Well, though this may not be a topic for this list, I also want to add my
2 eurocent here (:-) . First, I'm neither a MS hater nor a MS lover.
Actually this company is responsible for a lot of fun I had especially in
the last 12 months when I red their comments about open software and
especially Linux (please don't let us enter the philosophical discussion
here, if Linux and/or Linux/390 is open software or not).
However, the problem here is NOT a MS problem. If we assume that 20,000
people are subscribed to this list, then 20,000 computers have to run
senseless filters to get rid of the crap mail. My opinion is, if only
one (1) computer runs this filters (the listserver itself), this is
much much more efficient than anything else. You may say, this doesn't
help against spam and viruses mailed directly to you. Though you are
right, this is a completely different quality of disturbing people at work.
Sending just ONE mail to a list may disturb and waste time of 100,000's
of people and waste CPU-time of 100,000's of computers. This is definitely
not necessary, because the listserver itself could easily throw away this
crap. Therefore I still say: this is NOT Microsofts fault, this is a
bad behaviour of the listserver, and again EVERY listserver's default behaviour
should be:
.) Throw silently away mails containing viruses,
.) Throw silently away mails containing the string "[spam" in the subject.
This would save lots of bandwidth for the Internet, and save lots of CPU
cycles of computers all over the world.
My 2 ec, Herbert
At 23:18 30/07/2001, Mark Durham wrote:
Theodore Tso wrote:
On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 08:17:48AM -0700, Mark Durham wrote: I'm doing
the same. This is situation is absurd, and an embarrassment to the
IETF. Those I've mentioned it to (some of whom are *very* active in
WGs) just shook their heads in amazement.
Personally, I'd say it's an embarassment to *Microsoft*. Let's
allocate blame where it properly belongs. They were the ones who made
the mail reader which made these sorts of viruses possible....
- Ted
Well, yes, and point taken. For that matter, you can take it even further
upstream and blame Satan for all the world's evils, thereby washing your
hands of the whole mess. Obviously, Redmond is ultimately culpable here
(along with those who exploit their little loopholes); and, on the
downstream side, list subscribers must ultimately watch out for their own
interests. But moral superiority and libertarian ethics aside, the list
manager seems to be in an excellent position to solve this problem. Still,
if that's an unacceptable infringement of recipients' autonomy, so be it.
Some people make a strong argument for running an open relay, too (though
I don't buy that one either).
In any case, "embarrassment" was probably the wrong word, though I still
think "absurd" fits.
But I do agree re: Microsoft. And my apologies for being so ill-tempered.