On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 03:25:30PM +0100, Szilveszter Adam wrote: > On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 01:44:35PM +0000, Andrew Sayers or whoever wrote: > > It's important because I say it's important, and you should all believe > > me because I'm the widely trusted Patrick Shanahan, not Michael Herman > > pretending to be him. > > I have heard this argument too many times. But what people usually > forget to add is that, in the absence of a proof of linkage between an > individual and a signing key, the signature is not much worth. The purpose of a signature on a public mailing list isn't to prove that I'm Dave Cohen, residing at 9-06 Plymouth Drive, in Fair Lawn, NJ, 07410-1663, USA, Earth, Milky Way. Rather, it's to prove that the guy who types this message is the same guy who used to post all that junk here as "Dave <dave@xxxxxxx>" way back when, and now that all .tj domains are gone posts his SPAM here with his new email addy. In other words, you start to attain an interest (or disinterest) in posts signed with my key because you trust them to be interesting (or uninteresting). Just to beat a dead horse, you don't trust my email because I typed it; you trust me because I typed the email. > But since writing on a mailing list does not require a trusted identity, > and neither does reading mail, I don't care and judge messages here by > their content. That's your own choice, to treat everybody equally, as some anonymous voice out of space. I find it far more interesting to look around the room at whoever's talking, chat privately with many of them, recognize them when I notice them in other lists, etc. ...but, of course, it's your choice, and signing my mail doesn't take the ostrich option away from you :-) - Dave -- Uncle Cosmo, why do they call this a word processor? It's simple, Skyler. You've seen what food processors do to food, right? Please visit this link: http://rotter.net/israel
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