Hello John, > So if they were competemnt and ethical, tney would stop and find people to > work with who understand the issues so they can do research that is not > abusive and could have useful results. Unfortunately, as we have seen, they > are neither.
I personally believe (and sincerely hope that my believes are not disappointed here) that this stopping, reflecting, and improving is currently taking place, and has been for some time, as signified by no new mail measurements I know of having hit the world from the group so far. > Having spent my entire life in and around academia, I have no sympathy for > people who say that since we are so nice and our goals are virtuous it > excuses the stuff we are doing. No, it does not. You are attacking a strawman here, one where I obviously (and usually quiet aggressively) agree with your point. My argument was that it is hardly possible to gain a sufficient understanding of many protocols to be able to thoroughly design network measurements while accounting for all possible harms within the time available for a PhD. That is just as much a recipe for disaster as it is a practical reality for many people out there; Start your PhD, do four papers in four years, and have your first one submitted by the end of year 1. Learning by doing, breaking too much in the meantime, which is not a desirable state of affairs, especially given that with the standard-academia-workload no PI will be able to thoroughly vet what their students built. To still be able to make a positive difference, I started my current efforts to build something to curb this issue; Because no matter if one extends sympathies to people doing harm out of ignorance (no matter whether you see the cause for that in an underlying system or not), the truth is also that those measurements will keep hitting the Internet. I might have a bit too much of an idealistic world view here, but I believe established infrastructure which provides proper feedback from more experienced people before packets hit the fan (to which one can also point people to if they make mistakes) can really make a positive difference here, especially if people who really know what they are doing are willing to look at things before they are let out on the Internet. Talking of which: John, would you be willing to be part of something like that? I mean, it will probably take quiet some time until I have this going, so this would be a commitment for an undetermined future point in time (mostly due to me not having a /23 v4 spare for the project; But I am working on it. And of course then there is the adoption thing.)... But I believe your eyes in such a project might actually allow quiet a lot of students to learn a lot. With best regards, Tobias _______________________________________________ mailop mailing list [email protected] https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop
