Jargons of Info Tech industry

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Tim Tyler wrote:

What have you got against captions?

Giving photos captions is a *very* common practice.

Perhaps he has a search engine that can find blue hats in an image and
recognize people?

 

[Tim Tyler]

What makes you think I don't have a copy of Opera? Just so happens
I've got a registred copy on my newest computer.


My copy of Opera doesn't have that menu entry. I suspect you're making
platform-specific suggestions.

Trying it on a different platform, it looks like it does what I said
earlier: user mode simply disables the authors style sheets. None of
the "merging" you suggested was going on is actually happening.

The "user mode" uses style sheets you specify.

There's a whole bunch of built-in ones - and you can cascade them:

``User style sheets

``There is also the inclusion of 12 packaged user style sheets and an easy
menu application interface (View > Style). These sheets can be cascaded
together, with or without the page's styles. They are mostly for
accessibility, accessible web design and plain coolness: Emulate text
browser, Nostalgia, Accessibility Layout, Show images and links only,
High contrast, Hide non-linking images, Disable tables and Use default
forms design.

There are also three style sheets that are worth mentioning specially:
Hide certain-sized elements, Debug with outline, and Show structural
elements. Hide certain-sized elements is basically that CSS-powered
inline ad-killer that Eric A. Meyer came up with a few years ago. Debug
with outline uses the newly added support for the "outline" property to
display key elements. Finally, Show structural elements, which with the
acrobatic use of generated content, attribute selectors and counters,
shows the HTML tags inline, as well as the meta and link data, and a
report on the number of font tags and nested tables. Now this is cool!''

- http://www.evolt.org/article/Opera_7_Released/1/54851/

 

[Tim Tyler]

Merge the two CSS files? Most browsers do that - that's why they call
them "cascading" style sheets. Got a sample style sheet that you use
that prevernts authors from overriding things?

Custom style sheets are usually applied after those in the document -
when they are both being applied.

That way, the custom style sheet has the final word.

 

[Stefaan A Eeckels]

In comp.lang.java.programmer Roedy Green

It's gone

FYI, this bit:

``Like ICQ, someone cannot send you mail without your prior
permission. They can't send you mail because they don't have your
public key to encrypt the mail.''

...is pretty confusing - because "public key" is a term with a
technical meaning in cryptography - and a public key really *is*
public.

If you want to allow email only from a list of senders, then you use
a simple white list. Cryptography is not needed or desirable if this
is the intended goal.

But what is desirable is the possibility to authenticate the sender of
the message as genuine, given the ease with which SMTP headers can be
spoofed. Maybe this is suggested in Mr Green's essay, but
cryptographically signed email (using the originator's _private_ key),
where the signature and hence the originator of the mail can be verified
independently, would be very useful. The problem is to get everyone to
use digital signatures, and to ensure that such a signature can be
linked to an individual or business. I've no illusions here.

Take care,

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

Since - in Roedy's essay - messages are digitally signed, authority
to advise about any email address updates would presumably be confined
to those people with access to the sender's private key.

If I have the sender's private key, then I can pretend to be him. That
would mean that when you received an email from the sender, you couldn't
be sure if it actually came from him or not, thus defeating the purpose of
having a private key.

Even /without/ any form of authentication, a standard change-of-address
message - which is understood by mail readers - is a fine and sensible
idea.

So any random person -- or bot -- could send an email to my business
associates, telling them that my email address had changed to
(e-mail address removed), please send all your confidential
information directly there thank you very much.

Yeah. Fine *and* sensible.

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

FYI, this bit:

``Like ICQ, someone cannot send you mail without your prior permission.
They can't send you mail because they don't have your public key to
encrypt the mail.''

...is pretty confusing - because "public key" is a term with a technical
meaning in cryptography - and a public key really *is* public.

The term you want is "wrong", not "confusing".

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

Tim Tyler wrote:


Perhaps he has a search engine that can find blue hats in an image and
recognize people?

Yes. It is called "eyes". I look at the image, and miracle upon miracles,
I recognise Johnny wearing a hat.

