Re: Please set your line wrap to a sane value (was ... Re: Is there any gmane.org user in the list?)
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 07:30:14AM -0600, Dale A. Raby wrote: > > Not all of us are IT professionals. Some of us are blacksmiths, gun > salesmen, truck drivers, and even ecdysiasts. Please don't group "IT professionals." and standards/ettiquette/netiquette as one. > "No exceptions"? Really? I seem to get quite a bit of HTML formatted > email from friends, family, and business associates. Also, some of the > lists I subscribe to come in HTML. And that's fine¹. But on a mailing list it is a terrible way to try and get support. ¹ Well, OK it isn't, but have you tried nailing jelly to a tree? -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X
Re: Please set your line wrap to a sane value (was ... Re: Is there any gmane.org user in the list?)
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 02:33:56PM +0200, Nikola Petrov wrote: > > The fact that I don't know how the engine of my car works doesn't make > me a newbie. That's what abstractions in our world are for. Umm, in the "car world" yes you'd be a newbie. Don't consider it a derogatory term. We are all newbies somewhere. -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X
Re: HTML-only e-mail (WAS [the near-endless line-length thread])
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 06:27:35AM -0600, Jim Graham wrote: > Changing the subject so this (hopefully) doesn't restart the endless > thread. > > On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 06:27:42AM -0500, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 06:44:35PM -0600, Jim Graham wrote: > > > If you keep track, you'll probably find, as I have, that HTML-only > > > e-mail is between 99% to 100% spam. > > > > HTML email is sent exclusively by three groups of people: > > > > 1. Ignorant newbies > > 2. Ineducable morons > > 3. Spammers > > Actually, based on what I've seen, only #3 in that list is correct > for around 99% of it. Not true. I once worked for a company where one of the managers took delight in sending emails that looked like circus posters. It boils down to a self centered a**hole who is saying "Look at me. See what I can do" .snip. -- Bob Holtzman If you think you're getting free lunch, check the price of the beer. Key ID: 8D549279 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Please set your line wrap to a sane value (was ... Re: Is there any gmane.org user in the list?)
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 07:30:14AM -0600, Dale A. Raby wrote: > Ignorant newbies may at some point become the Michael Elkins of the > future. They may. And that would be an entirely good thing, for them and for all of us. But that doesn't preclude the fact that they're ignorant newbies *today*. With precious few exceptions, all of us were. > If you can't figure out a better method of dealing with spam than to > filter out HTML messages, perhaps there is another "ignorant newbie" you > neglected to consider. Actually, I have far better methods. And I not only use them, but I've written them up so that others can too, if they wish. But the statement stands: statistically speaking, blocking-on-HTML-only is not a bad anti-spam technique in most environments. It's certainly far better than many of the others that are commonly used or discussed. > I appologize ahead of time for this rant, but you see, I know what a DOS > window is and I guess I'm getting ornery in my old age. No apology necessary, before or after. ---rsk
Re: email has changed, you won't change everyone, and you don't have to
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 11:59:55AM -0600, David Young wrote: > One reason email software is not more useful is that because too many > smart people wage a losing war on the new, foreign ways of email instead > of programming filters that transform top-posted, red, 5000-column > emails to the style of email that they want to read. That's just sad. What you do not grasp -- and this is not surprising, many people do not grasp this -- is that there is a direct causal relationship between proper netiquette and the usefulness of email. Let me give you one example, and then suggest, as part of further study, that you look at the basics of netiquette (such as: never top-posting, indenting/attributing quotes properly, and so on) that you consider how each of those has a similar backing rationale -- a rationale which made sense once upon a time, and still makes sense today. Let's consider full-quoting. *Why* does it matter? Decades ago, when it was first recognized that full-quoting was a terrible idea, part of that recognition stemmed from the scarcity and expense of bandwidth and storage. While some of us were lucky enough to have "fast" circuits thanks to ARPAnet connections, many others were sending email over UUCP which in turn was carried over 300/1200 baud dialup connections which in turn incurred long-distance call charges proportionate to the volume of traffic. It was recognized, by thoughful, considerate people who valued email as a communications medium for all, not just the lucky few, that the simple courtesy of trimming excess quoted material -- a few seconds' work for any minimally-competent user -- could and would save money and time not only for many recipients, but for those handling the email in transit (neither