Re: Boulder Pledge

[Dave Sherohman <esper@sherohman.org>]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 05:05:29AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> That's a problem with your MUA, not with HTML per se. Once widely-used
> MUAs are sufficiently up to the task of dealing with HTML, this is
> likely to change.

Enough with the "that's a MUA problem, not an HTML problem" mantra.
It sounds no different to me than an MS zealot saying that inability
to read Word documents is a MUA problem as his response to every
argument offered for why sending Word docs is bad form.

> If there are lots of images or tables involved, then yes, this will make
> things harder. Normal text, however, is not a problem. Last time I
> checked, most HTML email (except for stuff sent by companies, who are
> trying to make themselves look 'professional' with their extravagant
> HTML) consists of normal text, laid out in the same way as a plain text
> email, but perhaps with some bulleted lists or such.

- So you're admitting that most (legitimate) HTML mail doesn't do
  anything that plain text can't?  Then why add the overhead?

- Bulleted lists, hmm?  And here I always thought you could do them
  just fine in plain ASCII...

> > It was impossible.  Couldn't be done.  You had to execute a
> > program first.  That fact is no longer true.  And not only that, but
> > it's gotten worse.  E-mail based viruses, utilizing HTML, JavaScript,
> > VBScript, and holes in the HTML rendering engines required to view
> > HTML
> > e-mail have become among the fastest growing and most damaging virii.
> 
> Interestingly, you forget to note that only Microsoft Outlook is
> affected by any of them. As much as you may think otherwise, this is an
> Outlook problem, not an HTML or JavaScript problem. Otherwise, Mozilla
> would have the same problems when viewing Web pages.

Perhaps the propagating ones are Outlook (Express)-only, but there
are other problems.  Pretty much all of the privacy-invasion
techniques (web bugs, etc.) are pure-HTML applications, for instance.

> So, you'd prefer to have 16 million Tripod-originated pop-under ads
> instead?

That's a problem with Tripod, not a problem with emailing links.

-- 
The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the
White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that
we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened.
  - Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html)