Vernon Schryver wrote:
The overwhelmingly vast majority of the use of HTML is
at best a waste of bandwidth and CPU cycles.
This is, at best, a representation of a personal, subjective
opinion.
Maybe so, but let me stand as one who FIRMLY agrees with it. :-)
The reality is that there is great demand for "rich text"
messaging and there always has been.
Perhaps, but RARELY among those who:
1) appreciate the cost differential, and
2) understand what it means.
The great majority of HTML-burdened E-mail is sent by clueless AOL, Hotmail and
Outlook users who don't even realize that that's what they're sending.
Even if the SENDER "likes" it, many recipients don't if for no other reason
than
that their inbox fills up and overflows 3-5x sooner than it would otherwise...
and that can create MONUMENTAL problems for recipients, cancelled mailing list
subscriptions, and so forth. At a MINIMUM, the sender should clear such
formatting with recipients FIRST, before just presuming that it's okay.
There are many clear indicators that large numbers of people like to both
send
and receive HTML formatted messages.
I don't think that's true at all, and in particular not for people who realize
the implications of it.
As far back as 1981, when I first started selling one of the
first "corporate" email systems, Digital's ALL-IN-1 office, customers
were asking for and often demanding "rich text" or "high quality" email
messaging capabilities.
If they want "high quality" e-mail there are a whole variety of options, going
well beyond HTML. One is to send .DOC files (which can be read with freeware
viewers), another is Adobe PDF files. In any case, such mail does not have to
be sent from unknown/untrusted/unfamiliar senders. It's NOT a good idea to
send
such stuff until you've verified that your recipients are prepared (and
willing!) to receive such higher-cost, reduced-compatibility messages.
And if they REALLY WANT to use HTML, another approach without most of the bulk
is to put it up on a Web server (using an 'unguessable' URL) and E-mail (as
plain ASCII text) the URL to the intended recipient.
If anything, the demand for such a capability has increased over time.
Mostly, the "demand" for such features have come from perversely creative
spammers who use these features to deceive/mislead/obscure.
It is no more reasonable to demand that the world accept that
email should not contain rendering information
That's NOT AT ALL what we're proposing. We're saying that such E-mail is NOT
suitable for an INITIAL, unsolicited contact. Once a relationship is
established between a sender and a recipient, the recipient can enable HTML
(etc) for that sender IF THEY WISH TO. Meanwhile, unsolicited, UNWANTED,
UNTRUSTED users of those technologies are quickly and easily sent packing
(which
is, after all, the goal).
than it would be for some
religious sect to demand that we not "pollute" the walls of our homes
with art. Our challenge should be to figure out how to give the users
what they want without exposing them to unnecessary risks.
What the USERS want is to block spam and malicious content
(viruses/worms/trojans) coming from people they don't want to hear from.
Users wanting HTML or attachments from indicated senders could enable that
easily. Perhaps (implementation at specific ISPs permitting) they could even
opt to open back up to (just that recipient) receive attachments/HTML/encoding
from just anybody, but then they don't have much cause to complain about
getting
the spam that they're then putting out the welcome mat for.
I think that most users would be DELIGHTED with the tremendous reduction in
spam
count and volume that my solution would yield, and would find that the minor
effort to re-enable trusted senders would be well worth the huge benefit.
[I don't deny that SOME users are going to be HUGELY annoyed by widespread
adoption of my proposal... but that group is going to be mostly spammers,
abusers, and virus authors, and I think we can agree that those are precisely
the users for whom we don't mind making their life a lot more difficult. :-) ]
If the problem is a difficult one to solve, it isn't because what the users
want is some that is not "legitimage," rather, it simply means that
we're not being creative enough in defining solutions.
I think the solution as I'm proposing would be cheap, easily implemented,
HIGHLY
effective, and with minimum-to-no impact on most users. It would GREATLY
reduce
the costs to ISPs (and thus to users) of spam and wasteful HTML-burdened e-mail
while still allowing them to get basically everything they want to receive.
There is far more use of HTML mail to violate privacy
with such as "web bugs" than legitimate use.
I don't believe this to be true. I get loads of "legitimate"
HTML mail every day.
Some people probably do, but rarely do they need to receive it from
unknown/untrusted people UNSOLICITED.
Gordon Peterson http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002 Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support the Anti-SPAM Amendment! Join at http://www.cauce.org/
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.
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