Your entire argument is based on the premise (which you didn't state before), is that most people just reject all HTML email. I see no evidence of that.
Yeah, I just did that, and even as I write, there's a big blue-and-silver F on the top of my window. I'd seen the Adblock extension before, when I was browsing the various (very long!) lists of Firefox extensions. It didn't strike me as particularly useful so I didn't bother to install it. I guess I mostly don't mind animated ads, but when you're trying to write a thoughful Slashdot post, having a sily animation on your screen is really headache inducing. I suspect that Slashdot will be the only site I totally forbid to give Flash animations.
You point out a bunch of ways HTML can be misused and you say its evil. That's absurd. If you want you don't want to screw over blind people, follow accessibility guidelines. If you think script malware and web bugs are wrong, don't use them.
Sure there are people who read your email on portable devices that don't do formatting -- but they're still in the minority. By the time they're in the majority, they'll be perfectly good doing rich text, and you'll look like a dweeb if you don't learn how to support that feature.
Geeks are stuck in this stupid "we don't need rich text" mind set, and its time we got over it. The rest of the world doesn't have time for such bullshit.
I agree that accusations of FUD are the last resort of people who don't have a real argument. But that's not a new thing. The first time I heard this TLA was back in 1998, when was when I was working at Sun, where "FUD" was their standard response to any criticism of Java. Even the most loyal Java programmer knows this platform has always had problems, starting with early implementations that were slow and flaky, and continuing with controversy over language features and control of the specifications. Instead of giving an honest response, Sun would accuse critics of spreading "FUD", which did little to improve Java's credibility.
"FUD" is, and always has been, just another way to spin honest argument into conspiracy theory. No intelligent person should ever use the term.
Oh bullshit. Maybe everybody you know sends text only messages. Most users are non-geeks who don't even know how.
I used to work a help desk at an internet services company, where we had this brain-dead ticket system which was email based, and wasn't smart enough to filter dangerous attachments, so it would just display the raw MIME text. Yeah, I know, there are better ways, but I didn't design the software. My point is that I often had to eye-parse HTML message or find the pure-text part in multipart messages. How often did I have to do this? More than 90% of the time. And this was with a relatively tech-savy user base. Your "only spammers" assertion is pure crap.
As usual "FUD" is a handy excuse for your own ignorance. iTunes does indeed hijack associations, just not the ones you happen to use. Obviously it can't hijack wmv files, since it doesn't know how to play them.
If you're going to get all religious, you should quit rather than use mass-mailing software, even for plain text messages. I mean, it's a spammer tool, right? How can you even consider using it?
The right way to do ethics is to forget stupid dogmas like "HTML email is evil" and base your decisions how your actions affect other people. Like a lot of other technologies, HTML email can be misused; specifically, senders can breach security with script-based malware, and privacy with graphic-based tracking cookies. If you don't engage in these abuses yourself, where's the ethical issue?
If you're concerned about security of your own users, you might tell them, "don't accept HTML email". But even that's serious overkill -- Thunderbird is perfectly capable of blocking security and privacy penetration while still accepting HTML email. Outlook is less impressive that way, but Microsoft software is hardly the gold standard for security.
"HTML email is evil" is standard geek bigotry. We're able to get by with pure-text message, anybody who can't is an asshole. Its time to remember that the whole world doesn't revolve around us.
Thank you! I was afraid I'd have to download almost 50K of extraneous graphics and HTML!
What would be helpful would be a link to the full-screen version that didn't require iTunes to play. Apple has gotten as bad as Microsoft and Real Networks when it comes to trying to take over your multimedia.
Nonsense. Chris Columbus, who directed the first two films, is still Executive Producer of the series. Directing a film is hard work, and it's not unusual for somebody to launch a series, then delegate that job in later films.
There are lots of silly rumors about J.K. Rowling. The only conflict that has any real basis in fact is that she's not producing more Harry Potter as quickly as the publisher would like. One reason for this is the novels are getting progressively more bloated. Which I personally find a pain, but which most fantasy fans seem to love.
The big problem with the HP movies was not that the movie people didn't get along with Rowling, but that they got along all too well. So the first two movies were very literal adaptations of the first two books. Not a good way to make a movie, because you end up with a shortened version of the book that doesn't take advantage of cinematic story telling. Which is why I enjoyed the first two books, but found the first two movies utterly boring.
Actually, they're using the same three child actors they've had from the beginning. they've been doing a HP movie almost once a year, and each story is supposed to be about one year at Hogwarts, so the actors are only aging a little faster than their characters. Right now they're maybe a year ahead; by the time the series ends they'll be maybe 3 years ahead of their characters. Which is nothing as things go -- there are tons of "teenagers" on TV these days who are in their late 20s! What makes these actors look "too old" is the usual adolescent growth spurts -- which even the kids' parents probably find disconcerting!
The one that has me confused is Scarlet Johansson, who's been playing grownups since before she finished high school!
And there you have it. Right now, the folks making the decisions are folks that think like us.
