On 2012-08-05 22:10:22 -0500, Derek Martin wrote: > On Mon, Aug 06, 2012 at 03:58:19AM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > > This is a silly answer. Every ISP can have problems one time or > > another! Complaining or getting a new ISP won't solve the problem > > if one has an urgent mail to send. > > Also the notion of urgent e-mail is kind of crazy. As you say, every > ISP can have problems. That includes becomming completely unroutable. > E-mail is designed to fail -- that is, it's expected to fail for MANY > different reasons, and designed to be fault-tolerant; but this > includes the idea that your e-mail might take DAYS to be delivered.
Hence the usefulness of direct SMTP access: e-mail is less likely to be affected by network/machine problems. And in general, you know at least that your e-mail message isn't waiting somewhere on your ISP's gateways. If there's a problem on the other side, in general you know it because the e-mail message is still in the queue on your machine. This is based on experience, comparing to other people who use an e-mail gateway. On my side, e-mail works much better! > If your communication really is genuinely urgent, you'd damn well > better use something else. Sometimes there isn't the choice, or if e-mail doesn't work because of something serious not specific to e-mail (e.g. network problem or power outage), the "something else" may not work either. -- Vincent Lefèvre <[email protected]> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.net/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
