Should a rule be set up that disallows messages (or attachments) of
greater than, say, 10k being posted to the list?
Gavin
On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, 6:45:20 AM, janieguarnieri wrote:
Hi,This is a very humour game
This game is my first work.
You’re the first player.
I hope you would like it.
[snip 120k attachments]
Actually, I’m not sure we’re supposed to have
attachments at all. Hmm. Guess the FAQ is
silent on that…?
Hal
----- Original Message -----
From: “Gavin Sinclair” gsinclair@soyabean.com.au
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 10:09 PM
Subject: Re: A very humour game
Should a rule be set up that disallows messages (or attachments) of
greater than, say, 10k being posted to the list?
attachments are OK, certainly larger than 10K. already the virus
catcher caught some of these for us. it would be better to set up the
ML software to use filters of some sort to block this sort of message
altogether. all the virus emails have pretty much the same wording
within their variant. who is going to write an email to this list with
the subject “A very humour game” anyway. also, even better, im sure
theres some Bayseian filter software for linux at the server level.
digibren
On Monday, January 6, 2003, at 11:18 PM, Hal E. Fulton wrote:
Should a rule be set up that disallows messages (or attachments) of
greater than, say, 10k being posted to the list?Actually, I’m not sure we’re supposed to have
attachments at all. Hmm. Guess the FAQ is
silent on that…?Hal
Mailing lists usually discourage attachments. I personally have no
problem with them, so long as they’re not 100KB+ spam attachments! I
don’t have a fast connection.
So automatically dropping large messages would be another spam-filter,
but I think diplomacy is a better way to discourage genuine
attachments 
Cheers,
Gavin
On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, 3:18:21 PM, Hal wrote:
Should a rule be set up that disallows messages (or attachments) of
greater than, say, 10k being posted to the list?
Actually, I’m not sure we’re supposed to have
attachments at all. Hmm. Guess the FAQ is
silent on that…?
Well, does this ML have a policy on attachments?
And anyway, what happens when they are echoed to
the NG? Deleted or (horrors) encoded and passed
through?
Hal
----- Original Message -----
From: “Gavin Sinclair” gsinclair@soyabean.com.au
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 10:33 PM
Subject: Re: A very humour game
On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, 3:18:21 PM, Hal wrote:
Should a rule be set up that disallows messages (or attachments) of
greater than, say, 10k being posted to the list?Actually, I’m not sure we’re supposed to have
attachments at all. Hmm. Guess the FAQ is
silent on that…?Mailing lists usually discourage attachments. I personally have no
problem with them, so long as they’re not 100KB+ spam attachments! I
don’t have a fast connection.So automatically dropping large messages would be another spam-filter,
but I think diplomacy is a better way to discourage genuine
attachments
Attachments for a technically-oriented mailing list shouldn’t be OK.
With so much free web hosting, there’s no excuse for people not to push
a necessary file attachment up to some webspace and publish the URL to
the resource. Then, only people who /want/ the file(s) can go fetch
them, alleviating bandwidth requirements for all the list participants
and the list server itself.
I generally relax this “rule of thumb” for non-technical mailing lists,
as it’s less likely that people will be knowledgeable enough to know how
to do this (put files up on a webserver and post URLs to them).
Disallowing file attachments at the list server stops these mail-borne
viruses most of the time. It also prevents someone from launching a
silly denial-of-service attack against the list server by hammering it
with a ton of messages containing large file attachments.
– Dossy
On 2003.01.07, Brennan Leathers digibren@mac.com wrote:
attachments are OK, certainly larger than 10K. […]
–
Dossy Shiobara mail: dossy@panoptic.com
Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/
“He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
folly – then you can let go and quickly move on.” (p. 70)
you make a very valid point about technical lists. but again, for ppl
who want to post code samples of some sort, it is sometimes a practical
matter of not wanting to put a bunch of code inline the message. same
goes for NG. so this is why I think some attachments should be allowed,
but preferably they could be screened through a low-cost virus-catcher
server (which it looks like this list does?) and limited to under
300-500k or so.
$.02
digibren
On Monday, January 6, 2003, at 11:57 PM, Dossy wrote:
On 2003.01.07, Brennan Leathers digibren@mac.com wrote:
attachments are OK, certainly larger than 10K. […]
Attachments for a technically-oriented mailing list shouldn’t be OK.
