NEWS FLASH!

[John Thompson]

On Sat, 16 Sep 2000 06:49:08 -0300, Trevor Smith wrote:

>On Fri, 15 Sep 2000 17:07:03 -0400 (EDT), Ralph Cohen wrote:
>
>>this list can argue back and forth about the impossibility and
>>irresponsibility of incorporating HTML into email because of a "lack of
>>standards" or desirability, but that completely ignores the fact that a
>>de facto standard has already been created by MS.  Where the front 90%
>>of the trains goes, the rest is sure to follow.

>OK fine. But you still haven't solved the issue of how much is enough
>_for everyone_ and how to get it "close enough" to Microsoft's
>rendering to be acceptable. After all, if the front 90% of the train
>is all red and blue and flashing with upper bar/viewing cars, etc.
>and the last 10% is a dirty gray coal car...
>
>So what does BSW do? Struggle to implement _exactly_ the same HTML
>stuff as Microsoft? How much time/money should they spend getting as
>close to exactly the same as MS?

Not to mention the historical record of the Microsoft "train" as a moving
target.  As soon as some competitor gets close to acheiving equivalent
function, Microsoft changes the "standard" out from under their feet (eg,
Win32s, Word, etc.).  The reason they can get away with this is that they
have such a dominant market share that they can afford to see standards as
only applicable to other people.  For themselves, whatever they decide
upon at the moment is "standard" as far as they're concerned.  This has
little or nothing to do with consumer demand or "innovation" (can anyone
here even think of one truely original Microsoft innovation in the last
decade?) and everything to do with using molopoly power to maintain market
share.

John (john.thompson@attglobal.net)