Let me see if I can't address your comments by citing two examples
that I've come across in the last 24 hours. I wasn't looking for these --
in fact, I've spent most of the last 24 hours asleep as my body fights
off the flu/cold/blech that I seem to have.
Example #1: The Demoroniser: correct moronic and gratuitously incompatible
Microsoft HTML. Read about it (and weep) at:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/
Example #2: Microsoft Exchange. The following conversational thread
has been taking place on the Spam-L mailing list...
Author #1:
I have some questions about how MS exchange screws with headers
and forwards mail. [...]
HOWEVER, I noticed that the relay was MS Exchange. Does it not
add Date: From: and Message-ID:'s? I noticed that it was
exchange 5.5 which I thought was the better version. I also
noticed that it looked like it was going through some kind of
firewall / SMTP proxy at XXXXXXXX.com that didn't really
identify itself. It looks like the Received lines are not
forged as the timestamps on the other message are updated for
all Received headers. [...]
Why the HELL is MS creating such crappy email server software?
RFC822 section A.3.1 states that the minimum required headers
are Date: and From:. Why doesn't it add or require them?
Author #2:
Why does it decide that a From:<[ip.address]> is malformed, or that
postmaster@[local.ip] is unauthorised relaying?
Author #3:
Microsoft doesnt read|care about|comply with RFCs. Their
resolvers will allow any old character in a Cannonical name,
they have added Win(95|98|NT) specific URLs (eg: RES://), and
well, they just suck IMO.
This sort of thing happens just about every day. So I don't really bother
keeping track of all of the ways that Microsoft's products ignore real
and de facto standards because (a) I do not use or support Microsoft
products and (b) there's really no need for me to keep a list on hand
because fresh evidence arrives on a daily basis. This is sad, but no
longer surprising.
As to the scalability/portability comments that I made: the cheapest
way to solve many problems is to throw hardware at them. (Hardware is
now ridiculously cheap, and a lot of great software is free, while
programmer time is still hideously expensive.) But if your software
isn't portable to other architectures, especially those that scale,
you don't have this option available, and you may have to do it the
hard (and expensive) way.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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