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From: jorn@mcs.com (Jorn Barger)
Subject: Re: WARNING: Control Codes
Date: 1997/09/30
Message-ID: <199709300858391293530N@jorn.pr.mcs.net>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 276758344
References: <60jjtp$qv9$5@mnementh.southern.co.nz>
 <wB1jGRAs1bL0EwnW@willows-end.demon.co.uk>
 <60qfp8$pn3$1@mnementh.southern.co.nz>
Organization: Spiral Solutions
Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art,alt.ascii-art.animation


Colin Douthwaite <cfbd@southern.co.nz> wrote:

> Dave Wallace (DSW@willows-end.demon.co.uk#nospam) wrote:
> >I'm not worried about control codes and I am certainly not going
> >to read any postings from this guy in future. [...]
> >  "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick 
> >   themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." 
> The above is a very appropriate Signature in view of the earlier 
>contents of your message about Control Codes. *8-) 

Colin, I have to say I'm with Dave on the question of the danger of
control codes.  Back when alt.ascii-art was first created, there was
a great wave of new animations being created and posted without
being uuencoded.  So many, in fact, that a.a-a.animation was
created to reduce the burden.

Somehow a report that control codes could be used by a malicious
hacker to format people's hard drives got escalated into a mass
shift to demanding uuencoded animations, which quickly killed the
entire genre, because it required so much extra effort to view.

But I searched far and wide at the time for anyone who'd actually
been victimized by control codes, and the result I got was that
it's never happened in modern times, because all reasonable software
disabled those particular codes long ago.

So I'd like to see this 'warning' retired, until someone comes up
with proof that it's valid.


j