On 4/13/23 11:54, tom petch wrote:
And Microsoft seem to have just taken that idea to heart by driving a
series of stakes into the coffin, lest the zombie come back to life.
When I got an e-mail this morning, purportedly from Microsoft (my ESP)
telling me that they were going to 'improve security' by abolishing
POP I thought it was spam. But hard as I look, I cannot see any flaw
in the e-mail headers and am driven to conclude that it is genuine
(even if quite off the wall). On the other hand, five years ago,
Microsoft set about killing this off with the removal of its
well-designed, easy-to-use, productive-to-use MUA, something my
ability to get work done in the context of the IETF has never
recovered from, hard as I try to overcome the obstacles thus created.
Now my ability to get work done will be reduced further, due in no
small part to the deficiencies of the web service offered.
And in some ways I have never recovered from being 'sold' from the ESP
of my choice to ... well, one that is not of my choice, forcing me to
use functions that I have no wish to. But given the time, effort and
problems from changing domain then, I have zero enthusiasm for another
change of domain although that might be the most productive route.
There are plenty of words that come to mind; I hope that I have edited
them out of this e-mail because none are suitable for this list.
Tom Petch
(not specifically directed towards Tom...)
I like to vent as much as anybody, but it seems to me that unless it
leads to a discussion for how to improve the situation, it's a
distraction at best.
I don't see any emerging viable replacement for email, for IETF and
similar kinds of discussions. Everything else that people use for
messaging is far worse in nearly every respect.
Instant messaging is a disaster for globally scoped discussions because
it's designed to facilitate real-time communications, and also designed
to work on mobile devices, so it omits or discards information that's
needed for a reader at some later date to establish context needed to
understand the discussion.
Nonstandard messaging products generally lack archiving capability or
produce such archives in nonstandard formats.
Almost everything except email all-but-forces vendor lockin which is
inappropriate for an open standards-making body. (Email only avoids
this because people can get their own DNS names and move them from one
ESP to another, which I've been doing for decades. Granted, however,
this is currently a bit too difficult and/or costly for most ordinary
users.)
Keith
