If I may be permitted to add to this that there are quite a few people with email accounts who either do not have internet access or whose internet access is very basic, including people with disabilities, and use of pine email and lynx browsers that are text based is the rule with many people. I use text based pine email for all of my Temple email account activities. For such users of email, the use of html mail causes messages to be received with annoying HTML tags at the minimum and in many cases renders them completely unreadable so that they are deleted unread. As the moderator of Net-Gold, I spend a substantial amount of time cleaning up some posts of HTML tagging so that the message is clean when reposting these coded messages to the archives for the list. Since this DDN list is aimed at countries and groups of people within countries who are part of the digital divide, it would seem to be a premise of the foundation of the list that such a list would servicable to the lowest common denominator of ability to capture internet and email content on equipment that may be old, outdated or limited. In some areas of the world, bandwidth is relatively inexpensive, whereas in other areas the cost of internet access may be a major portion of the income of many families. A list aimed at diminishing the digital divide should be aimed in all of its attributes at maximizing what is received by those whose payment to access the internet is a sacrificial amount of their salary. The South Asian disaster, among its other tragedies will almost certainly increase the ranks of those without internet access or with much lesser quality access. To reduce access to such a group of people of a list that has provided so much information for them seems to be a bad direction to head. Otherwise, I am a big fan of HTML mail. <g>
Got DOS? Get Internet! <http://www.accessmasters.com/dos.html> Finally: Broadband for the Commodore 64 <http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/18/1857204> Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Sep 18, '03 04:36 PM from the answer-to-a-question-that-didn't-need-asking dept. GP writes "Now even die-hard Commodore 64 users are able to enjoy the benefits of broadband Internet connectivity. A newly announced Ethernet card together with the Contiki operating system lets you surf the web, send e-mail, host web sites with the built-in web server, and soon even play LAN games on your good old Commodore 64! All this with a computer that is old enough to drink." The no-frills US$199 computer The US$199 personal computer has arrived ... without Microsoft or Intel inside <http://64.55.181.130/news/geeknews/2002Dec/gee20021210017684.htm> Wal-Mart has begun to offer a computer built by Microtel which is made for the simple broadband user in mind. The computer comes with no floppy disk drive and no modem, but does include a 10/100 Ethernet card. It also features a small 10 GB hard drive, 128 MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive (not a burner), and comes with a sound card and speakers. The processor running the computer is a VIA 800MHz C3 processor. Though the processor may be slower than its higher speed counterparts, the speed of the processor is not as much a factor for a computer marketed toward broadband Internet use. The operating system running the computer is the Linux-based Lycoris Desktop/LX. This Linux-based OS has much the same look and feel of Windows XP. The Digital Beat Vol. 2, No. 23, January 2000 By Jamal Le Blanc The Digital Divide: Evolving Awareness and Evolving Solutions <http://www.benton.org/publibrary/digitalbeat/db013100.html> Bridging the Digital Divide <http://www.ecommerce.gov.tt/uploads/digital_divide.pdf> UNDERSTANDING THE DIGITAL ECONOMY Data, Tools and Research May 25 and 26, 1999 US Department of Commerce Washington DC THE GROWING DIGITAL DIVIDE IN ACCESS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES: OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO PARTICIPATION IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY By Cynthia D. Waddell, J.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.icdri.org/CynthiaW/the_digital_divide.htm> South Africans Online: 'Digital Divide' and the Network Society <http://www.writing.uct.ac.za/what/southafrican.htm> Accessibility and Usability of Information Technology by the Elderly Hilary Browne Department of Computer Science University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] April 19, 2000 <http://www.otal.umd.edu/UUGuide/hbrowne/> Why Fiber Optics Can't Solve Today's Broadband Shortage - Technology Information Computer Technology Review, Jan, 2001 by Gilad Rozen <http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BRZ/is_1_21/ai_77057991> Africa Takes On the Digital Divide Africa Recovery (New York) ANALYSIS October 23, 2003 Posted to the web October 23, 2003 Gumisai Mutume New York New information technologies change the lives of those in reach <http://allafrica.com/stories/200310230592.html> I hope that these links serve as a reminder of the worlds referred to in the content heading of this list as factors in the decision to include or reject HTML based email on a list that is out there for the little bandwidth person, a liberal virtual world translation of the English language cliche "little guy" rendered gender neutral at the same time. Sincerely, David Dillard Temple University (215) 204 - 4584 [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net-gold> <http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ringleaders/davidd.html> <http://www.kovacs.com/medref-l/medref-l.html> <http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/net-gold.html> <http://www.LIFEofFlorida.org> World Business Community Advisor <http://www.WorldBusinessCommunity.org> =========================================== On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, John Hibbs wrote: > I for one hope the present (HTML) policy continues. > It seems this is especially important for a group devoted to > narrowing the digital divide. Yes, it may well be that most of us on > this list have broadband, super fast computers and live in countries > where electronic mail zips easily and instantly...but the great, > great, great balance of the world doesn't have these > advantages....and won't for a good long time. > Let the spammers choke on their own HTML. Let's keep the policy - and > in fact encourage our members to send *all* mail in plain text. > My two cents. > John Hibbs > http://www.bfranklin.edu/johnhibbs > > At 11:07 AM -0500 1/7/05, Andy Carvin wrote: > >Hi everyone, <snip> > >So I'd like to ask for comments from list members about a proposed > >rule change regarding HTML messages. The rule change would allow > >people to post in HTML, but still not allow attachments, which we > >block for virus and bandwidth concerns. Plain text, of course, will > >still be encouraged, but members wouldn't be penalized if they > >didn't comply. > >Please let me know what you think. If there's general consensus that > >posting in HTML is acceptable to the group, I'll make the rule > >change in the FAQ. > >thanks, > >ac _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
