Re: incoming mail without information in the from, to, subject fields

From: Hairy One Kenobi (abuse_at_[127.0.0.1)
Date: 04/23/04 

Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 16:01:32 +0100

"Barry Margolin" <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:barmar-5EC7F8.08182423042004@comcast.ash.giganews.com...
> In article <9_3ic.10$742.3@newsfe1-win>,
> "Hairy One Kenobi" <abuse@[127.0.0.1]> wrote:
>
> > "Barry Margolin" <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
> > news:barmar-6A2FDE.13403022042004@comcast.ash.giganews.com...

<snip>

> > Nope. Would have been nice if someone had looked beforehand, though. Or
have
> > you never come across an organization using IM internally, usually with
no
> > idea that the function is already built-in to the OS?
>
> But since none of the common SMTP clients/servers actually implemented
> the SEND mechanism, it *wasn't* already built-in to the OS.

?

Usually called something like "talk", "chat", "send", or whatever. Even NT
3.0 implemented it, IIRC. Most "modern" Windows users would probably be
happier if I called it "net send" or "winpopup", though ;o)

> And is SMTP's SEND feature really sufficient and/or appropriate for a
> useful IM network? You also need a rendezvous protocol to detect when
> your buddies are on-line, find their address, etc. Since you have to
> design a new protocol for this, it may be simplest to incorporate the
> message sending into it as well, rather than using the heavy-weight SMTP
> protocol for it.

Depends on how far you go into it, I guess. For my own part, most commercial
systems such as helpdesks, groupware, etc. just need a simple "pop it up if
they're logged-on, queue it if they ain't" approach:

SOML FROM: <me@over.here>
RCPT TO: <you@over.there>
DATA
Hello World

.

Seems fairly lightweight to me.. funnily enough, helpdesk usage was what
spurred me on in the first place.

H1K

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