[rescue] Corrupted list messages

[Mouse]

>> I am sending a properly bottom-posted, trimmed, plain-text email
>> from Gmail's web interface.

I have, too, on occasion.

When paid to.  That is, for work that brings in money.  I would not
tolerate it for less; I barely tolerate it as it is.

>> I am 53 years old and I have a 2 year old daughter.  Life is much
>> too busy already to waste time and effort maintaining and running my
>> own email server.
> The five minutes or so per month really cuts into my schedule, so I
> get that.

Now now.  For you, for me, yes, that's about it.  But we've had decades
accumulating the knowledge and expertise that makes it that (I'm 55
myself).  I was lucky enough to be paid to wrangle email systems for
decades.  Not everyone has been.

But, BUT...I firmly believe anyone with enough brain cycles to handle
this list, probably anyone with enough brain cycles to handle email at
all, could, if they cared to, do the research and the digging to find a
civilized email provider instead of depending on Google or Hotmail or
their ilk.  There aren't many of them left, but they exist.

It likely would cost you a little money.  That's to be expected.  Using
Google or their ilk saves you that cost on the surface - but that's
because it's pushing it off onto the rest of the net in general and
your correspondents in particular.

The real problem is the culture of entitlement: people expect, and even
seem to feel they have some kind of right to, services like email
without any (upfront) costs.

People who wouldn't dream of expecting a mechanic to fix a car for
free, or a copywriter to write ad copy for free, seem to expect email
providers to provide email services for free.

>> * Do not assume that because someone uses Gmail they are technically
>> naC/ve or incompetent.  They are not necessarily.

No, not necessarily.  But the correlation _is_ positive.

I do, however, consider them somewhere between selfish and sociopathic,
unless they're simply ignorant.  (Unless they *are* paying Google,
which some people do - that company I mentioned, for example.) Selfish
at best in that, by their choice of provider, they're pushing their
costs off onto others, unless simply ignorant that that's what they're
doing.  It's a large part of why I am as unhappy as I am with the gig
that hosts their mail with Google - even though they're paying, I doubt
they're paying enough.

> People have all sorts of reasons for the choices they make, but you
> cannot deny that the services *exist* primarily (if not solely) to
> service a market of people who give not one thin damn about anything
> that makes the network run.

Right.

That's, in large part, the problem: in the large, and in 100% of the
individuals in my experience, they don't know what their selfishness is
doing to the rest of the net, and, when it's pointed out, don't care.

>> I use what I use after _extensive_ evaluation of over a dozen local
>> clients and online services.  This one serves me very well.

That's to be expected.  Freeloading usually does serve the freeloaders
well.  (Almost) all your costs are being pushed off onto others.

>> Some of the more dogmatic members of this thread would do well to
>> remember Postel's Law.

And some would do well to remember what the net Postel's "Law" applied
to was like, and how different it is from today's net.

If we still had a Jon Postel at the apex of Internet governance,
Postel's Principle might still be useful.

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