Then, if I have any need to save that image rather than trash it, I name
it and file it in a directory appropriately, so that I can instantly find
it later without needing to call up a search engine.

Honestly, anyone would think that photos and photo albums never existed
before Google. Why force one particular bad technological solution on
everyone for the sake of something which many people don't even perceive
as a problem?

 

[Roel Schroeven]

I'll repeat the question: what do attachments have to do with HTML emails?

His reply wasn't exactly clear, but I that he means that wen you use HTM
mail, you don't have to attach the photo with the email. You can also
use the HTML to refer to an image somewhere on a webserver.

Doesn't seem such a good idea to me, since the possibility of external
images gives spammers the possibility to track who opens their mails.

 

[Rich Teer]

Normally you send photos to grandma with captions under each photo.
That is far more convenient for the technopeasant receiver than
dealing with multiple attachments.

And even more convenient is "Hey grandma, check out the latest
photos on my web site: www.example.com/rich/photos".

People keep thinking of email as a techie preserve.

Worse, people keep misusing email.

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

 

[Rich Teer]

This is pulling a King Canute. There is not even a mechanism in email
protocols to warn your correspondents of your demand. I have been

Yes there is: the message my server sends someone sending me HTML
says so quite plainly. That Outhouse (and presumably other WIndoze
email clients) choses to not display the real message and put up
some other generic, "user friendly" (but totally techie useless)
message besides the point.

There is nothing wrong with formatted text. You are confusing
formatted text with spam.

You think you hated formatted text, but you really hate spam.

Please don't presume to think for me. I've been using email and
the Internet for over 10 years, and I think I can differentiate
between spam and formatted text. I hate spam, that's a given.
But I hate spam that's in plain text as well as formatted text.

I hate HTML email for several reasons, including:

1. it's wasteful of bandwidth

2. it enourages people to put form over content

3. it doesn't display properly on my email client of choice,
which, BTW, I've been using in various versions for 10+
years.

There are probably others, but you get my drift. You'll also notice
that I deliberately didn't list the security issues. HTML is for
web sites, not email.

If your lover sent you a message with photo, and even musical
accompaniment, I doubt you would feel offended. It is the CONTENT
bugging you, not the HTML.

No it isn't. And my wife knows better than to do that. When she
sends me virtual boquets, she does so in the correctmanner: she
sends me a plain text link to a web site that does all the fancy
stuff, including background music. That is how it should be.

You imagine that the two are inexplicably linked. That is just because

No I don't.

Eudora warns you of deceptive links in HTML. There are many more such

I am fortuanate enough to not use Windoze.

unfair to blame formatting for the foolish practice off allowing
untrusted code to run without even an ok. They have nothing to do
with each other.

Agreed. But as I said above, I have many other issues with HTML emails,
over and above the security concerns.

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

 

[Roedy Green]

His reply wasn't exactly clear, but I that he means that wen you use HTM
mail, you don't have to attach the photo with the email. You can also
use the HTML to refer to an image somewhere on a webserver.

There is that and also the use of HTML formatting, embedded images,
captioning, rows, borders to make the message look more like a page
from a photo album.

 

[Roedy Green]

Only if your photos are so obscure and confusing that they need captions.

That is a hair shirt approach. What if someone is sending photos of
their new house? What if I am sending diagrams to help someone repair
their computer? It is ridiculous to tie people's arms behind their
backs. What you do instead is work to prevent abuse. Captions in and
of themselves are not dangerous things.

 

[Roedy Green]

Yes. It is called "eyes". I look at the image, and miracle upon miracles,
I recognise Johnny wearing a hat.

Even for a limited application like children's birthday parties
captions could say things like:

Johnny with this friend Pete, the one I told you about who has
leukemia....

Here is Johnny opening your present, the sweater you knitted him.

If you want to communicate with text and with pictures obviously there
are times when you want to communicate with both text and pictures.

Imagine a main sending emailed floor tile samples to his wife on a
business trip for her final veto and not being allowed to caption
them.

