From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Jul 05 2004 - 18:32:05 CDT
In <87zn6itcu5.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu> Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:
>Charles Lindsey <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk> writes:
>> Anyway, for anything bad to happen, two things are required:
>I think you're confused about the problem that we're worrying about. All
>that's required for something bad to happen is for a user to write a
>Subject that begins with "cmsg" without intending it to be a control
>message. The article will then mysteriously disappear on servers that
>consider that to be a control message.
But how likely is it that a user who does not understand the significance
of 'cmsg' will just "happen" to write a Subject which starts with "cmsg"
and is followed by a valid cancel message for a genuine article. Not as
unlikely as all those monkeys in the British Museum producing the
complete works of Shakespeare, but unlikely nevertheless.
No, I think you can safely asume that any "cmsg" article that turned up
containing a valid control message was written by someone who intended
just that.
The real question is the cost/benefit analysis. Is it worth including an
exceedingly messy restriction in the Subject-header (which some 'broken'
implementations already do, and which has already caused confusion to at
least one poster) in view of the miniscule benefit obtained in the case
of an event which is exceedingly rare?
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5