Mail Archives: opendos/2000/07/10/00:23:03
A big problem?
I enjoy reading the opendos mailing list. I've used DR-DOS since the Digital
Research Golden Years. Back when my hard drive was only 20 megabytes. Back
when every little byte was important. Now, with huge hard drives and fast
Internet connections, sloppiness and laziness seem to rule the computer
world. It is funny that I keep reading, here, astute criticisms of Microsoft
as producing "bloated software" yet some of the people on this mailing list
show the same degree of laziness. It takes just a split second to remove
quoted material. If you don't take that second, what does it say about both
you and other DR DOS users? I mean, we are *command line* lovers! We abhor
all those media quotes that say, over and over: "The DOS command line is bad
because the commands are too cryptic." The way the computer world is going,
next thing you know, we'll need a Flash Shockwave Plugin to view
multimegabyte messages full of cute animated cartoon characters! Is this
what computers are for?
I am not handicapped. Jim Stevenson was not asking the majority of the
community to cater to the needs of the minority. I was tempted to say
exactly the same thing he did. Why should the READER have to "filter" and
why should the lazy habits of some force us to "make changes to our reader
software"? That's exactly the Microsoft way of looking at the world, isn't
it?
Ok. If you want practical reasons for keeping email short and sweet:
1. For those of us who SAVE the messages for future reference, having tons
of un-necessarily requoted stuff adds significantly to the storage space.
2. If you want to search for key words, you triple or quadruple the number
of duplicate hits. It does not make sense from an "information management"
perspective.
3. If our children or peers watch us being lazy, they'll do it too. Watch
out! They might end up working for Microsoft!
4. It is polite. The Right Thing to do. Civil. And it only takes a second:
block text, scroll down, press the delete key.
Sure, computers are *programmable* but they are a joy to use when things are
elegant. That's why I've always liked DR-DOS and the philosophy behind it.
Right from the beginning. Just remember Gary Kildall.
There, I've had my rant.
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