g'day,
Vernon Schryver wrote:
. . .
> There is no magic. Users have been demanding the impossible from SMTP
> on the grounds that they don't understand why not for decades.
With all due respect, we're not the law-givers, come down from on high
with the tablets. We're the hired help. Telling the users they can't
drive that screw with the hammer we sold them isn't going to cut it.
If the users who pay the bills want to email documents, and that breaks
the system, than the problem is with the system, or the interface to it,
not the users. People want to share info, and they like using the
stored messaging paradigm to do so. It's not that they *can't*
understand why the frazzle pin can't fit into the grapple gromit, it's
just that they (quite rightly) don't care. They figure that they pay
people to worry about such things, so woe betide you if you drop the
ball at this point. Increased demand on email message sizes is something
we all agree is quite foreseable.
If the "problem" that the engineers are seeing is larger message sizes
leading to overloaded spools, then our task is to find ways to limit the
overloaded spools. Now, one way to do that is to stop people mailing
large files but to our credit, the system has apparently already been
working on better suggestions than that. Darwinian selection should do
the rest.
To me, the interesting question now is thus "have we reached a point
where the difference in degree has become a difference in kind, or can
we continue as is for a while?" Simply telling users they're misusing
the tools just creates market opportunities for your competitors.
- peterd
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- paraphrasing Bloom County...
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