Subject: Re: Just a heads up....

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 16:46:00 -0700

At 10:48 AM 5/26/99 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>In other words, Somewhere Out There, some idiots have created one or
>more mail systems such that, if someone new joins the company, someone

Not only is this, as Brad notes, an old problem, but i have been impressed 
with just how resistant CIO and other IT staff seem to recognizing the 
impact of the problem, when it is explained to them.

They simply do not believe that the two failure scenarios (rejection or 
delivery to the wrong person) are likely or serious.

d/

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Dave Crocker                                         Tel: +1 408 246 8253
Brandenburg Consulting                               Fax: +1 408 273 6464
675 Spruce Drive                             <http://www.brandenburg.com>
Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA                 <mailto:[email-masked]>

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From: [email-masked] (WJCarpenter)
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 10:51:54 -0700

perry> In other words, Somewhere Out There, some idiots have created
perry> one or more mail systems such that, if someone new joins the
perry> company, someone

dave> Not only is this, as Brad notes, an old problem, but i have been
dave> impressed with just how resistant CIO and other IT staff seem to
dave> recognizing the impact of the problem, when it is explained to
dave> them.

I have seen the definition of ecstasy.  It is this.  

Once upon a time, I worked for a large company (6 digits worth of
employees).  Me and my fellow malcontents argued vigorously for
several years for permanent and unique email IDs.  Powers That Be
argued back that <[email-masked]> or <[email-masked]> or
<[email-masked]> or even <First.M.Last/shoesize=[email-masked]>
were surely unique enough (and were dynamically resolved in a
company-wide database).  It was the officially recommended way to have
your email address on your business cards and whatnot.

At one time, there were three people in the company with the same
First.Last as me (one with the same middle initial), but that argument
didn't prevail, presumably because I was just lowly scum.  Then one
holy and blessed day, the company hired a person who happened to have
the same First.Last as one of the Powers That Be, instantly
invalidating his business cards and .sig file.  The permanent and
unique (and, incidentally, user-selected) email ID feature was added
to the company-wide database within a couple of months.

We put down our torches and pitch forks and danced in the streets.
-- 
[email-masked]   (WJCarpenter)           PGP
[email-masked]                    0x91865119
38 95 1B 69 C9 C6 3D 25  73 46 32 04 69 D6 ED F3

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From: [email-masked] (Kai Henningsen)
Date: 06 Jun 1999 17:48:00 +0200

[email-masked] (Perry E. Metzger)  wrote on 26.05.99 in <[email-masked]>:

> 	Recipient user name  not unique.  Several matches found in
> 	Name & Address Book.
> 	[email-masked]
>
>
> old suddenly gets all their mail bouncing because now someone else
> with a similar name is in the database.
>
> This is phenomenally brain-dead. I've seen some idiotic things done at
> various firms, but this is really in the top percentile of imbecilic
> ideas.

Well, it can be done the right way, or it can be done the wrong way. This  
seems to be done the wrong way.

The right way (or so I happen to believe) is the way we once implemented  
this in a certain BBS software. It starts out with having a definite,  
unique email address, *plus* there were quite a number of abbreviations  
the system understood, subject to uniqueness (with the additional twist  
that a sysop always trumped a non-sysop ;-)). That is, you *could* use  
shorter names, but then you had the collision problem; or you could use  
your unique id and were secure - plus, every mail you *sent* always used  
that unique handle.

Just for illustration, some of the LHS values I used under that system  
(all pointing to the same mailbox) were (oh, I should mention this wasn't  
an RFC-based software, so the syntax rules were different):

    Kai Henningsen       (the unique one)
    Kai_Henningsen
    kAi.hEnNiNgSeN
    Henningsen
    K. Henn.
    kh                  (easiest to remember, but also easiest to collide
                         with - fortunately I was one of the sysops :-))

Typical usage was to tell someone an abbreviated version, receive the  
first mail under that abbreviated version, and receive all further mails  
under the unique id because that's what got sent out.

MfG Kai