Kevin Bowling wrote in <CAK7dMtAH0km=RLqY0Wtuw6R7jXyWg=xQ+SPWcQA-PLLaTZii0w(a)mail.gmail.com>: |On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 11:59 AM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote: |> On Wednesday, August 14th, 2024 at 9:45 AM, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> \ |> wrote: |>> ... |>> The issue came when people started using the mail system as a programmat\ |>> ic messaging scheme (i.e., fork: some_program | mail user) and other \ |>> programs started to parse the output. |>> ... |> Mail as IPC...that's what I'm reading from that anyway...now that's \ |> an interesting concept. Did that idea ever grow any significant \ |> legs? I can't tell if the general concept is clever or systems abuse, \ |> in those days it seems like it could've gone either way. | |I like Clem's answer on mail IPC/RPC. | |To add I have heard some stories of NNTP being used once upon a time |at some service providers the way ansible/mcollective/salt might be |used to orchestrate UNIX host configurations and application |deployments. The concept of Control messages is somewhat critical to |operations, so it's not totally crazy, but isolating article flows |would give me some heartburn if the thing has privileged system |access.. would probably want it on a totally distinct |instance+port+configuration. | |Email and Usenet both have some nice properties of implementing a |"Message Queue" like handling offline hosts when they come back. But |the complexity of mail and nntp implementations lean more towards |system abuse IMO. The IETF will go for SML (structured email) https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/sml/about/ which then goes for machine interpretable email message( part)s. |> I guess it sorta did survive in the form of automated systems today \ |> expecting specially formatted emails to trigger "stuff" to happen. --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt)