Subject: FYA: The Internet on the Today Show... in 1994...
From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
To: SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2011 22:20:19 -0800
List-Id: <ietf-smtp.imc.org>

not all that long ago...

    <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI>

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:20:38 +0000
From: Paul Smith <[email-masked]>
To: Steve Atkins <[email-masked]>
CC: [email-masked], SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: mailing list footer addition to MIME email
Sender: [email-masked]

On 14/01/2011 19:56, Steve Atkins wrote:
>
> On Jan 14, 2011, at 11:31 AM, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>
>> Can't decide on the right place to ask this question, so you folks got elected...
>>
>>
>> A list member sends a message that contains a MIME body.  (If it makes a difference between a simple, since body that is MIME encoded, versus one that has "attachments", then clarifying that is part of the exercise.)
>>
>> The mail list adds a typical footer to the message and sends it out.
>>
>> How does the footer related to the received MIME?  Is a new MIME body created? Is the footer added as a separate MIME attachment? Is the footer somehow distinguishable from the original MIME content?
>>
>> I'm trying to understand the nature of the violence done by a mailing list to the body.
> It varies.
>
> I've seen at least these variants:
>
>    1. Append a plain ascii footer to the end of the 822 body. (This ends up as a non-displayed MIME postlude for any multipart message.)
>
>    2. Same as 1, but only do it for single part messages.
>
>    3. Append an additional text/plain mime section to the existing multipart/mixed capsule (works well for mailing lists that are primarily text/plain with attached files).
>
>    4. Create a new multipart/mixed message containing two parts, the first being the entire (usually multipart/alternative) content of the inbound mail and the second being a text/plain footer.
>
>    5. Modify the content of the existing text/html (and sometimes text/plain) section, injecting the content into the existing mime part.
>
> Number 5 is mostly used for advertising supported services, where they want to make sure that the eyeballs will always see the injected content, and the injected content wants to be text/html. It's painful to do compared with the others.

Our mailing list server does (5) (which includes (2)). (1) was our first 
go when we just wanted a quick solution, and we tried (3) and (4) but 
had problems with some clients not showing the footer in all cases. 
We've had far less problems with (5) although it's not ideal (it's 
difficult guaranteeing you're injecting HTML code into the right place - 
I'm pretty sure someone could make a message which would hide the footer 
- eg having an 'illegal' message with an unclosed comment before the end 
</body> would put the footer inside the comment)

VBR-Info: md=iecc.com; mc=all; mv=dwl.spamhaus.org
Date: 14 Jan 2011 22:20:53 -0000
From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: mailing list footer addition to MIME email
Organization: 
Cc: [email-masked]
Sender: [email-masked]

>I'm trying to understand the nature of the violence done by a mailing list to 
>the body.

Mailman typically adds an additional part, which works better in some
cases than in others.  The last time I looked, Yahoogroups edits the
footer into the HTML.

http://blog.kamens.us/2010/05/25/solving-the-gnu-mailman-mime-message-footer-problem/
http://wiki.list.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4030707
R's,
John

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:28:28 -0800
To: [email-masked]
From: SM <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: mailing list footer addition to MIME email
Cc: SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>
Sender: [email-masked]

Hi Dave,
At 11:31 14-01-11, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>A list member sends a message that contains a MIME body.  (If it 
>makes a difference between a simple, since body that is MIME 
>encoded, versus one that has "attachments", then clarifying that is 
>part of the exercise.)
>
>The mail list adds a typical footer to the message and sends it out.
>
>How does the footer related to the received MIME?  Is a new MIME 
>body created? Is the footer added as a separate MIME attachment? Is 
>the footer somehow distinguishable from the original MIME content?

When the original message is posted as text/plain, the footer is 
appended as text at the end of the message.  If the original message 
is posted as text/html, The footer is inserted near the end of the 
message inside the appropriate HTML tags.

If the original message is multipart/alternative, it can sometimes be 
reformatted as multipart/mixed and a new MIME part is appended for 
the footer.  The footer is not distinguishable from the original MIME 
content unless we resort to heuristics.

Regards,
-sm 

Subject: Re: mailing list footer addition to MIME email
From: Steve Atkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:56:14 -0800
Cc: SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Sender: [email-masked]

On Jan 14, 2011, at 11:31 AM, Dave CROCKER wrote:

> 
> Can't decide on the right place to ask this question, so you folks got elected...
> 
> 
> A list member sends a message that contains a MIME body.  (If it makes a difference between a simple, since body that is MIME encoded, versus one that has "attachments", then clarifying that is part of the exercise.)
> 
> The mail list adds a typical footer to the message and sends it out.
> 
> How does the footer related to the received MIME?  Is a new MIME body created? Is the footer added as a separate MIME attachment? Is the footer somehow distinguishable from the original MIME content?
> 
> I'm trying to understand the nature of the violence done by a mailing list to the body.

It varies.

I've seen at least these variants:

  1. Append a plain ascii footer to the end of the 822 body. (This ends up as a non-displayed MIME postlude for any multipart message.)

