Linux and fonts and Firefox and human-factors design

[Kevin D. Clark]

Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> writes:

> And my point is that the client is ultimately irrellevent, if the
> point is access to the data long term (oh, wait, am I conflating two
> threads? /me checks subject line.... Yep.  Sorry, I was thinking we
> were in the tape/long-term data storage thread.....)
>
> Okay, so, under the premise of being able to access your e-mail in 25
> years, my point is the choice of client is pointless, it's the storage
> format that matters.  For that, plain text files where you can easily
> get at them is better than a network protocol if you've long since
> left the company and your e-mail was on their server :)

[a parody, in one scene]


Dramatis Persona

  Paul Lussier, our hero.

  Joe User, an end-user.


The scene:  The year is 1995.  Paul is talking to one of his
            co-workers, a mildly savvy individual who has just
            stumbled across a program called "Mosaic".

Paul:  But, you see, Mosaic in itself really isn't very interesting.
       For God's sake, you can access the same information if you
       simply type "telnet www.yahoo.com 80" and then type a few
       simple commands.  The client that you use is ultimately
       irrelevant..."

 Joe:  But Mosaic seems really nice...

Paul:  Yeah, but it sucks.  Hey, did you know that HTML is stored in
       text files!!!

....




Barring anything truly interesting, I am finished with this thread.

Regards,

--kevin
-- 
GnuPG ID: B280F24E              Never could stand that dog.
alumni.unh.edu!kdc                   -- Tom Waits