Educating HP employees on the nettiquette

[JF Mezei]

OK, sorry to be blunt, but it seems that any HP employees in the VMS group
need some education on nettiquette. I have , and continue to be surprised to
see people who appear to be fairly well experienced and fairly senior make
such mistakes when it comes to using the internet for emails.

Would it be possible to sensitize all VMS-related employees to follow some
simple rules when sending emails:


1- NEVER EVER quote the entire contents of a message at the bottom, especially
if that message contained huge attachements sent to help debug a problem. We
don't all run 64 CPU marvels and opening up that email in decw mail takes a
lot of time.

2- The standard nettiquette is to quote at the top and post your message
below. This motivates the person to cut unnecessary text and just keep it to a
minimum. When they put the quote at the bottom, they don't realise how big a
boatload of text they are unnecessarily appending and don't bother cutting it.

3-If they refuse to top post, why not configure their mail client to not
bother including the original text ? I could never see the point of including
contents of previous messages at the bottom of a message.

4-Why is it so difficult for people to configure their mail clients NOT to
send HTML ? There are some that insisi on sending 2 copies, one in text and
the other in HTML, but becasue of the multipart nature, even the enxt gets
somewhat encoded.

Why is it so difficult for people whom we have a lot of respect for (VMS
engineers) to know the above concepts ?


Sorry for the rant, but it is always a big pain to receive such messages and
having to go through hoops to read them.

I think that VMS engineers should be forced to send a copy of each message
they send from their wintel crap box to their VMS mailbox. Maybe they'd learn
why nettiquette rules were written to begin with.

Hint: you're not supporting wintel customers, you're supporting VMS customers.
Microsoft may wish to ignore nettiquette, but the rest of the world still
abides by it.

[edo]

Post by JF Mezei
OK, sorry to be blunt, but it seems that any HP employees in the VMS group
need some education on nettiquette.

ROTFLMFAO!!!!!

Does anyone else see the incredible irony of JF Mezei lecturing people on
*netiquette*???

The gall.....

==============================
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

About

J F M E Z E I
==============================

1. Who is JF Mezei?

Jean-Francois Mezei is the worst netkook and megatroll to have ever hit
rec.travel.air and various other usenet newsgroups. He is also one of the
longest running trolls in usenet history.

2. How long has he been trolling?

For well over a decade.

3. Where does he live?

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Jean-Francois Mezei
86 Harwood Gate
Beaconsfield, QC H9W3A3
[phone]

His current e-mail address is ***@istop.com .

4. What makes him such a malicious troll?

His trolling is constant, repetitious, relentless. Once he invades your
newsgroup he will stay for decades, troll around the clock, day in and day out,
every day of the year, for years and years on end. He does not listen to pleas
to stop, he does not listen to anything anyone tells him, he does not pay
attention when the misinformation/disinformation he posts is corrected, he just
goes right on trolling year in, year out like a little child holding his ears
closed while yelling "I can't hear you, I can't hear anything you say!"

5. What does he troll about?

His favorite subjects are USA-bashing and anything to do with sex. He hates the
USA and Americans and will hijack any thread and turn it into a USA-bashing
fest. If he can't do that then he'll just start making lewd posts.

6. What does he hate about the USA?

Everything! He is part of a larger group of Canadian trolls who have a visceral
hatred of the USA, motivated by envy mostly. The USA is a happier, better, more
successful version of their country and they can't stand it. Some of JF's
favorite troll bait is "the Bush regime", "the Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz axis of
evil", "Americans are brainwashed", "Cars are evil", "SUVs are evil", "all
Americans are stupid" etc.

7. What about his sexual trolling?

Ah, that is JF at his trolling best. No sexual topic is too bizarre. Among his
favorites are child sexuality, masturbation, women's genitalia, sex toys,
circumcision, the sex lives of Americans (of course) ... the list is endless.

8. Circumcision???

Yes, JF trolled the circumcision newsgroups for years. He still likes to insert
circumcision into his trolling every now and then. Apparently, JF was
traumatized as a child because his parents, poor Hungarian immigrants to Canada,
left him uncircumcised when he was born, as is the custom in most of the world.
Growing up in Canada where male infant circumcision was prevalent at the time,
he was psychologically scarred (so he claims). As soon as he could he arranged
to get himself snipped, and then joined the brigades of circumcision
proselytizers in the newsgroups advocating the joys of a free willy. His main
argument is how much better he was able to masturbate after getting circumcised
without that "pesky foreskin" getting in the way of his enjoyment, and he has
made it his mission in life to spread the circumcision gospel.

9. What's his interest in child sexuality? That sounds kind of freaky.

Well, everything having to do with Mezei *is* freaky. Among the subjects dear
to his heart are the genitals of little boys and girls, especially little boy's
foreskins (and how tight they are) and little girls' hymens. He is also a
tireless activist and advocate that children should be taught to masturbate
early on so that they don't grow up "sexually repressed like Americans".

He also counsels all parents of boys that they constantly check their little
boys' penises and foreskins frequently to ensure a good fit, proper movement,
and that they be able to masturbate with no problems. Utopia for JF would be a
world full of parents manipulating their little boys' penises.

10. Ewww! This guy is sounding more and more disgusting by the minute! Are
you sure about all this stuff?

Yes, you can check the google archives for yourself. There's over a decade full
of Mezei trolling in there.

11. How can I find all that out, doesn't he change aliases all the time like
all trolls do?

Of course! See the appendix below for a list of many of his known trolling
aliases.

12. So where does this guy get so much time to troll, doesn't he work?

Ha ha ha! JF hasn't worked a day in his life! He's an adult baby, a grown man
who still lives at home with mommy and sleeps all day and trolls the newsgroups
all night. In his free time when he isn't trolling he likes to ride his bike
down to Dorval Airport and race the planes down the runway in his bike.

13. That seems strange, is he mentally ill or something?

Bingo! JF is a boy in a grown man's body. Psychologically he never got past
the age of 13 and got stuck in a world of bathroom humor (i.e. "pull my
finger!") and locker room antics that he has never been able to outgrow.

14. Speaking of locker rooms, I heard he has a sexual fetish about them, is
that true?

Yes! JF goes to the gym not to work out but to watch men in the locker room.
He loves to post about the male sexual organs he has seen in locker rooms over
the years, especially his unnatural obsession with foreskins. He stalks the men
in locker rooms trying to measure how much foreskin they have, or how little is
left if they have been circumcised. He gets extremely excited when he spots a
case of phimosis.

15. Oh my Gawd, this guy is nuts! He should be locked up in an insane asylum!

Yep, JF is certifiably insane. He lives in a black helicopter / tin foil hat
world where others are out to get him. The key to understanding JF is that he
sees himself as a VICTIM. To JF the world is out to get him, especially the
USA. Victimhood is what JF is all about.

What seems to have sent him over the edge was when the Canadian rail system was
"killed", in his words. He used to be a major train nut, spotting trains,
writing down their numbers and chasing them down at the train yard like a good
freak. Then he turned his attention to aviation. Major events that made him
fall head first deep into the abyss were the bankruptcy of Canadian Airlines and
their subsequent takeover by Air Canada (whom he sees as evil). So paranoid is
he that when an Air Canada plane crashed he claimed that Air Canada employees
went lurking about in the night with buckets of white paint to cover up the Air
Canada markings. He saw that as symbolic of a cover up of the crash
investigation. He has never recovered from this.

16. Where else does he hang out, I want to avoid him!

His main haunt on usenet is comp.os.vms, a newsgroup dedicated to some ancient,
arcane, obsolete piece of vax crapware that nobody has taken seriously for
decades. JF hangs out there with other misfits and social dropouts who share
his psychological traumas, crying for the good old vax days of yore. It's
really pathetic!

17. Where else does he hang out?

can.internet.highspeed, alt.cellular.fido, and a few other geeky computer
groups. For a while after the Shuttle Columbia disaster he invaded the
sci.space groups, sci.space.shuttle in particular, and trolled it relentlessly
with the anti-American, conspiracy theory crap he's so famous for. But they ran
him off that group and he had to go crawling back to comp.os.vms with his tail
between his legs, licking his wounds.

18. It sounds like comp.os.vms is the only group he respects and doesn't troll.

Pretty much. For a megatroll like JF it's impossible not to troll, so he slips
in troll bait every now and then, but by and large he respects comp.os.vms, and,
more importantly, he tries to hide his trolling activities from them so they
won't find out what a major netkook he is.

19. Wow, sounds like he should be exposed so they will know what kind of psycho
he is!

Exactly. Feel free to post all his trolls to comp.os.vms. And while you're at
it post them to can.internet.highspeed and alt.cellular.fido too. And to
alt.usenet.kooks, a group for the likes of JF, and news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.

20. What else can I do? Is there an abuse address?

Yes, you should send complaints along with copies of his troll posts to:

***@sympatico.ca
***@bellglobal.com
***@istop.com

And feel free to distribute this FAQ freely. Post it to newsgroups, email it to
people, you may host it at your own website, send it to newspapers and magazines
that do Internet articles or anything to do with Montreal or Canada, etc.


*** APPENDIX ***

List of some of the many trolling aliases used by Mezei over the years. This is
only a partial list, he has so many it's impossible to compile a full list.

***@istop.com
***@istop.com
***@videotron.ca
***@vl.videotron.ca
***@videotron.ca
"jfmezei"@videotron.ca[nospam]

nobody <***@nobody.com>
nobody <***@nobody.net>
nobody <***@nobody.org>
nobody <***@nobody.info>
nobody <***@nobody.int>
nobody <***@nothing.nil>
nobody <***@null.dev>
muklak <***@eskimo.net>
Sheep skin <***@station.au>
snowy squirrel <***@nest.tree>
Conspiracy Theory <***@theory.org>
Lou Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Flapping Labias <***@anatomy.org>
Throbbing vulva <***@anatomy.org>
Twin Gonads <***@gonads.com>
Loose Scrotum <***@anatomy.org>
Raised Organ <***@anatomy.org>
Popped Cherry <***@anatomy.org>
Monica Lewinski <***@westchester.com>
Deep Fried Foreskin <***@mcdonalds.com>
Aroma of Smegma <***@chanel.org>
Wet fart <***@smell.org>
Pubic dandruff <***@anatomy.org>
Voluptuous Nipple <***@anatomy.org>
Inserted Finger <***@anatomy.org>
Pubic Nair <***@anatomy.org>
Flatulent Meatus <***@anatomy.org>
Lihk Mhygroin <***@anatomy.org>
Pre Khum <***@anatomy.org>
Phi Mosis <***@anatomy.org>
Bal Anatis <***@anatomy.org>
Fren Ullum <***@anatomy.org>
Ivanna Getlaid <***@onani.org>
Ivanna Wankalot <***@onani.org>
Ivanna Umpalot <***@drevil.com>
Wan Tnoneofit <***@weirdnames.org>
Wan Itbad <***@inneed.org>
Wan Towank <***@anatomy.org>
Wan Tolik <***@anatomy.org>
Testos Terone <***@anatomy.org>
Upper Gonad <***@anatomy.org>
Right Gonad <***@anatomy.org>
Left Gonad <***@anatomy.org>
Tyson's Glands <***@anatomy.org>
Nose Hair <***@anatomy.org>
Coronal Sulcus <***@anatomy.org>
Corpus Cavernus <***@anatomy.org>
Armpit moisture <***@anatomy.org>
Onani Room <***@hotels.com>
Arnie's Banana <***@terminator.com>
Raised eyebrows <***@anatomy.org>
Vas Deferens <***@anatomy.org>
Naked Canuck <***@naturists.org>
Arni's socks <***@arnold.org>
Notable Exception <***@untied.com>
Unpopped Cherry <***@anatomy.org>
Tatooed Ovaries <***@anatomy.org>
Pierced eyelid <***@piercings.org>
Limp Tomato <***@vegetables.org>
Eggplant Earrings <***@piercings.org>
Banana Underpants <***@hillfiger.org>
Naval Lint <***@lint.mil>
Ingrown Toenail <***@anatomy.org>
Empty Stomach <***@anatomy.org>
Full Stomach <***@anatomy.org>
Smelly Cat <***@friends.nbc.com>
Torn Ligament <***@anatomy.org>
Art Tistic <***@modern.museum>
Furry Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Wet Racoon <***@wildnerness.org>
Mad Racoon <***@wildlife.org>
Lazy Racoon <***@wilderness.org>
Eaten Racoon <***@mcdonalds.com>
Happy Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Sleeping Racoon <***@wilderness.org>
Hungry Racoon <***@wilderness.org>
Horny Raccoon <***@fauna.org>
Smart Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
George W Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Ronald McRaccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Thirsty Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Johnny Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Oshi Santo <***@nx01.starfleet.org>
Oishi Chinko <***@nx01.starfleet.org>
T.Yellow <***@nowhere.com>
Q <***@continuum.net>
Borg Queen <***@borg.org>
Ronald Wilkerson <***@sympatico.ca>
John Balterman <***@sympatico.ca>

*DISTRIBUTE FREELY* *DISTRIBUTE FREELY* *DISTRIBUTE FREELY*

[Alan Frisbie]

Post by JF Mezei
OK, sorry to be blunt, but it seems that any HP employees in the VMS group
need some education on nettiquette. I have , and continue to be surprised to
see people who appear to be fairly well experienced and fairly senior make
such mistakes when it comes to using the internet for emails.
Would it be possible to sensitize all VMS-related employees to follow some

I'm afraid it is a lost cause. I have tried to educate them, not
only about the things you mention, but about sending Microsoft Word
documents, spreadsheets, and other attachments that cannot be read
on VMS systems. It's not that they don't know what they are doing,
they actively don't *want* to change. They claim that there are
only one or two people using VMS mail, so we are not worth the effort.
It's our fault that we are not running Windows.