The point I can't pound enough is that rich text and pictures with
captions are not INHERENTLY dangerous or spam. (Note that the most
common spam is the Nigerian con and variants which comes as a
non-formatted message.) Many have mentally linked rich text with
danger and spam because of Microsoft's incompetent email software. The
solution is to fix the software not block everyone from communicating
with rich text and pictures.

You don't have to use Outlook. see
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/email.html

 

[Dr.Ruud]

Roedy Green:

(Note that the most
common spam is the Nigerian con and variants which comes as a
non-formatted message.)

Don't think that that is true for everybody. For example not for people
that are behind central filters that already cope with common spam.

 

[Roedy Green]

And even more convenient is "Hey grandma, check out the latest
photos on my web site: www.example.com/rich/photos".

that is what my sister does. And there is now a service that will do
that See http://storymill.com/tidepool/

I find it amusing that people who complain about me giving links in my
posts rather that expounding inline are willing to insist others do
their emails via links where you need to fire up a separate browser
to see the images.

The other problem is maintaining a website is probably a skillset
Grandma is not willing to acquire. Even image inserting into emails is
pushing it. Further the website is yet an additional monthly expense
that could be avoided by using HTML in emails.

You might say what about those free 10 mb websites? That's not very
many images with today's megapixel digital cameras.

I think we computer folk owe the public an email system that works and
that is easy to use. It should at LEAST work better than the snail
mail system. The essential problem is it was designed overnight as a
proof of concept and has not been designed to deal with the problem of
spam or tracking conversational threads. Enclosures were a kludge.
Mail should be 8-bit binary transport with a system something like the
US post uses for large parcels. They don't show up directly in your in
mail box. You have to ok their delivery.

The biggest disincentive to spam would be to make sender pay a fee to
the receiver or to backbone maintenance. For most people it would all
balance out. Spammers would have to become more selective in their
targets. If they were sufficiently selective, they would not be a
nuisance. They could even be helpful sometimes.

I wrote an essay years ago on how such an email system might work. At
this point I think the most likely evolution is via Instant messaging
acquiring all the abilities of regular email. Instant mail interfaces
were designed to be computer friendly and extendable, so even though
there are a great many of them, people have written software that can
interface to many of them such as Trillian or Jabber.

see http://mindprod.com/projects/mailreadernewsreader.html

 

[riplin]

My grandma doesn't put captions in her photo album,

and she doesn't need captions on her photos in email.

She doesn't need captions in the album because she will explain the
pictures, at length, every single one of them, to anyone who comes
within grabbing distance.

"Here's Johnny with the dog. Here is Johnny with the
dog again. This one is Johnny on his own. Here is the
dog. Oh look, it is Johnny with the dog again -- ...

If your photos are so banal then only people who would recognise the
people would care about them.

Captions are for people who won't recognise the subject of the photo.
When you send a photo of a house to Granma is she supposed to just
_know_ that it your new house, or the one across the road, or the one
that burnt down last week ?

 

[Roedy Green]

Virus writers will love the ability to
change peoples address books remotely.

Since this is just a broad brush view, I find it odd you can predict
just what bugs there will be in the early implementations.

You sound almost as if you were the author of the current system and
feel personally attacked by others looking for ways to improve it.

In my scheme, every message is digitally signed, even a change of
address message.

Surely for a virus to send out a digitally signed change of address
message is more difficult than sending out an unsigned one, which they
can do today.

You have two problems you want to avoid:

1. the practical problem: failure to inform your correspondents, not
just your address list, of your new address (at least the ones you
don't consider spam or pests).

2. the potential problem: rogue software sending out fake change of
address notices.

In my scheme, The receiver of the change of address message ignores
it unless it is properly signed. Surely that is a more secure system
than we have today and that handles (1) without effort. At worst, a
very clever virus could change the one address book entry, the one for
this computer, in other's machines. It could not generally corrupt
other machines.

 

[Roedy Green]

``Like ICQ, someone cannot send you mail without your prior permission.
They can't send you mail because they don't have your public key to
encrypt the mail.''

...is pretty confusing - because "public key" is a term with a technical
meaning in cryptography - and a public key really *is* public.

