MIME

[anonymous-remailer at shell.portal.com]

Fellow Mime-punks,

Perry said:
> Naturally the idea is old -- I explicitly mentioned NeXT mail,
> didn't I? The point is that this is an open, non-proprietary, and
> STANDARDIZED framework for doing arbitrary recursive encapsulation of
> data in EMail.

Well, if "open, non-proprietary, and STANDARDIZED frameworks" are
always going to lag behind by several years, then I say the general
population will be better off by having entities such as Microsoft or
ETH decree their own "standards" and let the market decide to follow
them, or be niche players and imitate them.

Maybe I have yet to see the value of MIME, especially on mailing lists
such as this one.  So far I've just seen hundreds of messages about
how cool it will be, one MIME encapsulated gif signature, one screwed
up MIME post, several "faux MIME" ascii messages (definitely no
multimedia extensions, just ascii).  Lots of exhortation on how it would be
in my best interest to spend hours to upgrade to MIME compatible
readers so I can read the same mail I get now, plus the 0.01% MIME
messages that drift through (none of which exhibit the superior
features MIME allows).

I think the point Tim is making is that at the current time, our lives
are not made easier or enriched by "MIME".  If I want point and click
spreadsheet opening, I can use other systems that have worked for 5
years or more, with apps that are already configured and easier to
use.