Alan

[h***@aracnet.com]

Post by Alan Frisbie
on VMS systems. It's not that they don't know what they are doing,
they actively don't *want* to change. They claim that there are
only one or two people using VMS mail, so we are not worth the effort.
It's our fault that we are not running Windows.

<sigh> Idiots! One of the main uses of my VMS system is email. I use the
tty VMS Mail client daily, and the DECwindows client occasionally.

There is no way in H*** I'm doing email on Windows if I don't have to.
Unfortuantly at work I'm forced to use Outlook occasionally, and only
because people insist on sending Word attachments and the like.

Zane

[Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr]

Post by h***@aracnet.com

Post by Alan Frisbie
on VMS systems. It's not that they don't know what they are doing,
they actively don't *want* to change. They claim that there are
only one or two people using VMS mail, so we are not worth the effort.
It's our fault that we are not running Windows.

<sigh> Idiots! One of the main uses of my VMS system is email. I use the
tty VMS Mail client daily, and the DECwindows client occasionally.
There is no way in H*** I'm doing email on Windows if I don't have to.
Unfortuantly at work I'm forced to use Outlook occasionally, and only
because people insist on sending Word attachments and the like.

yahMAIL is often helpful for that kind of thing, if you have a webserver on
your VMS box.

-- Alan

[V***@SendSpamHere.ORG]

Post by JF Mezei
OK, sorry to be blunt, but it seems that any HP employees in the VMS group
need some education on nettiquette. I have , and continue to be surprised to
see people who appear to be fairly well experienced and fairly senior make
such mistakes when it comes to using the internet for emails.
Would it be possible to sensitize all VMS-related employees to follow some

Not when upper mgt forces them ti use Willywarez, JF.

Post by JF Mezei
4-Why is it so difficult for people to configure their mail clients NOT to
send HTML ? There are some that insisi on sending 2 copies, one in text and
the other in HTML, but becasue of the multipart nature, even the enxt gets
somewhat encoded.

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO CONFIGURE EMAIL CLIENTS TO SEND TEXT AS TEXT.
I can't stand quoted-printable shit in my emailbox.


While we're on it, send me a link to a document/image/file/kit/etc. DO NOT
ATTACH IT!
--
http://www.legacy-2000.com for the *best* OpenVMS system security
solutions that others only claim to be.

[JF Mezei]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
Not when upper mgt forces them ti use Willywarez, JF.

But surely one can configure even billyware to abide by internet standards
???? I know it can be done. How come VMS engineers aren't smart enough to
disable all the billyware options to make their emails internet compliant ?????

I am now einstein and I know not to include the whole contents of a post. And
if I was confronted with a mail client which automatically included the whole
contents, I would consciously delete all unnecessary stuff and post below it.
(and then go to the preferences and find a way to disable all the nasty
microsoft add-ons).


There is however an easy way to convince someone of the dangers of HTML
emails: send an html email that contains a <img src= to some porn web site
with a truly disgusting image. When the recipient opens the oemail, he'll have
no choice but to view this thing. And no virus scanning will have complained
because the html itself didn't contain any bad stuff.

Then, if they don't catch the dangers, you send HTML emails that contain
javascript and then you up the ante and send nasty java stuff.

[Paul Sture]

Post by JF Mezei
4-Why is it so difficult for people to configure their mail clients NOT to
send HTML ? There are some that insisi on sending 2 copies, one in text and
the other in HTML, but becasue of the multipart nature, even the enxt gets
somewhat encoded.

Some corporate environments have their PCs locked down so that you can't
change settings. It's a pain but true.

And then Exchange can muck things up too. Since we moved to that a year
or
two ago, I could never send a url to a VMS system without it getting
munged.

And there's another problem with Outlook. Last year I was regularly
exchanging
mails with an Outlook user at another company. Mine were of course
always
sent in text, but after 2 or 3 replies to each other, Outlook at one end
or
the other would decide it wanted to do bottom quoting, and wouldn't let
me rearrange it as I wished.

The _only_ workaround I found for that was to copy/paste the entire text
into
Notepad, then back into a _new_ email.

[R. D. Davis]

Post by Paul Sture

Post by JF Mezei
4-Why is it so difficult for people to configure their mail clients NOT to
send HTML ? There are some that insisi on sending 2 copies, one in text and

[...]

Post by Paul Sture
Some corporate environments have their PCs locked down so that you can't
change settings. It's a pain but true.

That's no excuse. They can always take a laptop computer in to the
office running a VAX emulator, e.g. SIMH, under Linux or FreeBSD,
running VMS, and swap some cables around, even if it means resorting
to using wire-cutters and a crimping tool, etc., if things are so
"locked down" that the cabling is glued to the PeeCees. Even if they
don't have VMS on their laptops, they can at least do what they want
with them, configuring to send reasonable e-mail, thumbing their noses
at being told to use those Dilbertized corporate PCs.

For some information about the aforementioned emulator:

http://www.wherry.com/gadgets/retrocomputing/vax-simh.html

Just because management says to do something their way doesn't mean
that one has to to it the way they're expecting one to do it. No
point in trying to please the upper management droids, since one will
get outsourced whether or not one is a wimpy backside kissing ninny
who's afraid to break or bend workplace rules as necessary. Why not
at least have some fun in the workplace before the jobs get sent off
to China, India, Outer Mongolia, etc. with G. Weaselboy Shrub's
blessing?

[John Smith]

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by Paul Sture

Post by JF Mezei
4-Why is it so difficult for people to configure their mail clients
NOT to send HTML ? There are some that insisi on sending 2 copies,
one in text and

[...]

Post by Paul Sture
Some corporate environments have their PCs locked down so that you
can't change settings. It's a pain but true.

That's no excuse. They can always take a laptop computer in to the
office running a VAX emulator, e.g. SIMH, under Linux or FreeBSD,
running VMS, and swap some cables around, even if it means resorting
to using wire-cutters and a crimping tool, etc., if things are so
"locked down" that the cabling is glued to the PeeCees. Even if they
don't have VMS on their laptops, they can at least do what they want
with them, configuring to send reasonable e-mail, thumbing their noses
at being told to use those Dilbertized corporate PCs.
http://www.wherry.com/gadgets/retrocomputing/vax-simh.html
Just because management says to do something their way doesn't mean
that one has to to it the way they're expecting one to do it. No
point in trying to please the upper management droids, since one will
get outsourced whether or not one is a wimpy backside kissing ninny
who's afraid to break or bend workplace rules as necessary. Why not
at least have some fun in the workplace before the jobs get sent off
to China, India, Outer Mongolia, etc. with G. Weaselboy Shrub's
blessing?

Doing what you suggest is, in some shops, a firing offence.

[R. D. Davis]

Post by John Smith
Doing what you suggest is, in some shops, a firing offence.

Well, who in their right mind can work in such miserable restrictive
places, that are so opposed to creativity, anyway? Besides, most of
those places in the US are going to end up outsourcing their employees
anyway, so why make things any easier for the SOBs before they
outsource your jobs?

[John Smith]

In article

Post by John Smith
Doing what you suggest is, in some shops, a firing offence.

Well, who in their right mind can work in such miserable restrictive
places, that are so opposed to creativity, anyway? Besides, most of
those places in the US are going to end up outsourcing their employees
anyway, so why make things any easier for the SOBs before they
outsource your jobs?

You might not get a severance payment if they can your ass 'for cause'.

[leslie]

John Smith (***@nonymous.com) wrote:
: R. D. Davis wrote:
: > In article
: > <E0p%b.71064$***@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>, "John
: > Smith" <***@nonymous.com> writes:
: >>
: >> Doing what you suggest is, in some shops, a firing offence.
: >
: > Well, who in their right mind can work in such miserable restrictive
: > places, that are so opposed to creativity, anyway? Besides, most of
: > those places in the US are going to end up outsourcing their employees
: > anyway, so why make things any easier for the SOBs before they
: > outsource your jobs?
:
: You might not get a severance payment if they can your ass 'for cause'.
:
No, they'll force the employee to train the foreign replacement in order
to collect severance pay, which is known as "knowledge transfer".

--Jerry Leslie
Note: ***@jrlvax.houston.rr.com is invalid for email

[R. D. Davis]

Post by leslie
No, they'll force the employee to train the foreign replacement in order
to collect severance pay, which is known as "knowledge transfer".

Heh, in such cases, it's imperative that one trains the foreign
replacent in the most appropriate manner possible, including teaching
the foreign replacement some nonsense words, inappropriate manners and
offensive "customs"... like, "in this company, one sticks out one's
tongue, makes a raspberry sound, rolls one's eyes and flaps one's arms
when entering the personnel department for the first time", or your
supervisor's nickname is "idjit boy", or "the receptionist will do you
special favors if you reach out and fondle her when you walk past."

And... teach them things like: "every fortnight, that's every two
weeks, it's imperative that you log into the SYSTEM account and
dismount all of the disks at 10:15AM, but only after you run a very
special program named "klunk". If it runs successfully, you'll notice
a lot of disk activity and hear a lot of commotion in the accounting
department, but don't worry about that, they always get a little
annoyed at routine system maintenance."

[R. D. Davis]

Post by John Smith
You might not get a severance payment if they can your ass 'for cause'.

It wouldn't be "for cause", since you were doing your work in the most
efficient manner possible with the company's best interests at heart.

[V***@SendSpamHere.ORG]

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by John Smith
You might not get a severance payment if they can your ass 'for cause'.

It wouldn't be "for cause", since you were doing your work in the most
efficient manner possible with the company's best interests at heart.

If you were working the cocksuckers in the NYC area, it doesn't matter.
Trump up some miserable lies and then rake 'em over the coals with some
vindictive abuse-of-process law(lie)suit. The *truth* simply does NOT
matter especially in a court of law where you'd have to go to challenge
said dismissal.

You seem to miss the fact that Joe Averageemployee cannot muster up the
money for the legal belhops necessary to counter any godless miscreant
employer hell bent on screwing your ass ten different ways from Sunday!

Been there!
--
http://www.legacy-2000.com for the *best* OpenVMS system security
solutions that others only claim to be.

[PhilThayer]

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by John Smith
You might not get a severance payment if they can your ass 'for cause'.

It wouldn't be "for cause", since you were doing your work in the most
efficient manner possible with the company's best interests at heart.

That is really a naive statement to make. Doing something that is
dicatated by Company Policy has nothing to do with the "best interest"
of the company at heart.

Doing things acording to company policy has EVERTHING to do with the
"best interest" of me getting a paycheck to support my family.
Whether I like it or not is beside the point. I work for my best
interest and not for the companies best interest. If my input happens
to help sway the company one way or another in making it's decisions
then that's great. But rocking the boat and falling out is not
something I enjoy. (Speaking from experience here.)

PT

[R. D. Davis]

Post by PhilThayer
Doing things acording to company policy has EVERTHING to do with the
"best interest" of me getting a paycheck to support my family.
Whether I like it or not is beside the point. I work for my best
interest and not for the companies best interest. If my input happens

Then it's also in your best interest to avoid having to work with
tools that are broken and annoying to use, like Windoze on a "locked
down" PC that one can't configure to one's liking. It's so refreshing
to nuke windoze and install something useful, like FreeBSD, on the
PC that one's employer puts on one's desk.

Post by PhilThayer
to help sway the company one way or another in making it's decisions
then that's great. But rocking the boat and falling out is not
something I enjoy. (Speaking from experience here.)

"Rocking the boat" does make sense if the policies and rules make no
sense---and many do not make sense in many companies. It does no one
any good to have to bother with following insipid policies and
procedures, particularly if they make your work more difficult to do.
If one can find a way to bend or break the rules, and doing so isn't
harming anyone, and it's to one's advantage, then, by all means one
should bend and break the rules to make life easier. If doing so
helps and doesn't hurt the company---or if it helps the company as
well as the individual as it may in many cases, then there would be no
"just cause" for firing someone for beaking or bending the rules that
serve only to patronize some egotistical pedantic dimwit who has
nothing better to do that sit around making up annoying policies and
procedures. Those mindlessly timid back-side kissing policy
followers, who are also likely to be the department tattle-tales,
afraid to make any waves, are their own worst enemies, and the enemies
of other thinking individuals as well.

[Paul Sture]

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by Paul Sture

Post by JF Mezei
4-Why is it so difficult for people to configure their mail clients NOT to
send HTML ? There are some that insisi on sending 2 copies, one in text and

[...]

