Borking Outlook Express 1097
Johannes writes: "Swedish Gnuheter has a story on Nick Moffitt arranging with his X-headers in way that makes it impossible to read his email with Microsoft WebTV or Outlook Express. Moffitt states: 'The folks using Outlook Express have locked themselves into a
limited subset of the information that can flow over the Internet, and
are blaming me personally for not limiting my transmissions to that
outlook-centric subset.'
See also original email (in English). Immoral? Or just right?" Looks like Moffit's "Who, me?" attitude is tongue in cheek, but the creative header changes here are hilarious.
The best way to convert people from Microsoft... (Score:3, Insightful)
If he were serious (which he doesn't appear to be), then I'd say its waaay to risky for the linux community. Shutting out everyone is one of the first ways to fail in bringing Linux into the mainstream...
Re:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:5, Insightful)
When did we become such elitists? When users are arbitrarily excluded and abused in the name of "free software," I begin to think that pehaps these same people now toting the supremacy of their operating system might in another time promote the supremacy of their language, nationality, or race.
I see nothing productive in this article or the attitude of its creator. The point of our movement is to produce good, useful software, and to make it available to everyone. The point is not to force them to use it, or to punish those who don't. Where's the freedom in that?
Re:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well spoken. But the bottom line is... it's his choice. If you don't like it, too bad, don't participate. This in essence is what freedom is all about. How free is it if you make him conform to your idea of what is normal? It may feel free to you, but what about to him? I run a restaurant that has a dress code and we also do not allow smoking crack on the premises. My restaurant, my rules. You don't like how it impinges on your freedom... too bad, go somewhere else.
In this particular case, you are free to participate, simply by conforming to his rules. Too much work for you?? Don't understand how to do it?? These are the criteria, deal with it.
Re:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:5, Insightful)
We aren't "forcing him to conform", we're forcing him to write in a format usable by all (you know, free means free across all boards, including proprietary).
Didn't RMS recently write an article about convincing people to not use Word attachments in email [slashdot.org]??
Isn't this the OPPOSITE?
Funny how you view things on the other side, isn't it?
If someone sends you a word doc, and you can't read it, its a big issue and everyone is serious.
If someone sends something that only linux users can read, its funny, and lets all shout "hurray!"
Think about it. And if you still think the second point, then you are, in fact, elitest.
Re:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Poeple not Lookout Express can still read his email, even if they are using Windows.
Elitists? Look in your own mirror! (Score:5, Insightful)
begin. Nothing more.
As the guy pointed out in his comments, they discovered it because someone on a mailing list happened to
begin a line with the magic word and *bam* every Outlook user who wasn't connected to an Exchange server (which sounds like a typical MS bug "fix") found the message to be garbled.
When MTAs and NNTP server had a from bug (where any line starting with
From was capitalized by the transport software, everyone agreed it was a bug. A nasty one, since it there were reasons it couldn't easily be fixed, but the message was still readable.
But suddenly we're "elitists" for saying that it's a bug - a critical bug - when MS Outlook interprets *any* line beginning with "begin" as the start of a UUENCODED block? Even though this produces unreadable garbage? And the latest versions of Outlook apparently don't even have an option that will allow the user to view the original message?
I agree there are some bloody annoying elitist attitudes on full parade here, but it seems to me that the elitists are the people who think every person on the planet should check their messages for any text that triggers Outlook bugs (e.g., lines beginning with "begin", any HTML keyword which will trigger the mandatory interpretation of the message as HTML, etc.) instead of MS admitting that they screwed the pooch on this one and issuing a quick patch.
They don't even have to use the same standards I demand of my own code - simply checking for a pattern where the "begin" is followed by an octal number would eliminate most of these false hits.
Re:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on. Get over yourself. Equating OS/software "religious" wars to real-world racism and intolerance is a bit of a stretch. They are completely different issues. I don't hear you crying "elitism" about all the websites out there that are unusable with any browser except IE, or that require Flash.
Actually, I see this kind of strategy as a Good Thing -- it's a good way to raise people's awareness of the general Suckiness of M$ and their products. Broken software, free or propriatary, needs to be rooted out and destroyed.
The dress code analogy is a good one -- it's his list to do with as he pleases. If he wants to exclude M$ users, that is his perogative. For a technical mailing list, it's not that bad an idea at all to force prospective users to have enough clue to have to exersize their craniums a little to be able to join. Just think of how many idiots we could get rid of here on
Re:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Outlook internally is one of the most poorly-engineered systems ever created. Its security model is a complete crock of shit that has several times nearly brought down the Internet. Microsoft's "programmers" wrote the attachment parsing code several times, each time being different and broken. (Proof: certain attachments aren't shown to the user because that broken code doesn't properly parse them, but if the user does "File->SaveAttachment" they *can* be saved because the saving code *does* properly parse them.)
You're free to bathe in a sewer if you want, but that doesn't mean people have to let you into their clubs.Re:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just today I got 2 "see the pictures from my party" attachments from a clueless contractor who apparently is using Outlook; something that is actually prohibited by company's software regulations. Excluding Outlook users might even be construed as a security measure. :-p
Re:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not funny at all. According to Microsoft [microsoft.com], Outlook was "just built that way" and I quote
"Will the virus impact my Macintosh if I am using a non-Microsoft e-mail program, such as Eudora?
If you are using an Macintosh e-mail program that is not from Microsoft, we recommend checking with that particular company. But most likely other e-mail programs like Eudora are not designed to enable virus replication.
So, if you were writing a program (trojan) that was designed as a virus delivery system (trojan), would you get upset if someone created a method for alerting users to this aspect (trojan) of your software? (Anti-Virus) The key here is that even Microsoft acknowledges that Outlook transmits viriii by design.
.
