Jon Postel, a remembrance of sorts

On Farber's IP list today:

From:   dave_@_farber.net

Subject: [IP] [spam] letter from Jon Postel

Date: June 10, 2004 8:56:39 AM EDT

To:   ip_@_v2.listbox.com

Reply-To:   dave_@_farber.net







Begin forwarded message:



From: Peter Bachman 

Date: June 10, 2004 3:00:56 AM EDT

To: dave_@_farber.net

Subject: [spam] letter from Jon Postel





Dave,



Got an email addressed from Jon Postel today. Of course it was an infected

W32.Netsky.D Worm that had scanned through someone's hard drive for email

addresses, and not an message from the great beyond being channeled through

a DSL connection.



Still it's a self-generated ironic comment by the network, on the sad state of

email within the network. The great computational expense generated by

sending spam out into the network is obviously wasted on trying to sell

Viagra; that much bandwidth and computing power is evolving into something

else; perhaps a very primitive early form of network intelligence that's

linking up bits of information in odd, but somewhat predictable ways.



Now if the "random spam monkeys" can type up and send me an unpublished mss

from William_Shakespeare@stratford-upon-avon.co.uk I can make money fast.

I'll be waiting near the trash bin of my bayseian filters looking for

submissions.



Cheers,



Peter Bachman



peterb_@_cequs.com



Can a machine think?



"You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you will tell me

precisely what it is that a machine cannot do, then I can always make a

machine which will do just that"  J. von Neumann 1948 Princeton, NJ





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Jon Postel, in the parental sense, truly the father of the internet, died in 1998. I'm not quite sure what to make of this event. Suffice it to say that it is strangely moving.