  2. Same as 1, but only do it for single part messages.

  3. Append an additional text/plain mime section to the existing multipart/mixed capsule (works well for mailing lists that are primarily text/plain with attached files).

  4. Create a new multipart/mixed message containing two parts, the first being the entire (usually multipart/alternative) content of the inbound mail and the second being a text/plain footer.

  5. Modify the content of the existing text/html (and sometimes text/plain) section, injecting the content into the existing mime part.

Number 5 is mostly used for advertising supported services, where they want to make sure that the eyeballs will always see the injected content, and the injected content wants to be text/html. It's painful to do compared with the others.

Most of the good discussion mailing list managers seem to use a hybrid, depending on the inbound mail type. I think a common algorithm is:

  text/plain => append a plain text footer to the existing content

  multipart/mixed => add a new text/plain content-disposition=inline part to the existing container

  anything else => create a new multipart/mixed message containing the original message and a new text/plain content-disposition=inline footer part.

Cheers,
  Steve

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:31:33 -0800
From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Organization: Brandenburg InternetWorking
To: SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>
Subject: mailing list footer addition to MIME email
Sender: [email-masked]

Can't decide on the right place to ask this question, so you folks got elected...

A list member sends a message that contains a MIME body.  (If it makes a 
difference between a simple, since body that is MIME encoded, versus one that 
has "attachments", then clarifying that is part of the exercise.)

The mail list adds a typical footer to the message and sends it out.

How does the footer related to the received MIME?  Is a new MIME body created? 
Is the footer added as a separate MIME attachment? Is the footer somehow 
distinguishable from the original MIME content?

I'm trying to understand the nature of the violence done by a mailing list to 
the body.

Thanks.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 11:10:03 -0800
From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Organization: Brandenburg InternetWorking
To: Steve Atkins <[email-masked]>
CC: SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>
Subject: is it still email (was Re: Text of the 'first email ever sent')
Sender: [email-masked]

On 1/8/2011 10:46 AM, Steve Atkins wrote:
> If a message can only be sent to other users on the same system, is it still
> email? Two hosts and one network seems like the minimum setup for something
> to be email. If there are no hosts, it's telegraph. If there's no network,
> it's inter-account messaging.
>
> Or is this just my "younger than packet-switching" perspective showing
> through? :)

I see your question as a touchstone to a basic source of confusion in many 
technical discussions, namely user-view vs. technical view.

Users do not care about packet switching or "remoteness".  They care about 
exchanging messages.  In this view, "email" is a style of communicating among 
two or more people.  Hence the question is how the thing is used, not how it is 
constructed or operates.  For this, the presence of a "network" is entirely 
irrelevant.

However note that the definition I provided also matches instant messaging, 
which makes comparison between IM and email potentially nuanced.

It used to be that IM requires simultaneity with no store-and-forward in human 
terms, but this has disappeared.  Now it has more to do with retention of state 
and message style.  IM keeps addressee state in a context window that might be 
called a conversation, and messages are short and typically textual.  But note 
that the 'state' part of this is pretty darn close to email's Reply command.

Email often  works fine for an IM style of communication, which means that the 
distinction has more to do with user interface and service agreements. 
(Delaying email for many minutes is considered acceptable; for IM it is not.)

However even within the technical view, the question of whether a network is 
necessary is interesting.  I think it's not required.

That is, email is about sending a message from an author to one or more 
recipients, with access asynchrony.  Participants do not need to be online at 
the same time.  This is/was as useful for folks sharing the same machine as for 
folks on different machines.

The computer sciency aspect of email is a specialized write-only permission to 
the recipient's file store.  Again, this is independent of whether a network is 
involved.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 14:01:57 -0500
From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked], SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Text of the 'first email ever sent'
Sender: [email-masked]

--On Saturday, January 08, 2011 09:56 -0800 Dave CROCKER
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> 
> Folks,
> 
> Wikipedia's article on email includes the text:
> 
>     The first email ever sent contained the letters
> "Qwertyuiop".
> 
> This is repeated in other articles on the net.
> 
> Seems like such a claim should be validated.  I don't recall
> ever hearing about it and would assume that it's incorrect,
> since I haven't seen any definitive agreement on what the
> first email system was, nevermind what its first message
> contained.
> 
> My understanding is that email was a feature of the first
> timesharing systems, which puts the likely first message in
> the first half of the 1960s.

Maybe not quite that early, but we definitely had email on CTSS
in the 65-66 window, possibly a bit earlier.  I'm quite sure
DTSS picked it up from CTSS; Tenex and ITS were other, slightly
later, development forks wrt both the operating system and
applications functionality.  I don't know enough about the SDC
and other systems  of roughly that period to know what they had
and when.

Wrt content, you might ask Tom Van Vleck -- if CTSS really was
first (and it may have been), he probably sent it.   But Tom has
made the point that, on at least CTSS and probably other
systems, inter-user email evolved from user -> operator and
operator-> user messaging systems, so one really has to figure
out what counts. Think, for example, whether a MOUNT command
with a text-string message constitutes email: I don't, but,
especially when such messages get queued so the operator doesn't
see it until a drive is available, one gets into a grey area.