Re:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is a segway. It claims it will change the world; some people try it out; some people implement it mainstream; Most people just stare and say "uhh." the world just isn't built for it yet.
[To appease the BSD Zealots: Linux is a tricycle, *BSD is a Segway. If you are not a BSD Zealot, ignore this line.]
UNIX is a Freightliner. Good when you need a lot of power and a big footprint to haul a massive amount of.. stuff.
Windows 2000 is an Automatic Transmission Ford. Good enough for the average person, they don't have to worry about it too terribly much. Most mechanics know how to fix them.
Win2K server is a nice, large Dodge. Good for hauling midsize loads. Can still be fixed by most mechanics, if they are adequately skilled. Can be upgraded to Cummins Turbo Dulie model with extended bed if neccesary. Maximum of 32 Wheels.
The analogies are endless.
Use his power for good, not evil (or less good:)) (Score:4, Interesting)
Same thing for anti-Microsoft mailing lists which disalow Outlook -- kindly inform anything other than Outlook is ok (due to security concerns, etc.) and provide a list of free or not-too-expensive email clients (or again a link to download.com and the like).
Sounds like a much better (and beneficial) use of time.
Re:Use his power for good, not evil (or less good: (Score:5, Informative)
The hack is to begin the message body with
begin
Outlook interprets this as starting a uuencoded section, and turns perfectly readable text into gobbly-dy gook.
The other hack is to change the Reply-To: header as Outlook usually does when it marks the messages read. Then he adds a novel X header that seems to imply his email was actually censored somewhere along the way. So, the Outlook user sees gobblydy gook instead of a message bbdy if he sees the message at all, and if he tries to diagnose the problem will be immediately be misled by the novel X header into thinking he was censored. Whereupon he goes to his sysadmin, who will read the email in plain text, and laugh heartily. Or cry.
Lighten up! (Score:5, Funny)
This has nothing to do with advocacy, monopolies, anti-this or that. Its good clean schlap-stick fun.
My personal X-headers include... /dev/null
X-Apparently-From: mars
X-Complaints-To:
Hmm.
grep -E '^X-[^:]+:' < read-messages| sort -u Should give me some more fodder. Hmm, those Importance and Priority headers might do something entertaining.
Re:Use his power for good, not evil (or less good: (Score:3, Insightful)
Its ok to say "Use anything except outlook" when you are on the linux side.
What would you say, if I said use a program that can read Word docs [slashdot.org]??
Lets use RMS's words in the opposite context, shall we?
Lets face it. "Free" means free in free software AND proprietary software. If it doesn't, then its "free" in a very restrictive manner (which I wouldn't call "free").
If you want everything free, you had better learn this lesson!
No Inconsistency in Preferring Open Standards (Score:5, Interesting)
>Its ok to say "Use anything except outlook" when
>you are on the linux side.
>
>What would you say, if I said use a program that
>can read Word docs [slashdot.org]??
The point about these anti-Outlook headers is that they're still perfectly conformant with RFCs 821, 822, et al. Any conformant mail-reader can read these messages just fine.
But there is no RFC for Word .doc format. In either case, the underlying message is "use a mail client that conforms to open standards (the RFCs)."
When Microsoft releases an RFC for .doc format, then this position will be hypocritical. But until then, it's perfectly consistent. (Alternatively, they could make Outlook obey the RFCs... then Mr. Moffitt's header hacks won't bother it any more.)
Re:Use his power for good, not evil (or less good: (Score:5, Insightful)
What would you say, if I said use a program that can read Word docs??
I'd ask which RFC that's specified in so I could verify compliance. Email, unlike Word documents, is a real standard that was written specifically for ease of implementation and interoperability (even between machines with different ideas of character set).
The world welcomes MS to inspect the relevant RFCs and implement a compatable product. MS doesn't seem to have published a description of Word format anywhere.
Word is a proprietary format (not at all standard) that shifts like sand in the desert with no consideration of interoperability or safe interchange of data.
Re:Use his power for good, not evil (or less good: (Score:3, Insightful)
- There are two ways, actually, that one can meet the
crackmonkey mailing list dress code. One is to simply use Free
Software, and not use a mailer that requires you to accept a license
that makes you promise not to share with your friends. Another is to
continue to use your Windows-based mailer, but hack the headers of
your message so as not to betray your use of the software.
Which is exactly the hypocrisy I can't stand about GNU-zealots.[...]
First of all, I am not a member of the Open Source movement. They seem only interested in how you can make money from free software. I am actually (believe it or not) more concerned with the ethical and moral issues involved in the subjugation of human beings through restrictive copyright and patent law. I consider myself a member of the Free Software movement.
He doesn't want to subjugate others' behavior, except by using software in the way he thinks is right. He wants to be ethical and respect people's rights, except where he feels he has the right to impose on others how they release technologies or extensions that rely in small part on his code.
This is why I prefer the Artistic License or the BSD licenses. They don't create stipulations, or only create stipulations on the original code. Code released under these licenses will always be available for everyone regardless of their creed.
If I build a project, and see some subroutine code that is GPL restricted, I know not to rely on it, because it limits my options on the code that I write. Why would I limit my options on my code, just to give someone else a woody? No thanks, GNU.
Re:Use his power for good, not evil (or less good: (Score:5, Funny)
begin any lines of your message wrong, which means that having your mailer arrange the line-breaks for you won't work.
Obviously, working around all of the bugs in software which people might use is a pain, and shouldn't be your
responsibility. After all, it is local mail delivery programs that deal with lines that start with "From". It would suck to
end up having to carefully tune your content to broken implementations. And if you've decided not to support broken mailers
why not trigger the bug intentionally, so people don't read part of your conversation before running into a message
they can't read? I think that people using mailers which don't understand the MIME format shouldn't stop you from using
attachments. If a message conforms to all applicable standards, it's fine by me. Attaching a Word document is perfectly
legitimate, although the document itself doesn't conform to any Internet Standards other than "binary data".
WTF makes Mr. Moffitt so important (Score:3, Funny)
Borked? (Score:5, Funny)
Warning: Too many connections in
Unable to select database
Shouldn't that be
"Werniga: Esha tue amany conecctionsa in der
Re:Borked? (Score:5, Interesting)
Får man lägga till nya headers i sina e-post-meddelanden som gör att de meddelanden som man skickar inte kan läsas av de som använder Outlook Express eller läser brev med WebTV?
Frågan har väckts i samband med att Nick Moffitt har skickat just sådana meddelanden på Tron-listan. Microsoft-användarna är inte nöjda med Moffitts beteende medan Moffitt hänvisar till att mottagarnas e-post-program är problemet och inte hans X-headers.
De headers som är omdebatterade:
X-Fnord: +++ath
X-WebTV-Stationery: Standard; BGColor=black; TextColor=black
X-Message-Flag: Message text blocked: ADULT LANGUAGE/SITUATIONS
X-BeenThere: crackmonkey@crackmonkey.org
Läs Nick Moffitts brev på Crackmonkey-listan.
Debattera sedan gärna vidare på Gnuheter.
While mildly entertaining... (Score:5, Insightful)
And it isn't going to be through holier-than-thou rhetoric couched in do-unto-others-as-they-do-unto-you that the open source/free software movements are going to make converts.
If only it were that simple. (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think reverse engineering, publishing exploits not addressed, and many other seemingly questionable activities are very important. We must think and act freely if we'd like to continue to do so.
Silly and Immature (Score:3, Insightful)
You want to know why those who are not technologicly gifted are afraid of Linux? Things like this. Silly, immature, and asinine elitism.
To punish people because of the mail client they use is pointless. Does the various versions of Outlook have problems? You bet. You don't like it. Fine. DON'T RUN IT.
Things like this destroy the credibility of the Linux community in general. You want businesses and government to think that the Linux community is serious, focused, and can provide better products. Stupid stunts like this do not give a good impression.
Re:Silly and Immature (Score:5, Informative)
http://free.bluemountain.com/home/ImportantNoti
There is evidence that MS has actually done something along the lines of what this gentleman did on purpose as a means of retribution to a company that opposed being bought out (or some other interest of MS's
Re:Silly and Immature (Score:3, Informative)
If the guy were doing some fizzlebuzz that nobody would ever stumble upon, you would have a point.
But he's highlighting the fact that the Outlook programmers were so eager to be "helpful" that they didn't write decent filters to pick up the start of a UUENCODED block. Where I have used the pattern
"^begin ([:digit:]+) ([^ ]+)$"
(or a looser pattern that allows spaces in the filename), they check for "^begin " alone. Or maybe "^begin", which would also trigger on words like "beginning." My filter still catches the start of all valid UUENCODED block but doesn't wrongly trigger whenever the message just happens to start with the magic sequence "begin". (I also usually check for an "^end$" line and properly formatted interior lines, but I digress....)
This is just one symptom of a HUGE problem with MS products. A lot of people have reported problems where a message has something like <html> deep within the body of a message and Outlook INSISTED that the document was HTML... with the resulting garbage output. I'm sure others have had similar problems, but not been able to attribute it to some magic sequence causing the body of the message to be run through an inappropriate filter.
So I wouldn't use this casually to annoy people, but it's a good technique to have in hand when people claim that a problem is due to the sender, not the receiver's mail agent.
end important message
turnabout is fair play (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft has, for years and years and years, encouraged web site authors to write their web sites for Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer only.
If you want to call us "silly" "immature" and "asinine" for exercising our right to begin an email with "begin", then you'd have to find accusations ten times worse and levy them against Microsoft for all the dirty tricks they've foisted over the years.
Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
So he wants people to be able to use any kind of software to read email, and is annoyed that he gets documents from Windows users which are unreadable in his email program. So his response is to make sure that other people cannot necessarily read his email messages, and he expects others to adjust their computing environment to read what he sends. How is this any different from his adjusting his own computing environment to read what they send? Or is it that he just believes that the Internet should be mutually unintelligible (I mean, more than it already is)?
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
He feels that if people *really* want to read what he writes, then they'll modify their environment properly so that they'd be able to read it. He's stating that he doesn't care much one way or the other whether they want to read it or not - it's up to them.
Likewise, you could assume that if he wanted to read what people sent him enough that he would modify his environment in order to read it.
He's just picking and choosing how his communications go out, and how he receives them. How is that wrong? If people don't like it, then they don't have to communicate with him. It's that simple. Who the hell are *we* to say that he has to change so that we can receive his e-mails? Of course, you could say that if he *really* wanted to communicate with everyone then he *would* change. And ya know what? That's exactly what *he* is saying - he doesn't want to communicate with everyone, just with the folks that care enough to hear him.
Doesn't seem that complicated - or malicious - to me at all, really. I honestly don't see what the problem is.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not breaking these peoples' systems (as the MyParty worm does). I'm simply pre-emptively killfiling myself!
I also killfile outlook users based on the User-Agent and X-Mailer headers. It's entirely my perogative.
As for the mailing list dress code, it's MY GODDAMN LIST. If you want me to set up an open mailing list for everyone, just mail me and I'd be more than happy to set it up and host it on my machine for you! But the crackmonkey list is NOT that sort of list.
If you have something to say to me, you'll just have to make sure you get my attention, which is divided enough as it is now.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are not necessarily self-selecting. Not everyone has a choice of mail clients. Some are bound by corporate standards, or by their ISP's support policies. Further, he could ban the offending emails more efficiently by disallowing attachments, filtering any message which is not 7-bit clean and setting the max message size to, say, 10K or so.
Instead, he is blocking Windows users who are unwilling to accomodate his oddness (by munging their headers) from posting to his email list, and blocking Outlook users from reading his email by deliberately mangling his email.
Frankly, it's dumb. The whole point of the Internet is that people should be able to communicate without regard to what platform/software is being used. To do what this guy is doing actually improves MicroSoft's position, because it plays into their hands by turning the Internet into disconnected islands.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:3, Informative)
"he is blocking Windows users who are unwilling to accomodate his oddness (by munging their headers)"
No: "No, the attachment bug is far more subtle than that. It
doesn't happen based on headers, which are rightfully the section of
an e-mail that mail readers are SUPPOSED to process. Instead, the bug
is that any message that has the word "begin" at the beginning of a
line will be treated as a garbled attachment from that point on."
I'm finding that the number of
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all: corporate policy and ISP support policies do not (usually) prevent you from using some other mailer in addition to the supporeted Internet Exasp.
You don't even have to use different software. If you have the intelligence to hack the headers, then you still get a free pass in.
Hell, If I really wanted to post, and my isp/employer had forced me to sign a contract promising only to use virgin Microsoft software, I could still telnet to his mail server on port 25 and type in the raw SMTP.
Second of all, he pointed out that the requirement was also a simple filter to keep out the newbies that didn't pay attention to posted instructions. I did a similar thing when I got annoyed with the people who didn't respond to no-TK warnings on my TRIBES server.
For a while, I set the name of my server to "Cannon's Foder Land PW=pw", and the password to "pw". The people who managed to get in tended to be higher in intelligence than the average player.
I liked it that way.
Summary: If you can't send mail that looks like it didn't come from MS Express, then you probably don't belong on the mailing list.
Not effective (Score:4, Informative)
However, it doesn't seem to help much, quite a few people are still using Outlook Express. Other newsreaders such as Gnus display some of these pseudo-attachments as real ones, too. (And I don't think this is a bug, it's just built-in uudecode support.)
And Outlook Express has much more critical bugs, for example in quoted-printable handling together with quoting.
Well since he FBI and NSA use it :) (Score:3, Funny)
I am of course being my usual smart ass self.
I think someone should be free to send whatever the hell they want HOWEVER they want to their colluges, a bunch of people griping this is bad, bad for linux, what does RMS say, WHO CARES !!!!
This, if it were acually serious, it isnt. WOULD be a matter between the sender and the recipient.
Youre not going to be in or do business long if noone with outlook can read your mail.
Using a de facto incoming filter (Score:4, Interesting)
Whatever you think of his politics I love the idea of a snooty doorman looking at the M$ users and making them continue to stand in line outside the club. ;)
It raises the bar for entry to the list, and ensures that users really want to be there. There are two ways, actually, that one can meet the crackmonkey mailing list dress code. One is to simply use Free Software[] Another is to continue to use your Windows-based mailer, but hack the headers of your message so as not to betray your use of the software.[] Both methods demonstrate an effort made to post to the list, as well as a certain degree of technical acumen.
I hate to say it but this probably works wonders. I remember when alt.hackers instituted a policy in which it was listed as a "moderated" newsgroup but there was no moderator. So any submitted stories were simply mailed into the ether.
You had to edit your header so that you 'approved' your own post. Yes, it was trivial but a quick comparison between that group and 'alt.2600' proved that even that low a bar worked wonders for the level of content.
=tkk
Posting Gnumeric attachments...? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, the time will come when I'm the one to post results. I'll use Gnumeric, I think. I have been toying with the idea of actually posting a Gnumeric XML file to the list... Revenge!!! ;-)
Well, I'm not going to do it just for the revenge. It has to be illustrating some point.
This got me thinking: Since Gnumeric's native file format is based on XML, it should be possible to have it sensibly parsed and displayed in a browser that does support XML, including IE, given....?
OK, so this is the question: What would it take for people to get a readable table on their browser, straight from a Gnumeric XML file?
If this would work, it would illustrate a major point: How much more flexible these products are. Those who have experienced all M$ lock-ins and unreadable documents can suddenly access a document in a format they've never heard of.
No Soap, Radio! (Score:3, Redundant)
Yup - you guessed it. *click*
I also can't read L337. It's exclusionary speech, meant to be read only by other members of the clique.
Free Software is a philosophy. Part of that philosophy is to share with as many people as possible. It's not a stick to beat people with, or something for the privileged techno-elite.
Go ahead - keep Outlook users from reading your mail. Write in L337 if you want and keep people over the age of 17 from reading your mail. Heck, write in Swedish! Do you suppose my desire to read your deathless prose will make me learn Swedish?
Yup, you guessed it. *click*
Another lumpen-proletarian
Dear Timothy: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:i cant reproduce the OE bug (Score:3, Insightful)
Try the word "begin" with two spaces after it followed by the attachment name. This should be at the beginning of its own line, as in:
begin blahblahblahThis will result in an attachment named "blahblahblah."
I just tried it with OE6 and it is buggy.
Re:i cant reproduce the OE bug (Score:5, Informative)
this explains it [microsoft.com]
Re:i cant reproduce the OE bug (Score:4, Funny)
"Don't write the email that way."
Consider this theoretical KB for the ping of death ICMP packet written in the same patronizing tone:
"ICMP fragments which have wrong sizes can lead to a blue screen in the TCP/IP section of the operating system.
Workarounds:
* Don't receive an ICMP ping of death attack
* Try to not create malformed packets.
* Munge all ICMP packets so they are malformed UDP packets instead.
* Consider an alternate DoS to use on your own server, such as tear or land (which we
"
Afterall, it's not the client's responsibility to handle data from the universe at large(*).
(*) Ha. Go read "The Ten Commandments for C Programmers [kuro5hin.org]," specifically number 5.