With so much free web hosting, there’s no excuse for people not to push
PGP signatures are usually attachments aren’t they? … and on technical mailing
lists it’s more likely to find people who sign, and people who actually might
check signatures.
On Tue, 7 Jan 2003 13:57:37 +0900 Dossy dossy@panoptic.com wrote:
Attachments for a technically-oriented mailing list shouldn’t be OK.
…
I generally relax this “rule of thumb” for non-technical mailing lists,
as it’s less likely that people will be knowledgeable enough to know how
to do this (put files up on a webserver and post URLs to them).
What’s the difference between an attached code sample and an inline
code sample? Not much, in my opinion. The bandwidth argument applies
to a lot of things: HTML, off-topic posts, etc. Why pick on
potentially on-topic and useful attachments?
For a code sample, putting it on a web site and publishing the URL
seems like a punitive amount of effort.
I think there should be an upper limit to the size of messages in this
list, regardless of attachments.
A quick survey of the last couple of months leads me to the conclusion
that of all the posts above 10K:
I would therefore set the limit at 20K for a message. This would
actually exclude that last item, but he could resend after zipping -
not exacly a bad idea.
One thing’s for sure. 100Kb+ spam messages make me mad.
Gavin
On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, 3:57:37 PM, Dossy wrote:
Attachments for a technically-oriented mailing list shouldn’t be OK.
With so much free web hosting, there’s no excuse for people not to push
a necessary file attachment up to some webspace and publish the URL to
the resource. Then, only people who /want/ the file(s) can go fetch
them, alleviating bandwidth requirements for all the list participants
and the list server itself.
you make a very valid point about technical lists. but again, for ppl
who want to post code samples of some sort, it is sometimes a practical
matter of not wanting to put a bunch of code inline the message.
Perhaps the filter could strip all attachements except *.rb
(In the unlikely event that the .rb file was a virus written in Ruby,
it might still be interesting to the readers of this list 
Bill
From: “Brennan Leathers” digibren@mac.com
Don’t get me started on my “PGP signed messages to a mailing list are
silly” rant.
I can hardly think of any time where I needed to verify the
authenticity of an email’s sender for a message I’ve ever received on a
mailing list in, oh, the past 10 years. And, I’m on a LOT of mailing
list, many of them technical.
– Dossy
On 2003.01.07, jared jennings jjenning@stetson.edu wrote:
PGP signatures are usually attachments aren’t they? … and on
technical mailing lists it’s more likely to find people who sign, and
people who actually might check signatures.
–
Dossy Shiobara mail: dossy@panoptic.com
Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/
“He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
folly – then you can let go and quickly move on.” (p. 70)
If you’re talking about attaching Ruby code to a message, we’re probably
talking about 10K on average. I think a limit of 25K for file
attachments is /more/ than reasonable. Anything larger, and the poster
should just put a URL to where the file(s) can be gotten from.
Think about it: right now, there’s 1173 members of the ruby-talk
mailing list. If you sent a 25K attachment, that’s 25K x 1173 =~ 29.3M
worth of data transfer, plus probably another 250K worth of TCP and SMTP
overhead to send those messages out.
While 30M doesn’t sound like a lot (and, /today/ it really isn’t) …
chances are, the machine hosting the ruby-talk mailing list pays for
bandwidth at some level.
– Dossy
On 2003.01.07, Brennan Leathers digibren@mac.com wrote:
you make a very valid point about technical lists. but again, for ppl
who want to post code samples of some sort, it is sometimes a practical
matter of not wanting to put a bunch of code inline the message. same
goes for NG. so this is why I think some attachments should be allowed,
but preferably they could be screened through a low-cost virus-catcher
server (which it looks like this list does?) and limited to under
300-500k or so.
–
Dossy Shiobara mail: dossy@panoptic.com
Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/
“He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
folly – then you can let go and quickly move on.” (p. 70)
Gavin Sinclair gsinclair@soyabean.com.au wrote in message news:18765807966.20030107173718@soyabean.com.au…
For a code sample, putting it on a web site and publishing the URL
seems like a punitive amount of effort.
I second that.
Would it be impossible for the receiving MTA to put the attachment
somewhere on it’s server, and convert the attachment to a corresponding
URL ?
This would also solve the bandwidth problem.
Cheers,
Han Holl