"Default" Internet Service

Sun Jun 13 17:50:18 UTC 2004

--On 13 June 2004 16:15 +0100 Dave Howe <DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk> wrote:

> disproof by counterexample is a valid technique.

only where the "law of excluded middle holds" true - that means if
everything is black & white with no shades of grey.

It is quite clear if nothing else from the circularity of threads
on NANOG about this sort of stuff, the number of iterations
around the circles, and the number of years this has been going on
that there is no silver bullet. So there are two other possibilities:

a) There is at least one (probably more) type of action which mitigates
   but does not fully solve the problem [in which case telling us
   why solution X doesn't work because it doesn't address example Y
   is not much help, as by assumption no solution is perfect], or

b) There are no types of action which mitigate the problem. In which
   case go do something more interesting than read/write NANOG on
   the subject.

There are a lot of (a)'s that are quite helpful. If anyone thinks,
for example, that installing a decent firewall doesn't help
prevent intrusions (no, it doesn't stop them all), or online access
to OS fixes (ditto), I would suggest some statistics to show this
would be useful.

Alex