Boy!  I had no idea I would start such I bruhaha with my response!

By the way, for the record I happen to agree with those of you that favor
plain text e-mail.  (I don't miss having to deal with encoding and
un-encoding binary attachments, though!)  When I turn off html formatting, I
WANT IT TURNED OFF!!!.  (Unfortunately I am a victim of Outlook 2000 in a
corporate LAN environment)

That being said, it just seems like tilting at windmills trying to argue
against html-based e-mail.  As bandwidth becomes cheaper, storage becomes
cheaper, and processing power becomes A LOT cheaper, David's excellent
argument becomes a bit diluted (and perhaps a bit trivial).  So what if your
e-mail takes 650 bytes instead of 100 when your storage will hold 50 years
worth?  Who cares if your bloated O/S takes 400MB to install when you have a
27 GB hard drive?

My point is, its all relative.  I don't agree with it (it seems so damned
inefficient!) but I have to accept the inevitability...

Brent Christensen
'89 GL Syncro Westy
Santa Barbara, CA

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]On Behalf
> Of Brush, John
> Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 2:24 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Re: MIME Message! (non-vw related)
>
>
> > BTW2 - And why should the internet look the same to everyone? Sounds
> > boring.
> >
>          Ah Tim, you don't understand the issue. Standards
> allow EVERYONE to
> use the internet, not just those who choose Microsoft. You
> may not believe
> it, but there are tens of millions of people on the internet
> who do not use
> a M$ OS. These people are getting squeezed out of the usage
> because of one
> company's quest to dominate and rule the internet. If you
> consider that to
> be fair, then there is no more to be said.
>
>         The internet operates on standards the same as we have certain
> standards for automobiles. Lucky for you, gasoline is a
> standard product as
> it allows you to drive anywhere you want and use the car you
> choose. What if
> the gas companies forced you drive a certain type of car for
> no valid reason
> other than 'they can?'
>
>         The idea of the internet looking the same to every
> machine simply
> means that ANYONE can use it. If M$ was able change the communications
> standards from TCPIP to something unique, then no one could
> use the internet
> except windows users. (and they would do it if they could,
> but most of the
> internet is Unix based)
>
>         Again, if you think that is fair, there is no need
> for any more
> conversation.
>
>         People should be able to get email with a simple mail
> reader that
> understands the internet standard of text. When one company
> dictates that
> everyone send email via HTML, bandwidth suffers, slow
> connections suffer,
> and some folks can't use the email programs of their own choosing.
>
>         If you think that is fair, then there is no need for any more
> conversation.
>
>         Try to also recall that changing existing standards causes M$
> windows to be completely open to viruses and malicious
> attacks. You don't
> hear of too many Unix machines getting taken down by an
> email, do you? If
> you want to know why, investigate why gates made windows so
> open to attack
> and didn't even care. To this day, all the windows users hate
> that one kid
> who sent the ILOVEYOU email, but continue to worship at the
> altar of bill
> gates who is the man responsible in the first place.
>
>         If you think that is correct, there is no need for any further
> conversation.
>
>         Its not a crusade, its simply a matter of wanting to
> have a choice.
> Imagine living in a world where we wore the same stupid
> clothes, drove the
> same ugly car, and lived in the same overpriced house. Its
> all about choice.
>
>         Best Regards,
>
>
>         John
>

[text/html]