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:Borked?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Cut and paste, then.

Får man lägga till nya headers i sina e-post-meddelanden som gör att de meddelanden som man skickar inte kan läsas av de som använder Outlook Express eller läser brev med WebTV?
Frågan har väckts i samband med att Nick Moffitt har skickat just sådana meddelanden på Tron-listan. Microsoft-användarna är inte nöjda med Moffitts beteende medan Moffitt hänvisar till att mottagarnas e-post-program är problemet och inte hans X-headers.

De headers som är omdebatterade:

X-Fnord: +++ath

X-WebTV-Stationery: Standard; BGColor=black; TextColor=black

X-Message-Flag: Message text blocked: ADULT LANGUAGE/SITUATIONS

X-BeenThere: crackmonkey@crackmonkey.org

Läs Nick Moffitts brev på Crackmonkey-listan.

Debattera sedan gärna vidare på Gnuheter.

Posting Gnumeric attachments...?

[KjetilK]

Hm, I'm on this list that is often used to post results from races, and people keep on posting Excel files to that list, in spite of frequent complaints from more than one UNIX user. And in spite of my frequent warnings of how easy it is to trojan a computer when you open Excel attachments. There are a few people on this list who control a lot of money, I find it hard to understand that they dare do it.

Anyway, the time will come when I'm the one to post results. I'll use Gnumeric, I think. I have been toying with the idea of actually posting a Gnumeric XML file to the list... Revenge!!! ;-)

Well, I'm not going to do it just for the revenge. It has to be illustrating some point.

This got me thinking: Since Gnumeric's native file format is based on XML, it should be possible to have it sensibly parsed and displayed in a browser that does support XML, including IE, given....?

OK, so this is the question: What would it take for people to get a readable table on their browser, straight from a Gnumeric XML file?

If this would work, it would illustrate a major point: How much more flexible these products are. Those who have experienced all M$ lock-ins and unreadable documents can suddenly access a document in a format they've never heard of.

No Inconsistency in Preferring Open Standards

[kmactane]

>Its ok to say "Use anything except outlook" when
>you are on the linux side.
>
>What would you say, if I said use a program that
>can read Word docs [slashdot.org]??

The point about these anti-Outlook headers is that they're still perfectly conformant with RFCs 821, 822, et al. Any conformant mail-reader can read these messages just fine.

But there is no RFC for Word .doc format. In either case, the underlying message is "use a mail client that conforms to open standards (the RFCs)."

When Microsoft releases an RFC for .doc format, then this position will be hypocritical. But until then, it's perfectly consistent. (Alternatively, they could make Outlook obey the RFCs... then Mr. Moffitt's header hacks won't bother it any more.)

rejecting outlook post from mail filters

[SysadminFromHell]

I know of Ubizen, a Belgian security firm, that filters out all of the Outlook posts from its incoming mail for al of its users. They simply send the message back, including an explanation to the sender that it isn't quite safe to use Outlook and that they're only allowing mail from other mail-clients. Considering this comes from a renown security firm, a lot of people take this advise very seriously. Of course, this isn't quite the same thing but it still is an interesting way to look at the 'Outlook Problem'.