From: Dwayne (ddraig@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Mar 10 1998 - 17:50:23 MST
Michael Lorrey wrote:
> Its sad indeed to see neo-neo-luddites on an extropian mail list who think
> that '7-bit ascii should be enough for anybody'. I think that using HTML as
> an email standard is an excellent step up in the quality of communication.
>
> Here's words for warning to this reactionary attitude: "Why would anyone ever
> need more than 640k of RAM?", so sayeth Chairman Bill Gates, in 1981.
>
> As one of the most technophilic mail lists on the net, we should be
> encouraging the use of as high a quality communications medium as possible, to
> push the standards forward.
Sure, but we should also not cut people out because they don't have as |<00|_ a
computer as you, dude. The simple fact of the matter is that *everyone with a
computer* can read text. Not everyone can read HTML, as has been pointed out.
The whole point of standards is to make sure that everyone can see/use/whatever
the same data. The whole point of mailing lists is to communicate. If some people
can't read HTML mail, why should you punish them because they are not up to your
"standard" of techno-widgetry?
I could then go on about text-mode versus GUIs but that's been done to death...
Dwayne.
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