On 10/16/2010 1:07 PM, MH Michael Hammer (5304) wrote: > This is disingenuous on your part. It is akin to saying that although > the common usage of hammers is to hit nails, we must accept within the > definition of normal the usage of beating people on the head with a > hammer.... simply because some people do and it is not documented > through warnings on hammers that this is not normal. > > There is a subset of headers that the vast majority of informed (even > semi-informed) implementers would agree on. Perhaps we need to reach a > consensus and document this to protect the children.
Wow. From sophistry to disingenuous. Today seems to be when people think that tossing in slams at motives, legitimacy and style somehow facilitates discussion. It invites all sorts of responses in kind, none of which would be constructive. And I've tossed in this comment merely to note how irritating today's vocabulary choices are and suggest folks make more judicious choices. My postings have constructive intent and serious thought behind them. The might be wrong, but they are not naive, frivolous, poorly intentioned, or any of the other things that permit superficial dismissal. Please debate them on substance; if you've missed the substance, please show the courtesy of simply asking for clarification. In any event, it's clear that at least two of you have entirely missed my point. So let's try this again, more carefully: There is a fundamental difference between saying "something bad might happen" versus "do this specific thing to provide this specific protection". One is a generic warning. The other is a spec. The difference is not subtle. Re-read my questions. They werequite precise. The text in the spec does not provide precise answers; when it appears to provide precise answers, they were not the result of informed thought: "Which header fields are essential to protect? How much of the message body is essential to protect?" Let me emphasize: Most of the advice in the spec is not useful, except as basic reminders to an already-knowledgeable reader. "Useful" means that someone who does not already knows the answer is able to figure out the answer from the guidance that is given or the guidance tells them how to go about finding out the answer. They can't do that with what is in the spec. I don't mean we should rip out all the advice, merely that we need to distinguish between soft advice and serious, technical specification. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net _______________________________________________ NOTE WELL: This list operates according to http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html