What I envisioned was you would give a "public" key to someone you
wanted to converse with you. He would encrypt all mail with that. He
could give that key to someone else, who could then impersonate him.

Most likely that second person would be his laptop.

Let's say he posted the key in the New York Times, then anyone could
impersonate him. You would the deactivate him, just as if he were a
spammer. You might or might not give him a new key when he begged for
permission to communicate.

In my opinion, the weakest link in my scheme is the initial beg for
permission to send. Here a stranger has to, in one line, tell you who
he is and why he wants to talk to you. This is much like a spam title
that tries to trick you into reading the body of the message. You
still need spam list to help filter these types out.

My scheme should work fine if you are not someone like me who gets a
lot of legit mail from strangers.

Perhaps you could slow them down with some randomly chosen questions
to prove they know something about you. Companies could do the same
thing.

You can inconvenience the sender to a fair degree since most people
don't often write strangers with the expectation of a personal
correspondence.

 

[Roedy Green]

Actually, you present a design that forces a solution that makes them
do what you want down their throats, never mind what they want, or
what they've been doing. It shows an amazing ignorance about the
internet and how people behave on it. Like most antispam proposals, it
won't actually stop spam, just force spammers to concentrate on
different channels. You seem to have randomly broken quoting for
people who download mail and read it offline, and for any medium
that's unreliable or doesn't reliably deliver messages "in order" -
which includes mail and news. Virus writers will love the ability to
change peoples address books remotely. The problem of differing
character sets is technically solved. Practically, the solution
doesn't work because people implementing the software ignore the
standards. What's your server going to do when it gets messages with
characters in them that aren't valid in the charset that it's declared
as being? Better yet, what's it going to do when the characters are
valid, but the declared charset isn't the one the author actually
used? You implementation sketch only covers the client talking to the
first server (in that it requires the client to encrypt a challange
phrase with the private key belonging the email id, which is
presumably what 2822 uses for the envelope sender). Most mail on the
internet goes through at least two servers, and news is much
worse. For instance, your messages apparently passed through 10
servers getting to me. You really have to deal with store and forward,
or convince a large number of corporations that potentially hostile
users should be allowed to talk directly to their mail servers, which
isn't very likely. Kudos for recognizing that spam needs to be dealt
with by people with guns, but you lose half of them for making ISPS
liable for it.

I also read the comment about wanting an automated "Ask them to run my
browser in my favorite configuration", which is equally naive. A lot
of sites have such cruft on them already. I find them funny - I surf
the web on three different platforms, none of them Windows. Any
pointer to download a new browser or plugin for Windows just impresses
me with the authors lack of skills. The only browser I know of that
runs on all three platforms is Opera, and it's something radically
different on one of the three. Even should you get the platform right,
almost nobody is going to bother upgrading following the download
links. The very small percentage of users who are real geeks will
silently thank you for the notice, and update their software. Most
users will ignore it so long as the page isn't obviously broken. For
those for whom it's broken, all but small percentage will simply find
some other site to visit. I'd suggest that anyone thinking about writing

Your post brings up a meta-issue. How long should posts be?
I note several schools of thought.

There is the initial post, sort of a mini lecture on something
covering perhaps 7 major points.

Then you can have the theatre-critic style response where each person
in turn goes through the 7 points saying when they think.

Then they repeat the 7 points each commenting on what each of the
others had to say on the seven points. etc.

Then there is the conversational style where you discuss one major
point at a time, perhaps with several threads, one for each point.
These threads meander or split off themselves.

My preference is to think of a post, other than perhaps the initial
essay post, as like a paragraph. It should stick to one main idea.

Seems to me google will have an easier time classifying posts if they
don't cover too much ground.

 

[Paul Rubin]

There is that and also the use of HTML formatting, embedded images,
captioning, rows, borders to make the message look more like a page
from a photo album.

That's the worst of all. I certainly don't want my mail reader
opening network connections to arbitrary places when I read my mail.
I have no willingness at all to reveal my mail reading habits or IP
address to everyone who sends me email. If someone wants a return
receipt, they can use snail mail and fill out a form at the post
office for it.