Borking Outlook Express

Johannes writes: "Swedish Gnuheter has a story on Nick Moffitt arranging with his X-headers in way that makes it impossible to read his email with Microsoft WebTV or Outlook Express. Moffitt states: 'The folks using Outlook Express have locked themselves into a limited subset of the information that can flow over the Internet, and are blaming me personally for not limiting my transmissions to that outlook-centric subset.' See also original email (in English). Immoral? Or just right?" Looks like Moffit's "Who, me?" attitude is tongue in cheek, but the creative header changes here are hilarious.

Comments

Re:Hmm seems to me...

[garcia]

either way it is stupid. although his personal vendetta is far from the one that MS started.

It's people like him

[banuaba]

That make people like me stick with windows.

As far as I can tell, he is sending emails that take advantage of an admittedly stupid bug in Outlook (beginning an email with the word 'Begin:' makes it treat the email as an attatchment) and *features* in webTV and outlook's X-header interpretation. The making messages colored and black-on-black font stuff doesn't effect emails sent to your precious mutt. All it seems to be is some puffed up linux using jackass who wants to be an asshole and prove how superior he is.

In my mind, he's a step or two above website defacers. "THIS EMALE HAS BEEN HAX()RD BY NICK MOFFETT FUK U MICR0$LOTHSHAFT"
yeah, way to win some hearts and minds, buddy. Judging someone by the IRC client they use is likewise idiotic. OMG DOOD U USE TEH MIRC LOLZ NICK MOFIT SEZ THAT YOU HAVE TO FAKE UR CTCP VERSION OR WE KB U OK FAGET?

Grow up, Nick. You're just hurting those reasonable people who are trying to make Linux work for the rest of us.

Amazing stupidity

[CrystalFalcon]

Gaah!

For several years now, I have received the occasional e-mail about how I should never write e-mail in HTML, but stick to plaintext. This has usually been followed by how Microsoft doesn't care about standards (I use an MS client), raah raah raah, and the key argument is that everybody should always be able to read your information. To me, that argument is about equivalent to "nobody on the highway is allowed to drive faster than the slowest car". If we enforced people to be compliant with all standards, we'd effectively kill progress. Even though we may not like the current trend of progress, there is still always change going on.

Anyway, here we have the exact same thing, only lockout on purpose rather than implicitly by upgraded technology, targeted against a specific client. This guy is saying outright that "Sorry if you can't read my e-mail, here are a bunch of alternatives", just like I use to do when people complain they can't read HTML.

The chief difference is that I don't send HTML mail out of malice, I do it because I think it adds value to the mail (I can format for readability more than I can in 76-column ASCII). This guy croaks certain clients because he doesn't like the clients, or rather, their maker. He's giving people trouble on purpose, and boasts about it.

That is just amazingly stupid.

Crystal Falcon

There are only two things infinite, the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not so sure about the universe. --Albert Einstein

Total BS

[brunes69]

Mod this guy down, thats total BS. Just to be sure I just went to download.com and downloaded something. No registration at all.

Well done!

[JMZero]

Your attitude (which is shared by many) is a significant barrier to businesses looking to move towards open source (you'd fare GREAT in my business - clients love being told they're wrong). Businesses know that they can't treat their clients like you treat people, and they think that's their only option if they move to open source.

It isn't. You can win by sending documents in RTF or PDF, and _asking_ them to do the same - and explain yourself. If they don't, then convert the documents and open them in StarOffice and get on with your life.

Also, you can get a free Word viewer - assuming you have access to a MS platform (and since you suggest buying Word as a possibility I assume you have access to one) - but shouldn't StarOffice be able to convert them decently anyways?

Re:I Can Understand Why He Did It

[rhaig]

plonk!
(yes, I know it's a usenet reference, and there aren't killfiles here, but I'll still put him in my killfile and procmail spam filter just incase)

Re:Does this seem contradictory to you?

[nickm]

Mailing lists, McFly. Mailing lists.