mobile user strawman argument

Sun Jul 3 23:37:29 UTC 2005

At 10:01 PM -0400 2005-06-30, Todd Vierling wrote:

>  Um, I wasn't talking about an ISP.  I was talking about the MUA with the
>  largest market share, and most frequently found security holes, which ships
>  with an OS I prefer not to name directly is possible.

	There are three key pieces of the puzzle, all of which have to 
fit together in order to make the whole thing work:

		1.  The user's ISP

		2.  The remote ISP

		3.  The user's equipment (including OS and MUA)

	If the user's ISP doesn't provide the necessary services, then 
nothing else matters.  If the user's OS and MUA don't support the 
necessary services, then nothing else matters.  If the remote ISP 
blocks the necessary services, then nothing else matters.

	As a North American Network Operator, the only thing you can 
control is #1.  Whatever problems exist as part of #1, you should 
have the ability to fix them, but that is the limit of your ability.

>  Or is that still too vague?

	I'm saying that there are problems in #2 and #3 that also have to 
be lived with or worked around in some way, otherwise the user is 
dead in the water.

	If that's still too vague, consider that smartphones will soon be 
the dominant method of connecting to the Internet (if that isn't the 
case already).  I have run into multiple MUAs on a SonyEricsson P900 
and a Treo 650 that are sorely broken in a variety of ways, including 
things like SMTPAUTH, TLSSMTP, POP-before-SMTP, etc....

	Oh, and Microsoft still throws some pretty interesting wrenches 
into the mix.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.