ss wrote, [on 4/28/2008 6:04 AM]:
My defences go up when a person misuses email ids and says "trust me" even if
he is otherwise like Mother Teresa. It is not normally necessary for people
to go about things in this way. Such a person may not be "bad" - but he is
certainly different and I make a living out of picking up differences.
Would I trust such a person? Perhaps - in time, it would take time to figure
out that a person who misuses email and says "You have to trust me" is
actually trustworthy - especially if his email found its way into my mailbox
masquerading as someone else, rather than my soliciting his opinion.
Shiv,
It appears to me that Rene is actually saying much the same thing that
you are (though he can, and should, certainly speak for himself) and
chose this particular way to dramatise it.
It is so trivial to forge a "From:" address, especially on a mailing
list [1], that our primary defense against it, at this point, are social
norms. An illustrative example would be to imagine a village where
nobody locks their doors. The primary defense against theft is then good
neighbours and social norms.
The reaction on this list (and elsewhere, apparently) about not having
*intentional* ambiguity over the person behind an email address is, I
believe, and example of a social antibody reaction.
Udhay
[1] where it becomes much more difficult to *reliably* and *repeatably*
read headers, or do things like PGP signatures etc - these may not be
treated well by the list software. I have repeated experience of this.
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
