block in open()

[Jordan Abel]

Jordan, do I make personal judgemental comments such as
"living in the 70s" about -you-?

My understanding was that usenet was first created in the 70s [as it
turns out, I'm apparently mistaken - it was in fact the 80s] - and your
opinion seems to be that it should remain set in stone, unchanging since
that day. It was not a personal judgement, it was an observation on the
consequences of your stated opinion.

There are (or were relatively recently) posters in this very newsgroup
whose names (in the from: header) contain non-ascii characters encoded
in, i can only assume, mime format. Would you have them leave? Change
their names?

 

[Walter Roberson]

And, regardless, the fact that RFC 822 is the basis for all this means
that there are no headers that are valid for mail but invalid for
usenet, or vice versa.

RFC 1036 specifically indicates that Usenet uses a restricted subset
of RFC 822.

 

[Jordan Abel]

RFC 1036 specifically indicates that Usenet uses a restricted subset
of RFC 822.

Yes - such restrictions as "the colon must always be followed by
a space" But RFC 1036 is no more a standard than USEFOR (it may be
'further along' - but... a document either is a standard or it is not,
there's no halfway about it), and USEFOR is more recent.

But anyway - in so far as an RFC can be considered a standard but an
internet-draft cannot:

RFC 1036 does not address how messages are to be interpreted by user
agents. It's about interchange, not meaning. And "Any unrecognized
headers are allowed, and will be passed through unchanged"

RFC 1036 also does not forbid any of the headers it doesn't mention
- "Any unrecognized headers are allowed, and will be passed through
unchanged." first of all, this business about passing through again
shows that this is a transport standard, not about the interpretation of
messages by end-user software. Also, RFC 822 states "As network mail
requirements dictate, additional fields may be standardized." Now, many
such fields are standardized, and are listed in RFC 2076. It goes
without saying that Content-Type is among them.

 

[Walter Roberson]

My understanding was that usenet was first created in the 70s [as it
turns out, I'm apparently mistaken - it was in fact the 80s] - and your
opinion seems to be that it should remain set in stone, unchanging since
that day. It was not a personal judgement, it was an observation on the
consequences of your stated opinion.

"insistance on living in the 70s" is definitely a negative personal
judgement, not just "an observation". It is a phrase written for
emotive effect, not as a statement of objective fact nor as
a repetition of any statement I have made about myself. The technical
name for such phrases is "argumentum ad personam" or
"ad hominem abusive".

Is it really necessary to use ad hominem against someone who
has not used ad hominem against you?

 

[Jordan Abel]

My understanding was that usenet was first created in the 70s [as it
turns out, I'm apparently mistaken - it was in fact the 80s] - and your
opinion seems to be that it should remain set in stone, unchanging since
that day. It was not a personal judgement, it was an observation on the
consequences of your stated opinion.

"insistance on living in the 70s" is definitely a negative personal
judgement, not just "an observation".

No, it's not. You _did_ insist on not allowing any progress since the
state of what usenet had been like in - well, what turned out to have
been the 80s rather than the 70s, but surely you would have been just as
offended if i'd said that instead.

It is a phrase written for emotive effect,

That doesn't mean it is in any way personal - it is not you I dislike,
it is your views. that's the opposite of "personal".

not as a statement of objective fact nor as
a repetition of any statement I have made about myself.

It is a rephrasing of your _apparent_ insistence that no usenet standard
that was made after some arbitrary date [which I mistakenly believed to
have been in a different decade than it was] should be observed.

The technical
name for such phrases is "argumentum ad personam" or
"ad hominem abusive".

Is it really necessary to use ad hominem against someone who
has not used ad hominem against you?

Actually - ad hominem would be if I said something personal about you
that was true but irrelevant, like if [assuming I knew of it] i brought
your political affiliations into the argument in order to use that as
"evidence" that you were wrong. You seem to be saying that what I said
was false (when in reality you have simply misinterpreted my meaning),
not that it is irrelevant.

In fact, supposing that "insisting on living in the 70s" is a bad thing,
and that you did in fact do so [perhaps by illicit use of a time
travelling device], it would be ad hominem if I said "he insists on
living in the 70s so we shouldn't do what he says even though it has
nothing to do with time periods or anything" - this would if anything be
the exact opposite of ad hominem, particularly given that "you insist on
living in the 70s" is not what i'm trying to prove.

 

[CBFalconer]

That is not the point. The point is that html is dangerours to
unwary systems and operators. This started not because my
newsreader cannot read html, but because I have taken the
precaution of forbidding it to do so, for security reasons, and I
advised the OP of the situation. HTML does not belong in news
groups, and I will not read HTML email either. Just because you
can step out your back door and urinate on the geraniums does not
mean that that is an advisable thing to do.

.... snip ...

I see I invented a new word - dangerours. Will it become wildly
popular? Time will tell.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

2006-10-24 <[email protected]>,
Mark McIntyre wrote:
because html is an executable file format,

No, it's not. What ever gave you the idea that it was?

Because it is. Whatever makes you think it isn't?

Its interpreted, to be sure, but then so are shell scripts, and I
strongly suspect people consider those an executable format.

HTML is no more an executable format than JPEG. (and, I chose the example of JPEG for
a specific reason - can you guess what it is?)

Because its also been used as a delivery vector for viruses?

That's hardly relevant to this discussion.

I disagree, and consider it disingenuous to ignore the point.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Text is text, binary is binary,

Actually, they're both binary.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Mark McIntyre]

No, it's not.

Yes it is. Saying it aint won't make it so.

