From: Kai Henningsen (kaih@khms.westfalen.de)
Date: Sun Mar 11 2001 - 13:44:00 CST
chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk (Charles Lindsey) wrote on 05.03.01 in <G9q3Ds.DK1@clw.cs.man.ac.uk>:
> In <86snkw1dh2.fsf@animal.interhack.net> Matt Curtin
> <cmcurtin@interhack.net> writes:
>
>
> >>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
>
> > Charles> Many have argued that "spam", massively crossposted or
> > Charles> multiposted articles
>
> >Isn't spam specifically massively multiposted? I thought we were more
> >pedantic than to include massively crossposted articles under that
> >definition. (It's an annoyance, for sure, but one cancel will kill
> >it, and even remotely modern user agents will not show the article
> >once it's been seen...)
>
> The consensus seems to be that corssposting also counts as spam, but the
> square root as much as multiposting (Bredbart index, and all that).
That is a consensus I am definitely not aware of. Massively crossposted
stuff is sometimes called "velveeta"; calling it spam tends to get
corrections at least in news.*.
Please completely take out crosspostings from that part. They do not
belong there.
> >This is all true and highly applicable right now, but I would prefer
> >to see this generalized. The reason is that the direction of HTML is
> >_away_ from such things as APPLET, IMG and similar cruft, toward a
> >generalized OBJECT. I think it sufficient to say
>
> Hmm! I'll believe that when I see it. I guess the dreaded Java[script] is
> going to be hanging around the web for quite a few years to come :-( .
He's talking about syntax. OBJECT does all of these things, plus ActiveX
and whatever crap people come up with next; but at least it has a halfway
sane syntax and you don't get a new variant for any new stuff.
> >Having said all of that, I'm also hesitant to go so far as to say that
> >executable code us unlikely to have a valid application in Netnews. I
I'd go so far and make that "extremely unlikely". I can think of no good
reason to have such code; anything I can think of is a giant gaping
security hole, *and* I can think of a better solution for every such case,
even ignoring "just don't do that" which will often be right.
Well, except for the case of wanting to attack someone's computer.
MfG Kai