Post by Paul Sture
Some corporate environments have their PCs locked down so that you can't
change settings. It's a pain but true.

That's no excuse. They can always take a laptop computer in to the
office running a VAX emulator, e.g. SIMH, under Linux or FreeBSD,
running VMS, and swap some cables around, even if it means resorting
to using wire-cutters and a crimping tool, etc., if things are so
"locked down" that the cabling is glued to the PeeCees. Even if they
don't have VMS on their laptops, they can at least do what they want
with them, configuring to send reasonable e-mail, thumbing their noses
at being told to use those Dilbertized corporate PCs.

Excuse me, but you are talking of somewhere which hasn't got a clue.

And no, swapping cables around is not the answer...

[R. D. Davis]

Post by Paul Sture
And no, swapping cables around is not the answer...

Perhaps you're right. One should just insert a FreeBSD CD-ROM into
the CD-ROM drive of the PC and begin the installation, deleting
Windoze partitions or just running fdisk on them. :-) :-) :-)

[Paul Sture]

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by Paul Sture
And no, swapping cables around is not the answer...

Perhaps you're right. One should just insert a FreeBSD CD-ROM into
the CD-ROM drive of the PC and begin the installation, deleting
Windoze partitions or just running fdisk on them. :-) :-) :-)

And then find that you can't run that timesheet program, which means you
don't get paid :-)

But your previous suggestion of connecting your own laptop would have
had you chucked out by security at any place I have worked in the last
10 or so years. At some places you could end up in jail too.

[R. D. Davis]

Post by Paul Sture
And then find that you can't run that timesheet program, which means you
don't get paid :-)

Hey, just write the hours down on a piece of paper and take that to
the payroll department. Seems simple enough to do.

Post by Paul Sture
But your previous suggestion of connecting your own laptop would have
had you chucked out by security at any place I have worked in the last
10 or so years. At some places you could end up in jail too.

That's weird. What kind of control freaks were you working for
anyway? Why would anyone want to work for such employers? Jail time
just for avoiding Micro$oft rubbish by using your own laptop seems
rather extreme, and a further perversion of that already strange
concept of "justice" that exists in the U.S., don't you think?

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by Paul Sture
And then find that you can't run that timesheet program, which means you
don't get paid :-)

Hey, just write the hours down on a piece of paper and take that to
the payroll department. Seems simple enough to do.

Post by Paul Sture
But your previous suggestion of connecting your own laptop would have
had you chucked out by security at any place I have worked in the last
10 or so years. At some places you could end up in jail too.

That's weird. What kind of control freaks were you working for
anyway? Why would anyone want to work for such employers? Jail time
just for avoiding Micro$oft rubbish by using your own laptop seems
rather extreme, and a further perversion of that already strange
concept of "justice" that exists in the U.S., don't you think?

Paul isn't in America.
He is in that paragon of freedom called Switzerland. :-)

bill

[JF Mezei]

Post by R. D. Davis
anyway? Why would anyone want to work for such employers? Jail time
just for avoiding Micro$oft rubbish by using your own laptop seems
rather extreme, and a further perversion of that already strange
concept of "justice" that exists in the U.S., don't you think?

Actually not in the USA because there are no real data privacy laws. But
eleswhere in the world, institutions such as banks are very very touchy on
allowing any activity that may result in private information being copied to a
laptop that can then be taken out of the bank premises without prior
authorisation and proper paperwork (non disclosure agreements etc etc)

I have seen "bank" laptops encrypted in such a way that you cannot install
your own software (eg: you can only run bank approved software). If you bring
your own laptop, there is no telling what software you have on and what
nefarious activities you coudl knowingly or unknmowingly be doing.

Jail, perhaps not. But immediate firing, probably. You don't mess around with
private information, unless you are a VP or higher at which point nobody has
the guts to tell you "you can't do that". That is why illegal information
exchanges between banks and questionable deals often occur at the highest
levels since they have much more freedom to operate and are not bogged down by
the strict restrictions that they apply to everyone below them.

[Paul Sture]

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by Paul Sture
And then find that you can't run that timesheet program, which means you
don't get paid :-)

Hey, just write the hours down on a piece of paper and take that to
the payroll department. Seems simple enough to do.

Doh! They've gone to the trouble to develop that application to save
paperwork, and they aren't going to make exceptions just because someone
feels like doing it another way.

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by Paul Sture
But your previous suggestion of connecting your own laptop would have
had you chucked out by security at any place I have worked in the last
10 or so years. At some places you could end up in jail too.

That's weird. What kind of control freaks were you working for
anyway? Why would anyone want to work for such employers? Jail time
just for avoiding Micro$oft rubbish by using your own laptop seems
rather extreme, and a further perversion of that already strange
concept of "justice" that exists in the U.S., don't you think?

Not control freaks at all, but:

o - Responsible companies who take Data Protection Acts seriously.

o - Companies who wish to protect trade secrets and intellectual
property.

o - Financial institutions who take security and client confidentiality
very seriously.

o - Government agencies and the like.

[PhilThayer]

The reason I don't mind seeing the entire text of a message is so that
I can remember the "conversation" that occurred. Not everyone is
young with good memories. So when someone references something that
was said previously in the "conversation" a person could go back and
look at what is referenced and see what was said and in what context
it was said in.

And when I look at some of the posts on newsgroups, I can understand
why some people would include the entire "conversation" in a message.
Take this one for example. It is really obvious from the
confversation that some people are extremely Windows centric and would
rather do everything on windows and forget the rest of the world.
They talk about how "Windows is great for email and outlook is the
best email reader."

At least that is what I remember of the conversation...

PT

[Paul Sture]

Post by PhilThayer
The reason I don't mind seeing the entire text of a message is so that
I can remember the "conversation" that occurred. Not everyone is
young with good memories.

Old(ish), but a good memory here.

So when someone references something that

Post by PhilThayer
was said previously in the "conversation" a person could go back and
look at what is referenced and see what was said and in what context
it was said in.
And when I look at some of the posts on newsgroups, I can understand
why some people would include the entire "conversation" in a message.
Take this one for example. It is really obvious from the
confversation that some people are extremely Windows centric and would
rather do everything on windows and forget the rest of the world.
They talk about how "Windows is great for email and outlook is the
best email reader."
At least that is what I remember of the conversation...

A brilliant sense of humour Sir/Madam/Ms (I forget which)

:-)

[Wayne Sewell]

X-Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Educating HP employees on the nettiquette
Date: 26 Feb 2004 05:50:23 GMT

Post by Alan Frisbie
on VMS systems. It's not that they don't know what they are doing,
they actively don't *want* to change. They claim that there are
only one or two people using VMS mail, so we are not worth the effort.
It's our fault that we are not running Windows.

<sigh> Idiots! One of the main uses of my VMS system is email. I use the
tty VMS Mail client daily, and the DECwindows client occasionally.
There is no way in H*** I'm doing email on Windows if I don't have to.
Unfortuantly at work I'm forced to use Outlook occasionally, and only
because people insist on sending Word attachments and the like.

The mime utility included starting with 7.3 works well enough to pull out
attachments when people insist on sending them. I find it most useful for
image files, which can be displayed directly on the vms system with xv or
mozilla. Admittedly, the fucking word documents have to then be ftped to a
billybox for viewing. Fortunately, I don't get many of those.

Wayne
===============================================================================
Wayne Sewell, Tachyon Software Consulting [phone] ***@tachysoft.com
http://www.tachysoft.com/www/tachyon.html and wayne.html
===============================================================================
Jed Clampett, checking into hotel: "This place got a cement pond?"
Ellie May: "And do yuh let critters in it?"

[R. D. Davis]

Post by Wayne Sewell
mozilla. Admittedly, the fucking word documents have to then be ftped to a
billybox for viewing. Fortunately, I don't get many of those.

Nah... just use a text editor to look at the .doc file and search for
recognizable text strings like "the" to get to where the text is in
the file. If it contains graphics, etc., then just ignore those and
tell the idiot who sent it to you to bring you a printed copy of it if
he or she wants you to see everything.

[Martin Vorlaender]

Post by Wayne Sewell
The mime utility included starting with 7.3 works well enough to pull
out attachments when people insist on sending them. I find it most
useful for image files, which can be displayed directly on the vms
system with xv or mozilla. Admittedly, the fucking word documents have
to then be ftped to a billybox for viewing. Fortunately, I don't get
many of those.

If it's just the text of the MS Word docs you're after (yes, some people
do write Word documents when simple ASCII would be enough :-( ), you can
extract it in most cases on VMS using antiword - see
http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/~huber/pds/antiword/antiword_vms.htm
Thanks, Sepp!

cu,
Martin

[Paul Sture]

Post by Martin Vorlaender

Post by Wayne Sewell
The mime utility included starting with 7.3 works well enough to pull
out attachments when people insist on sending them. I find it most
useful for image files, which can be displayed directly on the vms
system with xv or mozilla. Admittedly, the fucking word documents have
to then be ftped to a billybox for viewing. Fortunately, I don't get
many of those.

If it's just the text of the MS Word docs you're after (yes, some people
do write Word documents when simple ASCII would be enough :-( ), you can
extract it in most cases on VMS using antiword - see
http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/~huber/pds/antiword/antiword_vms.htm
Thanks, Sepp!

Correction to that url:

http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/~huber/pds/antiword/antiword_vms.html

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Post by h***@aracnet.com

Post by Alan Frisbie
on VMS systems. It's not that they don't know what they are doing,
they actively don't *want* to change. They claim that there are
only one or two people using VMS mail, so we are not worth the effort.
It's our fault that we are not running Windows.

<sigh> Idiots! One of the main uses of my VMS system is email. I use the
tty VMS Mail client daily, and the DECwindows client occasionally.

We are a media rich society and to expect people, be they inside or
outside your company, customer, or vendor base to stay with paper-tape,
teletypes, or punch cards because you don't feel e-mail should be
anything other than vanilla ASCII text, is a hopeless battle that will
only continue to frustrate yourself, and alienate everyone else
attempting to communicate with you.

Post by h***@aracnet.com
There is no way in H*** I'm doing email on Windows if I don't have to.

You don't have to run a client on Windows, you can use MAC, Linux, Unix,
hell, fire up an old copy of DEC Windows on a VS2000 or if you are
really bold, VWS and write your own GUI client, but rending MIME content
is beyond the ability of VMS Mail on a VT terminal, and MIME content in
e-mail is not going away...


Barry

[JF Mezei]

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
We are a media rich society and to expect people, be they inside or
outside your company, customer, or vendor base to stay with paper-tape,
teletypes, or punch cards because you don't feel e-mail should be
anything other than vanilla ASCII text, is a hopeless battle

When a kid gets a new toy, it will use it all the time. Then, as he matures,
he will use the toy only when he needs it.

Sending HTML emails adds absolutely nothing. "Kids" think it is way cool to
be able to send emails with text in blue, red, yellow, and have some huge or
very tiny letters and different fonts. But when they mature, they will realise
that this adds absolutely nothing to the contents.

Yes, there are times when you do need to include attachements which are in
various formats. But for the vast majority of times, a simple text-only
message more than suffices.

By default, people should be sending text only, and only use attachements and
richer text format when it is really necessary.

If Microsoft had followed that established nettiquette in its software
defaults, it wouldn't had suffered so many viri and worms. It is because
people are sending "rich" contents and MS's software treating it as plain text
(in terms of security) that there are so many problems costing industry
billions in lost productivity due to viri.

[rofl]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
We are a media rich society and to expect people, be they inside or
outside your company, customer, or vendor base to stay with paper-tape,
teletypes, or punch cards because you don't feel e-mail should be
anything other than vanilla ASCII text, is a hopeless battle

When a kid gets a new toy, it will use it all the time. Then, as he matures,
he will use the toy only when he needs it.

LOL! Kind of like you and usenet, except you haven't matured yet even though
you've been abusing your toy for over a decade.

==============================
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

About

J F M E Z E I
==============================

1. Who is JF Mezei?

Jean-Francois Mezei is the worst netkook and megatroll to have ever hit
rec.travel.air and various other usenet newsgroups. He is also one of the
longest running trolls in usenet history.

2. How long has he been trolling?

For well over a decade.

3. Where does he live?

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Jean-Francois Mezei
86 Harwood Gate
Beaconsfield, QC H9W3A3
[phone]

His current e-mail address is ***@istop.com

4. What makes him such a malicious troll?

His trolling is constant, repetitious, relentless. Once he invades your
newsgroup he will stay for decades, troll around the clock, day in and day out,
every day of the year, for years and years on end. He does not listen to pleas
to stop, he does not listen to anything anyone tells him, he does not pay
attention when the misinformation/disinformation he posts is corrected, he just
goes right on trolling year in, year out like a little child holding his ears
closed while yelling "I can't hear you, I can't hear anything you say!"

5. What does he troll about?

His favorite subjects are USA-bashing and anything to do with sex. He hates the
USA and Americans and will hijack any thread and turn it into a USA-bashing
fest. If he can't do that then he'll just start making lewd posts.

