Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!smoke.cs.toronto.edu!rayan Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc From: rayan@cs.toronto.edu (Rayan Zachariassen) Subject: Re: Interesting header/error message Message-ID: <91May20.231953edt.1249@smoke.cs.toronto.edu> Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto References: <91May18.002007edt.1255@smoke.cs.toronto.edu> <1991May19.195406.25511@oar.net> Date: 21 May 91 04:00:22 GMT Lines: 66 Eliot, # Would ZMailer reconstruct the To: line by placing some bogus address? No, the replacement address is exactly the corresponding envelope address in all its gloryness. If that too is bad, an earlier stage of processing has already detected and rejected the message or compensated for the bogosity, depending on the situation. # <> can be replaced with an alias to an address linked to /dev/null, ... Yes, however that means the code *requires* cooperation from the mail administrator (to, say, put an appropriate nobody alias in place). This is not something I'd do without very very good reasons, since the required cooperation is guaranteed to cause confusion and problems. I think it is bad enough that the various error messages needed by the code are kept in external files, though in that case cleanliness won out. As usual it comes down to (personal) priorities and philosophy. Karl, Reminds me of my reaction when someone in passing told me "Oh, Henry got his Sun", and the image that came and stuck to my mind was a little baby with a Deep Authoritative Voice. Sigh. You can't know what it is like to be surrounded by anti-matter... there is a vocal minimalist contingent at UofT, notably Geoff, Henry, Mark Bartelt, and occasionally Norman Wilson. You know the old story about never discussing politics or religion with friends? Well, header hacking comes in heavy in those categories... I think we all think it is a vile (tm Collyer) thing but they seem to feel it is very rarely necessary whereas my experience convinces me it is a necessary evil. Then there was the time when I had made some changes to rmail... I introduced a bug which caused messages longer than the stdio buffer size to lose their second stdio buffer block. I didn't realize there really was a bug until I got a message IN SCREAMING UPPERCASE, from Henry, complaining about his mail getting mangled. It turns out that of all the UUCP mail coming through the new rmail, mail from utzoo!henry was the only stuff running into a problem. You see, Henry's messages are usually > BUFSIZ long. I don't think Henry is quite convinced yet that I wasn't purposely and personally targeting him (I wasn't Henry, *honest*!). Still makes me blush. We've since thought of some interesting variations on this scheme: Henry-filters in the news system. We could give him a signature of *our* choice for a change... rayan -- Spencerisms: The first line always seems to make | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology a funny combination when read aloud. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry This has been a test message of the | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology constant broadcast system. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry Anyone for a Usenix contest about | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology signature quotes? | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry This could go on forever, but a certain | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology daemon is going to get very grouchy. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ;-))