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Re: Eliminating Virus Spam

2001-01-03 17:40:03
From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso(_at_)MIT(_dot_)EDU>

...
I agree that filtering multipart messages goes too far; they can be
useful.

Please point to an example of a useful multipart message seen in
this list or that might someday be useful in this mailing list.
I have Microsoft, Linux, and various BSD UNIX systems, but I cannot
think of any way I or anyone at @rhyolite.com or almost anywhere else
might find a use VCARDs from an IETF list.  I honestly cannot think
of anything that is not a simple non-MIME, 7-bit ASCII message and
that makes sense from the main IETF list.  What am I missing?

(Yes, most people have non-U.S.English (i.e. non-ASCII) characters in
their names and anything they write in their mother tongues, but anyone
who wants their name or anything else to be understood in an international
email forum has no alternative but to use transliterations to ASCII.)

(I keep saying "main IETF list" on the possibility that some WG list
might reasonably need to ship arbitrary MIME attachments.)


...
simply filtering all messages that orignated from Microsoft MUA's (which
would also solve the problem), although arguably that penalizes the
wrong set of people --- the users, instead of the idiots who wrote the
MS-MUA's in the first place.

On contrary, the idiots are merely agents of the users.  The idiots
should be penalized only by the common, many years old skepticism of
resumes with the well known stigmata.

The people who should and do go to jail for "cracking" and other fun are
not the authors of the tools and scripts but those who use them.  The
people who should be penalized for the behavior of their MUA's and MTA's
are the people who own the computers and software and who continue to use
it despite knowing that it is simply wrong that "you can't go wrong by
buying Microsoft."

The problem with PC software is not the vendors, but the users who refuse
to deal with their responsibilities.  Those who whine that it's not their
fault that their employers "standardize" on junk should be excluded from
all IETF activities for an intolerable lack of basic professional ethics
or at least technical competence.


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com



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