senders nor recipients) who were generously contributing some of their scarce resources to facilitate communication. It was clearly the courteous thing to do, which is why those who failed to do it were frequently chastised for their discourtesy. Fast-forward to today. And while the underlying technologies have changed, the virtue of frugality hasn't. Because there are still people who are on relatively low-bandwidth/high-cost connections, and there are still people generously contributing their resources to facilitate third-party email communication. Moreover, and this is something that wasn't a concern all those years ago, email is now quite often a conduit for abuse and attacks (e.g., spam, phish, malware) so there are, as I presume everyone knows, numerous resources deployed to scrutinize email messages for those -- and in the case of many, resources used are proportional to message size. [1] Consider also -- in the case of mailing lists -- the archives. Both their size and their suitability for search indexing are adversely affected by excessive and incorrect quoting. [2] Consider also the situation of those who are, unfortunately, saddled with email storage quotas. [3] Consider also...ah, but by now, the thoughtful reader will already be enumerating his/her own list of instances where excessive quoting has a direct, if small, impact on the usefulness of email as a communications medium. In other words, all these years later, bandwidth and storage and human time *still* matter. In different ways, of course, but not everyone is so lucky as to have mail accounts without quotas, terabytes of backing storage, plenty of free/cheap bandwidth, and lots of free time. Those who do should always be mindful of those who don't. Now there will be people who will observe that the aggregate cost of all this may be tiny. And that the inconvenience to users they will never meet (that is: by wasting their valuable personal and professional time by forcing them to scroll through excess quoted material over and and over and over again) is of no concern. Perhaps in some cases the cost IS tiny. But the aggregate total over all email messages is enormous. Exercise for the reader: go through the last month's traffic on *this* list. Trim out all the excess quoted material. Compare size to original. Calculate difference in bandwidth charges for someone reading their email on a mobile device connected to a service which charges by-the-byte. [4] And as to the inconvenience to users they will never meet, there is no way to truly quantify that. Nor is there any way to compel senders to take it into consideration -- except to appeal to their basic human decency, and ask that they THINK about the many recipients of their messages...and put their situations, needs, resources, time ahead of their own. The few seconds that it takes any competent email user to trim quoted material is a small thing compared to the large amount of aggregate time spent by recipients scrolling through it...again. And again. And again. We call that consideration "courtesy". And being courteous to people you will never meet, for that matter, people whose existence you may never even be aware of (because they
Re: Please set your line wrap to a sane value (was ... Re: Is there any gmane.org user in the list?)
* Dale A. Raby [12-10-12 08:33]: ... > I appologize ahead of time for this rant, but you see, I know what a DOS > window is and I guess I'm getting ornery in my old age. or cp/m and audio tape storage. and *ignorance* |= stupid but lacking in knowledge and perhaps *only* of a particular subject. Which means we are all ignorant but that does not mean we are stupid, understanding that my wife may disagree with anything I say. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.orgPhoto Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member Registered Linux User #207535@ http://linuxcounter.net
Re: Please set your line wrap to a sane value (was ... Re: Is there any gmane.org user in the list?)
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 02:33:56PM +0200, Nikola Petrov wrote: > What about clients that you are doing support for? That's so easy to handle, I'm surprised to see it asked (at least, if you're using procmail). You create two (or more) rc files for procmail. For example, I have a setup that looks something like this: ~/.procmailrc .procmail/whitelist .procmail/definitely_spam .procmail/possibly_spam Rules in the main .procmailrc are simple things like making sure the "From " line isn't remoeved, etc., and then calling the other files (using INCLUDERC). Note that the whitelist is called first. Any e-mail that falls through the whitelist is then subject to spam filters, starting with definitely_spam and then moving on to probably_spam (the way they're listed above represents the order in which they're INCLUDERC'd in ~/.procmailrc). If you're not using procmail, you're on your own, at least as far as my being able to help. Later, --jim -- THE SCORE: ME: 2 CANCER: 0 73 DE N5IAL (/4) | "This 'telephone' has too many spooky1...@gmail.com | shortcomings to be seriously considered < Running Mac OS X Lion > | as a means of communication. The device ICBM / Hurricane: | is inherently of no value to us." 30.44406N 86.59909W| (Western Union internal memo, 1876)
Re: Please set your line wrap to a sane value (was ... Re: Is there any gmane.org user in the list?)
