[ADMIN] HTML Based Email (AOL 6.0)

[David Salmon]

Not to belabor a dead horse, but, to change horses in midstream, I
respectfully submit that you are backing a dead horse.

I am not advocating HTML email.  Nor am I insensitive to those with older
equipment or slow and expensive connections to the internet.  Although I am
located 200 miles from Silicon Valley, I am in a rural mountainous area and
have a slow and balky connection myself.  I am simply pointing out that
times have changed and the internet and the software have moved on.   It is
not even an issue any longer among software designers; I saw it recently
described as "old-fashioned."  It will not be long before others, like AOL,
drop the option to turn off HTML and simply assume everyone has it and can
use it.  The internet juggernaut is not going to halt.

By the way, there is no way to ensure that archived digital information will
be retrievable, whatever its format.  I looked into archiving judicial
records in digital format a few years ago and found that there simply is no
medium at present on which the data can be recorded that will not degrade
relatively rapidly, to say nothing of the difficulties in finding outdated
equipment that will be able to read it.  Any archiving done in electronic
format is strictly temporary, at this point, whatever the form in which you
keep the data.  For the immediate future, at least, there is no alternative
to periodically updating one's equipment and transferring the old data into
the new forms.

David