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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.
Slashdotting... ever...
You know well you can't make it alone... you can't make it alone.
begin Kris Herzog quotation:
> I know I may have said some harsh things on the Tron list, but I'd
> actually like to put all that aside, and personally thank you, as
> you've given me an idea to write an article about the larger
> picture.
>
> Basically, I'm trying to patch together ideas into an article that
> addresses the issues that we all have recently suffered through.
>
> So I'll ask you the same questions that I have of others, and I'd
> appreciate your complete honesty and I will promise that I will NOT
> turn this into a personal attack on you. This was never my
> intention.
Thank you for taking the time to approach me and hear me out.
I'll try to explain my side of things as best I can, here.
> So here we go:
>
> "In the particular example I am using, someone who was exploiting a
> Microsoft Outlook bug by modifying his X-Headers to cause his
> messages to be read as attachments on a mailing list.
As a matter of fact, that's factually incorrect. While it's
true that my headers do have some doozies, they're mostly innocuous.
The worst one probably is the X-WebTV-STationery, which sets my text
to black-on-black for anyone reading with a WebTV. WebTVs are pretty
rare nowadays, but that's easily overridden I'm told. The +++ath bug
only affects your ISP's modems (which are NOT likely to have the
hangup flaw), and it's formatted wrong anyway. That one's more of a
troll.
No, the attachment bug is far more subtle than that. It
doesn't happen based on headers, which are rightfully the section of
an e-mail that mail readers are SUPPOSED to process. Instead, the bug
is that any message that has the word "begin" at the beginning of a
line will be treated as a garbled attachment from that point on.
It's a horrible bug in Outlook, though not one that appears
when an exchange server is used (I can explain why later if you like).
Microsoft has not even acknowledged it as a bug, and apparently recent
versions of Outlook Express have had features REMOVED that once let
the user read the mails anyway. It used to be that the user could
select some sort of "view source" option and view the message
unprocessed. I'm told that this no longer works.
My other two headers are mostly annoyances. I set a Reply-By
that flags my messages as red, and my X-Message-Flag pretends that the
reason they can't read my mail is because of some censorship software
somewhere blocking my message from their eyes.
Even if I were to remove all of the custom headers from my
messages, the simple fact is that my ordinary internet-standard
plain-text messages will still cause this problem. In fact, the
problem was discovered *accidentally*, when Bruce Sterling distributed
a document via e-mail that had the word "begin" appear at the start of
a line in the middle of one of his paragraphs.
> Another example is a mailing list that will reject any mail from
> Windows-based clients.
Yes. It's true that I run a mailing list that does not allow
posting from Windows users. Many people complain about this, but in
my mind I see it as no different than a restaurant or dance hall
having a dress code. It raises the bar for entry to the list, and
ensures that users really want to be there.
There are two ways, actually, that one can meet the
crackmonkey mailing list dress code. One is to simply use Free
Software, and not use a mailer that requires you to accept a license
that makes you promise not to share with your friends. Another is to
continue to use your Windows-based mailer, but hack the headers of
your message so as not to betray your use of the software.
Both methods demonstrate an effort made to post to the list,
as well as a certain degree of technical acumen. Our IRC channel on
slashnet.org has the same sort of dress code: You can use a
non-Windows IRC client, or you can fake your version information.
> This caused problems for many people using Microsoft products, and
> as such, I'm trying to gain perspectives from both the
> Microsoft/Non-Microsoft sides to help describe the situation of
> people who believe in open-source to the point of zealotry, and how
> this can be addressed in the modern 'free society' of the Internet
> and the spirit of "Open Source" in the fact that it supports a
> non-discriminatory feeling and policy. And how some people have
> taken the battle to new level with this kind of behavior."
First of all, I am not a member of the Open Source movement.
They seem only interested in how you can make money from free
software. I am actually (believe it or not) more concerned with the
ethical and moral issues involved in the subjugation of human beings
through restrictive copyright and patent law. I consider myself a
member of the Free Software movement.
Many people have somehow drawn the premature conclusion that
the reason I do this is because of some sort of ideological zealotry.
What I do with my e-mails was certainly informed by my technical
experience with free software, but it is not done out of a desire to
change anyone.
Many people have also mistakenly joined the open source/free
software cause with the anti-microsoft cause. This is foolhardy,
since there are many proprietary programs for GNU/Linux and BSD whose
licenses are just as antisocial as any Windows license. You'll note
that there are a lot of proprietary programs that don't suffer the
flaws of Outlook Express, and they can read my messages just fine.
Don't you think that if I were doing this out of some sort of free
software zealotry, I'd break ALL proprietary mailers?
Also, there is the mistaken impression that I am somehow
discriminating against a whole class of people by writing e-mail that
Outlook refuses to read. I see this as a curious by-product of
American culture, whereby your consumer tastes somehow create a
ready-made cultural identity for you. There are a great many FREELY
AVAILABLE mailers (for Windows, even) that are capable of reading
plain-text messages. You yourself are using Eudora, which is just
such a program!
> "Would you view behavior like this as a detriment to the open source
> movement as a whole?"
[...]
> Honestly, I'd like to hear your side to this, the reasons why you
> feel the way you do, and why you chose to follow the path you have.
I've been using Unix-based mailers for well over a decade.
I've been mailed countless illegible attachments from Windows users
over the past ten years. It's immature of me, I know, but to some
degree turnabout is fair play.
I don't do it to win people over (and yes, it definitely
generates a lot of ill-will for free software among those who
mistakenly associate it with the cause), although I have seen many
people for whom this was the straw that broke the dromedary's back.
If people think my messages are worth reading, then they will (like
the dedicated posters to the crackmonkey mailing list) adjust their
computing environment to accomodate.
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. If I were to post all of my messages in
Russian, even fewer people on the Tron list would be able to
understand them; but would there then be an uproar demanding my
removal from the list?
--
INFORMATION GLADLY GIVEN BUT SAFETY REQUIRES AVOIDING UNNECESSARY CONVERSATION
01234567 <- The amazing* indent-o-meter!
^ (*: Indent-o-meter may not actually amaze.)
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Yup - you guessed it. *click*
I also can't read L337. It's exclusionary speech, meant to be read only by other members of the clique.
Free Software is a philosophy. Part of that philosophy is to share with as many people as possible. It's not a stick to beat people with, or something for the privileged techno-elite.
Go ahead - keep Outlook users from reading your mail. Write in L337 if you want and keep people over the age of 17 from reading your mail. Heck, write in Swedish! Do you suppose my desire to read your deathless prose will make me learn Swedish?
Yup, you guessed it. *click*
Another lumpen-proletarian
I couldn't have said it better. Mod this post up (I mean the post I'm replying to not mine).
Why can't it be a true escape with the following algorithm?
To escape: If a line begins with n ">"s (including n=0), followed by the 5 characters "From ", then prefix the line with an additional ">".
To unescape: If a line begins with n ">"s (n >= 1), followed by the 5 characters "From ", then remove the first ">".
What he's talking about here is the Unix-style mbox format for storing mail. Each message has another header added to it that begins "From " and has pre-parsed contents of the RFC822/2822 message that follows it.
Should a message include the word "From " at the start of the line it is quoted while in the mbox only. When it is displayed it is removed. Is that clear enough? While it is in storage it is quoted. You might think this is a problem, but have a look at the garbage bollocks some mailers mash a message into when they store them.
Unix mailers that use mbox may munge the message while it is stored but they do not have a problem with displaying the message.