Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 01:38:04 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Worldcon & Capclave
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 12:21 AM 3/18/05 -0500, Barry L. Newton wrote:

>The thing is done.  The year is 2005.  The technology is standard.  There
>is no point in wasting time to do it over.  Let's move on.

It may be done, and 2005, but the technology isn't standard yet.  There are
standards, but there are also major players who don't follow those
standards (rhymes with "MicroSoft" in one case), and people can't, or won't
for good reason, switch software to stay capable of dealing with what
standards exist as they change every few months anyway.

For instance I run an old version of Eudora (circa 1995) because I have
lots of mail stored in it and I don't choose to expose myself the many
exploits that exist for taking advantage of those with fully HTML capable
mail readers (like sending them a message that contains a tiny little
picture...which is actually a URL pointing to a picture in the HTML making
up the message, and which, when displayed (more or less invisibly as it's
only one pixel), sends the IP address of the user's machine to the owner of
the web site hosting the picture along with various bits of other
info...i.e. "we got another one Joe!".  If there are bugs in the
implementation of the mail reader or the HTML library it makes use of (and
there are...) then it can be possible to take over use of the machine
without permission and turn it into a mail relay or things even more
sinister or annoying, but even without that, having your mailer accessing
web pages without your knowledge and perhaps sending info about you and
your machine is not my idea of "secure".

There are also people, like me, who don't like web-based mail or lists.
Unlike e-mail they make you use a particular interface (and there are no
standards I've been able to detect for how those work or look, or even
which browsers they will work with and which they won't) and you have to
remember to go look at each of them, while e-mail just shows up on my
machine.  Yahoo Groups doesn't have these last problems, as you can have it
send you the messages too, but even when set to "plain text" it doesn't
follow long established standards for message format (like what is used in
this one) and that leads to confusion over who said what when a thread gets
longer than a single response.

Yes, it's free, but so are a lot of other options.  Yes, I've used it
before when forced to, but I don't like it and I'd rather ignore things
that exist there than use it.  If those who *have* to use it for capclave
don't have the same feelings about it that I do, no problem.  Have fun.
Just don't expect everyone to go keep up with it, contribute to it, or be
aware of what's going on in there.  Just think of it as choosing to hold
meetings in the smoking con suite...they may be open, but they won't be
fully attended.  If that's ok, then that's ok.

BTW, I'm not complaining, just trying to explain the other viewpoint on
this, since I hold it.  I'm not on the concom, and only recently rejoined
the club so I'm sure I won't be missed.  There just seemed to be a desire
to have others participate at least by watching, and the choice of venue is
contrary to that desire and it seemed worth pointing that out.

-- Mike B.

--
It's a shame that families can be torn apart by something as simple as wild
dogs.