At 14:35 31/07/2001, Keith Moore wrote:
Therefore I still say: this is NOT Microsofts fault
so what you are saying is that it's the job of the network to not
deliver any content to you that you don't want to see, and for the
network to somehow figure that out in advance, so that you're never
inconvenienced? no matter how much trash other network sites send
your way?
A listserver is not the "network" (actually I don't see anything which
IS "the network"). A listserver is just a more or less dumb server which
serves 1000's, possibly 100,000's of users. As mentioned, I don't see
any problem to add a virus-scanner and a short script to the listserver
to discard virus-attachments and spams. Though it will not find everything,
it will enhance the situation a lot. I especially don't like the way one
company is lynched for every software problem in the world. I use a mail
client who filters all these virus informations from this list into the
trash and marks them read. Every mailclient can do that (possibly Outlook
cannot, I don't know and I don't care, because I don't use it). BUT: this
is not the job of my PC and not the job of 10,000's of other PC's running
any OS with any mailclient you can think of. It's the job of the server
who spreads these mails around (because it seems to be too difficult to
put the childish or silly guys into jail, who have enough time to waste in
their life to create such mails). And I think it's an easy job, and there
are no emotions necessary.
/Herbert
(this list being a special case of "the network")
presumably the network should also accomodate everyone else's
desires for filtering also, all at the same time?
and presumably you're also willing to tolerate the network making
incorrect decisions, say 10% of the time, and either inappropriately
blocking or inappropriately admitting a message that you don't want to see?
and you're willing to accept the amount of complexity/state that must
be absorbed by the network, and the corresponding loss of reliability
and scalability, and the increase in operational cost?
and you're willing to have the network shoulder this responsibility
no matter how poorly the software at the endpoints is written, and
no matter how vulnerable it is to attack by miscreants?
seems to me that it's attitudes like that that produce products like
the SMTP firewall that currently sits in front of odin.ietf.org
(and counteless other SMTP servers) which prevents SMTP from working
properly. separation of function, scalability, reliability, and
proper operation be dammed - what's most important is that no garbage
get through.
the end-to-end argument is completely discarded because we have no
way of forcing Microsoft to produce reliable software or to accept
responsibility for its negligence.
Keith
hmmm. maybe the snail-mail service's mail sorters could automatically
detect and discard junk mail. and maybe the phone network could
altomatically detect telemarketers and electrocute them...
it does have a certain appeal to it.