of their connections..."
This isn't really a helpful statement. Once upon a time, it did happen like
that. The current situation is a response to the unbelievably high volumes
of crap emitted from these unsecured and un-virus-checked 24/7-connected
home PCs. Any responsible mail system administrator will not overspec a
machine to handle an appropriate volume of mail for their organisation (it
is equally as wrong to underspec it, to be fair). In order to handle the
volume of this, you have to seriously overspec it.
It is more appropriate, in terms of the limited resources available, to
ignore the much much less than 1% of home users on Cable/DSL lines who are
actually clued enough to send mail properly and cleanly, and tar the >99%
with the brush of "this connection is likely to be full of rubbish".
In the case of the quote above, the percentages weren't so stacked, even
if they were percieved to be. Unfortunately, in this case, the constant
reports I hear from colleagues and peers of having to un-spyware machines,
and having virus checkers find numerous different viruses, and the inability
of most people to update their software, means that I'm more inclined to
believe those figures. This is not racism, this is reality, more's the pity.
This discussion has been had to death many times. I'm afraid that if you want
to host your domain on a residential cable/dsl line, then you have to live
with the consequences. If your IP is dynamic, forget it, as there's little to
no traceability that I have, if it's static, that's a bit better, but why
should I trust you any more than the compromised windows boxes on either side
of you by IP?
Cheers
MBM
--
Matthew Byng-Maddick <mbm@???> http://colondot.net/
(Please use this address to reply)
