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Borking Outlook Express

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the swedish-is-funny-on-the-face-of-things dept.

Johannes writes: "Swedish Gnuheter has a story on Nick Moffitt arranging with his X-headers in way that makes it impossible to read his email with Microsoft WebTV or Outlook Express. Moffitt states: 'The folks using Outlook Express have locked themselves into a limited subset of the information that can flow over the Internet, and are blaming me personally for not limiting my transmissions to that outlook-centric subset.' See also original email (in English). Immoral? Or just right?" Looks like Moffit's "Who, me?" attitude is tongue in cheek, but the creative header changes here are hilarious.

1 of 1,097 comments (clear)

  1. Amazing stupidity by CrystalFalcon · · Score: 2, Flamebait

    Gaah!

    For several years now, I have received the occasional e-mail about how I should never write e-mail in HTML, but stick to plaintext. This has usually been followed by how Microsoft doesn't care about standards (I use an MS client), raah raah raah, and the key argument is that everybody should always be able to read your information. To me, that argument is about equivalent to "nobody on the highway is allowed to drive faster than the slowest car". If we enforced people to be compliant with all standards, we'd effectively kill progress. Even though we may not like the current trend of progress, there is still always change going on.

    Anyway, here we have the exact same thing, only lockout on purpose rather than implicitly by upgraded technology, targeted against a specific client. This guy is saying outright that "Sorry if you can't read my e-mail, here are a bunch of alternatives", just like I use to do when people complain they can't read HTML.

    The chief difference is that I don't send HTML mail out of malice, I do it because I think it adds value to the mail (I can format for readability more than I can in 76-column ASCII). This guy croaks certain clients because he doesn't like the clients, or rather, their maker. He's giving people trouble on purpose, and boasts about it.

    That is just amazingly stupid.

    Crystal Falcon

    There are only two things infinite, the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not so sure about the universe. --Albert Einstein