On Sun, 2004-01-25 at 14:22 -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > But in practice it'll never be 'just like a human assistant', especially
> > a clueful one. So I don't believe that it should be treated as one.
>
> Your beliefs are your own, but that's the very definition of a "Non
> sequitur" if I've ever seen one.
I assert that does not behave like a human agent, therefore we shouldn't
trust it to behave like one. You think that's a non sequitur.
Interesting.
> That's completely lame argument too. You're responsible for your own
> broken software and you use it at your own peril. If it doesn't do what
> you want it to do then learn how to make it conform, and if it can't
> then either fix it or find a replacement that can do what you want it to
> do! We're talking about very common software here, not laws of physics!
My software does precisely what I want it to, thank you.
> Are you completely disconnected from the the real world to the extent
> that you've even missed examples of this problem in this very forum?
I have no recollection of seeing any examples of problems caused by
responses to $sender_address in this forum. Yet this thread was started
by a problem caused by responding to $reply_address.
Do please enlighten me if you would.
> > I remain unconfused. As I said, the Sender: header in the example will
> > _happen_ to match the SMTP reverse-path. Call it coincidence if you
> > will; I prefer to observe that there is a correlation.
>
> It's either a co-incidence, or broken software. RTFRFC again.
On the mail to which I'm replying I see:
Return-path: <exim-users-admin@???>
Sender: exim-users-admin@???
Do you _really_ assert that this is either coincidence or broken
software, rather than normal behaviour? Which of the two, in this
particular case, do you believe to be the case -- is it just a
coincidence or is something broken?
> In this case what you call an MTA is merely a program that can act as
> both an MTA and as a MUA, and in this case it is clearly acting as an
> MUA since it is working on behalf of the user. Please don't be confused
> by the fact that all of this happens under the guise of one program --
> that's simply an implementation optimisation (a flawed one, IMNSHO).
I assure you I'm not at all confused, thank you.
> > You automatically avoid responding to bounces
>
> Where you respond to has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not
> you avoid responding to bounces.
Theoretically true, practically false. Take, for example, the example
which started this thread. If it had been configured with
'to = $sender_address' I believe it would have automatically avoided
responding to bounces.
I assure you I have a thorough grounding in the real world.
> I wish I could say I've discussed this very issue with Jon Postel
> himself, but sadly I never did. However I am sure that he did at least
> once read my view on these matters on a public forum (I've been fighting
> against the sendmail implementation of "vacation" since the day I first
> saw it) and given that he never responded to correct me (as he did on
> other matters, sometimes even just to fill in details I wasn't aware of)
> I can only assume that he agreed with what I said.
That would probably be a flawed assumption. Having witnessed your other
contributions to this mailing list, and having briefly entered a
discussion with you myself, I shall no longer be bothering to contradict
you in public. You shouldn't take that as implicit agreement on my part
either.
--
dwmw2
