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Re: Eliminating Virus Spam

2001-01-03 16:30:02
From: Scott Lawrence <slawrence(_at_)virata(_dot_)com>

Still, there are other good reasons why the IESG should add something like
the following to sendmail.cf on odin.ietf.org to reject multi-part junk:

     HContent-Type: $>+Check_CT
     SCheck_CT
     R$*multipart$*              $#error $: 553 reject multi-part junk


That seems rather heavy-handed; I've often found the vcard 
attachments to be quite handy, for instance.

What vcard attachments should be sent to the main IETF list?  Unless
a substantial majority of main IETF mailing list subscribers find them
useful, they should not be sent to the main IETF list.  I suspect
that not only are they not useful to a majority, but that a majority
could not use them even if they knew about them and wanted to.

Anything other than pure 7-bit ASCII is very hard to justify in an
international mailing list that is not a captive of a single vendor.


                                              The IETF produced the 
MIME standard that defines these things, after all.  The multipart 
mechanism is not itself responsible for the bad ways in which it is 
used.

Each time I hear that statement about MIME, it feels as if my blood
pressure ncreases 10%.  I've heard it so often that by now I should be
excreting diamonds.

Outside the offices of the pointy haired and of marketoons, the existence
of a tool is not a requirement for its use in absolutely positively every
context.  MIME is an excellent screwdriver, but it is silly to insist, as
many do, that MIME must be used everywhere a hammer is needed.  The most
common rationalization for MIME everywhere (including the exceptionally
dumb Eudora headers that announce 7-bit ASCII and no multi-parts) is
politically correct cant involving "diversity" (of people, not computers).


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com



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