On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 02:33:56PM +0200, Nikola Petrov wrote: > The fact that I don't know how the engine of my car works doesn't make > me a newbie. That's what abstractions in our world are for.
Yes, it *does* make you an ignorant newbie, on the topic of "automotive engine maintenance". (I'm one too. I'm not even sure I can correctly identify some of the components under the hood of my car.) If you or I decided to do something about that, we probably could: we could learn how to change the oil or the spark plugs, maybe how to tune the engine or replace belts and hoses, and so on. Clearly neither of us has found the time for it thus far, so we remain: ignorant newbies. I see no point in sugar-coating this. Most Internet users *are* ignorant newbies, which is a major reason why we have many of the problems that we have. [1] The goal is to try to educate as many of them as possible, as much as possible, so that they're not. (The really bright ones don't need us to do that: they're self-teaching. Good for them.) And one of the tens of thousands of possible lessons we can teach them, en route (we hope) from "ignorant newbie" to "enlightened guru" is "don't send mail marked up with HTML". It's probably not the most important, but it may be one of the easiest. ---rsk [1] Relevant example: consider how many choose to use Outlook over the alternatives, including mutt. Now...at this point in time, "using Outlook" is a catastrophic mistake roughly equivalent to setting yourself on fire. Yet huge numbers of people do it anyway. In fact, there are even places where thoroughly incompetent IT organizations run by ignorant newbies and/or ineducable morons *mandate it*. I find this appalling, but my opinion doesn't matter: it happens all day every day.
