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IPsec and Platonic Ideals®



Gentlemen:

It has recently come to my attention that your IETF WG is using the
term "Platonic Ideal" to refer to certain aspects of ongoing work.  I
would like to observe that one of my best known dialogues does, in
fact, bear on the area of cryptography used for communication.  Most
historians of ancient Greece have terroneously ranslated my text into
a question of whether a tree falling in a forrest makes a noise if
nobody is present to hear.  In fact, the original text asks the
analogous question of whether a passive wiretapper, intercepting an
encrypted (at the physical layer) staellite down link can be said to
have effected wiretapping.  (I attribute the mis-translation to the
fact that most historians are not very technical.)  With this in mind,
I suggest that members of your WG exercise due restraint in referring
to certain matters as being representative of Platonic IdealsŪ.  My
attorney has suggested that I retroactively apply for a trademark on
this term and its scope of applicability will certainly include the
area in which the IPsec WG conducts its business, based on the
properly translated dialogue I cited above.

Sincerely,

Plato