That doesn't mean it is in any way personal -

Come now, don't be disingenuous. Of /course/ it was personal.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Jordan Abel]

That is not the point. The point is that html is dangerours to
unwary systems and operators. This started not because my
newsreader cannot read html, but because I have taken the
precaution of forbidding it to do so,

So why didn't it just display the plain text version?

for security reasons,

Do you forbid your web browser from displaying html as well?

But I digress

aiind I advised the OP of the situation.

I don't like html either - and in fact my newsreader _can't_ handle it,
and it apparently can't handle multipart (which annoys me) - I was just
pointing out the fact that there's apparently no actual rule against it
(lacking a charter, CLC must fall back to "is it binary or is it not"
and text/html is not binary, it's ascii, and "is it on-topic" - IIRC the
original message was, at least insofar as anything posted here anymore
is) and maybe there should be. I wouldn't have posted at all if not for
the _other_ issue. (I wouldn't mind if text/enriched became more common,
it can at least be handled sensibly by stripping out all the tags, but
i digress)

HTML does not belong in news groups, and I will not read HTML email
either.

Yet, again, you'll read html webpages.

We are not simply being obstinate antediluvians. HTML works quite
well on the www (except when misused, which is often). It has its
place, which is not here.

We're talking about _three_ separate issues now:

The use of HTML (which, i'll freely admit, I was only arguing for it to
be contrary. Without the fact that I was replying anyway, I wouldn't
have even mentioned it. after all, text/enriched has most of the
benefits and is quite a bit safer - now if only it were better
supported). Though why you think what's good for the www isn't good for
anyplace else is a bit odd - security reasons? then surely you stay off
the www entirely, so how would you know what works well on it?

The use of attachments (and it's unclear _why_ servers drop messages
with attachments, rather than, say, dropping messages with BINARY
attachments) and the misconception that attachment means binary. An
attachment, of a text file, is just a fancy machine-readable "cut here"
line, and there's absolutely no reason they should be forbidden or
dropped. The fact that they are is nothing more than an unfortunate
configuration error.

And your somewhat ridiculous "don't use mime types" line. What, not even
text/plain? despite strong (and possibly deserved) opposition against
html, the mime infrastructure is much more than that, and quoted-
printable, format=flowed, and other mime-ish things have long since won
their rightful place on usenet.

 

[Jordan Abel]

Because it is. Whatever makes you think it isn't?

Its interpreted, to be sure, but then so are shell scripts, and I
strongly suspect people consider those an executable format.

So do you think text is an executable format? After all, it contains
commands like "back space" and "carriage return". Or even *gasp*
"display LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A at the current position and advance the
cursor"

HTML does not have anything that would be considered 'executable code'
(now, there's javascript, but that's not part of html. and it can be
ignored.)

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

The use of HTML (which, i'll freely admit, I was only arguing for
it to be contrary. Without the fact that I was replying anyway, I
wouldn't have even mentioned it. after all, text/enriched has most
of the benefits and is quite a bit safer - now if only it were
better supported). Though why you think what's good for the www
isn't good for anyplace else is a bit odd - security reasons? then
surely you stay off the www entirely, so how would you know what
works well on it?

I'm not especially afraid of HTML coming into my machinery. I have
(I hope) the dangers under control. But I want to discourage its
use because it can and has been used to install uglies on other
machines, which are then used to send emails and what not here and
there. The result is more spam and more things to protect against.

 

[Richard Bos]

Because it is. Whatever makes you think it isn't?

The fact that it specifies what is to be displayed, never what is to be
executed? It's a markup language, not an executable language.

Don't tell me you confuse BrokenScript with HTML...

Richard

 

[Mark McIntyre]

So do you think text is an executable format?

What I think is that ther's no such thing as an executable format.
Whether its executable depends on the OS. Is a PE file executable on
MVS? Is a Windows DLL executable on Solaris? Is a bash script
executable on Windows? Which sort of .com file runs on VMS and which
on CPM?

The executability of a file isn't defined by whether its "text" or
"binary" but by the environment you insert it into.

But this is all fairly offtopic, and try as I might I can't get it
even obTopical.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Mark McIntyre]

On Thu, 26 Oct 2006 07:35:30 GMT, in comp.lang.c ,

Don't tell me you confuse BrokenScript with HTML...

Since I have no idea what you refer to as BrokenScript, out of all the
vast array of scripting languages one can use inside webpages, I can
safely say that I do not. By the way, please don't bother to explain
to me which one /is/ BrokenScript, I really don't want to know.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Richard Bos]

Since I have no idea what you refer to as BrokenScript,

Whichever broke a web page today. May be any of them.

Richard

 

[riedel]

... snip ...

I see I invented a new word - dangerours. Will it become wildly
popular? Time will tell.

already 18500 google hits...

 

[Jordan Abel]

What I think is that ther's no such thing as an executable format.

The executability of a file isn't defined by whether its "text" or
"binary" but by the environment you insert it into.

There is also the matter of whether the file contains instructions to be
carried out or not.

But this is all fairly offtopic, and try as I might I can't get it
even obTopical.

obTopical: C source code may be an "executable format" by the definition
I gave above. Discuss.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

There is also the matter of whether the file contains instructions to be
carried out or not.

.... which are absolutely defined by the environment. If you're unsure
about this, try copying .com files from VMS to DOS.

obTopical: C source code may be an "executable format" by the definition
I gave above. Discuss.

Shant.

--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Jordan Abel]

... which are absolutely defined by the environment. If you're unsure
about this, try copying .com files from VMS to DOS.

The instructions are there regardless whether or not the environment can
understand them. In the case of an html file, there are no instructions.
I.e. something cannot be considered an executable format if it does not
have the potential to be "executed" on any system because it does not
contain any text to be interpreted as instructions to be carried out.