Meeting reminder

[Mike O'Dell]

i suspect HTML email is rampant because most email clients
today produce HTML by default and render it without fuss
or effort on the part of the recipient. therefore
there is little motivation for The Average Joe to 
divine the spell required to change the default encoding.
(Of course this assumes they understand and care about
the difference, which very few do.)

Even with the spell in hand, there is even less 
motivation to invoke the spell given that it often 
requires what appears to require delving into
the "Options" well past the sign reading
"All Ye Who Enter Here Abandon Hope!"
No sense losing one's immortal soul over email encoding!

Personally, being one of the few surviving members
of a deeply-endangered species (users of the MH
mail software), I try to send non-HTML ASCII whenever
possible. The serious grief comes when an attachment
is required, or one wishes to digitally sign an email.
Neither of those can be done without invoking the
myriad convoluted spells of MIME, and once one opens
that particular portal to Digital Hell, the great
sucking of the HTML Wind blowing by frequently
sweeps one along even if trying hard to avoid it.

Given the demonstratedimpossibility of pushing the "No HTML Email"
rope more than a few millimeters (outside of select groups
with what can only be considered "curious digital proclivities"
these days), I have simply given
up complaining and instead resort to silent grumbling
about the obvious dissolution of Western Civilization
directly traceable to HTML (and HTML Email in particular)
while revelling in the *dark* knowledge how to send 
ASCII-only email using nothing more than the 
target SMTP server and user "Telnet".

that is the email equivalent of sending
CW using the ignition coil of an engine and a key
fashioned by using a bare wire drawn across notches
through the paint to complete the ground for an
emergency spark-gap transmitter.

(anyone else remember "Carl & Jerry"??)

(big grin)

     -mo