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.
Hmm seems to me... (Score:2, Insightful)
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...
Way to win over users (Score:2, Insightful)
I have never written any software, webpages, etc... to exclude a subset of my potential users. To me this is incredibly arrogant and downright snobby.
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.
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: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.
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: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?
Re:Does this seem contradictory to you? (Score:1, Insightful)
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: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.
his mailing list (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:While mildly entertaining... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, if we could only get the spammers and L3373 script kiddies to adopt this strategy!
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: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.
Only on Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
If Microsoft employees sent out emails with headers that made them unviewable in Eudora or other email programs, people on here would be throwing a fit.
I use Eudora and hate Outlook (have to use Windows here...), and I have bundles of idiot coworkers that happily click on virus emails here and at home... but the hypocrisy here is ridiculous. Were the situation reversed we would be crying for another lawsuit against M$.... how is this different?
Mark
Re:C'est La Vie (Score:1, Insightful)
Just because he didn't ask our opinion doesn't mean his actions don't affect us, or reflect on us.
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: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:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Uhm - the guy who is doing this is a member of the Free software camp, i.e. an RMS follower. I don't remember if RMS believes in "forcing the issue" but I have to agree that it is detrimental to ALL computer users, let alone to users of proprietary software.
To be honest - I think it's a childish behavior.
Re:Stupid... (Score:2, Insightful)
Damn you people are lame.
Re:Stupid... (Score:1, Insightful)
outlook users are NOT trying to "fuck things up".
the intent is VERY different
Did anyone actually read the article? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Way to win over users (Score:2, Insightful)
It's kind of like when I was younger and liked to skate. My best friend was a hardcore bmx freestyler. We used to drive to skateparks (before they closed them all, before they started opening them again) all the time. He rode his bike, I rode my board. No big deal. I didn't try to get him to ride a board, and he didn't try to get me to ride a bike.
We can learn stuff from each other, but there are enough skateboarders around now, it won't hurt if there aren't more.
I'm lucky enough to have a lot of freedom at work and have laughed at these guys many times when virus' come through, first one, then another, like dominoes. Sure I feel superior to them and their Outlook. So what?
If people don't get it, fuck 'em. If they want in, welcome with open arms.
In short, I TOTALLY support what this guy is doing. Freedom is great, and as I said in another post, I'm having a lot of fun laughing at you idiots who can't tell the difference between a monopoly imposing their will on the masses and a single user promoting, militantly, his beliefs.
Re:Silly and Immature (Score:2, Insightful)
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: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.
I wanna! (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sick of receiving emails from people I know at my company that use outlook... and they are full of some meta-data syntax for meet scheduling and so forth... the responsibility always seems to be mine to figure out what they contain. Now I can do the same thing back to them!
Sad tho, the net is supposed to be about interoperability. first a fence goes up, then another...
Retardation (Score:1, Insightful)
There are three stages of microsoft bashing: funny, serious, and retarded. This guy should join the special olympics.
I don't get it, what mailing list is he running that is so important that we have to give a shit?
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: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:Hmm seems to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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.
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: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: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!
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: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)
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.)
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
Re:I Can Understand Why He Did It (Score:2, Insightful)
Two wrongs do not make a right (Score:2, Insightful)
First off, two wrongs do not make a right. If you think it is wrong to be shut out because you don't use Windows, then it is certainly hypocritical to turn around and do the same thing back.
Secondly, this is even worse than those aforementioned cases because it is fully intentional. *Most* of the time non-MS clients are not shut out intentionally, but simply because of uninformed users or capabilities lacking in the software. For example, I think most people would not have a problem sending docs in RTF if they didn't use any special features of Word and they knew some people couldn't read
In this case, it is the worst of all possible scenarios: hypocritical, intentional, by a user that knows better, and not due to any lacking capabilities in the software. Deliberately targeting bugs when it is easily avoidable is no better than being a script kiddy.
This guy should get bent.
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.
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:Use his power for good, not evil (or less good: (Score:2, Insightful)
"Use anything except outlook" allows the use of 99% of the email clients out there, disallowing only one.
"use a program that can read word docs" is the opposite, that requires you use one (or one of a handfull) of particular document readers while disallowing the other 99%. A more appropriate statement would be "use any document reader except staroffice". Which would be perfectly reasonable if you felt staroffice had some ridiculous bugs.
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: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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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: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:Elitists? Look in your own mirror! (Score:2, Insightful)
No, the elistist part is purposely exploiting the bug to exclude certain users.
Re:The best way to convert people from Microsoft.. (Score:1, Insightful)
That is not what happened in this case. Anyone (except Outlook users) can read the messages, not just Linux users. How many platforms are out there? Maybe a couple dozen? How many email clients are out there, maybe a few hundred? And all of them except one can read the email. And the one that can't, isn't locked out due to someone thinking they don't have enough marketshare to be worthwhile. They are locked out due to a defect of their own.
If there were a situation where the roles were reversed (e.g. a FreeBSD email program couldn't read a standard message for some reason) the bug would simply get fixed and it wouldn't be an issue. But Outlook users are slaves and don't get bugfixes, because they make self-defeating choices. So they get laughed at. I don't normally laugh when someone gets shot, but I do when they shoot themselves while showing off.
Re:Hmm seems to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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: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: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.