6. What does he hate about the USA?

Everything! He is part of a larger group of Canadian trolls who have a visceral
hatred of the USA, motivated by envy mostly. The USA is a happier, better, more
successful version of their country and they can't stand it. Some of JF's
favorite troll bait is "the Bush regime", "the Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz axis of
evil", "Americans are brainwashed", "Cars are evil", "SUVs are evil", "all
Americans are stupid" etc.

7. What about his sexual trolling?

Ah, that is JF at his trolling best. No sexual topic is too bizarre. Among his
favorites are child sexuality, masturbation, women's genitalia, sex toys,
circumcision, the sex lives of Americans (of course) ... the list is endless.

8. Circumcision???

Yes, JF trolled the circumcision newsgroups for years. He still likes to insert
circumcision into his trolling every now and then. Apparently, JF was
traumatized as a child because his parents, poor Hungarian immigrants to Canada,
left him uncircumcised when he was born, as is the custom in most of the world.
Growing up in Canada where male infant circumcision was prevalent at the time,
he was psychologically scarred (so he claims). As soon as he could he arranged
to get himself snipped, and then joined the brigades of circumcision
proselytizers in the newsgroups advocating the joys of a free willy. His main
argument is how much better he was able to masturbate after getting circumcised
without that "pesky foreskin" getting in the way of his enjoyment, and he has
made it his mission in life to spread the circumcision gospel.

9. What's his interest in child sexuality? That sounds kind of freaky.

Well, everything having to do with Mezei *is* freaky. Among the subjects dear
to his heart are the genitals of little boys and girls, especially little boy's
foreskins (and how tight they are) and little girls' hymens. He is also a
tireless activist and advocate that children should be taught to masturbate
early on so that they don't grow up "sexually repressed like Americans".

He also counsels all parents of boys that they constantly check their little
boys' penises and foreskins frequently to ensure a good fit, proper movement,
and that they be able to masturbate with no problems. Utopia for JF would be a
world full of parents manipulating their little boys' penises.

10. Ewww! This guy is sounding more and more disgusting by the minute! Are
you sure about all this stuff?

Yes, you can check the google archives for yourself. There's over a decade full
of Mezei trolling in there.

11. How can I find all that out, doesn't he change aliases all the time like
all trolls do?

Of course! See the appendix below for a list of many of his known trolling
aliases.

12. So where does this guy get so much time to troll, doesn't he work?

Ha ha ha! JF hasn't worked a day in his life! He's an adult baby, a grown man
who still lives at home with mommy and sleeps all day and trolls the newsgroups
all night. In his free time when he isn't trolling he likes to ride his bike
down to Dorval Airport and race the planes down the runway in his bike.

13. That seems strange, is he mentally ill or something?

Bingo! JF is a boy in a grown man's body. Psychologically he never got past
the age of 13 and got stuck in a world of bathroom humor (i.e. "pull my
finger!") and locker room antics that he has never been able to outgrow.

14. Speaking of locker rooms, I heard he has a sexual fetish about them, is
that true?

Yes! JF goes to the gym not to work out but to watch men in the locker room.
He loves to post about the male sexual organs he has seen in locker rooms over
the years, especially his unnatural obsession with foreskins. He stalks the men
in locker rooms trying to measure how much foreskin they have, or how little is
left if they have been circumcised. He gets extremely excited when he spots a
case of phimosis.

15. Oh my Gawd, this guy is nuts! He should be locked up in an insane asylum!

Yep, JF is certifiably insane. He lives in a black helicopter / tin foil hat
world where others are out to get him. The key to understanding JF is that he
sees himself as a VICTIM. To JF the world is out to get him, especially the
USA. Victimhood is what JF is all about.

What seems to have sent him over the edge was when the Canadian rail system was
"killed", in his words. He used to be a major train nut, spotting trains,
writing down their numbers and chasing them down at the train yard like a good
freak. Then he turned his attention to aviation. Major events that made him
fall head first deep into the abyss were the bankruptcy of Canadian Airlines and
their subsequent takeover by Air Canada (whom he sees as evil). So paranoid is
he that when an Air Canada plane crashed he claimed that Air Canada employees
went lurking about in the night with buckets of white paint to cover up the Air
Canada markings. He saw that as symbolic of a cover up of the crash
investigation. He has never recovered from this.

16. Where else does he hang out, I want to avoid him!

His main haunt on usenet is comp.os.vms, a newsgroup dedicated to some ancient,
arcane, obsolete piece of vax crapware that nobody has taken seriously for
decades. JF hangs out there with other misfits and social dropouts who share
his psychological traumas, crying for the good old vax days of yore. It's
really pathetic!

17. Where else does he hang out?

can.internet.highspeed, alt.cellular.fido, and a few other geeky computer
groups. For a while after the Shuttle Columbia disaster he invaded the
sci.space groups, sci.space.shuttle in particular, and trolled it relentlessly
with the anti-American, conspiracy theory crap he's so famous for. But they ran
him off that group and he had to go crawling back to comp.os.vms with his tail
between his legs, licking his wounds.

18. It sounds like comp.os.vms is the only group he respects and doesn't troll.

Pretty much. For a megatroll like JF it's impossible not to troll, so he slips
in troll bait every now and then, but by and large he respects comp.os.vms, and,
more importantly, he tries to hide his trolling activities from them so they
won't find out what a major netkook he is.

19. Wow, sounds like he should be exposed so they will know what kind of psycho
he is!

Exactly. Feel free to post all his trolls to comp.os.vms. And while you're at
it post them to can.internet.highspeed and alt.cellular.fido too. And to
alt.usenet.kooks, a group for the likes of JF, and news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.

20. What else can I do? Is there an abuse address?

Yes, you should send complaints along with copies of his troll posts to:

***@sympatico.ca
***@bellglobal.com
***@istop.com

And feel free to distribute this FAQ freely. Post it to newsgroups, email it to
people, you may host it at your own website, send it to newspapers and magazines
that do Internet articles or anything to do with Montreal or Canada, etc.


*** APPENDIX ***

List of some of the many trolling aliases used by Mezei over the years. This is
only a partial list, he has so many it's impossible to compile a full list.

***@istop.com
***@istop.com
***@videotron.ca
***@vl.videotron.ca
***@videotron.ca
"jfmezei"@videotron.ca[nospam]

nobody <***@nobody.com>
nobody <***@nobody.net>
nobody <***@nobody.org>
nobody <***@nobody.info>
nobody <***@nobody.int>
nobody <***@nothing.nil>
nobody <***@null.dev>
muklak <***@eskimo.net>
Sheep skin <***@station.au>
snowy squirrel <***@nest.tree>
Conspiracy Theory <***@theory.org>
Lou Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Flapping Labias <***@anatomy.org>
Throbbing vulva <***@anatomy.org>
Twin Gonads <***@gonads.com>
Loose Scrotum <***@anatomy.org>
Raised Organ <***@anatomy.org>
Popped Cherry <***@anatomy.org>
Monica Lewinski <***@westchester.com>
Deep Fried Foreskin <***@mcdonalds.com>
Aroma of Smegma <***@chanel.org>
Wet fart <***@smell.org>
Pubic dandruff <***@anatomy.org>
Voluptuous Nipple <***@anatomy.org>
Inserted Finger <***@anatomy.org>
Pubic Nair <***@anatomy.org>
Flatulent Meatus <***@anatomy.org>
Lihk Mhygroin <***@anatomy.org>
Pre Khum <***@anatomy.org>
Phi Mosis <***@anatomy.org>
Bal Anatis <***@anatomy.org>
Fren Ullum <***@anatomy.org>
Ivanna Getlaid <***@onani.org>
Ivanna Wankalot <***@onani.org>
Ivanna Umpalot <***@drevil.com>
Wan Tnoneofit <***@weirdnames.org>
Wan Itbad <***@inneed.org>
Wan Towank <***@anatomy.org>
Wan Tolik <***@anatomy.org>
Testos Terone <***@anatomy.org>
Upper Gonad <***@anatomy.org>
Right Gonad <***@anatomy.org>
Left Gonad <***@anatomy.org>
Tyson's Glands <***@anatomy.org>
Nose Hair <***@anatomy.org>
Coronal Sulcus <***@anatomy.org>
Corpus Cavernus <***@anatomy.org>
Armpit moisture <***@anatomy.org>
Onani Room <***@hotels.com>
Arnie's Banana <***@terminator.com>
Raised eyebrows <***@anatomy.org>
Vas Deferens <***@anatomy.org>
Naked Canuck <***@naturists.org>
Arni's socks <***@arnold.org>
Notable Exception <***@untied.com>
Unpopped Cherry <***@anatomy.org>
Tatooed Ovaries <***@anatomy.org>
Pierced eyelid <***@piercings.org>
Limp Tomato <***@vegetables.org>
Eggplant Earrings <***@piercings.org>
Banana Underpants <***@hillfiger.org>
Naval Lint <***@lint.mil>
Ingrown Toenail <***@anatomy.org>
Empty Stomach <***@anatomy.org>
Full Stomach <***@anatomy.org>
Smelly Cat <***@friends.nbc.com>
Torn Ligament <***@anatomy.org>
Art Tistic <***@modern.museum>
Furry Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Wet Racoon <***@wildnerness.org>
Mad Racoon <***@wildlife.org>
Lazy Racoon <***@wilderness.org>
Eaten Racoon <***@mcdonalds.com>
Happy Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Sleeping Racoon <***@wilderness.org>
Hungry Racoon <***@wilderness.org>
Horny Raccoon <***@fauna.org>
Smart Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
George W Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Ronald McRaccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Thirsty Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Johnny Raccoon <***@wilderness.org>
Oshi Santo <***@nx01.starfleet.org>
Oishi Chinko <***@nx01.starfleet.org>
T.Yellow <***@nowhere.com>
Q <***@continuum.net>
Borg Queen <***@borg.org>
Ronald Wilkerson <***@sympatico.ca>
John Balterman <***@sympatico.ca>

*DISTRIBUTE FREELY* *DISTRIBUTE FREELY* *DISTRIBUTE FREELY*



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This message was posted via one or more anonymous remailing services.
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is unverified.

[PhilThayer]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
We are a media rich society and to expect people, be they inside or
outside your company, customer, or vendor base to stay with paper-tape,
teletypes, or punch cards because you don't feel e-mail should be
anything other than vanilla ASCII text, is a hopeless battle

When a kid gets a new toy, it will use it all the time. Then, as he matures,
he will use the toy only when he needs it.
Sending HTML emails adds absolutely nothing. "Kids" think it is way cool to
be able to send emails with text in blue, red, yellow, and have some huge or
very tiny letters and different fonts. But when they mature, they will realise
that this adds absolutely nothing to the contents.
Yes, there are times when you do need to include attachements which are in
various formats. But for the vast majority of times, a simple text-only
message more than suffices.
By default, people should be sending text only, and only use attachements and
richer text format when it is really necessary.
If Microsoft had followed that established nettiquette in its software
defaults, it wouldn't had suffered so many viri and worms. It is because
people are sending "rich" contents and MS's software treating it as plain text
(in terms of security) that there are so many problems costing industry
billions in lost productivity due to viri.

Formatted email is valuable to many people. Whether the format is
HTML or a MS-Whatever attachment. Whether people want to believe it
or not MS is an industry leader in computers. I would bet that at a
minimum 75% of office systems are running on MS based platforms. So,
that means that 25% of the industry is using a non standard platform
for their office management environments. It't the anti-MS
hackeristas that cause the excessive viri and worms that are currently
hitting systems anc costing the industry billions in lost productivity
not to mention profits due to the purchasing of expensive Anti-Virus
software. How in the world can you blame Viri and Worms on a company
that is setting the industry standards.

PT

[V***@SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <***@posting.google.com>, ***@hotmail.com (PhilThayer)
a shill for Bill's Redmond Academy of Teenaged Software Neophytes Emitting Substandard Technology writes:
{...snip...}

Post by PhilThayer
Formatted email is valuable to many people. Whether the format is
HTML or a MS-Whatever attachment. Whether people want to believe it
or not MS is an industry leader in computers. I would bet that at a
minimum 75% of office systems are running on MS based platforms. So,
that means that 25% of the industry is using a non standard platform
for their office management environments. It't the anti-MS
hackeristas that cause the excessive viri and worms that are currently
hitting systems anc costing the industry billions in lost productivity
not to mention profits due to the purchasing of expensive Anti-Virus
software. How in the world can you blame Viri and Worms on a company
that is setting the industry standards.

Stupid! Lame! Anybody care to add more?

How much does Billy pay you to shill?
--
http://www.legacy-2000.com for the *best* OpenVMS system security
solutions that others only claim to be.

[David J. Dachtera]

[snip]
How in the world can you blame Viri and Worms on a company
that is setting the industry standards.

That's a self-answering question, no? Be careful: don't confuse de-facto
standards with industry standards.

True standards bodies don't arbitrate to suit the needs of a single
vendor. Standards bodies define standards based on input and feedback
from the industry. That's why they're called "Industry" standards: the
industry provides their definition. No single vendor dictates it.

