Jargons of Info Tech industry

[Denis Kasak]

John Bokma wrote:
> 
> You can't be sure: errors in the handling of threads can cause a buffer 
> overflow, same for spelling checking :-D

Yes, they can, provided they are not properly coded. However, those 
things only interact locally with the user and have none or very limited 
interaction with the user on the other side of the line. As such, they 
can hardly be exploitable.

> Some people never use them, and hence they use memory and add risks.

On a good newsreader the memory use difference should be irrelevantly 
small, even if one does not use the features. I would call that a 
nitpicky argument. Also, the risk in question is not comparable because 
of the reasons stated above. The kind of risk you are talking about 
happens with /any/ software. To stay away from that we shouldn't have 
newsreaders (or any other software, for that matter) in the first place.

> Of course can HTML be useful on Usenet. The problem is that it will be much 
> more often abused instead of used.

No, you missed the point. I am arguing that HTML is completely and 
utterly /useless/ on Usenet. Time spent for writing HTML in Usenet posts 
is comparable to that spent on arguing about coding style or writing 
followups to Xah Lee. It adds no further insight on a particular 
subject, but _does_ add further delays, spam, bandwidth consumation, 
exploits, and is generally a pain in the arse. It's redundant.

-- Denis