[Novalug] Administrativia -- list configuration [was: The age of "Guilt-By-Knowledge" and how the anti-system crowd has "won"]

Bryan J Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Sat May 2 20:35:20 EDT 2015


On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 8:01 PM, James Ewing Cottrell III via Novalug
<novalug@firemountain.net> wrote:
> Next you'll be telling us that Top Posting is Gauche.
> Guess what? The World has decided Against You on both accounts en masse.

The world has also decided on MS Office.  That still doesn't mean your
documentation will be retainable and, better yet, more editable in 10
years.

(Insert the 3, different, incompatible "Transitional" Office OpenXML
formats, none of which match the ISO 2008 spec, and even Microsoft had
to introduce "compatibility modes" in the 2015 edition for the sheer
number of 2007 v. 2010 conflicts)

>  Do you REALLY want to go back to uudecoding Attachments?

Different relationship.  Like many things, uudecode had its time, but
even MIME took over more than just SMTP.

> Yes, we have all seen Horrible HTML based mail, and it's even worse when
> they assume M$ specific feature.

The world also previously decided on MS IE6-only HTML.  I don't even
have to say "I told you so" to so many past clients on this, although
their huge IE development divisions got their "job security" (and
hated me for trying to prevent such whenever I stepped on-site).

> Perhaps the best Balance is Text with MIME Attachments, which are pretty
> must Standard by now. And isn't there a Content-Type: text/rich?
> And perhaps my own style of emphasis, Like This, ain't so bad either.
> P.S. FWIW, the text *like this* was displayed in Bold in my MUA,
> Thunderbird.

Many Google'isms are as bad as Microsoft'isms aka "We are the standard."

E.g., Message-ID is the only way to always and accurately thread,
whether it's SMTP, NNTP or anything else.  Even web archives, even
those at Google, have started to learn this, which is why Microsoft
had to add Message-ID tracking to GMail after a few years.

That's why I've always referred to most Google app developers as
"script kiddies."  They hack at things, utterly forget standards and
best practices because they allegedly "knew better," then are smacked
in the face why the standards and best practices exist.  ;)

-- bjs



More information about the Novalug mailing list