Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!aurora!eos!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl
From: karl@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: More BITNET stupidity
Message-ID: <7385@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 29 Feb 88 03:34:15 GMT
References: <7136@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu< <1619@tulum.UUCP> <1615@uoregon.UUCP>
Organization: OSU
Lines: 41
In-reply-to: dboyes@uoregon.UUCP's message of 28 Feb 88 00:14:29 GMT


dboyes@uoregon.UUCP writes:
   I sent the following letter to Karl a few days ago.

Interestingly enough, I haven't received a copy of David's note via
mail; this is the first I've seen of it.  So I'm successfully getting
automated replies to mail (which I don't want), and I'm not getting
hand-mailed replies (which I need rather a bit more).

   These messages are
   legitimate and are caused by the software DOING THE RIGHT THING.

No, it's not.  I, as a random user at a random site writing mail to a
random mailing list, should never see any sort of internal weirdness
of anyone else's network.  If it's true that the automated message
originated from something I posted to comp.emacs (entirely possible,
as I show up there reasonably often), then that is explicitly a
broadcast medium and I don't want to hear what goes on in the
propagation of it across the countryside.  Not ever.

(And as an aside, my note was not "lots of whining," as claimed.  I
merely posted that I had gotten a strange note which I could not
correlate with anything I'd written, couldn't get any direct help when
I went through the standard procedure for asking for help, and hence
posted here looking for network wisdom.  I can't think of a better
approach to the problem.  I'm open to new suggestions, though.)

   *flame on*
   To those of you who think our software is brain-damaged, AT LEAST IT
   TRIES TO BE IMPOSTER-PROOF.

*flames doused*
You have no hope whatever of making the system imposter-proof so long
as you maintain connections with networks that openly and freely
acknowledge that they are not secure, including but not limited to
UUCP and the Internet.

Jeesh, I wasn't trying to spawn a "my network is better than your
network" flame-fest.  I just wanted to know where the weird mail came
from.

Karl