By contrast, M$ dictates "standards" based on what's easiest to program
or what can suit their own needs, whether the industry truly needs it or
not. Marketeering can create a need as surely as the most creative
problem solver. The vendor who holds the preponderance of the market
(that is, they hold a monopoly) arbitrates choices then uses
marketeering to create the problem and touts their arbitrary choice as
the answer.

If these arbitrary choices by a single monopoly vendor are adopted
widely in the industry, they become "de-facto standards", not "industry
standards" since the industry had no say in their definition.

[R. D. Davis]

Post by PhilThayer
Formatted email is valuable to many people. Whether the format is
HTML or a MS-Whatever attachment. Whether people want to believe it
or not MS is an industry leader in computers. I would bet that at a

P.T. Barnum was an "industry leader" in extracting the money from
suckers' wallets/purses too. What's your point?

Post by PhilThayer
minimum 75% of office systems are running on MS based platforms. So,

That doesn't mean that everyone has to go along with that. If 75
percent of the people anywhere on the property of a nut farm are nuts,
are you saying that the other 25 percent should try to be nuts too?

Post by PhilThayer
that means that 25% of the industry is using a non standard platform
for their office management environments.

And your point is?

Post by PhilThayer
It't the anti-MS
hackeristas that cause the excessive viri and worms that are currently
hitting systems anc costing the industry billions in lost productivity

No, it's the M$-Windoze weenies and Micro$oft who are causing the problems.
If their systems weren't broken, the viruses wouldn't be such a problem.

Post by PhilThayer
not to mention profits due to the purchasing of expensive Anti-Virus
software. How in the world can you blame Viri and Worms on a company
that is setting the industry standards.

Setting industry standards? ROFL. If you're refering to Micro$oft,
surely you have an overactive imagination or are extremely gullible
Micro$oft breaks industry standards while _claiming_ to be setting
them, and people like you, unfortunately, appear to believe them. I
suggest that you, quickly, invoke emacs and run the "doctor"
program----it might help. Good luck! :-)

[Paul Sture]

<snip>

Post by PhilThayer
Formatted email is valuable to many people. Whether the format is
HTML or a MS-Whatever attachment. Whether people want to believe it
or not MS is an industry leader in computers. I would bet that at a
minimum 75% of office systems are running on MS based platforms. So,
that means that 25% of the industry is using a non standard platform
for their office management environments. It't the anti-MS
hackeristas that cause the excessive viri and worms that are currently
hitting systems anc costing the industry billions in lost productivity
not to mention profits due to the purchasing of expensive Anti-Virus
software. How in the world can you blame Viri and Worms on a company
that is setting the industry standards.

You have a fine sense of humour Sir.
:-)

[Paul Sture]

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by h***@aracnet.com

Post by Alan Frisbie
on VMS systems. It's not that they don't know what they are doing,
they actively don't *want* to change. They claim that there are
only one or two people using VMS mail, so we are not worth the effort.
It's our fault that we are not running Windows.

<sigh> Idiots! One of the main uses of my VMS system is email. I use the
tty VMS Mail client daily, and the DECwindows client occasionally.

We are a media rich society and to expect people, be they inside or
outside your company, customer, or vendor base to stay with paper-tape,
teletypes, or punch cards because you don't feel e-mail should be
anything other than vanilla ASCII text, is a hopeless battle that will
only continue to frustrate yourself, and alienate everyone else
attempting to communicate with you.

But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

[V***@SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <***@sture.homeip.net>, Paul Sture <***@sture.homeip.net> writes:
{...snip...}

Post by Paul Sture
But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Any email that is received here as Content-Type: */html is considered to be
fertilizer for the bit bucket.

I'd toss that rediculously stupid "quoted-printable" formatting (oh, to be
Freed of that idiocy ;) but that would mean I'd never hear from DEComHPaq
again. Why does PLAIN OLD TEXT need to be encoded?

Another nuisance in the email world is the inability to locate the carriage
return key. WTF? Are people are so tired from doing the Willywarez three-
finger salute umpteen times a day that it's too much effort to depress the
carriage return every 70-80 characters typed?

--
http://www.legacy-2000.com for the *best* OpenVMS system security
solutions that others only claim to be.

[Ken Fairfield]

VAXman- wrote:

[snip]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
Another nuisance in the email world is the inability to locate the carriage
return key. WTF? Are people are so tired from doing the Willywarez three-
finger salute umpteen times a day that it's too much effort to depress the
carriage return every 70-80 characters typed?

Micro$olth software actively _discourages_ uses of the <CR>,
sigh... In this case, it's hard to blame the users since the
software they run _tells_ them to avoid that key. When I receive
a plain-text e-mail which has been properly formatted with <CR>
by the author, OutHouse asks me if I want to "remove the unnecessary
line breaks?" (or similar; I don't have the exact text in front of
me...).

It causes me no end of grief that OutHouse and MS Worse,
etc., prevent me from saying where a line ends or how to format
a paragraph. I do my best, but the "casual user" of this stuff
not only doesn't know there's a problem, s/he will think we're
crazy and doing it all wrong: BillWarez told her/him so! As a
result, we get PhilThayers(tm).

-Ken

P.S. But Brian, you knew this already, right?

[Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr]

[snip]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
Another nuisance in the email world is the inability to locate the carriage
return key. WTF? Are people are so tired from doing the Willywarez three-
finger salute umpteen times a day that it's too much effort to depress the
carriage return every 70-80 characters typed?

Micro$olth software actively _discourages_ uses of the <CR>,
sigh... In this case, it's hard to blame the users since the
software they run _tells_ them to avoid that key. When I receive
a plain-text e-mail which has been properly formatted with <CR>
by the author, OutHouse asks me if I want to "remove the unnecessary
line breaks?" (or similar; I don't have the exact text in front of
me...).

Oh, indeed. I spent some time figuring out this problem, when I had
Datatrieve creating comma-delimited ASCII files for import to Excel.
They're mailed to the user who requested them, who reads them in Outlook,
and then cuts-and-pastes to put them in Excel. I got lots of complaints
about my crappy formatted files until I got the user to go through the
process while I was watching. Outlook in the SLAC-standard configuration
removed "unnecessary" line breaks BY DEFAULT; you had to click on a
particular icon to make it put them back.

(Helpful people reading this: Yes, I'm aware that I can use a Perl library
to create actual downloadable Excel spreadsheets, but learning how to do
that and redoing these existing queries in DBI-based SQL has a much longer
turnaround time than just doing some easy reformatting in Datatrieve, and
they always need these reports Right Now. I may end up redoing particular
reports using that approach, but I'm also working on getting the users to
use Crystal Reports or some other tool to generate their own ad hoc
reports.)

It causes me no end of grief that OutHouse and MS Worse,
etc., prevent me from saying where a line ends or how to format
a paragraph. I do my best, but the "casual user" of this stuff
not only doesn't know there's a problem, s/he will think we're
crazy and doing it all wrong: BillWarez told her/him so! As a
result, we get PhilThayers(tm).

What you said.

-- Alan

[V***@SendSpamHere.ORG]

[snip]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
Another nuisance in the email world is the inability to locate the carriage
return key. WTF? Are people are so tired from doing the Willywarez three-
finger salute umpteen times a day that it's too much effort to depress the
carriage return every 70-80 characters typed?

Micro$olth software actively _discourages_ uses of the <CR>,
sigh... In this case, it's hard to blame the users since the
software they run _tells_ them to avoid that key. When I receive
a plain-text e-mail which has been properly formatted with <CR>
by the author, OutHouse asks me if I want to "remove the unnecessary
line breaks?" (or similar; I don't have the exact text in front of
me...).
It causes me no end of grief that OutHouse and MS Worse,
etc., prevent me from saying where a line ends or how to format
a paragraph. I do my best, but the "casual user" of this stuff
not only doesn't know there's a problem, s/he will think we're
crazy and doing it all wrong: BillWarez told her/him so! As a
result, we get PhilThayers(tm).
-Ken
P.S. But Brian, you knew this already, right?

I thought so. PeeCees have keyboards with only three useful keys:
CTRL ALT and DELETE. To think that the CARRIAGE RETURN was useful
is pure silliness.

--
http://www.legacy-2000.com for the *best* OpenVMS system security
solutions that others only claim to be.

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Post by Paul Sture

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by h***@aracnet.com

Post by Alan Frisbie
on VMS systems. It's not that they don't know what they are doing,
they actively don't *want* to change. They claim that there are
only one or two people using VMS mail, so we are not worth the effort.
It's our fault that we are not running Windows.

<sigh> Idiots! One of the main uses of my VMS system is email. I use the
tty VMS Mail client daily, and the DECwindows client occasionally.

We are a media rich society and to expect people, be they inside or
outside your company, customer, or vendor base to stay with paper-tape,
teletypes, or punch cards because you don't feel e-mail should be
anything other than vanilla ASCII text, is a hopeless battle that will
only continue to frustrate yourself, and alienate everyone else
attempting to communicate with you.

But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Then that being the case, I would say that your anti-spam systems are
very infective and in our case, I would say the inverse is true and that
about 80% of our spam messages that do leak through, are text; Russian
seems very popular lately...

Barry

[Paul Sture]

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by Paul Sture

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by h***@aracnet.com

Post by Alan Frisbie
on VMS systems. It's not that they don't know what they are doing,
they actively don't *want* to change. They claim that there are
only one or two people using VMS mail, so we are not worth the effort.
It's our fault that we are not running Windows.

<sigh> Idiots! One of the main uses of my VMS system is email. I use the
tty VMS Mail client daily, and the DECwindows client occasionally.

We are a media rich society and to expect people, be they inside or
outside your company, customer, or vendor base to stay with paper-tape,
teletypes, or punch cards because you don't feel e-mail should be
anything other than vanilla ASCII text, is a hopeless battle that will
only continue to frustrate yourself, and alienate everyone else
attempting to communicate with you.

But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Then that being the case, I would say that your anti-spam systems are
very infective and in our case, I would say the inverse is true and that
about 80% of our spam messages that do leak through, are text; Russian
seems very popular lately...

Not so much ineffective as non-existant for the place I last worked at.

I suppose I've been lucky on the Russian front then :-)

[Paul Sture]

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by Paul Sture

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by h***@aracnet.com

Post by Alan Frisbie
on VMS systems. It's not that they don't know what they are doing,
they actively don't *want* to change. They claim that there are
only one or two people using VMS mail, so we are not worth the effort.
It's our fault that we are not running Windows.

<sigh> Idiots! One of the main uses of my VMS system is email. I use the
tty VMS Mail client daily, and the DECwindows client occasionally.

We are a media rich society and to expect people, be they inside or
outside your company, customer, or vendor base to stay with paper-tape,
teletypes, or punch cards because you don't feel e-mail should be
anything other than vanilla ASCII text, is a hopeless battle that will
only continue to frustrate yourself, and alienate everyone else
attempting to communicate with you.

But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Then that being the case, I would say that your anti-spam systems are
very infective and in our case, I would say the inverse is true and that
about 80% of our spam messages that do leak through, are text; Russian
seems very popular lately...

There was a discussion of spam on BBC World Service radio this morning.
In it they interviewed some woman from Tampa who claimed she only
spammed people who had opted in (yeh, I _really_ believed that one).

On one spam shot, 600,000 emails were sent out and got 65,000 "opens",
presumably measured by using HTML to reference back to a web site.
1500 click throughs apparently. Measuring view rates is important in
that line of work it seems, hence HTML.

[David J. Dachtera]

Post by Paul Sture

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by Paul Sture

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by h***@aracnet.com

Post by Alan Frisbie
on VMS systems. It's not that they don't know what they are doing,
they actively don't *want* to change. They claim that there are
only one or two people using VMS mail, so we are not worth the effort.
It's our fault that we are not running Windows.

<sigh> Idiots! One of the main uses of my VMS system is email. I use the
tty VMS Mail client daily, and the DECwindows client occasionally.

We are a media rich society and to expect people, be they inside or
outside your company, customer, or vendor base to stay with paper-tape,
teletypes, or punch cards because you don't feel e-mail should be
anything other than vanilla ASCII text, is a hopeless battle that will
only continue to frustrate yourself, and alienate everyone else
attempting to communicate with you.

But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Then that being the case, I would say that your anti-spam systems are
very infective and in our case, I would say the inverse is true and that
about 80% of our spam messages that do leak through, are text; Russian
seems very popular lately...

There was a discussion of spam on BBC World Service radio this morning.
In it they interviewed some woman from Tampa who claimed she only
spammed people who had opted in (yeh, I _really_ believed that one).
On one spam shot, 600,000 emails were sent out and got 65,000 "opens",
presumably measured by using HTML to reference back to a web site.
1500 click throughs apparently. Measuring view rates is important in
that line of work it seems, hence HTML.

Gotta be careful there, too. Where I work, the LookOut! preview pane is
a preferred view. The preview pane causes a "passive" "open" in that the
HTML is read, executed and rendered as if the user had voluntarily
"open"-ed the message.

IMHO, it reasonable to to believe that home users of LookOut! may prefer
that view, also. Thus, that measure may not as reliable as the spammers
would like to believe.

