On Wed, 11 Jun 1997, Sean Witham wrote:
> > ... but you haven't got the latest development version! :-) The newly-
> > added "expiring address" facility (suggested by Brian Blackmore) does
> > have to do this. I have chosen to use 2-digit years, with the assumption
> > of the 21st century for all but those starting with "9". I shall
> > certainly have retired by 2090, and so, I suspect will Exim.
> >
>
> Why chose 2 digits ? Why not use 4 digits ?
Because:
(a) It is something users are likely to be typing for themselves,
possibly quite often. It gets dead boring to have to type an unchanging
"19" or "20" every time - after all, that's why people use 2-digit dates
in the first place, because the century changes so rarely.
(b) Once we are past the millennium, strings like 010304 won't look so
obviously like dates as 970304 perhaps does, whereas 19970304 and
20010304 do look like dates. The idea being that it will be less easy to
automatically spot that a local part is time-expired and remove the
date. Mind you, if a spammer is intelligent enough to do that, one might
hope they would be intelligent enough to realize that it would do them
no good, since the person who posts with an expiry-stamped address is
highly likely not to react positively to spam.
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
