Re: Faces via finger?
Philippe-Andre Prindeville (philipp@inf.enst.fr)
Thu, 2 May 91 00:39:20 +0200
A face is a per-person datum. Y'know, we already have a widely used net
facility for per-person data -- finger. Why not include face data in
finger output? This wouldn't even necessitate any changes to finger --
just include it in the .plan file. "faces" could be hacked to try to
finger an Internet user for which it doesn't have a face. Best of all,
it wouldn't require any sysadmin involvement to get it being widely
used/available.
Except that the finger data format is defined by an RFC (either just
published or soon to be published, I forget). Also, certain spooks
consider this to be a security breach. Lastly, finger follows the
Internet protocols philosophy of having all data be human-readable.
In mail, X-Face data is acceptable because it is an "X-" (or unoffical)
field... Otherwise, we might as well all start using ASN.1 and define
an "faces" data type...
-Philip