[Rudolf Wingert]

Hello,

Nettiquette is necessary for a secure emailing. I must be sure that all
Email from INFOVAX are plain text. Then I can read them without to be
afraid that there is a virus, which do activate itself by viewing. Why
must (!!!) you use other then plain text? The most one do use other in
case of every one is doing it. I use Outlook, but I have customized my
Email format as plain text.

Best regards Rudolf Wingert

P.S. This is an OpenVMS mailing list, and every one using OpenVMS should
be able to read the Email without any unreadable parts.

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
{...snip...}

Post by Paul Sture
But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Any email that is received here as Content-Type: */html is considered to be
fertilizer for the bit bucket.
I'd toss that rediculously stupid "quoted-printable" formatting (oh, to be
Freed of that idiocy ;) but that would mean I'd never hear from DEComHPaq
again. Why does PLAIN OLD TEXT need to be encoded?

Because the SMTP RFC is based on 7-bit text streams and if you include
anything odd like a British pound symbol, or the Euro, or any other
language punctuation that is not English based, those characters require
an 8-bit encoding at which point the MTA MUST encode the message as
quoted-printable. So even if there isn't HTML, embedded graphics, MS
crap, there is STILL the need for folks to get over themselves and
except that pure, raw, 7-bit ASCII text e-mail is history!

Barry

[V***@SendSpamHere.ORG]

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
{...snip...}

Post by Paul Sture
But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Any email that is received here as Content-Type: */html is considered to be
fertilizer for the bit bucket.
I'd toss that rediculously stupid "quoted-printable" formatting (oh, to be
Freed of that idiocy ;) but that would mean I'd never hear from DEComHPaq
again. Why does PLAIN OLD TEXT need to be encoded?

Because the SMTP RFC is based on 7-bit text streams and if you include
anything odd like a British pound symbol, or the Euro, or any other
language punctuation that is not English based, those characters require
an 8-bit encoding at which point the MTA MUST encode the message as
quoted-printable. So even if there isn't HTML, embedded graphics, MS
crap, there is STILL the need for folks to get over themselves and
except that pure, raw, 7-bit ASCII text e-mail is history!

Duh!

Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!

--
http://www.legacy-2000.com for the *best* OpenVMS system security
solutions that others only claim to be.

[John Smith]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG

Post by Paul Sture
But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Any email that is received here as Content-Type: */html is
considered to be
fertilizer for the bit bucket.
I'd toss that rediculously stupid "quoted-printable" formatting (oh, to be
Freed of that idiocy ;) but that would mean I'd never hear from DEComHPaq
again. Why does PLAIN OLD TEXT need to be encoded?

Because the SMTP RFC is based on 7-bit text streams and if you
include anything odd like a British pound symbol, or the Euro, or
any other language punctuation that is not English based, those
characters require an 8-bit encoding at which point the MTA MUST
encode the message as quoted-printable. So even if there isn't
HTML, embedded graphics, MS crap, there is STILL the need for folks
to get over themselves and except that pure, raw, 7-bit ASCII text
e-mail is history!

Duh!
Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!

Well then, VMS had better get with the program hadn't it?

Seems to me that 'internationalization' is the order of the day. How about
we just drop the '$' from 'plain old text' and use the Euro symbol in its
place - after all it's arguably a strong currency and will likely remain so
for decades vs. the USD, especially if the Republicans are re-elected. :-(

[JF Mezei]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
Because the SMTP RFC is based on 7-bit text streams and if you include
anything odd like a British pound symbol, or the Euro

Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!

1- There have been extensions to RFC822 that allow 8 bit characters to be
sent. Often, a SMTP server will convert those to quoted printable.

2- There is a big difference between quoted printable and an HTML.

Quoted printable only affect how text is transmitted, not how it is displayed.
HTML affects hos it is displayed and provides much flexibility to
include/embed stuff that is well beyond text.

Quoted printable still gives you a message that is not multipart. (eg: just
one body).

However, MS mailers who insist in sending two copies of your text (one in
quoted printable and one as HTML) will send multipart messgages where the
quoted printable portion is doubly quoted-printable encoded.

[V***@SendSpamHere.ORG]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
Because the SMTP RFC is based on 7-bit text streams and if you include
anything odd like a British pound symbol, or the Euro

Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!

1- There have been extensions to RFC822 that allow 8 bit characters to be
sent. Often, a SMTP server will convert those to quoted printable.

You and the other fellow missed the point... PLAIN OLD TEXT does NOT
require any conversion to quoted-printable.

Post by JF Mezei
2- There is a big difference between quoted printable and an HTML.
Quoted printable only affect how text is transmitted, not how it is displayed.

It sure does if you read your mail in a text mail program. Lovely
to parse through equal sign shit this and equal sign shit that...

--
http://www.legacy-2000.com for the *best* OpenVMS system security
solutions that others only claim to be.

[Paul Sture]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
{...snip...}

Post by Paul Sture
But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Any email that is received here as Content-Type: */html is considered to be
fertilizer for the bit bucket.
I'd toss that rediculously stupid "quoted-printable" formatting (oh, to be
Freed of that idiocy ;) but that would mean I'd never hear from DEComHPaq
again. Why does PLAIN OLD TEXT need to be encoded?

Because the SMTP RFC is based on 7-bit text streams and if you include
anything odd like a British pound symbol, or the Euro, or any other
language punctuation that is not English based, those characters require
an 8-bit encoding at which point the MTA MUST encode the message as
quoted-printable. So even if there isn't HTML, embedded graphics, MS
crap, there is STILL the need for folks to get over themselves and
except that pure, raw, 7-bit ASCII text e-mail is history!

Duh!
Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!

But the British pound can be plain old text if you use a proper VT.
Somewhere in the setup you can toggle the display between # and the GBP
symbol, certainly on UK models.

When it comes to accented characters, Barry does have a point, as then
even mail between 2 VMS systems can go "quoted-printable".

But that's still _no excuse_ for munging mails which don't require 8 bit
characters.

[V***@SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <***@sture.homeip.net>, Paul Sture <***@sture.homeip.net> writes:
{...snip...}

Post by Paul Sture

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
Duh!
Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!

But the British pound can be plain old text if you use a proper VT.
Somewhere in the setup you can toggle the display between # and the GBP
symbol, certainly on UK models.
When it comes to accented characters, Barry does have a point, as then
even mail between 2 VMS systems can go "quoted-printable".
But that's still _no excuse_ for munging mails which don't require 8 bit
characters.

Thanks for being the only one that seems to see the light.

--
http://www.legacy-2000.com for the *best* OpenVMS system security
solutions that others only claim to be.

[Paul Sture]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
{...snip...}

Post by Paul Sture

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
Duh!
Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!

But the British pound can be plain old text if you use a proper VT.
Somewhere in the setup you can toggle the display between # and the GBP
symbol, certainly on UK models.
When it comes to accented characters, Barry does have a point, as then
even mail between 2 VMS systems can go "quoted-printable".
But that's still _no excuse_ for munging mails which don't require 8 bit
characters.

Thanks for being the only one that seems to see the light.

No problem.

But having mulled this one over a bit, a MAIL enhancement to decode
the quoted-printable stuff would be useful _for me_, at least for the
case of accented characters, as I tend to get quite a few of those.

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by John Smith
You might not get a severance payment if they can your ass 'for cause'.

It wouldn't be "for cause", since you were doing your work in the most
efficient manner possible with the company's best interests at heart.

That doesn't matter if it violates company policy! Your argument is
weak at best, because it could be said that taking confidential
information home to work on it during your off-time is in the companies
best interest. What if that same effort violates corporate security
policies and procedures, and perhaps even puts the companies site
clearance at risk? You are suggesting that the ranks determine what
corporate policy or procedure they will chose to adhere to, that is
unacceptable.


Barry

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
We are a media rich society and to expect people, be they inside or
outside your company, customer, or vendor base to stay with paper-tape,
teletypes, or punch cards because you don't feel e-mail should be
anything other than vanilla ASCII text, is a hopeless battle

When a kid gets a new toy, it will use it all the time. Then, as he matures,
he will use the toy only when he needs it.

I'm not sure in you're attempting to imply anything here :-) but my kids
are adults...

Post by JF Mezei
If Microsoft had followed that established nettiquette in its software
defaults, it wouldn't had suffered so many viri and worms. It is because
people are sending "rich" contents and MS's software treating it as plain text
(in terms of security) that there are so many problems costing industry
billions in lost productivity due to viri.

Arg, IMHO that is complete BS!

Microsoft has a problem because:
1. Their product is running almost every where and they shipped it
with all of their crappy and unsecured services enabled (even if you
never needed them). This is further complicated because most home
users/small business users what these services are or how to disable them
2. MS can't seem to figure out what a buffer-overrun is nor how to
code in a manner to avoid creating them, let alone fixing them but most
importantly, even if MS issues patches, those same home users/small
business users haven't a clue as to what patching is or why the latest
patch just busted their system so they don't do it.
3. And MS does want to segregate the OS from all of the fluff and
crap that is predominantly exploited like IE, Outlook, SQL, and now ASN.


and unrelated to MS, sites that have services are not adequately
protecting their systems with firewalls. In the case of the SQL
exploits, it is next to impossible to justify allowing SQL services to
be openly accessible to anyone from the Internet, a basic firewall would
have stopped much of that.


I know it's been mentioned before in jest, but the should have licensed
the VMS kernel from Digital and then slapped their GUI on for Windows
NT, 2K, and XP...

Barry

[JF Mezei]

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
Arg, IMHO that is complete BS!
1. Their product is running almost every where and they shipped it
with all of their crappy and unsecured services enabled (even if you
never needed them).

Not it isn't bullshit. If Microsoft had abided by established standard, their
mail and news programs would not have had automatic support for HTML and
automatic execution of attachements for preview. And they woudln't have added
scripting additions into HTML that enables nefarious HTML code to do nefarious
things to the machine.

And if users had not had their defaults set to send and view HTML and all
sorts of non-image attachements, they would have been a lot fewer viri
reveived and sent.

HTML in email and NEWS is just one of the many good examples of "all of their
crappy unsecured services enabled".

It isn't BS.

[John Smith]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
Arg, IMHO that is complete BS!
1. Their product is running almost every where and they shipped
it with all of their crappy and unsecured services enabled (even if
you never needed them).

Not it isn't bullshit. If Microsoft had abided by established
standard, their mail and news programs would not have had automatic
support for HTML and automatic execution of attachements for preview.
And they woudln't have added scripting additions into HTML that
enables nefarious HTML code to do nefarious things to the machine.
And if users had not had their defaults set to send and view HTML and
all sorts of non-image attachements, they would have been a lot fewer
viri reveived and sent.
HTML in email and NEWS is just one of the many good examples of "all
of their crappy unsecured services enabled".

The realitiy is that Microsoft did all this based on what they researched
(ie. opinion polling of their customers) and what the results showed as
being perceived by their customers as being useful and 'cool' - RFC's be
damned.

Since embedded HTML in e-mail isn't going away and that the only people who
really understand what's wrong with it are for the most part security
administrators in non-Microsoft environments, there has to be some attempt
to learn to 'peacefully co-exist' with it.

Maybe PDMF or the abandoned HP mail gateway product or something similar
should become a standard part of every VMS installation for interactive
users. VMS MAIL could still exist for system messages.

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
Because the SMTP RFC is based on 7-bit text streams and if you
include anything odd like a British pound symbol, or the Euro, or
any other language punctuation that is not English based, those
characters require an 8-bit encoding at which point the MTA MUST
encode the message as quoted-printable. So even if there isn't
HTML, embedded graphics, MS crap, there is STILL the need for folks
to get over themselves and except that pure, raw, 7-bit ASCII text
e-mail is history!

Duh!
Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!
Well then, VMS had better get with the program hadn't it?
Seems to me that 'internationalization' is the order of the day. How about
we just drop the '$' from 'plain old text' and use the Euro symbol in its
place - after all it's arguably a strong currency and will likely remain so
for decades vs. the USD, especially if the Republicans are re-elected. :-(

Perhaps I'm a little rusty on history, but was it not Woodrow Wilson, a
democrat, who instituted the Federal Reserve Act which basically handed
over complete control of all US currency to a group of private bankers
who then proceeded to outlaw the backing of currency by silver or gold,
except for international exchange which lead to the bleeding of our gold
reserves off-source?


Our economy is recovering, which I personally credit to the present
administration, but the currency valuation issue is no doubt a direct
result of the fiat currency we have had for roughly 8 decades, the
personal and government debt that we as US citizens have saddled
ourselves with, and the fact that several countries (ie. China) who are
growing as an economic presence, are preparing to return to a gold
standard currency.


Barry

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by PhilThayer
Doing things acording to company policy has EVERTHING to do with the
"best interest" of me getting a paycheck to support my family.
Whether I like it or not is beside the point. I work for my best
interest and not for the companies best interest. If my input happens

Then it's also in your best interest to avoid having to work with
tools that are broken and annoying to use, like Windoze on a "locked
down" PC that one can't configure to one's liking. It's so refreshing
to nuke windoze and install something useful, like FreeBSD, on the
PC that one's employer puts on one's desk.

