John said:
You can't be sure: errors in the handling of threads can cause a buffer
overflow, same for spelling checking :-D
Yes, they can, provided they are not properly coded. However, those
things only interact locally with the user and have none or very limited
interaction with the user on the other side of the line. As such, they
can hardly be exploitable.
Some people never use them, and hence they use memory and add risks.
On a good newsreader the memory use difference should be irrelevantly
small, even if one does not use the features. I would call that a
nitpicky argument. Also, the risk in question is not comparable because
of the reasons stated above. The kind of risk you are talking about
happens with /any/ software. To stay away from that we shouldn't have
newsreaders (or any other software, for that matter) in the first place.
Of course can HTML be useful on Usenet. The problem is that it will be much
more often abused instead of used.
No, you missed the point. I am arguing that HTML is completely and
utterly /useless/ on Usenet. Time spent for writing HTML in Usenet posts
is comparable to that spent on arguing about coding style or writing
followups to Xah Lee. It adds no further insight on a particular
subject, but _does_ add further delays, spam, bandwidth consumation,
exploits, and is generally a pain in the arse. It's redundant.
-- Denis
