For those of us who believe that standards are necessary, the internet is
was/is based
on standards. Standards developed way before there was a company built
on the concept that standards are meant to be broken; every day. They are
available
to anyone who wants to look them up and use them.

Email is defined by the internet standard as text based, ascii only, files.
It does not
allow for HTML, or MIME, or any of the other variants so stupidly introduced
by
the behemoth for the purpose of locking people into its method of thinking.

There are all kinds of standards for internet usage, such as the TCPIP
protocol, and
methods of transmission. To not adhere to accepted standards fractures the
structure
of the internet and causes all kinds of problems for users and basically
means that it
is NOT a free and open architecture. Then users end up  bickering and
arguing amongst themselves. No productivity in that, is there?

I don't use microsoft products except when forced to do so by an employer.
Those
of us who choose other than M$ get particularly peeved when standards are
broken
for no apparent reason, other than because "I can" Other operating systems
are built
around the accepted internet standards we have, and when someone with a
large
base such as M$ deliberately goes out and breaks the rules, it costs a lot
of people a
lot of time and frustration. Witness this discussion :)

The internet should look the same for every user so that everyone can take
advantage of it without bowing to the mighty man from Redmond. If folks
continue to
just go along, why not just give the whole damn thing to gates and get it
over with??

Anybody ever heard of Lynx?

Gee, and its not even friday, but notice I didn't mention the "G" word :-)

Regards from Utah,

John