Hello Gregy:
On Fri, 26 May 2000 01:48:57 -0800, Gregory J. Feig wrote:
> On Thu, 25 May 2000 22:14:25 -0500, "Samuel W. Heywood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>> My dear fellow Arachnids:
> -----------snip-----------
> Sam.....
> I think you have confused the "Editor of the Atlantic Monthly"
> with the owner/operator of the custom publishing plant who rents or
> leases his presses out to all comers....or who does contract job-lot
> publishing on contract for some publications.
OK, I can agree that I have not been clear in making the distinction
between custom publishing plants, or "contract publishing houses",
and specialty publications designed to appeal only to specific kinds
of audiences.
> The ISPs are those "press owners", the providers of the machines
> that blindly crank out the paper media garbage...
> The "Editor of the Atlantic Monthly" is...........YOU....!!! and
> me, and all the other idiots who put "pages" up for people to view.
> IMO, the ISPs have no business "editing" the pages on their servers,
> unless they are inflammatory/pornographic stuff which will be likely to
> result in the ISP being banned from his primary provider..
I think it would be a good idea if some, but certainly not all, ISPs
were to adopt standards based on content, reading level, technology
used, or browser compatibility, so as to offer the www community
some more clearly defined choices when it comes to deciding which sites
to browse. I think it is clearly a waste of time when you visit a site
with Arachne only to find that it is not compatible with your browser
after you have waited so long for the page to download. Also it is a
waste of time when you are looking for a page having technical data on
IC chips and you go to a page having a title that sounds like what you
are looking for only to find that you are accessing a porn page. (This
actually happened to me once! The web site was making a
not-so-very-funny pun on the term "IC".) This just proves that you can't
judge a book by its cover; however, you can, in some cases, judge a book
by the reputation of the publisher.
For the reasons explained above, and also for many other reasons, I think
it would be a good idea for some ISPs to establish standards. In many
cases it is nice to be able to have some idea as to what you might find
before you even go there. Life already has enough surprises to offer
even when you are not looking for them. The IC page was so surprising
that it even made my eyes pop out!
All the best,
Sam Heywood
-- This mail was written by user of Arachne, the Ultimate Internet Client