Lameness filter encountered! (Score:3, Funny)
Right on, slashdot. ;)
OE is pretty great (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're not familiar with the two Outlook products, here's an overview: Normal "Outlook" is the crappy Microsoft Office-integrated, do-it-all, unsecure, scheduling, Exchange-client, mail reader and more and Outlook Express is simply the POP/IMAP that comes with IE. The latter is a great mail client.
I don't use Internet Explorer anymore - I've been using Mozilla since 9.5 (a few months now) and I love it. But I can't use the Mozilla mail client yet, it's just not mature enough. OE is simple to use, fast, manages the 10,000 emails I have in folders without problems, doesn't make me manage each email account separately (though I could if I wanted), decent filtering, higher-security, etc. Whoever wrote this app at Microsoft had a clue as it's really well done. There's not much wrong with it, except, I guess, whatever this guy is ranting about and the fact that it's a Microsoft product.
The last bit does bother me as I'm slowly weaning myself from M$ products. I have TRIED many other email programs (for Windows) and not been satisfied at all. The Bat!, Eudora, Mozilla, Opera's Email bit and others that have come and gone from my system. Until they're more like OE, I'm not switching...
I'm really pulling for the Mozilla team and gave my feedback to some of the Mail guys during the Bug Week or whatever it's called. But I'm not a C++ programmer (and even if I was, I'm not installing Microsoft Visual C++ to develop with Mozilla...) so I just have to wait until it gets mature enough for daily use.
One good thing though is that the Mozilla importer is great for pulling in my emails from OE already. So when the UI is up to snuff, it'll be a snap to switch over. (And then I can seriously consider switching over to Linux full-time also...)
That's it.
-Russ
Re:OE is pretty great (Score:3, Informative)
I'm using the latest Outlook Express and Ctl-F3 works fine to see the original source of any email. Not sure where this guy is getting his info. Maybe it's different on XP (I'm on Windows 2000), but I'm using the newest OE (6.000.2600) so it shouldn't be different.
Ctl-F3 is handy for copying and pasting SPAM messages into SpamCop web forms.
-Russ
Re:OE is pretty great (Score:3, Informative)
Did anyone actually read the article? (Score:5, Insightful)
My first thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Neat hack, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Your average Outlook user is the same person who just accepts that they have to reboot their computer 3 times/day and has never quite figured out that that "Windows Update" link on their start menu does. Basically, I see 2 scenarios:
1. User tries to open email, it doesn't work. User thinks "oh well, maybe outlook's not feeling well, I'll try again later" and keeps going... probably forgetting about the email altogether
2. User tries email, it doesn't work. User tries again later, still doesn't work. User contacts sender and gets pissed off when sender says "yeah, I rigged it so you couldn't open my message with that crappy mail program. I'm so 1337."
I mean sure it's fun to screw with exclusive MS users every once in a while but this just makes the sender look like a little brat...
Non destructive but helpful (Score:3, Funny)
X-Message: This could be an Outlook virus! Are you sure you want to continue using Outlook?
Wish I could take credit for it... A person who receives an email with that in the header will have a red flag displayed next to the item in the list of emails and the message itself will display at the top of the email display when the message is read.
I Can Understand Why He Did It (Score:5, Insightful)
Those users expect me to be able to read their Word format files without complaint. (Like I am going to pay almost $400 for a word processor for 1-2 documents a week.)
They expect that I read their html formatted mail with bizzare IE-only extensions.
These are the same people who become totally baffled if I send them a ASCII document with Unix line wraps.
At some point you get tired of dealing with people who expect the world to conform to their expectations and platform while making *no* effort to adapt to anything outside of their narrow world-view.
My method of dealing with people who send Word documents is to return the favor by sending them Star Office format. It is amazing how much they complain about it. They expect me to install a very expensive package, but are totally unwilling to install something that costs them next to nothing. ($50 if they buy the boxed version.)
What I find even more interesting are the people who seem to be backing the Outlook user in this "fight". The Outlook bug that is being exploited is quite old. Not only has Microsoft refused to fix it, it appears that they have removed the work-around. (I still do not see why people continue to use Outlook. The only reason that I hear from people is because they need the calendaring support and shared folders. There are other programs that do similar things. They are just being lazy.)
Part of the "PC" movement in this country is the unwillingness (in fact that absolute abhorence) to tell someone when they are being stupid. Error-correction is no longer tolerated because someone's feelings might get hurt. Since when did the most sensitive and stupid gain control of what should or should not be done?
Re:I Can Understand Why He Did It (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of us work at crappy companies where we're required to use Outlook. We rely on Outlook's crappy calendaring and other features. We could use something compatible (like Bynari TradeXCH), but our IT department would rather buy all Microsoft than think for themselves. I can't use something else on my own because I'm running Win2000 Terminal Services and don't have administrator priveleges. (Yup, I'm using a Unix workstation, but I need to use WTS just to read email!)
So I use Outlook. But the nice thing is, if I get an email virus, who cares! It's IT's problem, not mine. If I can't read an email because of an outlook bug (which is unlikely because I only get work-related email on that account), I can always forward it to my Unix account and read it with elm.
I'm not lazy; I'm just oppressed. However, next time I go job-hunting, I'm going to pay particular attention to what kind of computing environment they use.
Been /.'d already (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to say, I'd like to find a really good approach for dealing with mailers with built-in prejudicial statements in them.
You know the kind, where you get to see disparaging comments like
as if you are using a deficient MUA when you see such text.I'd really like a 2-3 sentence autoreply text that could bounce some of those MS Word attachments with similar pronouncements about
Most people simply have no idea what standards are, nor the ways or the degree to which they pay for the IT infrastructure that they currently use.Their responses are usually quizzical and predictable, "Uhh, so what does it look like to you when Word launches?" Answer: Word doesn't launch. It requires money to launch. It requires that you buy the whole banana to get Word. (There used to be Ted Rall cartoon years ago that parodied the whole issue during the browser war years "Works best with MS House!"
