Subject: RE: [Asrg] How to defeat spam that uses encryption?

From: "Sauer, Damon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:00:43 -0500

<SNIP>

> Companies are worse, they blow money patching
> and recovering from the infections that Outlook makes possible.

>companies are increasingly looking for alternatives, but when you have 
>an existing company-wide system with a large user population and you 
>can't just take the system down for a week to revamp things, moving to 
>a new environment takes a lot of time, energy and money. Especially 
>since e-mail is by all measures a corporate critical function almost 
>everywhere now. Sometimes, the work needed to make a switch simply 
>overwhelms an organization's ability to do it.

 -------- I whole-heartedly agree with this statement. If we go back to the
"wish-list"- the implementation needs to be incremental. There is no way
that I can shut off email even for an hour much less breaking everything (MS
calls this an upgrade) all at once and hope that everyone else does too.

 Regards<
Damon

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From: Jason Hihn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:10:21 -0500

> calls this an upgrade) all at once and hope that everyone else does too.

FYI: I agree too. Though some alternatives are coming into being. The
protocol is not broken with Outlook, it's the client. Ximian's Connector
software for Evolution allegedly will allow you to switch out clients w/o
any real kind of downtime or feature loss. The downside (if you think it's
one) is that Evolution is Linux-only. (No that that's a bad thing, just that
the transitioning is a pain ;-)

OFF-TOPIC:
What I'd like to see is relational databases  used for email storage. That
way, I can connect up anywhere, with a variety of SQL-interoperable clients
(ie. Mozilla (from any platform), Outlook (gasp), Eudora -- all could have
ODBC). Eliminate vendor lock-in a la file formats, while providing access
from anywhere...

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From: Chuq Von Rospach <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:20:54 -0800

so, in practice, you want to hand over mail servers from Microsoft to 
Oracle. Because large organizations use Oracle as their database 
predominantly.

And since e-mail is text, these are large databases. Start thinking of 
systems with 10,000 active users and 35,000 accounts, a mail quota of 
100 megabytes, 7,000 open connections at any time, and you'll start 
giving MySQL serious hiccups. and given MySQL has some blob/text 
limitations at 16 megs, you have a different problem with really large 
emails (no, I don't think sending stuff that large is a good idea....)

that's a lot of disk....

On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 01:10  PM, Jason Hihn wrote:

> OFF-TOPIC:
> What I'd like to see is relational databases  used for email storage.

---

From: Jason Hihn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:30:29 -0500

Bah, MySQL isn't a database yet (even 4.x), all around MySQL isn't good
enough for a production mail system. But that flame war and discussion is
for another mailing list...

Their email storage is their choice. It could be flat files for all I care
as long as any client can read it. I just like SQL because it's relatively
compatible between vendors... Therefore swapping out Outlook would be a
"piece of cake."

FYI: Interestingly though Postgres has this note on text types:
"The storage requirement for data of these [text] types is 4 bytes plus the
actual string, and in case of character plus the padding. Long strings are
compressed by the system automatically, so the physical requirement on disk
may be less. Long values are also stored in background tables so they don't
interfere with rapid access to the shorter column values. In any case, the
longest possible character string that can be stored is about 1 GB."

And now back to our regularly scheduled on-topic topic....

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chuq Von Rospach [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 4:21 PM
> To: Jason Hihn
> Cc: Sauer, Damon; David F. Skoll; Jim Youll; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [Asrg] How to defeat spam that uses encryption?
>
>

---

From: Chuq Von Rospach <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:33:19 -0800

On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 01:30  PM, Jason Hihn wrote:

> as long as any client can read it.

what you are looking for is called "imap" (heh)

> Therefore swapping out Outlook would be a
> "piece of cake."

you've never had to migrate 5,000 users off of their favorite mail 
client before, have you?

which is actually a legitimate issue to be dealt with on this list...

---

From: Jason Hihn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:43:14 -0500

> Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 4:33 PM
> To: Jason Hihn
> Cc: ASRG

I don't think so. After I pull it down off my mail server, I still want
global access. I don't want to leave my mail on the server. I know that's
what imap does. Are you suggesting that I run an imap server on my local
machine too?

> you've never had to migrate 5,000 users off of their favorite mail

Actually yes. Not quite that many though. No one has a 'favorite', they just
don't like change. That's my finding anyway. That's why some people still
use pine. ;-)

> which is actually a legitimate issue to be dealt with on this list...

Nah, I believe SPAM should be dealt with in a client-transparent way.
(Infrastructure changes, not client ones, unless your client is a source of
spam, which is the case for Outlook)

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From: Chuq Von Rospach <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:58:19 -0800

> what imap does. Are you suggesting that I run an imap server on my 

if you're seriously interested in "getting it exactly the way I want 
it", probably. Because then you're in control of it.

> don't like change. That's my finding anyway. That's why some people 

heh. point taken, although it's really both...

> spam, which is the case for Outlook)
I think there are uses for (and we're going to need) both.