Dear Bob George - as much as I appreciate your contributions generally
but this one of: Sun, 4 Feb 2001 was a bit too askew to let it pass
like that.
Your wrote:
> Which RFC pertains to mail content?
The thread was not about content but about format.
To glue the question - why there is massive "overquoting" - to the
content issue seems not very clean.
Then, to shovel the problem into the shoes of those stupid users is a
bit paternalistic, I'd think:
> ... the problem is users who don't bother to learn the program.
The least question to ask here is, does the (alsway "dumb/newbie" ?)
user get a real/realistic chance to "learn" ?
And connected with this: is there any effort/incentive done to make
him/her "learn" ?
I dare say that the effort just goes towards the opposite, i.e. to make
her/him believe he needs not bother any tiring effort to "learn"
(understand: unpleasant, complicated "work"). Which is very much the
dominant trend of programming for use of "consumers".
Now, there could be some discussion about contradicting aims between
"making things easy" and "understanding (how it works)" - and I'm very
much in favour of supporting laziness (which I consider a positive
quality) - but this is not the point; rather, if you make it difficult,
from the outset, to learn about what the effects would be of handling a
'puter prog, then I'd say it's a "bad" thing. (Remember, the thread
started with a remark if it was so difficult to avoid damage for
others by using Outlook/OE.)
Still, this is not the major point. I took the liberty to enlarge from
that to some generalising about *programming* and its implication
for marketing programs; not, about any specific *firm*. I would have
to bear with the qualification of being silly but I do not accept
being qualified "willing" to be so, and "to make things up":
> I find the willingness of folks to make up things to accuse Microsoft
> of pretty silly.... to blame user laziness on them
> exclusively really puts the credibility of this list in question.
Firstly, to invoke "the credibilty of this list" for reasons of one
contribution is either demagogical or proposterous, and in any case an
insult to the capacity of its readers to read/judge themselves.
Secondly, I didn't: neither did I make up things in order to blame MS,
nor did I blame user laziness. I have hundreds of MB of almost illegible
mail to digest (and some of them stored, you are invited to look at it)
from "high quality" lists where I only have to look at the header to
know the reason for the (digesting) pain. This is sheer observation,
not "make-up". These are not stupid people who never would understand a
manual, not to speak of reading one. These are academics, NGO experts,
journalists, you name it. (BTW, I'm always on the lookout for the real
good example of a real "dumb user" but it's always something that spoils
the exemplarity. So I got only a very few good ones in my collection.)
Now to the core of your diatribe - sorry, the following quote *does*
justify this qualification:
> To accuse Microsoft of consipiring with the telcos to drive up
> costs, when pay-per-minute is pretty well gone in their largest market
> really takes it past the limit.
I didn't say "conspiration", I didn't even mean anything the like, and
the mechanism of marked dominance are a bit more complicated than this.
(See above, on the effort of "learning".) The story is even older than
the old idea of ol'Rockefella with his lamps for China. And it's
completely irrelevant if the name of the game is MS, Esso or GE. It's
the market "logic" - more precisely: power play - which decides, not
the intrinsic technical properties of the product alone, nor the best
intentions of its engineers[*]. I'll try to state it factually:
You have a product which is successfully selling (it helps, if buyers
do not have much other choice). Through its instrinsic construction,
it needs a lot of other inputs (petrol, electricity, bandwidth). Other
"market operators" take advantage af this to produce and sell (fuel,
bandwidth). If you can tweak market rules a bit more - this part is
called (World) Intellectual Property Rights, Definition of Standards,
and the like - every "operator" gains. Well precisely: those who are
"operators"; not necessarily those who are "operated on". In any case,
there is no conspiracy, it's all in the open, from the local cattle
market to the Davos "World Economic Forum" and the G8 meetings.
To take a simple example: You wouldn't see a suburban supermarket
starting up a campaign against car use. They rather set up a "cheapest
price" petrol pump there too. And they gladly cut their part from the
ever-increasing oilcake.
Under the line, and that is the argument, there is:
(1.) an *uneven* redistribution. Sure, users get some (pleasure or even
functional) "value" individually - which is what "the product" keeps
selling[**] - but there is a massive transfer of monetary (or market)
value from them (as group) to the "operators". This is measurable not
even in monetary terms but even in technical such (see again [*]);
(2.) the fact that the rationale of this process is not questioned,
despite some obvious contradictions to other declared "values" we
(pretend to) live with - equality, for instance; and finally,
(3.) some empirical evidence that the "all-gain" model of endless growth
(of ressources utilisation) would have material limits.
Californians got a surprising reminder on that.[***]
Finally, I find it a bit too easy, and definitely paternalistic, to
declare newbies guilty because of their sheer existence; wouldn't it
be the task of a programmer (and the firm that sells his product) to
attract new clients ?
> There are tons of new users around and they tend to do stupid things.
Well, so would the kid use the flashing lighter I give to her without
telling her that I opened the gas pipe and what would happen if she
plays with the gadget.
Come on Bob, you have given some *excellent* examples here on this
very list for how to enlighten people who asked questions - why would
you defend some arrogant bullying firms for just *not* doing this ?
// Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2001-02-05
The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.revobild.net
-----------
[*] Here's an intriguing contradiction of the IT branch: the whole
enormous market does not follow "technically-best" directions despite of
that technicians (in the broadest sense) create the substance for its
operations.
[**] Selling cars with sexual attributes in the advertising has hardly
any functionality in common with transporting a person from A to B.
Though it works (for selling cars, though perhaps less for the transport
functionality).
[***] Don't get hooked up with the bureaucratic mess of price
"de"regulation, corporate manoeuvres and the like, look at the absolute
per capita electricity consumption in Cal: scale it up to Brazil, Nigeria
or China - with "all things equal" - to imagine the outcome.
-hc
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