Post by PhilThayer
to help sway the company one way or another in making it's decisions
then that's great. But rocking the boat and falling out is not
something I enjoy. (Speaking from experience here.)

"Rocking the boat" does make sense if the policies and rules make no
sense---and many do not make sense in many companies. It does no one
any good to have to bother with following insipid policies and
procedures, particularly if they make your work more difficult to do.

You sound like a person that has not worked for someone in some time
because your statements are utterly ignorant! In a world of ISO 9000
certification and compliance, procedure and policy are mandates as are
policies for site security clearances, let alone policy developed and
dictated for the protection of intellectual properties. I can only
deduce from your gibberish that you are simply clueless or looking to
just agitate those on this list with topics that really have no purpose
or place on a technical group...

Barry

[R. D. Davis]

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
You sound like a person that has not worked for someone in some time
because your statements are utterly ignorant! In a world of ISO 9000

If that's what you'd like to believe, it would, perhaps, be unfair for
me to hinder your delusions that apparently originate in something akin
to hogwash.

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
certification and compliance,

ISO 9000 compliance is pure bureaucratic pantywaist foolishness and
poppycock that gives MBA's something to waist the activities of their
few fully-functioning brain cells on. If this wasn't true, we'd see
vast quantities of products of higher quality than were produced
thirty or more years ago. Those damned MBAs and management
consultants, etc., along with upper management, and their
lower-ranking henchmen, spend so much time focusing on certain useless
standards (while ignoring useful standards) and other things
nonsensical that they end up neglecting the actual product quality.
Well, they don't actually neglect the quality, they just reduce it to
cut costs and disguise the poor quality with greater efficiency.
Let's look at this from another angle: such standards serve to produce
an illusion of good quality so that more people can be duped into
forking over their hard-earned money for cruddy products in fancy
packaging while upper management makes larger profits as a result.

Not everyone in the world has their brain immersed in corporate
hogwash as you're appears to be, and as a result, some of us can see
what you've been brainwashed to not be able to see---or to not accept
the propaganda that you spew.

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
procedure and policy are mandates as are
policies for site security clearances, let alone policy developed and
dictated for the protection of intellectual properties.

...And your point is?

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
I can only
deduce from your gibberish that you are simply clueless or looking to
just agitate those on this list with topics that really have no purpose
or place on a technical group...

The opionions of you and your fleas are not necessarily germane. Did
someone at Micro$oft program your brain?

[JF Mezei]

Post by R. D. Davis
ISO 9000 compliance is pure bureaucratic pantywaist foolishness and
poppycock that gives MBA's something to waist the activities of their
few fully-functioning brain cells on.

I fairness, if you build bolts, screws and washers, ISO9000 can be good
because it forces you to fully document the processes and ensure that the
process is followed. It works because you never change the product and hence
need not spend 70% of your time updating paperwork.

But if you are in a dynamic industry, then the constantly changing nature of
your products and operations make ISO9000 a very heavy chain attached around
your legs.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by R. D. Davis
ISO 9000 compliance is pure bureaucratic pantywaist foolishness and
poppycock that gives MBA's something to waist the activities of their
few fully-functioning brain cells on.

I fairness, if you build bolts, screws and washers, ISO9000 can be good
because it forces you to fully document the processes and ensure that the
process is followed. It works because you never change the product and hence
need not spend 70% of your time updating paperwork.

Yes, but as far as ISO 9000 is concerned it also doesn't make any
difference if all your bolts have the threads winding backwards.
As long as you can repeat the process every time.

bill

[JF Mezei]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Yes, but as far as ISO 9000 is concerned it also doesn't make any
difference if all your bolts have the threads winding backwards.
As long as you can repeat the process every time.

Which is the goal of ISO 9000: to ensure that your customers get a product of
consistent quality. (eg: the 1 millionth widget will be exactly the same as
the 100th and will be exactly the same as the demo widget you used to conclude
the sale).

[John Smith]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Yes, but as far as ISO 9000 is concerned it also doesn't make any
difference if all your bolts have the threads winding backwards.
As long as you can repeat the process every time.

Which is the goal of ISO 9000: to ensure that your customers get a
product of consistent quality. (eg: the 1 millionth widget will be
exactly the same as the 100th and will be exactly the same as the
demo widget you used to conclude the sale).

In Microsoft's case all it amounts to is 'same shit, different day'.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
You sound like a person that has not worked for someone in some time
because your statements are utterly ignorant! In a world of ISO 9000

If that's what you'd like to believe, it would, perhaps, be unfair for
me to hinder your delusions that apparently originate in something akin
to hogwash.

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
certification and compliance,

ISO 9000 compliance is pure bureaucratic pantywaist foolishness and
poppycock that gives MBA's something to waist the activities of their
few fully-functioning brain cells on. If this wasn't true, we'd see
vast quantities of products of higher quality than were produced
thirty or more years ago.

Why would you think that? Unless this is a totally different
ISO 9000 than the one I am familiar with it deal with process
and not product. It certifies that a well documented and
repeatable process exists. It does not address the quality of
the output. You can make pure garbage. All ISO 9000 requires
is that you can repeat the process every time. Thus turning out
large piles of garbage. It would not surprise me to drive by a
certain building in Redmond, WA and see a proudly displayed ISO
9000 billboard out front.

bill

[PhilThayer]

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by R. D. Davis

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
You sound like a person that has not worked for someone in some time
because your statements are utterly ignorant! In a world of ISO 9000

If that's what you'd like to believe, it would, perhaps, be unfair for
me to hinder your delusions that apparently originate in something akin
to hogwash.

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
certification and compliance,

ISO 9000 compliance is pure bureaucratic pantywaist foolishness and
poppycock that gives MBA's something to waist the activities of their
few fully-functioning brain cells on. If this wasn't true, we'd see
vast quantities of products of higher quality than were produced
thirty or more years ago.

Why would you think that? Unless this is a totally different
ISO 9000 than the one I am familiar with it deal with process
and not product. It certifies that a well documented and
repeatable process exists. It does not address the quality of
the output. You can make pure garbage. All ISO 9000 requires
is that you can repeat the process every time. Thus turning out
large piles of garbage. It would not surprise me to drive by a
certain building in Redmond, WA and see a proudly displayed ISO
9000 billboard out front.
bill

Bill is exactly right. All ISO-9000 (as well as the other ISO-9xxx
standaards that go along with it) does is to document the steps that
are taken in a process to acheive a product and assign accountability
to those steps (something that Bill did leave out.) The idea being
that a process can be analyzed and productivity increased. Outside of
the US the ISO-9000 is almost a req1uirement for any company to even
do business. Without it they are excluded from many competitive
contracts for services and goodsl. This has forced companies to
implement ISO-9000 which in turn has increased the quality of products
as well as reduce costs.

Maybe people should be less afraid of loosing jobs to foreign
companies who have implemented ISO-9000 and can bid lower while
providing a high standard product or service and more attention to WHY
these companies can provide the higher quality product or service.

Company policies are not put in place for the purpose of making one
lone wolf employees life easier. They are put in place to enable the
company to provide better and more compliant products and services.

PT.

(P.S. - For those who DO know me in person and know how I think, they
probably understoood the humor that was meant by the "MS setting
industry standards" post earlier. For the people who do not know me
and did not understand the humor...Go to the store, buy some corn in
the can, get a fishing pole and go fishing AWAY from comnputers for a
while so you can relax. I could suggest some excellent lakes and
rivers in the great state of Missouri.)

[R. D. Davis]

Post by PhilThayer
that a process can be analyzed and productivity increased. Outside of
the US the ISO-9000 is almost a req1uirement for any company to even
do business. Without it they are excluded from many competitive

ISO-9000 is still bureaucratic tripe attempting to make companies whose
products suck look on paper good even though they still suck. On the
other hand, it's possible to produce high-quality products, with
consistency, without ISO-9000. Those who believe otherwise need to
run Emacs and invoke the doctor program (at the least).

Post by PhilThayer
contracts for services and goodsl. This has forced companies to
implement ISO-9000 which in turn has increased the quality of products
as well as reduce costs.

Hogwash... marketing and MBA (we all know what those initials stand
for: Meaningless But Arrogant) hogwash. I don't see where overall
product quality has increased. I still see more and more products
designed to be less (easily) repairable, more products using steel
which are made without the assistance of whitesmiths (the people who
finish the edges off so consumers don't cut their hands, etc. on them)
and more and more products with built-in obsolescence that shout
"cheap and cheesy although expensive".

Post by PhilThayer
Maybe people should be less afraid of loosing jobs to foreign
companies who have implemented ISO-9000 and can bid lower while
providing a high standard product or service and more attention to WHY
these companies can provide the higher quality product or service.

ROFL... Planet Earth to Phil Thayer, Planet Earth to Phil
Thayer... :-) If those companies in China have implemented ISO-9000,
then that's the best example yet of proof as to why ISO-9000 is pure
poppycock. Take a pocket knife that was made in China for example;
within a year or so, the main blade was loose and floppy, and became
dull, and one of the plastic side-pieces fell off; the screwdriver
blades in it are more useless than smashed roadkill eaten by crows.
I've got another pocket knife made many decades ago, in the U.S.,
before ISO-9000 was ever thought of, that's still in good condition
(has been sharpened a few times, but doesn't get dull so quickly!).
The US is being flooded with poorly made products from China, and the
product quality is far less than marginally satisfactory. We've got
less than desirable produce from countries in South America filling
supermarket produce departments, not because of good quality, but
because of corporate greed combined with political greed that has also
resulted in the destruction of too many farms in the U.S. by land
destroyers (oddly known as "developers" that develop little other than
eysores on the landscape). I'll take my cars made in the 1970's
anyday over the little bits of rubbish on wheels produced today, that
auto manufacturers should be ashamed to put their names on... I'd like
to see those new cars last thirty or forty years.

Post by PhilThayer
Company policies are not put in place for the purpose of making one
lone wolf employees life easier. They are put in place to enable the
company to provide better and more compliant products and services.

Many unnecessarily restrictive corporate policies are put in place to
boost the already oversized egos of managers who get their jollies by
creating and enforcing policies. Such managers have another reason
for creating such policies: they like to attempt to reduce the chances
of creative and intelligent employees doing things their own way which
could make those managers look all the more like the numbskulls that
they are to others in the company who've overestimated their potential
to be useful.

Post by PhilThayer
(P.S. - For those who DO know me in person and know how I think, they
probably understoood the humor that was meant by the "MS setting
industry standards" post earlier. For the people who do not know me

Anyone with a reasonably functional brain should see the (perverse)
humor in anything to do wiht Micro$oft.

Post by PhilThayer
and did not understand the humor...Go to the store, buy some corn in
the can, get a fishing pole and go fishing AWAY from comnputers for a
while so you can relax. I could suggest some excellent lakes and
rivers in the great state of Missouri.)

That sounds much better for the spirit, mind and body than most
corporate environments... perhaps there will come a day when such
environments go away... we can all work towards seeing that happen.

[PhilThayer]

Post by R. D. Davis
ISO-9000 is still bureaucratic tripe attempting to make companies whose
products suck look on paper good even though they still suck. On the
other hand, it's possible to produce high-quality products, with
consistency, without ISO-9000. Those who believe otherwise need to
run Emacs and invoke the doctor program (at the least).

Careful. Emacs uses a Configuration Management model base on ISO-9000
standards to provide a consistent product to the users. Just because
it has not been certified does not mean it is not compliant.

Post by R. D. Davis
I still see more and more products
designed to be less (easily) repairable, more products using steel
which are made without the assistance of whitesmiths (the people who
finish the edges off so consumers don't cut their hands, etc. on them)
and more and more products with built-in obsolescence that shout
"cheap and cheesy although expensive".

Maybe it would be worth your time to research the average functional
life-span of IT products. The life-span is not decreasing due to
inoperability. it is reducing due to the faster pace of new
technology becoming available. So if you don't want "built-in"
obsolescence, stop the new technology from becoming available.

Post by R. D. Davis
ROFL... Planet Earth to Phil Thayer, Planet Earth to Phil
Thayer... :-)

Oh boy... there go those voices agaibn. I told them to leave me
alone...:)

Post by R. D. Davis
If those companies in China have implemented ISO-9000,
then that's the best example yet of proof as to why ISO-9000 is pure
poppycock. Take a pocket knife that was made in China for example;
within a year or so, the main blade was loose and floppy, and became
dull, and one of the plastic side-pieces fell off; the screwdriver

Let's stick to IT products and service. Otherwise I will have to
start comparing the quality of the American made Wantons to the
quality of the Chinese made Wantons. And we wouldn't want that.

Open your computer and tell me how many of the boards, chips, fans,
power supplies, Hard Disks, CD-Roms, etc... are made in the US and how
many are made outside the US. The ISO-9000 certified manufacturing
plants outside the use run more efficiently than the non-ISO-9000
certified plants in the US. (yes, labor is cheaper, that's another
dicussion altogether.) But go even further than that. How many
companies are out-sourcing to services companies overseas because the
services companies are ISO-9000 certified? Why, becasue the companies
using those services overseas want to do business overseas and to do
that business have to show that their product is ISO-9000 certified.
Companies that do not do business overseas are simply dying a slow
death.