People so much consider these things like .doc to be standards, that they ought to be made into bona fide standards that are publicly documented, including all the quirks of proper display, instead of just glossing over that they cannot be displayed without paying money to see them, even if its bundled into the cost of your new PC or the Microsoft Enterprise License Agreement for Office, which is probably priced more inelastically than gasoline.
For fuck's sake (Score:3, Informative)
This is really no different from the countless web sites with such poorly-written code that users are forced to use IE for the page to display at all. Stop giving yourselves ulcers over something so insignificant in the daily course of life.
-Legion
You all missed the point (Score:4, Insightful)
The actual exploit he is abusing is described here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=
and is triggered by the text:
"begin " at the beginning of a line, followed by some text. Outlook renders from the begin onwards as an attachment, even without a matching "end".
The headers actually do different stuff, as described here:
http://www.rodos.net/outlook/
Now the headers by themselves are of minor amusement, the begin exploit is extremely discourteous on public mailing lists, as for digest members, it destroys the rest of the disgest - ie. it affects the posts of others.
Opinion:
Nick seems to think he's being terribly clever, by putting this "begin " in his attribution, so that his every mail is deliberately disruptive to public mailing lists. The whole thing is just a "look how clever I am" stunt and his actions justifications are purile in the extreme.
Don't condone this behaviour if you object when people send you unreadable html mail, or when script kiddies attack your box "to make you aware of a security problem", or when people take the words "freedom", "open source", and "linux" to support such idiotic, antisocial and deliberately disruptive behaviour.
Play God to whom? (Score:3, Interesting)
And why are Windows users the only ones excluded? Why not exclude Mac users too? Aren't they supposed to be even stupider than Windows users? So block two of my computing platforms if you want, I have more...
Unix email can also corrupt plain-text... (Score:5, Informative)
I understand the purpose of the ">" is to escape the "From " that separates emails. But I never understood why it was not unescaped upon reading the email.
By the way the problem is so common that the LaTeX manual has an index entry called, "From, line beginning with", and calls the problem "a bit of fossilized stupidity".
The answer, as with everything, is pr0n (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft's support page. (Score:5, Funny)
To workaround this problem:
That's pretty funny.
Microsoft's recommended fix (Score:5, Funny)
No word on when the riots by visual basic programmers furious that the new version of that language requires start/end blocks instead of begin/end blocks will end.
More tongue-in-cheek. (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps something else along the same lines but not quite so annoying would be acceptable though. Like html formating your email with the code tag and then putting the html for the email in the code tag. This way outlook displays the same crap we have to see everytime someone sends us an html email! They can still read the msg but its annoying for them just like it is for us. I wouldn't do this all the time but it'd a good once a month thing just to remind all those outlook users dome of us hate html. Even more interesting though is simply using a font tag with a class attribute to set the font to I dunno...4 or 5 pixels! They'd have to squint really hard if they used outlook but to everyone else it would be one tag. Humor like this would serve as a more polite way of poking people about html email but still let them read the page.
Jartan
rejecting outlook post from mail filters (Score:5, Interesting)
this isn't "borking" outlook. (Score:3, Informative)
outlook express cannot handle RFC compliant MIME messages, and instead displays the text as attachments.
Rules To Avoid Alienating People You Want To Reach (Score:3)
The whole reason I even bother to post to slashdot any more is as an exercise in this kind of argument. (The slashdot crowd is particularly susceptible to this kind of quasi-technical emotional stuff.) Here are some lessons I've learned.
Rule #1 is: Never be a pedantic asshole. Nobody likes one, unless he's already on his side!
Rule #2 is: Entice people to do it the better way by showing them how cool it is.
That's it. Just show people why your thing is better in a non-annoying way. Be excited, not hateful. Most people are very reasonable, and even if they are not convinced, you may have changed their minds slightly and they won't resent you (and your movement) afterwards!
Give 'em a break! (Score:3, Funny)
OKay. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to ask. What purpose does this have other than making his mail unreadable on OE or WebTV?
"Forcing him to lock his mail into a subset of readers"... no.. this is the opposite.
He is deliberately excluding a subset of users.
For THAT matter..
Who really has a problem with OE? Outlook, yes, it's done many bad proprietary things that make it a pain in the ass. I *STILL* receive lots of attachments I can't read because they are proprietary to Outlook.
But Outlook Express seems to me to be fairly well behaved.
Of course.. I use Eudora on all MS platforms... because it makes keeping years worth of email in folders MUCH easier, and I like how it deals with attachments much better.
The best .sig virus! (Score:4, Funny)
beginhappy99.exe .signature virus! Please copy me into your .signature!
This is a
See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more information.
end
First people were telling him that he had a virus, then people were telling him that he was being a jerk, etc... was extremely amusing :)
I need to do that next time I post to a MS newsgroup :)
Re:Stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Blazing anger.
And this is different exactly how?
When a Linux person does it, it's 'funny' (+1).
This is immature and childish.
True that.
I hope he comes to his senses and refrains from this kind of petty vendettas.
When people start ignoring his email (message->block sender), maybe then he'll get the idea: being a jackass to other people might be funny for roughly two seconds, but no longer than that.
Re:Stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
As he pointed out, Outlook users send people unreadable, non-standard attachments all the time. What's the difference? Why do non-Outlook users always have to be the ones to conform to what Outlook users do?
his mailing list (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stupid... (Score:3)
Re:Stupid... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no standard where there is no free (as in speech) implementation. Seriously. Specs are not standards, they are implementation suggestions. The only real specs are code. The only truly documented standards have free (as in speech) implementations. I don't care how many people use it.
My boss agrees just fine. We have a largely Windows shop, but I feel well supported in my choice to not use it here. It's not idealism anyway. It's pragmatism. Bondage and slavery are uncomfortable and shorten ones lifespan.
A difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy's action seems to be his attempt to fight back, and educate. Do you use Outlook? if not, how many illegible attachments and other garbage have you gotten from people who _do_? I'd consider this to be revenge/payback to the Outlook-using world, and not foolish at all - people need to see what is wrong with Outlook and this helps point it out - anyone on this list will probably be technical enough to get why he's doing this anyway, and be understanding (it's a bug in Outlook, after all...)
Re:Stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is different exactly how?
He is not a monopoly. Microsoft is. What he did (if intentional) was not illegal. What Microsoft did (if intentional) is.
Re:Stupid... (Score:3, Troll)
I don't know about yours, bucko, but I couldn't give a damn. If MSN has anything interesting to say (unlikely), odds are that somebody else will be saying it.
And this is different exactly how?
Microsoft's move was part of an effort to coerce lock-in to a non-standards-compliant protocol. This locks out non-standards-compliant clients. Totally opposite.
This is immature and childish.
Not at all. It makes the point very clearly. If more people did it, more users would realize just how broken MS software is.
Re:Stupid... (Score:5, Funny)
In one case, case Microsoft software denied the user the ability to view content.
In the other case Microsoft software denied the user the ability to view content.
Hmm, I guess I see your point.
Stupid... but making a point (Score:4, Insightful)
He even states that in his mail. But maybe making a point often is. His point is, that outlook only displays a limited subset of mails, and to demonstrate that he tweaked some mails. That was apparently necessary, since seeing is believing (and now Microsoft can't go on saying "But noone would ever do that"), and we know the users of Outlook to be mostly ignorant of theoretical possibilities until one of them happens to actually manifest and destroy their harddisk.
Microsoft gets its hands dirty in undermining and muddying standards, the result is, that a lot of people wonder what to do with that 'word' document, why they get sent web-Pages in their e-mail, or how to avoid being diverted by nazi webservers, that refuse to serve pages to non-microsoft browsers, even if their client could render them perfectly well.
This behaviour of microsoft, adopted by web-masters, businessmen and Windows-users all over the planet, who refuse to let you join their club until you've got Windows+IE+Word installed (and don't even think about it) is widely accepted and good standing business practice. Now someone dares to raise awareness of that fact and it's childish. Maybe Microsoft should do some more lobbying to get it into the DMCA that any e-mail has to be outlook-compliant. Or maybe the folks over in Redmond should have taken it upon them to read some RFCs.
Re:Does this seem contradictory to you? (Score:5, Informative)
The first says "I don't care if windows users can't read my mail"
The second says "I don't want windows users posting to my mailing list"
There is a distinction.
Re:Does this seem contradictory to you? (Score:3, Insightful)
The first says "I don't care if windows users can't read my mail"
The second says "I don't want windows users posting to my mailing list"
There is a distinction.
You are correct, but they have one thing in common. Anyone has the right to do either one.
If he wants to make it so windows users can't read his mail, that's his problem. And if he wants to exclude windows users from posting to his mailing list, well it's his mailing list, he can moderate it any way he wants to.
Now, is this polite? No not really.There are certainly better ways of getting your point across. Perhaps he would be better served by warning people upon joining his mailing list that windows clients are frowned upon for whatever reasons and pointing them to some equivalent free software.
Ender
Re:RMS says not to do this kind of thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
and
I probably don't agree with what he is doing, but I can see that it is in some ways a good idea to punish people whose email programs do not follow the RFC's, because that may be the only way to get people to put pressure on the vendors to provide correct software.
Remember, part of MS strategy is to make life difficult for people who don't use MS software and want to interact with those who do. Selling clients that don't follow the RFC's is just a part of this. Maybe this will make a few users complain to microsoft that they can't read a properly formated email using their MS email clients and force MS to change its practices.
Re:He contradicts himself (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just in Case....Full Text (Score:3, Insightful)
Even from 9x you're graced with telnet and cut and paste.
telnet mail.domain.com 25
HELO me.domain.com
MAIL FROM: user@domain.com
RCPT TO: recipient@otherdomain.com
DATA
Date:
Subject:
From:
Hi! This is my message body.
.
There's that modicum of techical acumen he was talking about. Not that this guy isn't an arrogant cock.
Re:It's people like him (Score:3, Interesting)
I use outlook every day and I recieve email that I cannot read. Why? Because outlook blocks exe files from me. Now you say that I shouldn't be getting them, well my co-workers send them to me! They don't know that I can't read them because they all use Netscape Mail. I have to switch to outlook because we are switching to MS Outlook servers and so soon they will have to as well. However in the real world things are not that simple.
I think that we need to press MS to make their software more compatable with badly written mail messages. Not get mad at someone who writes bad messages. If you don't wish to recieve badly written messages, then don't use the email system.
The whole point of the X-Headers he's using is to let people extend the functionality of email. It's the implementors fault if they assume the only X-Headers written will be by complaint programs! That's just silly.
Re:"begin" bug (Score:3, Informative)
Basically it has a message, then
Begin 666 www.myparty.yahoo.com
then encoded data.
.com is executable in Windows, so it happily decodes the "attachment" and makes it runnable.
It can bypass some mail gateway scanners, because it isn't a valid attachment, only to Outlook.
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Like it or lump it, that's the way it is, unless you're talking about ActiveX. Even though it usually makes sense to author your content for the widest audience, no one is under any obligation to do so.
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Check these:
Group blasts Internet Explorer 5.5 for lack of Web standards [infoworld.com]
Review of Netscape6... see paragraph 2 damning IE W3C compliance [internet.com]
IE 5.5 criticized for lack of Web standards [cnn.com]
Microsoft claims conformance to CSS level 1 and DOM level 1 in IE6, so maybe they have done an about face on this issue (much like suddenly deciding security is more important than idiot-friendliness). Unfortunately, 95% of the current Windows user base is using IE5 because it comes with the OS (through Win2K at least).
