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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: domains:  a view from bangland
Message-ID: <3523@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Feb-84 19:28:47 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.3523
Posted: Tue Feb  7 19:28:47 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Feb-84 19:28:47 EST
References: <65@down.UUCP>, <898@cbosgd.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 29

I agree with pretty much everything Mark said, except for one thing:

  .............I hope that if you always type harpo!cbosgd!mark, you won't
  insist that your mailer route it through harpo even though there's a
  better link through allegra or directly (assuming it can be deterimined
  that the cbosgd is the same machine)....

Damn right I insist on it.  If I wanted the best route, I'd type something
like "mark@cbosgd".  It is absolutely essential to have some way to
bypass brain-damaged idiotic "user-friendly" optimization when necessary,
and people who make their mailers optimize exclamation points out deny
this vital facility to anyone who routes mail through their site.  I am
starting to feel sufficiently strongly about this that I'd be tempted to
suggest that any site that insists on optimizing whether it's asked to
or not should be disqualified from being a backbone site, on the grounds
that its software is too "user-friendly" to be usable.

Pursuing this point further, to avoid having this message be just a
repetition (albeit with different emphasis) of stuff I've said before:
if we are going to implement domain-based addressing, we *MUST* *MUST*
*MUST* implement the extra bit of syntax that provides for explicit
routing.  With any luck, wide availability of domain-based software will
help avoid further brain-damaged "cleverness" on mailers that should be
following orders and not trying to outsmart their customers.

"I don't want a user-friendly system:  I'm not a friendly user."
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry