On 16 May 2007, at 00:53, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
[snip]
The thing is it would be really nice to have some functional separation between the business of this list which is operating a network, and the security focused lists, and the botnet/phishing/spam lists, addressing policy lists, the internet standards list, and so forth.
While there persists an attitude that security isn't a core part of running a network there will continue to be insecure networks flooded with spam, phishing, botnets et al. I've been running wide area networks since 1995 and I've always seen security as an operational network issue and moreover I find incomprehensible an attitude that sees it otherwise.
You and I and lots of other people on this list are on on many or all of those sorts of lists. While cross-pollination is acceptable and in fact desired dragging the business of one group of community interests in to the domain of another is not appropriate.
In the particular case of Gadi, I resent the persistent grandstanding and offers of assistance and assurances that's he's on the job. That's essentially all advertising for his consulting business and I don't think it's appropriate on this list. I for one do not flog the products of my employer on this list, nor do you, or most other people who participate.
While Gabi is voluble I don't concur. I've never formed the impression that he's advertising anything other than the problem or some [possible] solutions. I've certainly never felt he was advertising his paid services - so much so that this is the first time I was explicitly aware that he offers paid consultancy in this area, if that is indeed the case.
I tolerate this sort of behavior in the security arena (read bugtrac these days) though I resent the fact that it's de rigeur in the space for many disclosures to essentially be advertising for the consultants doing the work, virus updates are advertising for anti-virus companies etc.
[snip] Can I please make a [probably futile] request. If someone thinks something is off-topic but the subject matter is even conceivably marginally on-topic - just skip the post. Don't start a long discussion of the relevance. Inevitably the discussion of topicality takes up more time and attention than the original subject would have. Whenever I see this happen I always suspect that the operational issue is really that the complainants don't have enough real operational work to do and I wish I had their cushy job.