Post by R. D. Davis
I'll take my cars made in the 1970's
anyday over the little bits of rubbish on wheels produced today, that
auto manufacturers should be ashamed to put their names on... I'd like
to see those new cars last thirty or forty years.

Me too. I like the older cars because I can work on them. Not like
the new cars with all the computers on them. I try to stay away from
computers when I leave work. :)

Post by R. D. Davis
Many unnecessarily restrictive corporate policies are put in place to

What is "unnecessarily restrictive corporate policies" to one person
may be required for another. Ask the PC tech who has to maintain the
consistence of the PS's in a corporation. Would he rather have the
users allowed to change anything on the PC and support inumerable
configurations or have a "unnecessarily restrictive corporate
policies" policy to maintain one or two configurations to deal with?

Post by R. D. Davis
boost the already oversized egos of managers who get their jollies by
creating and enforcing policies. Such managers have another reason
for creating such policies: they like to attempt to reduce the chances
of creative and intelligent employees doing things their own way which
could make those managers look all the more like the numbskulls that
they are to others in the company who've overestimated their potential
to be useful.

Then I have a suggestion for you. Since it is in the best interest of
the company to cut out these corporate polocies, compose an e-mail
outlining the polocies that you feel are out of alignment with the
companies best interest and how they can be changed to be in the best
interest of the company. Send that e-mail to the President of the
company and tell him that you are willing to work with him to fix
these problems. Be sure to by-pass all the managers with the
"oversized egos" who "get their jollies by creating and enforcing
policies" so as not to get your e-mail shot down before it can get to
someone who can make a difference and come back and let us know how
that goes.

If you believe that strongly about these " unnecessarily restrictive
corporate policies", then do something about it.

Post by R. D. Davis
That sounds much better for the spirit, mind and body than most
corporate environments... perhaps there will come a day when such
environments go away... we can all work towards seeing that happen.

If only we could setup the offices on the shore of some nice lake and
be able to have the fishing pole right there beside us while we work.
When we get a bite grab the pole and fish. Oh, wait. We can't do
that because we're stopping the progress of technology to prevent
"built-in obsolescence." :) One day I will have an office like
that...

PT

[Bob Koehler]

Post by PhilThayer

Post by R. D. Davis
ISO-9000 is still bureaucratic tripe attempting to make companies whose
products suck look on paper good even though they still suck. On the
other hand, it's possible to produce high-quality products, with
consistency, without ISO-9000. Those who believe otherwise need to
run Emacs and invoke the doctor program (at the least).

Careful. Emacs uses a Configuration Management model base on ISO-9000
standards to provide a consistent product to the users. Just because
it has not been certified does not mean it is not compliant.

Is that why we're seeing reports that the latest releases can't read
most text files on VMS?

[PhilThayer]

Post by Bob Koehler

Post by PhilThayer

Post by R. D. Davis
ISO-9000 is still bureaucratic tripe attempting to make companies whose
products suck look on paper good even though they still suck. On the
other hand, it's possible to produce high-quality products, with
consistency, without ISO-9000. Those who believe otherwise need to
run Emacs and invoke the doctor program (at the least).

Careful. Emacs uses a Configuration Management model base on ISO-9000
standards to provide a consistent product to the users. Just because
it has not been certified does not mean it is not compliant.

Is that why we're seeing reports that the latest releases can't read
most text files on VMS?

Possibly. But is a consistent error on all releases?

[Bob Koehler]

Post by PhilThayer
Possibly. But is a consistent error on all releases?

I don't get into emacs anywhere near enough to know. But the
symptoms sound like emacs is now assuming a byte-stream file
system and doing I/O some way other than C standard FILE I/O.

[PhilThayer]

Post by Bob Koehler

Post by PhilThayer
Possibly. But is a consistent error on all releases?

I don't get into emacs anywhere near enough to know.

Me either. the point though was the with standards you may get errors
in a product, but they will be much more consistent and easier to
locate and fix.

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
{...snip...}

Post by Paul Sture
But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Any email that is received here as Content-Type: */html is considered to be
fertilizer for the bit bucket.
I'd toss that rediculously stupid "quoted-printable" formatting (oh, to be
Freed of that idiocy ;) but that would mean I'd never hear from DEComHPaq
again. Why does PLAIN OLD TEXT need to be encoded?

Because the SMTP RFC is based on 7-bit text streams and if you include
anything odd like a British pound symbol, or the Euro, or any other
language punctuation that is not English based, those characters require
an 8-bit encoding at which point the MTA MUST encode the message as
quoted-printable. So even if there isn't HTML, embedded graphics, MS
crap, there is STILL the need for folks to get over themselves and
except that pure, raw, 7-bit ASCII text e-mail is history!

Duh!
Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!

Well tell that to all of our European friends, also on this list, also
running VMS, that their currency symbol is not a valid or legitimate
text character, you are thinking on this matter is very
narrow-minded... I suspect that you could still find manual type
writers in England with old currency symbols though I would yield that
you would most likely never find one for the Euro.

Barry

[V***@SendSpamHere.ORG]

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
{...snip...}

Post by Paul Sture
But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Any email that is received here as Content-Type: */html is considered to be
fertilizer for the bit bucket.
I'd toss that rediculously stupid "quoted-printable" formatting (oh, to be
Freed of that idiocy ;) but that would mean I'd never hear from DEComHPaq
again. Why does PLAIN OLD TEXT need to be encoded?

Because the SMTP RFC is based on 7-bit text streams and if you include
anything odd like a British pound symbol, or the Euro, or any other
language punctuation that is not English based, those characters require
an 8-bit encoding at which point the MTA MUST encode the message as
quoted-printable. So even if there isn't HTML, embedded graphics, MS
crap, there is STILL the need for folks to get over themselves and
except that pure, raw, 7-bit ASCII text e-mail is history!

Duh!
Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!

Well tell that to all of our European friends, also on this list, also
running VMS, that their currency symbol is not a valid or legitimate
text character, you are thinking on this matter is very
narrow-minded... I suspect that you could still find manual type
writers in England with old currency symbols though I would yield that
you would most likely never find one for the Euro.

You, and others, missed what I said. quoted-printable for plain old 7-bit
ASCII text is not necessary!!! Somebody made some oblique statement about
currency symbols which was completely off base to what I was stating. You
are talking to me like I don't know that currency symbols are 8-bit and in
use outside of the US. Doh! Thanks!

--
http://www.legacy-2000.com for the *best* OpenVMS system security
solutions that others only claim to be.

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Post by Paul Sture

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
{...snip...}

Post by Paul Sture
But the ***very real*** problem there is that 99% of the html or
quoted/printable emails I receive are pure spam.

Any email that is received here as Content-Type: */html is considered to be
fertilizer for the bit bucket.
I'd toss that rediculously stupid "quoted-printable" formatting (oh, to be
Freed of that idiocy ;) but that would mean I'd never hear from DEComHPaq
again. Why does PLAIN OLD TEXT need to be encoded?

Because the SMTP RFC is based on 7-bit text streams and if you include
anything odd like a British pound symbol, or the Euro, or any other
language punctuation that is not English based, those characters require
an 8-bit encoding at which point the MTA MUST encode the message as
quoted-printable. So even if there isn't HTML, embedded graphics, MS
crap, there is STILL the need for folks to get over themselves and
except that pure, raw, 7-bit ASCII text e-mail is history!

Duh!
Euro and British pound symbols are NOT PLAIN OLD TEXT!

But the British pound can be plain old text if you use a proper VT.
Somewhere in the setup you can toggle the display between # and the GBP
symbol, certainly on UK models.
When it comes to accented characters, Barry does have a point, as then
even mail between 2 VMS systems can go "quoted-printable".
But that's still _no excuse_ for munging mails which don't require 8 bit
characters.

I would agree, no MTA should quote for just the hell of it, and in the
case of our systems, our MTA's are Process's SMTP on VMS and Sendmail on
Linux systems and we have never, ever, had a message mangled for no
cause, it is ALWAYS because a character exists in the body of the text
that is outside the standard 7-bit ASCII character definition, once that
ASCII character reaches 128 (decimal) or greater it must be encoded,
that is standard in the SMTP RFC...


Barry

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Yes, but as far as ISO 9000 is concerned it also doesn't make any
difference if all your bolts have the threads winding backwards.
As long as you can repeat the process every time.

Which is the goal of ISO 9000: to ensure that your customers get a product of
consistent quality. (eg: the 1 millionth widget will be exactly the same as
the 100th and will be exactly the same as the demo widget you used to conclude
the sale).

Yes, but if you go by the 'rule-busters' approach, no manufacturer would
use ISO which means in our case, many of our customers would not
purchase from us... As I said, I doubt he has any real production or
employement business and based on his web site, it doesn't appear that
he has much exposure to commerce either...


Barry

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Yes, but as far as ISO 9000 is concerned it also doesn't make any
difference if all your bolts have the threads winding backwards.
As long as you can repeat the process every time.

Which is the goal of ISO 9000: to ensure that your customers get a product of
consistent quality. (eg: the 1 millionth widget will be exactly the same as
the 100th and will be exactly the same as the demo widget you used to conclude
the sale).

Yes, but if you go by the 'rule-busters' approach, no manufacturer would
use ISO which means in our case, many of our customers would not
purchase from us...

I was not arguing against standards. My whole point is the majority
of people I talk with think ISO 9000 is a standard to guarantee the
manufactuure of quality products. It is not. It is a standard to
quarantee the manufacture of consistent products. As far as ISO 9000
is concerned, quality is irrelevant. ISO 9000 would be great if it
were combined with other standards that guaranteed the original process
(the one that is ISO 9000 certified) actually made quality products,
but all I ever see is people bragging about being ISO 9000 certified.

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.
As I said, I doubt he has any real production or
employement business and based on his web site, it doesn't appear that
he has much exposure to commerce either...

And you would be wrong, but that has never been a disqualifying
factor in c.o.v. :-)

bill

[Paul Sture]

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Barry Treahy, Jr.

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Yes, but as far as ISO 9000 is concerned it also doesn't make any
difference if all your bolts have the threads winding backwards.
As long as you can repeat the process every time.

Which is the goal of ISO 9000: to ensure that your customers get a product of
consistent quality. (eg: the 1 millionth widget will be exactly the same as
the 100th and will be exactly the same as the demo widget you used to conclude
the sale).

Yes, but if you go by the 'rule-busters' approach, no manufacturer would
use ISO which means in our case, many of our customers would not
purchase from us...

I was not arguing against standards. My whole point is the majority
of people I talk with think ISO 9000 is a standard to guarantee the
manufactuure of quality products. It is not. It is a standard to
quarantee the manufacture of consistent products.

Agree completely. Indeed if a company's business is that of making
use-once-then-throw-away widgets they may want to keep the quality of
those widgets down to ensure repeat sales.

Post by Bill Gunshannon
As far as ISO 9000
is concerned, quality is irrelevant. ISO 9000 would be great if it
were combined with other standards that guaranteed the original process
(the one that is ISO 9000 certified) actually made quality products,
but all I ever see is people bragging about being ISO 9000 certified.

Unfortunately it was sold as if it would increase product quality, which
is the reason many companies and govt. bodies came to insist they would
only deal with certified suppliers.

<snip>

[JF Mezei]

Post by Paul Sture
Unfortunately it was sold as if it would increase product quality, which
is the reason many companies and govt. bodies came to insist they would
only deal with certified suppliers.

By reducing the number of widgets that you ship with defects, you increase
overall/average product quality. (but it doesn't increase the quality of those
products which don't have a defect).

But there is also the issue that you are likely to find faults in the process
while doing the 9000 paperwork and by fixing those faults, you may increase
yield (fewer defects rejected).

Of course, in most cases, the additional 9000 paperwork and burden probably
costs more than the savings from the slightly better quality and fewer rejects.

[Paul Sture]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Paul Sture
Unfortunately it was sold as if it would increase product quality, which
is the reason many companies and govt. bodies came to insist they would
only deal with certified suppliers.

By reducing the number of widgets that you ship with defects, you increase
overall/average product quality. (but it doesn't increase the quality of those
products which don't have a defect).
But there is also the issue that you are likely to find faults in the process
while doing the 9000 paperwork and by fixing those faults, you may increase
yield (fewer defects rejected).

FWIW I first came across ISO 9000's predecessor in the UK, BS 5750 (BS =
Bristish Standard in that context) when I was given a conducted tour of
a hardware maintenance company. The system they had put in place to
achieve BS 5750 was indeed good. A simple example was when they got a
circuit board in for repair, all the dip switch and jumper settings were
recorded before doing any work on it, so that the repaired or
replacement board could be sent out to the customer with the original
settings.

Post by JF Mezei
Of course, in most cases, the additional 9000 paperwork and burden probably
costs more than the savings from the slightly better quality and fewer rejects.

For some reason which escapes me now, they had actually set up 2
companies, so had to do ther BS 5750 certification twice. After the pain
and expense of that, they wished they'd only set up one company.