On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 10:10:07PM -0400, Jerry Eckert wrote:
> Your crusade might be more effective if you used the short message -- at
> least then people using Outlook can see what the message is.
The original evil ploy was that people who couldn't read the e-mail
(and cared enough) would send me a message saying so, and then I'd
explain why, with some (hopefully) compelling arguments to convince
them to switch clients. But that hasn't really panned out (at least
until now).
> Unfortunately, some of us work in M$-centric environments and are forced to
> use these tools at home, like it or not, for compatibility reasons.
I would encourage all such people who are unhappy about it to make
arguments to their bosses and to their IT departments in favor of
switching. I've been considering writing a document that highlights
some of the major points, but they really come down to two things:
non-conformance to RFCs (which mostly no one cares about) and its
uncanny ability to spread viruses and get your box owned in other fun
and interesting ways.
The main reason I haven't (aside from having enough free time) is that
there's already plenty such documents on the net. If you feel the
desire, do a search on something like "why you should not use outlook"
and you'll probably find at least a dozen of them, if you can tolerate
wading through all the documents about bugs in Outlook and how to
secure it against <name your poison>. One of my favorites is this
one:
http://membrane.com/security/secure/Microsoft_Outlook_Express.html
It's cynical and pointed (like me!) but right on target.
> I do wonder what you hope to accomplish by targeting your crusade at those
> who have no influence over the features contained in Outlook? It seems to
> be on par with shooting people at random to advocate for gun control. Now,
> if you want to send the Outlook-incompatible email to M$...
I'm not in favor of gun control, but I'm not even going to go there!
Microsoft already knows about most of the problems... they designed
them in! Sending them mail is mostly a waste of time. The only way
to get them to write better software is to make people realize there
are better alternatives and get them to use them, so that Microsoft's
profits shrink until they start writing software that isn't broken.
Well, that's not exactly true. The first step is to get people to
realize there genuinely ARE problems with the software. I think most
people have only been using computers since Microsoft was ubiquitous,
and have come to believe that computers are just supposed to behave
badly. Virus infections and blue screens are the norm; why should we
expect anything else?
> If you want to continue preaching the evils of Outlook, I hope you'll
> reconsider using the long messages (I see you switched back in the message
> following the one I am replying to) so that those of us who are victims of
> the evil empire won't continue to be deprived of your wit, wisdom, and
> expertise.
Ah, kind words, those last... but you forgot cynicism, paranoia, and
pomposity! The long X-message in subsequent message(s) was an
oversight on my part. Those responsible for the fault in the
subtitles have been sacked... =8^)
--
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Derek Martin | Unix/Linux geek
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