question about formatting

[Grant Barrett]

On mardi 13 mars 2001 17:31, Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM wrote:
>Stephen Boatti's post "re: Japlish" dated "Fri, 9 Mar 2001 11:05:00
>-0500"  came to me in MIME encoding, with an HTML doppelganger very heavily
>loaded with formatting code of a type unfamiliar to me (who am no expert in
>these things).
>Am I the only person who saw it this way, the only one who minds, the only
>one who wrote to Stephen about it, or what?

No, I got it, too. It's not your crappy Notes software. All that junk is related to
XML code that is supposed to produce formatting, graphics and colors. As always, it's
caused by having an email program send HTML messages by default, which is a
generally frowned upon by most email lists for the following reasons:

a. Messages are generally larger, unecessairly increasing traffic and bandwith
requirements in a medium intended to be content-, rather than form-, driven.

b. Email messages sent in the way can include "bugs," little 1 pixel by 1 pixel
graphics that, when downloaded by an HTML email reader can attach your email address to a
cookie and/or URL. This means your movements across the Internet can have your IP or
email address attached to them. No scorn, please: it happens. Plenty.

c. Javascript exploits of common Microsoft email readers exist, usually involving
scavenging through your address book and sending out messages unbidden by you. Non-HTML
email does not pass these exploits on.


--
Grant Barrett
New York loves you back.
http://www.worldnewyork.org/