From: David Lesher [mailto:wb8foz@nrk.com] Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2001 6:56 AM

A) A friend got bit badly by the "anything I can attach I will" syndrome. He was in the UK, and the usual USG local POP (from PSI) was FUBAR.

So he called back to DC to get urgent mail. Some MITRE genius had attacked a 10+meg PowerPointless file to his message to 100+ folks, including Friend. Friend err (rather you & I) paid a VERY large phone bill for that braindeadness.

So, why were they dialing international when ATT WorldNet is closer/cheaper? Could it be because they'd have had to have opened the server for relaying, from ATT, in order to do that? The anti-openrelay crowd raised your friend's cost there by $4.90 per minute +VAT, by FORCING them to use international dialup instead. They could have also used ATT and punched a tunnel through to their host (still have to allow ATT dial port access). I was in the same position (London) last year and had my servers ORBS listed, even though they were only exposed for two weeks and they never saw spam being relayed. ORBS listing is cheaper than international phone charges, VAT or no VAT. Two things I always get before going to EU; a GSM rental cell phone and an ATT WorldNet account (I bring my own telco-hacker kit). For phone calls state-side I use Dialpad or Net2Phone. MHSC has been doing some work in NZ and we regularly connect via NetMeeting. My telco bills are consistently very low.

B) I'm intrigued by the proposal for pseudo attachments. Hmm, what's really needed?

1) User still points & clicks. 2) MUA uploads attachment to its designated server. 3) MUA attaches URL & password to message. 4) Recipient gets mail and grabs attachment. 5) Server knows who has gotten file, keeps track. 6) 24 hours after last recipient has claimed it, or {say} 1 week later, it deletes it. Replaces with "it's expired, have it resent" for whenever. (Gee, this sounds like news and history files...)

All this needs to work is for say Eudora and Mutt to both offer it. Once a critical mass of sysadms deploy same, and crank down the limit to 100K, more will. (I say Eudora because M$ will resist anything that interoperates....)

Key ingredient ... critical mass of sysadms. It will NEVER happen as long as neither Domino or Exchange are doing it. This list proves that you can't get any two sysadms to agree on the color of the sky on a sunny day. Further proof is found on the ICANN lists.

-- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

I still love this sig-line <g>.