Denis Kasak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > John Bokma wrote: >> >> You can't be sure: errors in the handling of threads can cause a >> buffer overflow, same for spelling checking :-D > > Yes, they can, provided they are not properly coded. However, those > things only interact locally with the user and have none or very > limited interaction with the user on the other side of the line. As > such, they can hardly be exploitable.
Uhm... one post can affect a number of clients, hence quite exploitable. >> Some people never use them, and hence they use memory and add risks. > > On a good newsreader the memory use difference should be irrelevantly > small, even if one does not use the features. I would call that a > nitpicky argument. Xnews - 10 M Thunderbird - 20 M There was a time I had only 128M in this computer :-D. And there was a time I read news on a RISC OS machine. I guess the client was about 300 K (!). > Also, the risk in question is not comparable > because of the reasons stated above. The kind of risk you are talking > about happens with /any/ software. True. The more code, the more possibilities on holes. > To stay away from that we shouldn't > have newsreaders (or any other software, for that matter) in the first > place. telnet :-P. >> Of course can HTML be useful on Usenet. The problem is that it will >> be much more often abused instead of used. > > No, you missed the point. I am arguing that HTML is completely and > utterly /useless/ on Usenet. But I beg to differ :-). I can think of several *good* uses of HTML on Usenet. But like I said, it will be abused. And you can't enforce a subset of HTML. > Time spent for writing HTML in Usenet But you are not going to *write* HTML, you let your client hide that. I mean, it's not that hard to have a client turn *bold* into <strong>bold </strong> :-). > posts is comparable to that spent on arguing about coding style or Agreed, I have learned things from arguing on coding style, even adjusted my style based on it. > writing followups to Xah Lee. Ok, now there is something one shouldn't spent time on :-) > It adds no further insight on a > particular subject, Yes, it does. That's why for example figures, tables, and now and then colours are used in scientific publications. ASCII art, now that's a huge waste of time. > but _does_ add further delays, spam, bandwidth > consumation, exploits, and is generally a pain in the arse. It's > redundant. I have to disagree. Mind, I am not saying that HTML *should* be used on Usenet, I am happy with Usenet as it is, but I wouldn't call it useless nor redundant. -- John Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/ Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/ Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list