Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewsu!mark
From: mark@cbnewsu.att.com (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: AT&T replies
Summary: cbnews is not broken
Keywords: cbnews
Message-ID: <1990Aug30.183437.11916@cbnewsu.att.com>
Date: 30 Aug 90 18:34:37 GMT
References: <1990Aug19.205508.16479@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> <1255@mtunq.ATT.COM> <7801@gollum.twg.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 50

In article <7801@gollum.twg.com>, david@twg.com (David S. Herron) writes:
> Listen..  by putting out e-mail headers with addresses like that
> you are claiming to be able to handle mail addressed like so.
> ergo-cum-quid cbnews.att.com is *BROKEN*
> 
> Saying that doing something unintuitive and specific-to-att.com is
> a very bad way to handle the situation.  Mr. Lesher described the
> normal way in which people try to reply to mail.  What he tried
> doing is the way it is supposed to work.  This is why I say that
> cbnews.att.com is *BROKEN*.

If you reply to this article, I wager to say the reply will get through.
cbnews has to deal with 200,000 AT&T employees in a company that is
reorganizing at an amazing rate.  It's inevitable that a few users
are going to have some problems.  The system as a whole is not broken,
anymore than TWG would be broken if you suddenly left (and your account
were deleted) or moved and then I tried to reply to something you posted
right before you left.

We have determined that the error rate recently went beyond our
acceptable standards of quality and identified the cause.  We have a
fix designed and expect to install the fix next week after appropriate
testing.

> If the header were to read "From: alex.g.bell@att.com" then
> it would work.

Excellent idea, but it runs into trouble for all the John Smith's
or David Jones in a 200,000 person company.  We're looking into
solutions for this, but we aren't there yet.

> >(It's impossible to look up information in the
> >directory and have the result sent outside of AT&T; that's both a
> >security and a privacy feature.)  The middle name or initial is
> >optional.
> 
> I'm curious.. assumably your directory will eventually be
> attached to an X.500 server.  One of the features which will
> likely be in X.400 user-agents is a hook into X.500 directories
> so that if you don't know specific details about somebody
> you can go querying around to get them so you can fill in
> attributes in the X.400 headers.
> 
> With the sort of policy you claim AT&T has, how will this work?

Simple.  We will deliver mail, and even help fill out the form for
a specific user.  What we don't do is let you browse the directory
to accumulate a list of employees.

	Mark