Not everybody has been on this list for decades. Some of you may be
wondering about the Dan Hughes reference, and 'out of office' comments.
What happened those many years ago was that a list subscriber set up an
automatic email response to any incoming mail. I don't recall exactly
how he did it, but it wasn't done according to, oh, shall we say best
accepted practice at the time. And in those early days of mailman
software running the lists, there were some things that could have been
improved.
So Dan sets up this vacation response program and goes on his merry
way. He gets a message from the MG list. His program responds to the
MG list with his 'out of the office' canned response. The MG list gets
his response, and sends it out to the list. Dan's autoresponder gets a
copy of his 'out of the office' and responds by sending his canned
response to the list. The MG list gets his response, and sends it out
to the list. Dan's autoresponder gets a copy of his 'out of the office'
and responds by sending his canned response to the list. The MG list
gets his response, and sends it out to the list. Dan's autoresponder
gets a copy of his 'out of the office' and responds by sending his
canned response to the list. The MG list gets his response, and sends
it out to the list. Dan's autoresponder gets a copy of his 'out of the
office' and responds by sending his canned response to the list. The MG
list gets his response, and sends it out to the list. Dan's
autoresponder gets a copy of his 'out of the office' and responds by
sending his canned response to the list. The MG list gets his response,
and sends it out to the list. Dan's autoresponder gets a copy of his
'out of the office' and responds by sending his canned response to the
list...
You get the idea. Basically this infinite loop put many thousands of
email messages in the queue in a short time, really clogging things up
and of course annoying 100% of the list members. And it took some time
on my part to step in, stop the loop and clean up the mess. Just
another day in the leisurely life of an overpaid and underworked sys admin.
mjb.
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