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From: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: mailers,
 quoting text etc. (was Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board?)
Date: 24 Aug 2002 21:29:28 -0600
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In article <5ee5b646.0208241357.39e0956a@posting.google.com>, dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
> "Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1030166702.5161.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> 
>> I would be surprised if some Microsoft Wizardry made any unseen additions.
> 
> Really?
> 
> Typical microsoft mailers make the unseen addition of completely useless
> HTML by default that is
> 
> a) redundant and serves no purpose
> b) wastes bandwidth and clutters up databases
> c) presents a security risk (HTML attachments are not benign!)

The defects introduced by Microsoft starting with Word 6 (allowing
instructions provided by someone else to execute in the context of
the recipient) were originated by IBM under the CMS system with a
text formatting extension.  IBM retracted that "innovation" and
discussed it at subsequent security conferences for several years.
Only then did Microsoft "innovate" with their own implementation,
apparently choosing not to bother studying anything else that has
happened in the computer industry.

> But I guess none of these (especially c) has ever been of any concern to MS :-)

There have been public statements from Microsoft that the "features"
provided by these loopholes are more important to their customers
than fixing security problems.