As a developer who has to provide web interfaces from time to time, I can promise you that it is a lot of work to make a site compatible with both IE and Netscape. Each one drops the ball when it comes to W3C conformance. I guess it's encouraging that MS is attempting to implement standards compliance into one of their products.
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is sharp contrast to IE 4? If you are going to compare the browsers, at least compare current browsers, don't compare the current IE to the 2 year old Netscape.
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:3, Informative)
Netscape 4's CSS support was broken from day one, and none of the subsequent point updates have improved things much.
For a quick overview take a look at this handy chart:
http://www.webreview.com/style/css1/charts/mast
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case, Moffit is not lazy or ignorant. You might not agree with his motives but you have to admit that with his knowledge and with a full understanding of the consequences he made a -- pretty funny -- decision to limit the applications that can view his email.
I am willing to applaud him for it (even though at work I also have to use Outlook and therefor could be negatively affected by his choice.)
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
When I thought about installing linux on my kids machine the first thing I did was go to every website that they visited to see if Netscape 6.2 would read the pages properly. barbie.com was the only one that didn't require Windows. Problems ranging from shockwave to Active-X, made it too much of a pain, for this newbie to make the plunge.
There is so much of the web now that caters to Windows / Mac that any other operating system is treated like someone that lives in a cabin in the woods.
Is this guy being a jackass, probably. Is the guy that tells you, you can't enter a resturant because you have on jeans instead of a suit, being a jackass? probably. Any difference? not really
Vertical
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope, wrong. If you are not technically competent enough to figure out how to play, you don't get to. Simply screening out, using his criteria. I know plenty of technically competent people who use Windows that would have no problem figuring this out.
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can get your high horse to slow down long enough to step off it for a minute or two, you could install any of a zillion open source tools to modify your headers as messages pass in/out of your network, solving the problem and allowing you to use any MUA you please.
His point was that he wanted people to have to do a little work before they could be a part of the list. Ways of assessing that are imperfect, and his is just one. You can demonstrate you've done it by installing a non-default OS and/or MUA on your machine, or you can do as I've suggested above. Either way, you then pass, and are free to play.
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:4, Interesting)
He sends out perfectly legitimate mail. We've had this debate on Usenet a few times.
Outcrap^H^H^H^Hlook tries to decode a message as an uuencoded attachment as soon as a message body line starts with "begin ". Feel free to think of the ramifications of that. (And yes, that's not "Header". That's "body", i.e. text supposed to be read by the recipient.)
This bug has been known for ages. M$ just doesn't fix it. It used to be worse, though. There was a time when out look even tried to interpret or execute said attachement. People had signatures that sent every Windows machine into lock or reboot.
Apparently the only way to get M$ to fix the most obvious crappy bugs is to massively exploit them.
So be it.
f.
Re:Amazing stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)
1) It adds little or no value. Okay, so you feel that you can format the mail more readably using HTML. I find that I can make mails perfectly readable without it, so for me, it adds no value.
2) It wastes bandwidth. So what? I have a 10Mbps connection at work internally, with a 100Mbps connection to the outside world. At home, I have a 0.5Mbps ADSL conneciton, so what do I care? Well, email is the single biggest cause of traffic on the internet, beating web browsing, P2P apps, ftp, etc. If everyone sent all their mails in HTML, that amount of traffic would double or triple - HTML format mails tend to be two or three times the size of the equivalent plain text. That's simply a waste of bandwidth (given 1 above, which I know you disagree with)
3) Not all mail readers cope with HTML properly. This is a bigger concern for me - I'm afraid some of my friends use mail clients such as mutt, and so HTML mail is a hassle for them.
4) HTML spam is much worse than plain text spam. I always set my mail client to prefer plain text, because you can't embed cookies in URLs to images in plain text. Doing so in an HTML mail gives a clear indication that the mail address is valid (as the image has been requested, the mail has been recieved and read). I don't reply to spam for the same reason; let them think that there's no-one at the address, that the mail was just swallowed silently by a server somewhere.
5) I have a big, fast connection now, but I didn't two weeks ago. Until two weeks ago, i had a 33.6 dial up connection with 'phone charges per minute. HTML mails sucked then because they're bigger, and they almost invariably come with img tags. Unless you can set your client to download the images too *and* cache them sensibly, you have to go online to read the mail properly everytime you want to read it.
I could probably go on, but they're the 5 biggest reasons why I dislike HTML mail. That said, I do think that everyone should feel free to send mail in whatever format they want. Of course, everyone also has the right to request that people communicate with them in a different format. Kind of like if I started speaking Japanese to you - I'd expect you to ask me to speak English. (I don't speak Japanese, but you get my point)
Oh, and his mails don't croak Outlook Express, it just doesn't display them properly. For what it's worth, though, I just tried the "begin bug" in OE 5.5 and the mail displayed correctly, so it looks like it's been fixed.
Cheers,
Tim
Re:Amazing stupidity (Score:3, Insightful)
Negative. Bug exists. Microsoft's reply is that you ought not to do this. Nevermind that their email reader doesn't conform to RFC - the solution is to make email conform to THEM !
Use
begin at the start of a line followed by two spaces and then non-space characters.
Re:HTML doesn't increase bandwidth much (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, every single HTML email sent by a Microsoft Mail client is at least twice the size of the equivalent plain text message...
Why is that, you say? Because the email messages are actually sent as multipart/alternative ... meaning usually that there is a complete (quoted-printable) text copy of the messages, as well as a complete html copy of the same message. Add the mime delimeters, the html tags, the doctype, the microsoft specific meta tags... and you usually end up at 3 times or more the size of the text/plain messages...