You guys all missed the boat. (Score:2, Insightful)
Note that you can run any other e-mail reader you choose, and you'll be able to see these e-mails. You can even run a proprietary OS like MacOS and still read these e-mails. Oh yeah, not to mention BeOS, palmOS, or OS/9 (not sure if there are really that many e-mail clients on OS/9 tho). This isn't really a linux only filter, it's a filter for e-mail readers that do not actually render e-mails correctly. It just so happens that MS is the only company/organization that has released an e-mail reader that doesn't adhere to the standard.
This is a bit of backlash against "Embrace and Extend". If MS could write software that worked correctly, there wouldn't be any problem.
SOME of the stuff done is aimed at disabling particular clients, like the WebTV stuff. Maybe that's not cool, but the rest of it is.
Things to think about. (Score:2, Insightful)
When Outlook Express doesn't display messages with horribly maliformed headers, it's "Funny Cause M$ Writes Peice of Shit Porgrams".
Furthermore, if someone uses Outlook Express, we should send them messages with maliformed headers so they can see how terribly wrong and immoral they've been. "Bad Microsoft Person! You're such a luser! You suck! Neener neener neener!"
Frankly, this is a feature, not a bug. If someone is petty enough to actually do that, I don't want to hear from them. Ever. I'm switching to Outlook Express.
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...
Re:Does nobody know about the free Office viewers? (Score:2, Insightful)
I also have VMWare, but this is for times when I don't have windows booted up and ready. :) And for Quicktime without sound skips. :)
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.
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.
so many idiots, so little time (Score:1, Insightful)
Let's review, shall we? Putting aside the fact that Outlook is a crock of poorly-written shit, these enraged jerk-offs seem to completely ignore the fact that the mailing list is - dare we say it? - private. Repeat that to yourselves, you outraged loons - priiiiivvaaaate. As in, the guy owns the show, he makes the rules, you either comply or take your marbles elsewhere.
Somehow, somewhere, some Windows-using twits have gotten the idea that if they're denied a private service then they have cause to bitch, complain, whine, and generally act like 9-year-olds whose parents say "no" to the candy bar in the store. To the casual observer it's both hilarious and annoying, as well as a bit mystifying - at what point did these yahoos decide that they have a god-given right to impose themselves anywhere they please? Or were these folks just born complete fuckwits with no sense of private property?
Well, guess what. In some places you just aren't wanted. That isn't arrogant, that isn't elitist, it's just the way things go. I have a website complete with forum that only allows users with a password access - does that mean I'm being elitist simply because I won't give you the password? If you think so, then don't be surprised if you look into the mirror and find the word "LOSER" tattooed on your forehead.
Of course, in this case the guy makes it painfully easy to get on to the mailing list, practically giving you a step-by-step on how to go about it with a minimum of effort. No where near as restrictive as I am with my own property - my website and my forum, to do with as I please.
His mailing list. To do with as *he* pleases. Same as you can, if you can master the basics of setting up one in the first place.
Like I said, if you don't like it take your marbles elsewhere. You don't have a right to demand entry, or worse - to demand entry on your terms. It ain't your property, it ain't a democracy, you don't have a vote nor do you deserve one.
Max
I never promised you compatibility (Score:2, Insightful)
Too bad folks. This is what comes from allowing the computing enviornment to become fragmented and non-standardized. Microsoft is not a standard-bearer (other than their flag), and has on many occasions BROKEN the standards that existed (vbscript instead of javascript for instance).
The simple fact of the matter is that Microsoft, IBM, Sun, etc, have set the sandard for competitive , evolutionary, cut throat tactics in the computing industry. These large corporations have repeatedly introduced non conforming, incompatible products to "gain market share". They employ marketing tactics to obfuscate the facts about their products and attempt to squash independent discovery and exposure of flaws and incompatibilities.
Well, where was the debate when I could not open my word 97 documents in WordPro or WordPerfect? Others here have mentioned the cross-browser problems. And there are still cross platform incompatibilites which have only STARTED to be addressed now that the internet is here.
Is it wrong to specifically deny access to an email to certain mail readers? Before I can answer that consider this. Is it wrong for Outlook to have features only other Outlook users can use? Your answer to both questions should be the same because the operation is the same! In either case there is data that is unreadable by an unsuitable client.
Our clever friend is not the first computing entity to make a non-compatible standard, and he will not be the last. Those of you who use outlook are as much to blame for this by supporting this behavior by the behemoths in the past. You have been warned in the past that MS products were not great, only adequate or less. You persevered in purchasing them anyway. In essence YOU SHOULD NOT BE SURPRISED THAT YOUR MS PRODUCTS DO NOT WORK TO SPEC. You've always liked it that way in the past, here you go. YOu should have been ready.
Stop crying in my beer.
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.
Re:Lord help us if those are our only two choices! (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps I should have said the fight between corporate America and the public domain is a fight for survival. That just seemed a little too precocious for my taste. Also, the survival is one sided. Corporate america ain't going nowhere.
As for "abuse of copyright power": This is just one more reason I think copyright needs to be revisited. Control over use of works and even control over price at point of sale is too much. It's a problem when the FSF wields it. It's a problem when Microsoft wields it. Much like the "One ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them." it's just too much power for anyone to actually use and stay pure. Extending the terms by 20 years every 20 years just multiplies the problem.
Lord help us if congress doesn't put it's foot down. (Assuming it still has one)