(only slightly about) Issue: CONTAGION-ON-NUMERICAL-COMPARISONS

[Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Tue, 20 Sep 88 10:44:45 PDT
    From: Jon L White <jonl@lucid.com>

    ... I've noticed that this kind of encryption always occurs whe Symbolics
    folks try to reference prior mail; it must be some kind of "feature"
    in the Symbolics mailer? ...

We didn't do the encrypting.  Our mailer tries to refer to messages by
their unique Message-ID designation where one exists. This allows us,
among other things, to sort conversations by message references or to
select a particular conversation in isolation so that we can see whole
conversations contiguously rather than mixed up with unrelated messages.
The Message-ID was generated at your end.

When no unique Message-ID is available, our mail sending program uses
the less reliable and more verbose "The message of <when> at <where>"
format to refer to the reply.

    ... Could you possibly restore something more like the original dateline;
    on these references, with at least (1) which mailing list to which
    the msg was sent, (2) the "From" name, and (3) a readily understandable
    date format [e.g. Wed, 14 Sep 88 16:27 EDT].  Thanks. ...

Some mailers use an organized theory of constructing message id's in an attempt
to make them not clash. There is no general theory for unpacking such message
ids, but here are my guesses:

 <8807200836.AA02976@bhopal.lucid.com>
 is probably "The message of 20-Jul-88 8:36am PDT from someone@Lucid" (JonL?)

 <19880719152249.9.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
 is probably "The message of 19-Jul-88 3:22pm EDT from Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM"

 <19880719213809.1.GREENWALD@SWALLOW.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
 is probably "The message of 19-Jul-88 9:38pm from Greenwald@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM"

 <870402170955.6.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
 is probably "The message of 2-Apr-87 5:09pm EDT from Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM"