Oh, is it Historical Precedent Time?
After Marilyn poled down that river in 3-D, conventional wisdom
held that a movie patron after about 1958 had just better become
accustomed to those funny little cardboard bi-colored glasses if
he wanted to ever see a movie again.
And there were always the purists who held out for the Old Way.
Chaplin did City Lights as a silent a decade and a half after
sound became prominent.
But, like any school of fish, a phalanx will eventually bring
the whole troop along. Sound did happen for movies, color
came to TV, and HTML comes online.
My list came online in 1992, and we still run straight ASCII
through it. At one time, there was resistence against a web
presence. One egalitarian soul among us proclaimed, what of
the poor among us, who cannot afford Web access, but must
feed among us as they are able with scraps and Juno?
He was convinced when free net hookups went in at the public
library.
And today we have freemail accounts which support HTML. Anybody can go
to Yahoo and see color and big fonts without spending a dime. I'm not
sure how long the rearguard action serves any purpose.
It sounds like an S&M scene. You will obey my dictum or suffer the
consequences. To me, this shows more respect for the mechanism than the
public it's supposedly set up to serve. Were I to employ such draconian
drama to one of the lists I operate, I would fluster and foil every
member. They're old, like me, and they don't understand, and nobody
will be able to educate them all. We find we can tolerate the odd HTML
smear quite well in that particular unit.
And I clean it out of the other list by hand. Because I care more for
the participation than the rules of engagement, which can be sometimes
very disengaging if overstressed. That's the secret to the differences
of opinions I see here. Some have large groups of relatively
sophisticated users and they don't mind offending a minority of them to
uphold appearances. It's like requiring an ascot at the club. You can
do that for the Ritz Carlton Old Boys, but not for a smalltown Kiwanis
with a declining membership.
--
An Ann Landers letter one year: "Oh, Ann, a panhandler approached me
this morning, what would you do?" Ann replied with a detailed
intenerary - she would take the bum to a restaurant, see him seated,
and, to prevent her contribution going to crack, pay the maitre 'd.
It was hilarious. Ann Landers spends no time on the street. She thinks
a panhandler is extremely rare. Likewise, some guides give us extensive
advice about how to handle instances of spam, each single occurance
requiring about fourteen hours work.
And some would spend their time stamping out the dread smear of HTML on
mailing lists.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tim Bowden)
"The reason you can never go home again
is because you can never leave." - Timocrates
