Various people are alleged to have said things like:
"file transfer by email is evil"
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 08:13:18 -0400
From: "Cutler, James R" <james.cutler@eds.com>Various people are alleged to have said things like:
[ snip ]
Business Response:
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I rather like DJB's IM2000 initiative:
Why not send the header with some "magic authentication cookie" to the
receiver, who may then yank the file from sender-side spool using HTTP or
some other protocol that's more efficient than uu- or mime-encoded SMTP?
Eddy
Various people are alleged to have said things like:
[ snip ]
Business Response:
[ snip ]
the problem with large file transfer via email is that it takes up
more space than the actual file (it's usually encoded in some manner
which makes it grow by a factor of somewhere from 1.2 to 1.4), and
there's no guarantee that the sender will do anything about it.
the use of ftp or scp to retrieve files requires active involvement
and encourages the recipient to do something with the file. it's a
simple matter of a synchronous system compared to an asynchronous one.
my personal view is that email messages should not exceed one megabyte
in size. anything larger is (imo) silly.
I rather like DJB's IM2000 initiative:
hmm...sounds like pop-without-smtp, except it needs smtp to send the
notifications. i guess i could spam notifications to someone and end
in the same pickle i'm in now wrt to spam.
Why not send the header with some "magic authentication cookie" to the
receiver, who may then yank the file from sender-side spool using HTTP or
some other protocol that's more efficient than uu- or mime-encoded SMTP?
like this?
Content-Type: Message/External-body;
name="draft-bogdanov-comments-umsp-01.txt";
site="ftp.ietf.org";
access-type="anon-ftp";
directory="internet-drafts"
that and a small perl script are how i get all the internet drafts and
rfcs as they are published.
Various people are alleged to have said things like:
"file transfer by email is evil"
alleged? dammit, i wanna get t-shirts printed up! 8^)
Arbitrarily denying the use of email for file transfer is, in and of itself,
tortuous interference with legitimate business of others.
owning and operating an ISP with an AUP is "in and of itself, tortuous
interference with legitimate business of others."
whether that AUP is about SPAM, or kiddie-porn (a business to some) or
huge emails, the ISP should be, and is, allowed to make its own judgements of
what it allows/disallows.
it may be your opinion that limiting email message sizes is possibily
detrimental to some classes of users, and may cause them to not be customers.
it is my opinion that we will keep more customers than we lose, merely by
having facilities that work efficiently, stably and cost effectively.