[cap-talk] controversial article

[Mark Miller]

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Matej Kosik <kosik at fiit.stuba.sk> wrote:
> [...] Digital Silk Road at the bottom.
> (If it can be implemented).
> I wquld be (If my goal were to build defensively correct distributed
> software system) more worried about DDoS than unreliability of networks.

"more worried" is fine for building "more correct" systems. But an
unsolvable problem, even if it were practically minor (which it
isn't), would still stop us from achieving correctness in the sense of
guaranteed service. "More correct" systems are exactly what we should
be building. So we should acknowledge a permanent retreat from the
absolute goal of distributed correctness.

I do think that DSR or other such agoric bandwidth allocation systems
can provide good defenses against DDOS. In the absence of legacy
compatibility constraints, I believe they are straightforwardly
technically achievable. But I do not believe they are politically
possible anytime in the foreseeable future.

--
Text by me above is hereby placed in the public domain

   Cheers,
   --MarkM