At 06:18 PM 5/25/01 -0400, Steve Sobol wrote:
Apples != oranges. You can avoid reading the binaries groups, and server admins can refuse to carry them.
Once an e-mail is dumped in your mailbox, you can't automagically delete it if you are Joe Sixpack Average NetUser. You either have to go in with your e-mail client and download and delete it, or ask your ISP to nuke the message.
*My* experience is that people who weren't expecting the big files from the yahoos that send it to them think their e-mail is broken until they call and I check their mail spool and see there's a big file (obviously the situation is slightly different if they were expecting the message, but there are a lot of times when I hear that someone's friend or relative just dumped a big mail in their box). Large files are an annoyance to the customer in cases like that.
That's why the big-email dilemma is such a... well, such a dilemma. If you disallow huge emails they complain. If you allow them, they get stuck and need help. It was even worse when every 1user was using Outlook 97, which routinely choked on any email over 500K. We (my former employer) finally started charging $10 to clear out a stuck mailbox. After a time or two they would learn to use the web interface and clear it out themselves. A technical solution (like the one mentioned earlier) would be great, but it would need to work both ways, otherwise it wouldn't help until many people implemented it. Converting outgoing attachments to a link would be great, but it would also need to convert incoming attachments to a link. Incoming is the worse problem IMO. I'll add that to the list of things I plan to work on if I find myself without 60 hours/week of work that I get paid for.