From: David Champion Date: 00:20 on 13 Apr 2005 Subject: HTML E-mail Not what you're thinking. > <!-- > This is a graphic email message. If you are reading this message > then your email program does not support HTML format. We recommend > upgrading the program you use to read your email. > --> Well then, pinhead, *don't put in a text part to a multipart/alternative message*. My reader understands HTML just fine, dipstick, but if you state that the two parts are equivalent, which is what multipart/alternative bloody *means*, then of course I'm going to favor the text one, you hoser. So none of this noise -- and yo, what's it doing buried inside an HTML comment anyway, peabrain, if you've concluded already that I don't dig? -- none of this noise about I need a new flaming mail reader to see your precious "content". I miss when IT departments had underpaid old curmudgeons sitting in the back room hollering that if you're gonna do this, you're gonna do it right, instead of a pile of cheap CS graduates whose best contribution to the project is finding the pull-string that makes the new manager, just hired from Pepperidge Farm or some place, go "Cool!" I mean, I'm underpaid anyway. Might as well let me have the right effect on the product.
From: David Champion Date: 19:48 on 30 Aug 2004 Subject: Stuffit Expander. You know what I'm talking about. Asinine, misbegotten, throwback jar of bilge. What do we need this kind of blistering toesore for anyway, in this day? And stop stealing my focus. The only good thing about Stuffit, *ever*, is that it gave Aladdin the money to buy and maintain ghostscript.
From: David Champion Date: 17:42 on 02 Sep 2003 Subject: DNS * On 2003.09.02, in <20030902162044.GJ23320@xxxx.xxxxxxxx.xxx>, * "David Champion" <dgc@xxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > * On 2003.09.02, in <Pine.LNX.4.55.0309021638100.6478@xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx>, > * "Mark Fowler" <www@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > I hate software that doesn't map http://theirdomainname.com to > > http://www.theirdomainname.com. > > But that's asinine. We don't map uchicago.edu to smtp.uchicago.edu, or > to finger.uchicago.edu, or to sunrpc.uchicago.edu, either. Because it's > not. And it's not software's fault, it's people's achievement. > > In a justifiably bad mood, but (unfortunately) not because of software, Oh, all right. I'll take a shot at software, in the spirit of this post. Mapping domain.name to www.domain.name is asinine; I stand by that. But I'll tell you what I hate. I hate DNS. DNS is busted. DNS had a good idea in the MX record: a short and simple way to say "whenever you want this name for SMTP, use this other name instead." A fine concept, a noble goal, and most useful. I can make mail for domain.name go to smtp.domain.name with no trouble. And mail for anywhere else. What a useful paradigm! I need this for my http and finger services, too, as it happens. It should be little surprise, and I imagine a lot of people do. We've mapped finger at domain.name to finger at another box for ages -- since before there was a web, and that coexists fine with mail. Adding a mapping for http might be nice -- it's certainly user-friendly, and good in principle. But it's impossible to map both finger and http jointly with smtp. Why? Because DNS is busted. What DNS should do is to provide a uniform, service-neutral RR mapping a service (or port, if you'd rather) to a host. When my web browser wants to look up http://domain.name, it looks up the service RR instead, and perhaps finds the http mapping saying it should refer to www.domain.name instead. Finger could easily do the same. It could even be built into library routines for constructing sockaddr_in structures, if we wanted to make things easier for the coder. But DNS doesn't do this; it's short-sighted. It would rather push this burden to the application protocol, where it doesn't belong. DNS is busted.
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