That same distinction applies to "netmail": if the only criteria
that separate it from intrasystem email is that more than one
machine was involved and/or that users were identified in terms
of the machine on which their accounts were located, it is
pretty early... but with transports involved magnetic media and
sneakernet or equivalent.   If one requires a wired physical
layer, then one gets back to a lot of definitional questions.
For example, there were, IIR, store-and-forward remote station
to central operator communication facilities in at least one of
the systems that evolved into IBM RSCS by around 1967-68.  I
don't think they constituted email, but I could easily imagine
other opinions.

As far as "Qwertyuiop" is concerned, my intuition from
remembering the people and attitudes of the time is that it is
pretty unlikely.   Test strings of all types tended to be at
least slightly meaningful words and sentences or, less often,
sometime really trivial and obvious like "123456789"... I
remember hearing it suggested that doing so provided some
automatic/intuitive error detection.  Now, if someone told me
the first IM (or talk, or SMTP SEND, or...) message was
"Qwertyuiop", I'd find it a lot more credible.

    john

Subject: Re: Text of the 'first email ever sent'
From: Steve Atkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2011 10:46:42 -0800
To: SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>
Sender: [email-masked]

On Jan 8, 2011, at 9:56 AM, Dave CROCKER wrote:

> 
> Folks,
> 
> Wikipedia's article on email includes the text:
> 
>   The first email ever sent contained the letters "Qwertyuiop".
> 
> This is repeated in other articles on the net.
> 
> Seems like such a claim should be validated.  I don't recall ever hearing about it and would assume that it's incorrect, since I haven't seen any definitive agreement on what the first email system was, nevermind what its first message contained.

The version I've seen is Ray Tomlinson saying he'd sent several test messages between arpanet hosts, and their contents were quite forgettable, "Most likely QWERTYUIOP, or something similar". I can see how that'd get misquoted into the version on wikipedia.

http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html
http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/mistakes.html

> My understanding is that email was a feature of the first timesharing systems, which puts the likely first message in the first half of the 1960s.

If a message can only be sent to other users on the same system, is it still email? Two hosts and one network seems like the minimum setup for something to be email. If there are no hosts, it's telegraph. If there's no network, it's inter-account messaging.

Or is this just my "younger than packet-switching" perspective showing through? :)

Cheers,
  Steve

Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 10:45:12 -0800
From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Organization: Brandenburg InternetWorking
To: SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Text of the 'first email ever sent'
Sender: [email-masked]

Mystery solved.

It's a mis-statement of something Ray Tomlinson said:

    <http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/mistakes.html>

d/

On 1/8/2011 9:56 AM, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>
> Folks,
>
> Wikipedia's article on email includes the text:
>
> The first email ever sent contained the letters "Qwertyuiop".
>
> This is repeated in other articles on the net.
>
> Seems like such a claim should be validated. I don't recall ever hearing about
> it and would assume that it's incorrect, since I haven't seen any definitive
> agreement on what the first email system was, nevermind what its first message
> contained.
>
> My understanding is that email was a feature of the first timesharing systems,
> which puts the likely first message in the first half of the 1960s.
>
> d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 09:56:30 -0800
From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Organization: Brandenburg InternetWorking
To: SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>
Subject: Text of the 'first email ever sent'
Sender: [email-masked]

Folks,

Wikipedia's article on email includes the text:

    The first email ever sent contained the letters "Qwertyuiop".

This is repeated in other articles on the net.

Seems like such a claim should be validated.  I don't recall ever hearing about 
it and would assume that it's incorrect, since I haven't seen any definitive 
agreement on what the first email system was, nevermind what its first message 
contained.

My understanding is that email was a feature of the first timesharing systems, 
which puts the likely first message in the first half of the 1960s.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:21:22 -0800
From: Douglas Otis <[email-masked]>
To: Hector Santos <[email-masked]>
CC: IETF SMTP list <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: A few ipv6 questions
Sender: [email-masked]

On 12/23/10 9:39 PM, Hector Santos wrote:
>
>  John R Levine wrote:
> >
> > Not really. I want to give advice to people who are writing MTAs.
> > They need to deal with whatever they find when they're trying to
> > deliver mail.
> >
> > As I hardly need to tell anyone here, we need to deliver mail on
> > the Internet we have, not the Internet we might want or wish to
> > have at a later time.
>
>  Which *should* means if you offer a public smtp service port, you
>  have to support a IPv4 and MX service connection regardless.

Hector,

Perhaps, but when entities having mixed reputations end up behind common 
addresses, this will necessitate domain authentication techniques to 
unravel shared resources.  Malefactors will seek out situations where 
blocking by address is likely untenable.  Identity by address will not 
represent either a limited nor unique resource that offers reputations 
an effective mitigation strategy.  IMHO, this means sources will need to 
establish authentication techniques independent of the IP address used, 
since even white-listing an IP address is likely to become problematic.

A low cost and readily available solution may not be far off.  See-
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-dane-protocol/

-Doug