> they dictate > the "need" that you (and I, and I'm sure _M as well) ridicule. > Perceived corporate "needs" only exist in context, just like SOPs, > salary grades, and filing methods.
I am certainly not a very experienced sa. I'm more of a programmer than anything else, but I'm not very experienced at that either. So you can take my comments with a grain of salt. Personally, the "need" or "not need" argument is irrelevant (sp?). If a large corporation asks me to build them an application that they "need" and the price is right (and it's not illegal or unethical), I build it. If I were to successfully convince them that they don't need it, I don't get paid. My employees don't get paid. That said, let me illustrate an example of corporate "need": Online Issue Tracking and Project Management Software - The project timeline, tasks, problems, and bugs are posted online. - Developers, managers, and testers essentially "subscribe" to a particular task or bug. - Every time an update is made, subscribers are notified of changes via HTML email that includes an HTML form for approvals, changes, notes, etc... This would be very difficult/cumbersome without HTML formatted email. - Screenshots with attached notes pointing to specific parts of the screenshot (much like Adobe Studio) are also sent via email. This is just not possible without HTML email. This project paid well. Sure, I could have suggested that HTML emails were insecure, a pain, bandwidth hogs, etc... but then our issue tracker/ project manager would have been the same as the other 50 products out there. We could have just inserted a link into plain emails, but would that have won us the contract? Heck no! > you're going to have to bend from the hard-and-fast when it means > keeping your job Not to belittle anyone, but someone losing their job over something like this can probably find another one in a few days with relatively no impact on their lifestyle. In my position, it's the difference between keeping my 4 friends and me employed in our own shop or bust. We've put our life savings into our company. Losing this "job" means starting from square one... and a heck of a lot of debt or bankruptcy. Eliminating HTML email is akin to solving problems like hijackings and airport security by eliminating airplanes... since we can drive or take a boat to where ever we want to go. The more sensible approach would be to enforce more strict (stricter?) standards on security, employees, pilots, etc... or, in our case, to improve the software. >> If it can't be said in plain text, it isn't worth saying. > > You'd better have a word with your webmasters about that, then. :) And > I can't resist this: the first Italic font was designed only 50 years > after the Gutenberg Bible...there's an entrenched technology for you! And more recently... the Wall Street Journal is now in COLOR?!?! http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/04/09/wall.street.journal.ap/index.html -Norm 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/
