Subject: 4.00: "allow-changing-from"

From: Todd Vierling <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 09:20:03 -0500 (EST)

I read about this off of the Preview page, and perhaps it has already been
discussed.

This used to be disabled default behaviour because of "administrative
security reasons" (what I was told by a Pine developer when I first asked
about it back around 3.90).  Now, it's going to be added as a hidden feature
switch.  Is this settable per .pinerc or only in pine.conf?  If in .pinerc,
is there a disable analogue switch?

If there's no disable analogue, I'd like to resuggest the converse approach
as I did back in the 3.90 days:  enable this functionality by default, and
allow administrators to disable it, as they can do with many other features
added over the course of time, with a "disable-changing-from" switch in
pine.conf.fixed.  Here, you don't need two switches for the same feature
(one to enable and one to prevent enabling).

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal [email-masked]; Bus. [email-masked])

---

From: "Robin S. Socha" <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Mar 1998 16:11:10 +0100

> Todd Vierling <[email-masked]> writes:

> I'd like to resuggest the converse approach as I did back in the 3.90
> days: enable this functionality by default, and allow administrators to
> disable it, as they can do with many other features added over the course
> of time, with a "disable-changing-from" switch in pine.conf.fixed.  Here,
> you don't need two switches for the same feature (one to enable and one
> to prevent enabling).

I beg to differ. There are only a few occasions on which people need to
use this feature. More often, it will be abused by Clueless Lusers to
hide their identity (as if they could...). The "nospam" crap is already
all over the usenet, and I for one regret that the pine team have added
this "feature". If anything, the from-line should be altered by the
sysadmin via a sendmail alias or similar means. But no, this is the
90's and the mother of all LaMErS is always pregnant...

*sigh*

Robin

-- 
Robin S. Socha
Fahr zur Hoelle, Idiot! Michael Gundelbacher <[email-masked]>

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From: Todd Vierling <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 11:18:27 -0500 (EST)

On 19 Mar 1998, Robin S. Socha wrote:

: I beg to differ. There are only a few occasions on which people need to
: use this feature. More often, it will be abused by Clueless Lusers to
: hide their identity (as if they could...). The "nospam" crap is already
: all over the usenet, and I for one regret that the pine team have added
: this "feature".

You don't have multiple e-mail addresses, do you?  :)

This feature is very good for people that know what they're doing and have
more than one (I have six) e-mail address from which mail can be sent.  This
is why I proposed it as a site-disable option:  admins can turn it off just
like the ability to spawn shells and whatnot, and we don't have to dig in
the code to find out how to "turn it on."

Lusers running Linux at home who want to conceal their identity can do so
far more easily by using Sendmail;  Pine stands nowhere in their way.  And
users with PC-Pine can do this anyway, in a sort of roundabout fashion,
since the e-mail address has to be set *somehow*....

---

From: "Robin S. Socha" <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Mar 1998 22:43:59 +0100

>> I beg to differ. There are only a few occasions on which people
>> need to use this feature. More often, it will be abused by Clueless
>> Lusers to hide their identity (as if they could...). The "nospam"
>> crap is already all over the usenet, and I for one regret that the
>> pine team have added : this "feature".

About 8 right now. But I don't consider myself a Linux Luser.

> This feature is very good for people that know what they're doing
> and have more than one (I have six) e-mail address from which mail
> can be sent.  This is why I proposed it as a site-disable option:
> admins can turn it off just like the ability to spawn shells and
> whatnot, and we don't have to dig in the code to find out how to
> "turn it on."

Ok. But I still more danger than good use in it. Therefore, I'd prefer 
it the other way round.

YMMV,
Robin

-- 
Robin S. Socha
You said `give us Liberty or give us Death'
Now you've both, what do you want next?

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From: Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 16:52:57 -0800 (PST)

> is there a disable analogue switch?

Any feature can be disabled in pine.conf.fixed by preceding it with "no-". 
A sysadmin will have to add no-allow-changing-from in their
pine.conf.fixed to get the pine3.96 behavior where nobody is allowed to
change. If they don't, the default would be that nobody would be allowed
to change their From unless they hand-edit their pinerc.
 
-- 
Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Networks and Distributed Computing, Univ. of Washington, Seattle