I can tell that what you stripped was a really good flame and I appreciate your effort. Sorry to spark that, but here's the counterpoint to your argument: "no legitimate user really needs HTML email"...
We have many corporate users who now regularly rely on HTML formatted reports, analysis, and presentations all delivered via HTML email. None of them would ever consider using an email package that does not support HTML mail because their internal business systems have become dependent upon this capability. Were this only internal, we might make an argument to protect acainst virii and soforth by using web server resources to publish this content, however it has become very interactive, and also spans multiple organizations that interoperate - so it's a very hard sell... And the next piece of it is not possible to dispute: The majority of the personnel in these organizations and the executives either do not understand, will not be trained, and do/or not wish to take any extra measures whatsoever to "open" or otherwise "retreive" rich content from any source when they can simply receive it in their email like every other piece of electronic correspondence they have. To protest this in any serious way is a good way to loose their confidence if you are a consultant, and your job if you are an employee... Such a contention is seen as foolhardy and myopic - indicating that the person making this argument is incompetent or at least not paying attention to the real needs of the organization... I've seen people get into serious trouble over things like this and some of them have been the subject of, in the words of John Cleese, "A Strategic Personnell Redeployment". I wear many hats... Including CEO, CTO, CIO, COO and President in a number of organizations... I can tell you that from an informed perspective, Email with rich content is a strong solution to some real world problems... And as such, it is simply not going to go away... Any business organization that is not using this capability is at a distinct disadvantage. (read: going out of business strategy) That said, the current implementation of this capabililty is AWFUL for all the reasons we all talk about here... As engineers and technicians, it is our job to refine the solution so that the capability can be delivered without the risks... That's a tough challenge, but it is here to stay. _M PS: In corporate environments it is often possible to place a proxy server in the network path and program that server to refuse requests to unknown web servers - thereby reducing the risks where rich content is concerned while still allowing rich content to be safely delivered and easily published. However this is draconian and frequently a short-lived "experiment" because external content from legitimate sources quickly becomes an issue, and typically some executive will become frustrated enough to demand the removal of the restriction... Silly, but true. | -----Original Message----- | From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of | Dave Salovesh | Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 2:51 PM | To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' | Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] Is your e-mail watching you? | | | > -----Original Message----- | > From: Madscientist [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] | | > Unfortunately, the need for rich content is here to stay so | HTML email | > will prevail... And likely to become greater with time... | | I had a loooong reply (rant) to this drafted, but I | reconsidered. Thank me later - this is the short version: | Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Please visit the Knowledge Base for answers to frequently asked questions: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
