[p2p-research] More efficient (P2P?) usage of email

[M. Fioretti]

On Sun, Oct 05, 2008 14:24:45 PM -0400, Samuel Rose wrote:

> Why should I turn off HTML? Why will you not instead **please** turn
> it on?
> ...
> HTML email an issue?: Hell no. It is 2008 my friends.
> ...
> This is not a flame war. This is me telling you that this is a
> non-issue

To Christian and the other subscribers of the list:

a non-issue in 2008 my foot. I mentioned when I made this request that
there still "are tons of reasons why, even these days, it is much more
sensible and CONSIDERATE to trim as much as possible... and to always
avoid HTML or kilometric signatures. I can post the long list of such
reasons if asked, for the moment please take my word for it".

The list is at the bottom.

Samuel, don't bother to answer. After reading this:

> Trimming of emails for readability an issue?: yes, maybe (although
> most of the people you are talking to are reading their email in a
> system that AUTOMATICALLY RECGONIZES THE THREAD AND THIS IS WHY THEY
> ARE NOT TRIMMING IT AS MACHINES ARE NOW DOING IT FOR THEM :-O

I am really not going to waste one single minute from now on
discussing email or, for that matter, any other digital communication
system with you. I still can't believe you wrote such a sentence from
a pulpit in that "We're in 2008, you poor relict from the 80's"
attitude.

You have mixed email body trimming and email subject/ message-ID
threading in a way that makes it cristal clear you have no clue
whatever what the heck email actually *is*, what the heck software
does to it, or what the heck I am talking about in general.  So any
more time going after you on this would be wasted. Period.

Please do drop that line altogether, or at least reply only (
privately, why entertain the list any more?), only after studying some
good, thorough email primer.

As I said at the beginning, the main point of my message was only to
explain why, in some circumstances, I may simply start to ignore badly
formatted messages, and I suggest everybody to do the same, no matter
what the calendar says.

I've explained it, I'm adding the list below, and updated my filters,
so the case is really closed as far as I'm concerned.

Good night,
		Marco

########################################################################

here it is, pasted from a message I wrote to another list:

Transmitting back and forth useless kilobytes is still uselessly
expensive and VERY UNPOLITE (see bottom of this message), even if in a
different way than in the 80s:

- access from wireless devices is taking off, wireless bandwidth costs
  much more than fixed, hence pay-per-minute plans are quite
  commons. I saw just yesterday on another list a formal menace to
  denounce somebody to his ISP from a guy in Germany (ie not some
  remote desert). The reason? The German guy was (rightly) quite sick
  of spending a lot of money to download (=pay again) lots of long
  messages he'd already downloaded with his GPS phone, only because
  that "somebody" used to attach "I agree" or other 1/2 lines
  paragraph to the whole original message.

- in many "first world" countries, the only way they have to extend
  internet connectivity is to sell at the minimum possible cost, ie
  making customers only pay for actual traffic (wether you measure it
  in bytes or minutes it's irrelevant, so this also applies to ADSL
  lines) instead of a flat monthly fee, to people who otherwise would
  NEVER buy any Internet connection. To quote only the two most common
  cases, and note that both apply regardless of income:

          - senior citizens who only want to write 1/2 email a month
            to their grandchildren in another town and maybe see them
            for a few minutes on a webcam

          - vacation homes, ie places where you want faster connection
            than a GPS, wifi doesn't exist, but where you stay only a
            few days each year.

- bandwidth and disk space on **all** servers, including those running
  this list, *are* charged by the KByte, so retransmitting whole long
  messages only to add a few lines costs more. Also because each
  message generates as many copies as list members. It may be
  indirect, meaning that they tell you "unlimited bandwidth" but slow
  you down a lot your traffic (like all the messages of the mailing
  list you run), but they are charged for sure. As a matter of fact,
  distinguishing the service providers who openly tell you "server
  bandwidth is expensive, we have to limit or block you after
  XGygabytes of traffic a month" from those who generically sell
  "unlimited bandwidth" is widely recognized as a criterion to tell
  competent and honest providers apart from the others.

- if a list is moderated, like this one, you force the moderator to
  scroll down every time, he has to make sure you didn't slip some
  profanity or other bad stuff at the end. Ditto for the people who
  maybe want to read your signature to check out your website.

- oh, and then of course there still are a lot of places on Earth
  where real people do pay more, both in time and or money, when
  somebody else carelessly sends them kilobytes of email they had
  already read just to add "OK, then I'll get back to you about this".
  Read the "Another world" box of this article about a Pakistani
  school for a concrete example: www.linux.com/feature/148311

Please note the three common points of all these real world examples:

1) "useless kilobytes" include HTML formatting, that is stuff that
   costs more to download and transmit, regardless of the pricing
   scheme. Never, ever use HTML for email unless you *are* sure that
   all the recipients PREFER it

2) you simply have no way to know in advance the habits, preferences
   and current needs of people you send email to. You may not know
   them (= a mailing list), or your fiber-optic-connected friend may
   have been gone on a work trip where only GPS connectivity is
   available

3) the most important, if not the only point: in all the cases above,
   when somebody doesn't always trim his or her email as much as
   possible, the cost of that carelessness, lazyness, ignorance,
   whatever, is paid by OTHER people. It may be just a few cents, but
   it's a concrete cost, so that's why it's very unpolite not to trim
   email.

-- 
Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
software is used *around* you:            http://digifreedom.net/node/84