[reply posted to n.p.m.general only - watch the crossposting, people]
> > And even in the rest of the world, many folks pay:
> > by the minute for the phone connection
> > By the minute for the INTERNET connection
> > and by the kilobyte for the download.
> >
> > Adding a flowered background or six kind of fonts in seven
> > colors just doesn't seem to be a compelling argument for
> > screwing these people.
>
> Screw who?
<rant class="holy_war">
Most of Europe, including me, for a start.
Most of us this side of the Atlantic pay for internet connections (over
56k modems) by the minute. Charges in the UK are approx 3-5 pence (that's
~5-7 cents) per minute during weekdays, dropping to about 0.6-1 pence per
minute (about 1-1.5 cents) at the weekend. AFAIK, charges in Germany are
broadly comparable. I can't comment in detail on the rest of the EU.
At home, my other half and I are subscribed to about a half-dozen
newsgroups, a couple of which are fairly high traffic. Total is usually
about 2000 posts in 24 hours. That little lot takes about 10 minutes to
download by modem. If we were to do that during the day (which we don't,
cause it's so ****ing expensive) we'd be looking at about 70 cents a day.
If everyone decided to post in HTML, that would go up to something like 2
dollars.
Things are improving, slowly : it's been possible to get unmetered
conventional modem access in the UK for something like 6-12 months now,
but only for particular telco/ISP combinations, and the network
infrastructure is creaking under the load.
If you're lucky enough to live in an area covered by a cable TV company,
you may be able get cable modem access (all those of you in Manchester,
NTL just launched access via their digital cable TV network @ GBP25 per
month)
ADSL is available for about 50-60% of people in the country, but it's
horrifically expensive for home users. I think the cheapest I've seen is
about GBP40 (about 60 dollars) per month, with a hefty (GBP 100 plus)
installation charge. Again, it's only available via certain Telco/ISP
combinations.
And that's without even starting to consider less-well-off areas like
eastern europe or south america.
Fact: There are MILLIONS of people in the world to whom that extra couple
of Kb makes a very substantial difference.
</rant>
Sorry, personal hobby-horse.
Now returning you to our scheduled holy war on HTML vs. plain text
posting.
Those of you wanting to join in our regular holy war re: top vs. bottom
quoting should see the thread "Mozilla should put the Signature ABOVE..."
elsewhere in this group.
--
gav
Playing: OPFor; TFC1.5; Tachyon: The Fringe; Now Reading: A Good Old-
Fashioned Future, Bruce Sterling; Just Read : Deep Secret, Diana Wynne
Jones; Fairyland, Paul J McAuley; Cosmonaut Keep, Ken MacLeod;
