nanog mailing list archives

Re: SMTP AUTH


From: Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu
Date: Sun, 01 May 2005 23:37:53 -0400

On Sun, 01 May 2005 22:50:29 EDT, Dean Anderson said:

But only 16 email clients (counting Netscape, Mozilla, and Firefox
separately), support SMTP AUTH. But there are more than 1000 different
email client programs.  If you go to Microcenter, you can buy several
email client programs for windows, but only one (Outlook) supports SMTP
AUTH.  

Very interesting how those 16 clients have such a tiny market share, and the
other 984+ clients are all just piling up those sales.  Do the numbers again,
looking at market share rather than numbers.  I think you'll find that a bit
more than 0.16% of people have an AUTH-capable client.

(Hint - what percent of those other 984 clients are half-baked buggy pieces of
trash done by one guy who only half-understands how SMTP works?  How many of
them qualify as abandonware?  What sort of development efforts did those 16
have?  What are the 3 biggest clients that do *NOT* have AUTH support?  What do
these numbers tell you?)

Your comparison is precious. Its a classic sort of statistical deception,

Pot. Kettle. Color comparison.

at the extreme.  With seat belts, there is mandated 100% compliance. With

The *point* that you're trying desperately to gloss over to save your position
is that if 99% of the target population has something, whether legally required
or not, you *CAN'T* introduce something that gets another 2% onboard that weren't
before.

Incidentally, there's no 100% mandated compliance for seat belts either -
there's *plenty* of vehicles still on the road without them (granted, most of
these either have 'Antique' tags on them or are painted National School Bus
Chrome (National Bureau of Standards Color #1305)...)


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