On Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:03:24 -0500, Roger Turk wrote:
> Sam Heywood wrote:
>>> At my end, I retrieved Glenn's message with both of the above files
> represented by ikons. By clicking on either one of them, they would
> display as normal text files.
> I remember back a couple of years ago I used Arachne to send a JPG image
> file as an attachment to an email message having my brother and my two
> sisters named as multiple recipients. One of my sisters uses a Mac, the
> other uses a Windows 95 machine. They received the attachment represented
> as an ikon, and they clicked on it, and voil , the image was displayed. My
> brother has also a Windows 95 machine, but he uses an email program that is
> different from that used by my sister. He received the attachment as
> though it were an encoded appended file. No ikon.
> Here is another interesting observation about attachments and another DOS
> email program:
> I can send a UUENCODED binary file with NetTamer. If the recipient has
> a Windows CE device, or if he has Windows 95, then he will receive the
> file represented as an ikon, and he can open it simply by clicking on it.
> I don't know what would happen if I were to use NetTamer to send a
> UUENCODED file to an Arachne user. It would be an interesting
> experiment. In using NetTamer to send binary files, the outgoing message
> always appears as an appended encoded file. No ikon. Somewhere along the
> transmission and retrieval process the file becomes represented as an ikon.
> It is all a great mystery to me how this all happens, but somehow the system
> does work.<<
> Sam,
> I have sent UUencoded files as attachments to people and they arrived as
> separate messages, still encoded. I made sure that the extension was .UUE so
> that they could be identified as UUencoded files by the recipients e-mail
> program. I also tried sending base64 encoded files (with extension .B64)
> with the same results. Typically, the recipients didn't have the foggiest
> idea of what to do with them.
Yes, I have had the same experience. They want to be able to click on
an ikon and instantly find the fulfillment of their wishes. If you try
to explain to them how easy it is to simply go to the MS-DOS prompt and
simply enter the command UUDECODE followed by a space and the name of the
file to be decoded, you will be shunned as some kind of a nerd and a geek.
In this new age of virri infested emails, it is much safer to send and to
receive attachments as appended UUENCODED files, because a UUENCODED file
sent in this manner, is in reality only an ascii text file. There is no
way, AFAIK, that a virus can be transmitted in this way until after the
recipient has first UUDECODED it, and then, after having decoded it, he
loads the file to be "run". A windozer can easily make the mistake of
running a program simply by clicking on an ikon. Sorry for them. The
careless way windozers transmit file attachments around to each other can
be compared to the way an improperly trained person will show off a
firearm to a friend by simply handing it over to him and neglecting to
first perform the common-sense safety procedure of physically
demonstrating to his friend that the weapon is unloaded and placed on safe.
If his friend were savvy and knowledgeable, he should not even want to take
a look at it until after this has been done.
<snip>
Sam Heywood
-- This mail was written by user of Arachne, the Ultimate Internet Client
