Re: Virus's -- This is an Emacs bomb (fwd)

[gudu () winternet com (Michael Bresnahan)]

  > Emacs mail readers don't evaluate local variables when they read in a
  > folder, because they are not visiting the file proper; they are reading in
  > formatted data (i.e. messages) from a file.  It doesn't make sense to
  > evaluate variables that are part of a message.
  > 
  > It's possible that very old versions of VM didn't protect against
  > this, but it was fixed a long time ago; at any rate, VM 5.72 (the current
  > version) is safe.  Rmail never had the problem.
  > 
  > In general, if you are paranoid about setting buffer-local variables when
  > you visit arbitrary files, you can put the following in your .emacs:
  > 
  >     ;; for emacs 19
  >     (setq enable-local-eval nil)
  >     (setq enable-local-variables nil)
  >     ;; for emacs 18
  >     (setq inhibit-local-variables t)
  > 
  > 
  > Too bad some people are so paranoid about security that they happily
  > sacrifice useful functionality.  After all, every other user on the system
  > is clearly out to get them using any available opportunity...

Two questions:

1) Where is this documented?  I have found nothing in the emacs 18
info files.

2) Where is it useful?

MikeB