[SLUG] Mailing Lists!

[Ian Eade at IGM]

<snip>


> 
> > Would it be any better if there was only 1 operating system 
> and only 1 
> > software manufacturer in the world?
> 
> Of course not Ian.  But the worlds biggest megalomaniac is 
> advocating this, he's given us Outlook Express, and it sucks! 
>  Of course a lot of people don't know this because they don't 
> know any alternative.
> 
> But we seem to be getting to a situation were most mailing lists use 
> posting in context or bottom posting.  With some people insisting on 
> messing up the flow by top posting.
> 
> It's not just a case of readability either.  Because of top posting 
> each mail in a thread can become huge!  People simply click on reply 
> type their bit and send it off.  They don't look at the rest of the 
> post to see the numerous signatures and disclaimers attached.  These 
> should be trimmed off as no longer relevant.  I know some 
> people only receive a small amount of mail each day (I don't 
> get a huge amount) but some get a couple of thousand each 
> day.  So if each mail has 100+ Kb of rubbish that should have 
> been removed, that's an awful lot of unnecessary text to receive.
> 
> I'm hoping to put together some guidelines to get the best 
> from the mailing list in the next week.  Hopefully with the 
> help of some of the people who thanked me for trying to get 
> the list in some sort of order.
> 
> Al
> -- 
> Al Girling			Registered Linux User: 290080
> mailto:al21 at firenet.uk.com	Debian GNU/Linux
> 
> 


I use MS stuff simply for the sake of my wife and son, maybe a cop-out
but it suits there needs, especially as my Dissertation is about Office
XP - eeergh. 

However what gets me about MS is the way that they place their software
in charge. If its my computer and my software then what I say goes, for
instance in pre Outlook XP you could compose a message, select a 'send
from' email account from the send drop down menu and use that email
account to send the email. Very handy when you have 8 or so POP3 email
accounts and even handier if someone sends you an email to an old
address as you can reply using the new email address. Office XP's
version of Outlook however has no such option when it comes to sending
emails. There is no option as to which email address is used when you
click on send, the default POP3 email account is used. So to govern
which email account is used when replying to either a new message or
when composing a new message you have to set the specific email address
that you want to use as the default one and then click on send.

If I must continue using MS Office I will downgrade this version of
Office to one where by I am in control. However when time allows I am
going to set up my computer with Linux and use OpenOffice.


Ian