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At 01:04 PM 8/31/2003, Robert Walsh wrote:
I've no idea what winmail.dat is,

It's the Microsoft version of a SIG, only it's a binary attachment.

but signature.asc is there for your
protection - it's a pgp signature so you can tell whether the email
was
modified in flight or sent by somebody other than the person who
claimed
to send it.  In my mailer (Evolution), it appears as an icon that
indicates whether the signature matches the email and sender.  This is
an Internet standard as documented in rfc2015 (you can read it at this
URL: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2015.txt)  It surprises me that Eudora
can't handle it, since the standard has been around since 1996 or so.

I use PGP, but it signs IN the message (I'll sign this message to
illustrate).

Asking that no attachments be sent at all seems like an extreme answer
to the virus problem.  Sort of an "OK - we give up" solution: nobody
wins.  It certainly won't help solve all virus problems (many viruses
propagate by other means such as Windows/Linux/whatever
vulnerabilities)
and definitely won't solve the problem of people getting viruses from
other mailing lists or personal emails.  These sources can have just
as
much an impact on a mailing list or personal email account as
mail-based
viruses.

Not really extreme, there is rarely a time (I can't think of any) that
an attachment should be sent to everybody on a list.  I don't know how
many people are here, but I'm on other lists with 1000 or more people.
 If you have a file to share, you put it someplace and give a URL (as
in, the Rocket Ranch article is here:
http://interstellar.com/photos/Rocket_Ranch_Article.pdf ).  For anyone
without their own server, many places offer free space if you allow
their advertisements on your web page.  Of course, if all you're doing
is storing files there, nobody will ever see the advertisements.

Anyway, what is allowed is up to the particular list, I was voicing an
opinion.  Lists that I manage do not allow attachments (never have,
going back many years) and I recommend plain text messages so everyone
can read them.

- ----------
Jerry Durand
Durand Interstellar, Inc.
219 Oak Wood Way
Los Gatos, California 95032-2523  USA
tel:  +1 408 356-3886
fax:  +1 408 356-4659
web:  www.interstellar.com

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