Sorry, but that's standard Geek bigotry. Most web surfers are not "people like us". Most people seem to be pretty tolerant of obnoxious advertising, and the 900 million people who surf the web these days are more representative of society at large, not Geek culture. So it's a little suprising that obnoxious ads are less effective online they they are in other media.
My theory is this: people are so inundated with advertising that they need a mechanism to filter them out, to keep from getting distracted to death. Most people seem to be adept and creating little cognitive filters to eliminate distraction. (Geeks, by and large, seem to be pretty poor at this -- I've often wondered if there isn't some neurological difference between Geeks and "normal" people.) So most people litterally don't see most of the ads that are thrown at them every day.
But by trying to make their ads less obnoxious, Google removed all the visual cues that these cognitive filters rely on. Which is why market research indicates that most people don't perceive Google ads as ads, even though they're clearly labeled as such! In other words, Google found a way to get past people's ant-ad wetware -- and found it purely by accident.
It is true that viral marketing is very effective. But I don't think they're deliberately trying to do that. It's just that their haphazard product development process makes a proper "feature launch" impossible!
It's curious how Google repeatedly stumbles into extreme success. Early on, they decided to go with low-key text-based ads, not because they thought they'd be more successful than banner ads, but because the people making the decision hated pages with banner ads. We all know how that turned out -- it's the main reason Google turned a profit as early as it did.
Jeez, as I'm typing this there is this really annoying animated New Egg banner at the top of my Slashdot window. Some people never learn!
I seem to recall that all the external shots in the first season of TNG was CGI. It was decently done, with some cute effects ("Quick! Raise the shields before that debris hits us!") that you can't do with models. But it was still obviously animation, which is, I guess, unacceptable. So they switched to model-based effects as soon as they could afford to.
Really? Tvtome is reporting that they rebuilt 10-Forward for this ep. Also the Constellation-class bridge in the mirror universe eps was very obviously not CGI. Perhaps they borrowed the original set back from the Smithsonian, though that would probably be as expensive as building it from scratch. Interesting that they would spend so much money on sets only meant to be used once. Last-ditch effort to boost production values?
There should be a FAQ for this issue. People learn language by imitation, not by reading reference books. So informal, imprecise usage creeps in. Sometimes that's dangerous, sometimes not -- but it's a natural human thing.
Which is why they hire tech writers like me to nitpick manuals, data sheets, and other documentation. Though when we do so, people call us "anal". Oh well.
That doesn't make any difference. The problem is not that you and I can't use SEH. The problem is that SEH isn't a feature of GCC, because like all GPL products, it can't include software obtained under a "non-free" patents. The GPL sez,
We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
So basically, Borland would have to give a free license for SEH to the GCC project, which would also apply to everybody who used GCC. If that doesn't happen, the only way GCC could offer SEH is to abandon the GPL. Not likely!
No, they don't have a legal obligation. But just obeying the letter of the law, regardless of the consquences for others, is not good citizenship.
It's not sour grapes for people to resent Apple's mercenary attitude towards the KHTML project. Apple has benefited from the work of KHTML volunteers. It's only fair that KHTML be able to benefit in turn. That means providing Apple source code in a shareable form, not just "throwing it over the wall".
The Open Source concept is not going to work without a spirit of cooperation by its participants. By ignoring that spirit, and just doing the minimum they need to not get sued, Apple not only damages the KHTML project, they discourage others from opening up their source code and otherwise contributing their resources to OS projects.
Or some other big company with a lot of cash they need to spend. But that doesn't lead to profits, at least in the traditional sense. Indeed, big companies that acquire little ones very often run them into the ground. But the people who own a piece of the acquired company profit quite nicely...
Many people dream of getting pre-IPO options in some hugely successful startup and retiring at 30. I usually get rather irritated when I see this actually happen, because it almost always means they've conned somebody with deep pockets and no brains into acquiring some utterly worthless enterprise. Either the idea was bad to begin with, or the founders did a very bad job of bringing it to market. That's not technological innovation or entrepeneurship -- that's just a con game.
Slashdot Mirror
...scientists report that water is wet.
Your entire argument is based on the premise (which you didn't state before), is that most people just reject all HTML email. I see no evidence of that.
Yeah, I just did that, and even as I write, there's a big blue-and-silver F on the top of my window. I'd seen the Adblock extension before, when I was browsing the various (very long!) lists of Firefox extensions. It didn't strike me as particularly useful so I didn't bother to install it. I guess I mostly don't mind animated ads, but when you're trying to write a thoughful Slashdot post, having a sily animation on your screen is really headache inducing. I suspect that Slashdot will be the only site I totally forbid to give Flash animations.
Sure there are people who read your email on portable devices that don't do formatting -- but they're still in the minority. By the time they're in the majority, they'll be perfectly good doing rich text, and you'll look like a dweeb if you don't learn how to support that feature.
Geeks are stuck in this stupid "we don't need rich text" mind set, and its time we got over it. The rest of the world doesn't have time for such bullshit.
