Dne, 31. 10. 2010 12:02:39 je Camaleón napisal(a):
On Sun, 31 Oct 2010 10:49:24 +0000, Lisi wrote:
> On Sunday 31 October 2010 10:32:24 Camaleón wrote:
>> I don't see how a "lack" (meaning, "inability of choice") can be a
good
>> feature ;-(
I don't think you can directly equate "choice" to "feature" just like
that. Not letting kids wield guns, or prostitute themselves, or work in
sweatshops, are "features" although actually limiting their "ability of
choice". Not allowing people to drive cars before taking a driver's
license, although limiting people's "choice", is likewise arguably a
"feature".
Now, something like HTML mail is either a feature or it is not.
Steering issues about "features" into issues of "liberty to choose" is,
in my view, counterproductive. If we begin talking about the "liberty
to choose", we'll soon have to install bumps in our roads because of
reckless people who "choose" to drive like lethal bullets, or will have
to endure excruciating check-ups at airports because of people who
"choose" to use airplanes for something else than simply getting from
one place to another, or will have to endure hefty, painfully slow
flash-infested mail... Oh, we already do all that? I rest my case.
>
> There _is_ choice - there are loads of email clients and most of
them
> have inline pictures.
I wouldn't call it "choice" when you are forced to drop an e-mail
client
you like just because it lack one feature that it should be there
(it's a
GUI e-mail client, it allows creating html e-mails, so... why not
having
a full featured html editor that allows forwarding/replying while
keeping
the original format?).
That's precisely the problem. Approaching something on a why-not basis
instead of on a what-the-heck-for basis. Hey, why not make YAMC (yet
another mail client), basically re-inventing the wheel, instead of
joining the developers of a pre-existing mail client, and helping it
become 10x as fast, 100x as lightweight and 1000x as robust as all
other mail clients taken together? Hey, why not drop a stable, popular
and beloved DE such as KDE3 and, just for the heck of it, start a hazy,
bug-ridden, pre-production experiment called KDE4? Hey, why not have a
welcome page on our web site made of a *huge* java, or flash
application, stuffed full with blinking eye-sores and background music
and all imaginable bandwidth hogs, just to basically say "Welcome to
our site"? Hey, why encode e-mails as TEXT? It's so damn last-year,
let's encode it as MPEG-1 instead, or RealMedia -- or, hey -- as
uncompressed video! Yep, why not? Man, we could make the "Subject:"
field alone take up 125 MB if we just try hard enough!
Besides, there are "thounsand" users wanting such feature.
Sad, isn't it?
> But to give you an example of when a lack is a highly to be desired
> feature.
>
> Someone on the corner of the road I live in installed a very bright
> security light that was triggered by a motion sensor. The result
was
> that as I approached the corner I was suddenly blinded by a very
bright
> light shining straight into my eyes. It was fairly soon removed,
> presumably at the insistance of the Police. It was its _presence_
that
> was the bug and its absence a highly desirable feature.
I fail to see a direct relation between this example and Kmail html
issue, because you cannot go and turn off the light (you are not
allowed
to do it so, but police) but you can still have plain text e-mail
forwarding _or_ html e-mail forwarding: here the choice is fully
yours.
Sounds great. Except, the choice is fully yours. Which, given that,
generally, 90% of the people will choose Windows over GNU/Linux, Word
.doc format over open document standards, royalty-ridden multimedia
formats over open ones, vendor lock-in over open hardware/drivers, or
even super-sized hamburgers over healthy foods, can be a problem in
itself.
> So here. I regard the fact that my emails are blessedly HTML and
> picture free as a strength, and a highly desirable feature.
Having the option of using html e-mails does not mean you are forced
to
go that path, it is up to you when using plain text e-mail or html.
Now,
Kmail users do not have that choice.
Unfortunately, many of us have that path quite simply *thrust upon us*.
I wouldn't call that a choice by any stretch of the imagination. Ever
tried updating your mail over a tethered UMTS phone because your DSL
line just died or you're in the wild somewhere, with only your laptop
and your GSM phone? It's an enlightening experience, at a flaky 2-3
kps. Particularly when you realize that the bulk of that 45-minutes
download that has drained both your battery and your pre-paid GSM
account, has been taken by a couple of unsolicited multimedia-infested
HTML mails ...
Give a man the Garden of Eden, and you may be pretty sure he'll
eventually make a Middle-East Hell out of it. Oh, he did? I rest my
case.
I apologize if anybody's feelings have been hurt by this mail. It was
never my intention. I particularyl apologize to Camaleon, whom I value
as one of the best contributors to this list, in fact as one of the
list's pillars. My argument is not with you, Camaleon, it's with
certain modes of thinking that seem to be quite endemic and which I
profoundly disagree with.
--
Cheerio,
Klistvud
http://bufferoverflow.tiddlyspot.com
Certifiable Loonix User #481801 Please reply to the list, not to
me.
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