Subject: Re: msg-id

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 15:01:49 -0800 (PST)

Seth Breidbart <sethb@xxxxxxxxx>:

> To whom are you attributing that error?

To everyone who says that "once per thousand years" is good enough.

> Yes.  A hardware flaw could cause collisions in a "never" scheme;

A breakdown in a piece of hardware is different than a programmed, known
flaw.

>Computer breakdown during the 3 seconds between finishing editing the
>proto-article and hitting "send" is less common than breakdown in
>general.

Really? What is special about "finishing editing the proto-article" that
protects the computer from failure until hitting "send"? I'd like to know;
I'll get all my systems thinking that I've just finished editing a 
proto-article so they will be less likely to break down.

> If it's that important to you, choose your ISP based on it 

And how many ISPs advertise their message id creation algorithm? Your 
pretense that one can choose not to use a broken implementation of a 
deeply-buried algorithm relies on knowledge of that broken implementation
being used. That's not going to happen.

>> and when did I get to choose 
>> the implementation used on your server?

>You don't. 

Since YOUR message ids show up in MY news stream, then I have not had the
opportunity to choose not to be subject to the broken implementation.

> You don't have to consider that a problem.

There are lots of things I don't HAVE to consider a problem that are still
problems.

"Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>>"Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>>> But the id-right is NOT case-sensitive, 

>>I see nothing in RFC2822 that says it is not case-sensitive.

>Then I think we are in agreement. But I am aware of people who do not
>share that view.

Oh, good, we've started this game again. No Charles, if you say something
is NOT case sensitive, and I say that I see nothing that says it is not, 
that means we DO NOT AGREE. The fact that RFC2822 does NOT say it is 
case-insensitive, combined with the knowledge that ASCII 'a' is not the
same as ASCII 'A', means that I think it IS case sensitive.

>Indeed, injecting agents may well have to check for these funny cases (but
>then that is what I said).

No, that is not what you said. You said "I expect many injecting agents do 
little more than check there is a single '@' somewhere in it" and I'm 
telling you my experience is that they do much more than that.

---

From: Seth Breidbart <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 18:35:40 -0500 (EST)

> To everyone who says that "once per thousand years" is good enough.

Then you're wrong.   I think one collision, total, on average every
thousand years is good enough.  I also understand probability theory
quite well.

> A breakdown in a piece of hardware is different than a programmed, known

They both cause the same violation of the same MUST.

> protects the computer from failure until hitting "send"?

Nothing.  It's just not that much more likely to break in that
3-second window than any _other_ 3-second window, and there are a lot
of 3-second windows in a computer's lifetime.

> And how many ISPs advertise their message id creation algorithm?

Advertise?  None, because there aren't enough potential customers who
care.  So you'll have to make the effort of asking them, instead of
expecting the information to be thrust upon you.

> Your pretense that one can choose not to use a broken implementation
> of a deeply-buried algorithm relies on knowledge of that broken
> implementation being used. That's not going to happen.

If you generate your own Message-ID, then you don't have to know or
care about the algorithm that would otherwise have been used.

> opportunity to choose not to be subject to the broken implementation.

That's right.  Usenet contains broken messages.  The only way we can
prevent that is by saying that there's no such thing, any string is an
acceptable message.  I don't think that's useful.

> There are lots of things I don't HAVE to consider a problem that are still

You are welcome to worry about them as much as you want to.  I choose
not to bother.

Seth