"FUD" is, and always has been, just another way to spin honest argument into conspiracy theory. No intelligent person should ever use the term.
Already been there -- if I hadn't I couldn't play Quicktime at all. But the standalone player no longer does full-screen.
I used to work a help desk at an internet services company, where we had this brain-dead ticket system which was email based, and wasn't smart enough to filter dangerous attachments, so it would just display the raw MIME text. Yeah, I know, there are better ways, but I didn't design the software. My point is that I often had to eye-parse HTML message or find the pure-text part in multipart messages. How often did I have to do this? More than 90% of the time. And this was with a relatively tech-savy user base. Your "only spammers" assertion is pure crap.
As usual "FUD" is a handy excuse for your own ignorance. iTunes does indeed hijack associations, just not the ones you happen to use. Obviously it can't hijack wmv files, since it doesn't know how to play them.
The right way to do ethics is to forget stupid dogmas like "HTML email is evil" and base your decisions how your actions affect other people. Like a lot of other technologies, HTML email can be misused; specifically, senders can breach security with script-based malware, and privacy with graphic-based tracking cookies. If you don't engage in these abuses yourself, where's the ethical issue?
If you're concerned about security of your own users, you might tell them, "don't accept HTML email". But even that's serious overkill -- Thunderbird is perfectly capable of blocking security and privacy penetration while still accepting HTML email. Outlook is less impressive that way, but Microsoft software is hardly the gold standard for security.
"HTML email is evil" is standard geek bigotry. We're able to get by with pure-text message, anybody who can't is an asshole. Its time to remember that the whole world doesn't revolve around us.
What would be helpful would be a link to the full-screen version that didn't require iTunes to play. Apple has gotten as bad as Microsoft and Real Networks when it comes to trying to take over your multimedia.
There are lots of silly rumors about J.K. Rowling. The only conflict that has any real basis in fact is that she's not producing more Harry Potter as quickly as the publisher would like. One reason for this is the novels are getting progressively more bloated. Which I personally find a pain, but which most fantasy fans seem to love.
The big problem with the HP movies was not that the movie people didn't get along with Rowling, but that they got along all too well. So the first two movies were very literal adaptations of the first two books. Not a good way to make a movie, because you end up with a shortened version of the book that doesn't take advantage of cinematic story telling. Which is why I enjoyed the first two books, but found the first two movies utterly boring.
The one that has me confused is Scarlet Johansson, who's been playing grownups since before she finished high school!
My theory is this: people are so inundated with advertising that they need a mechanism to filter them out, to keep from getting distracted to death. Most people seem to be adept and creating little cognitive filters to eliminate distraction. (Geeks, by and large, seem to be pretty poor at this -- I've often wondered if there isn't some neurological difference between Geeks and "normal" people.) So most people litterally don't see most of the ads that are thrown at them every day.
But by trying to make their ads less obnoxious, Google removed all the visual cues that these cognitive filters rely on. Which is why market research indicates that most people don't perceive Google ads as ads, even though they're clearly labeled as such! In other words, Google found a way to get past people's ant-ad wetware -- and found it purely by accident.
It's curious how Google repeatedly stumbles into extreme success. Early on, they decided to go with low-key text-based ads, not because they thought they'd be more successful than banner ads, but because the people making the decision hated pages with banner ads. We all know how that turned out -- it's the main reason Google turned a profit as early as it did.
Jeez, as I'm typing this there is this really annoying animated New Egg banner at the top of my Slashdot window. Some people never learn!
...considering that a "booth babe" is the closest most game geeks will ever come to having an actual date!
I seem to recall that all the external shots in the first season of TNG was CGI. It was decently done, with some cute effects ("Quick! Raise the shields before that debris hits us!") that you can't do with models. But it was still obviously animation, which is, I guess, unacceptable. So they switched to model-based effects as soon as they could afford to.
Absence of screws implies that self-service will void your warantee, not your fingers.
Which is why they hire tech writers like me to nitpick manuals, data sheets, and other documentation. Though when we do so, people call us "anal". Oh well.
It's not sour grapes for people to resent Apple's mercenary attitude towards the KHTML project. Apple has benefited from the work of KHTML volunteers. It's only fair that KHTML be able to benefit in turn. That means providing Apple source code in a shareable form, not just "throwing it over the wall".
The Open Source concept is not going to work without a spirit of cooperation by its participants. By ignoring that spirit, and just doing the minimum they need to not get sued, Apple not only damages the KHTML project, they discourage others from opening up their source code and otherwise contributing their resources to OS projects.
On an Internet with 888 million users, half a million hits is not exactly "spreading like wildfire". Half of them are probably Slashdotters.
Many people dream of getting pre-IPO options in some hugely successful startup and retiring at 30. I usually get rather irritated when I see this actually happen, because it almost always means they've conned somebody with deep pockets and no brains into acquiring some utterly worthless enterprise. Either the idea was bad to begin with, or the founders did a very bad job of bringing it to market. That's not technological innovation or entrepeneurship -- that's just a con game.