Now just a cotton picking minute... > HTML email is sent exclusively by three groups of people: > > 1. Ignorant newbies > 2. Ineducable morons > 3. Spammers > > There are no exceptions. It thus, to Jim's point, an excellent > anti-spam/anti-stupidity technique to refuse all such traffic > at the MTA. > > ---rsk Ignorant newbies may at some point become the Michael Elkins of the future. Back in the day when I was an "ignorant newbie", I came to this list for help. I got a little help and plenty of "ignorant newbie" attitude. We could do with a little less of that attitude in all endeavors and a little more "hand holding". Not all of us are IT professionals. Some of us are blacksmiths, gun salesmen, truck drivers, and even ecdysiasts. "No exceptions"? Really? I seem to get quite a bit of HTML formatted email from friends, family, and business associates. Also, some of the lists I subscribe to come in HTML. If you can't figure out a better method of dealing with spam than to filter out HTML messages, perhaps there is another "ignorant newbie" you neglected to consider. I appologize ahead of time for this rant, but you see, I know what a DOS window is and I guess I'm getting ornery in my old age. Dale the Ornery Old Goat -- "Think nobody intercepts email? Think again! Gnu Privacy Guard. Not just for spies." pgpf2qYxBnATZ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Please set your line wrap to a sane value (was ... Re: Is there any gmane.org user in the list?)
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 06:27:42AM -0500, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 06:44:35PM -0600, Jim Graham wrote: > > If you keep track, you'll probably find, as I have, that HTML-only > > e-mail is between 99% to 100% spam. > > HTML email is sent exclusively by three groups of people: > > 1. Ignorant newbies > 2. Ineducable morons > 3. Spammers > > There are no exceptions. It thus, to Jim's point, an excellent > anti-spam/anti-stupidity technique to refuse all such traffic > at the MTA. > What about clients that you are doing support for? In the end of the day I will have to provide value for my clients instead of whining because they are using html in their emails. Most of the time they don't even know that they are doing something stupid. The same way some people don't know how the water is coming to their homes. The fact that I don't know how the engine of my car works doesn't make me a newbie. That's what abstractions in our world are for. -- Nikola
Re: HTML-only e-mail (WAS [the near-endless line-length thread])
Changing the subject so this (hopefully) doesn't restart the endless thread. On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 06:27:42AM -0500, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 06:44:35PM -0600, Jim Graham wrote: > > If you keep track, you'll probably find, as I have, that HTML-only > > e-mail is between 99% to 100% spam. > > HTML email is sent exclusively by three groups of people: > > 1. Ignorant newbies > 2. Ineducable morons > 3. Spammers Actually, based on what I've seen, only #3 in that list is correct for around 99% of it. > There are no exceptions. It thus, to Jim's point, an excellent > anti-spam/anti-stupidity technique to refuse all such traffic > at the MTA. Note, however, that A) I said HTML-only, not HTML. I get legitimate (non-spam) e-mail in multipart/alternative e-mail (and I also get crap in that format, where it starts with some BS nonsense like "Your e-mail client is not capable of reading this e-mail" and then it doesn't include anything else. Granted, I COULD, if I wanted to, just switch over to the HTML side, but I have an easier solutionit starts with procmail (as the MDA) and /dev/null. I used to take the time to send a message stating how multipart/alternative is supposed to work, but nobody who sends it with crap like that in the text side cares. So /dev/null won Later, --jim -- THE SCORE: ME: 2 CANCER: 0 73 DE N5IAL (/4)MiSTie #49997 < Running Mac OS X Lion > spooky1...@gmail.com ICBM/Hurricane: 30.44406N 86.59909W "'Wrong' is one of those concepts that depends on witnesses." --Catbert: Evil Director of Human Resources (Dilbert, 05Nov09)
Re: Please set your line wrap to a sane value (was ... Re: Is there any gmane.org user in the list?)
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 06:44:35PM -0600, Jim Graham wrote: > If you keep track, you'll probably find, as I have, that HTML-only > e-mail is between 99% to 100% spam. HTML email is sent exclusively by three groups of people: 1. Ignorant newbies 2. Ineducable morons 3. Spammers There are no exceptions. It thus, to Jim's point, an excellent anti-spam/anti-stupidity technique to refuse all such traffic at the MTA. ---rsk
