HTMLised email

[David Gaskill]

On Sat, 11 Dec 1999 12:17:31 -0800 (PST), Steve Wendt wrote:


>>On Sat, 11 Dec 1999 18:17:44, David Gaskill wrote:
>>
>>>I really don't think this is true but it is probably  true that Microsoft is more 
>>>important in setting Internet standards than those that compose RFCs. No 
>>
>>God help us if that were true!  The Internet would have crashed and burned 
>>long ago if it were running on M$ "standards."  The Internet runs on things like 
>>Sendmail, BIND, Apache, all REAL standards.

Maybe I should have put the word "now" in front of "true" in the message you 
quote. With that qualification I think that what I said is probably pretty near the 
mark. After all who originated frames and the subject of this thread, HTML e-mail? 

As someone who has used NT for a few years now I am probably more aware of 
Microsoft's shortcomings than you are but any organisation which has achieved the 
dominance, not to say the monopoly, that Microsoft has is bound to take a fair 
amount of stick. 

I would suggest that this dominance does have its upside; I can send an e-mail to 
someone in China with a Word attachment and be pretty certain that the recipient 
can read it. (It may well be that his copy of Word is pirated but but I don't imagine 
you would be too worried by this. If I chose to send it as a HTML e-mail he could 
probably read this as well on his pirated copy of Outlook Express...) 

Microsoft would not have achieved this dominance if their products were the load of 
rubbish that some suggest and, like it or not, in many areas of computing Microsoft 
do now set the standards. 

David