Owen, When you stretch an analogy this thin, it always falls apart. I was referring to the poison/pollution not the water/air. A drought/vacuum* would not be possible, but would you want the poisoned water/air?
This analogy is bad enough without the nits picked out. I actually mixed two posts to create a stream analogy out of an air analogy. I will not go any further and all further follows on to this analogy should be ignored. :) - Brian J. * a lack of air (for a reasonable deffinition of air) would be a vacuum... right? >-----Original Message----- >From: Owen DeLong [mailto:o...@delong.com] >Sent: Friday, October 28, 2011 12:11 PM >To: Brian Johnson >Subject: Re: Outgoing SMTP Servers > >> >>>> Nor is the data transiting these networks a commons. The air over my >>>> land is a commons. I don't control it. If I pollute it or if I don't, >>>> it promptly travels over someone else's land. >>> >>> If you choose to pollute the air heavily, the value of the air drops for >>> everybody. >>> If you choose to pollute the Net heavily, the value of the Net drops for >>> everybody. >>> >> >> STRIKE 3! Oops got ahead of myself. >> >> I'm attempting to prevent the pollution but I may capture a little good water >(almost nothing) along the way. To say that this is a way of "bad acting" and >causes a loss of value to the Internet as a whole is pure folly. >> > >No, it really isn't. Because the good water that you are catching is actually >causing >a drought downstream. > >Owen
