Advertisement
You can email the present netizen at n8chz AT yahoo DOT ca, but don't expect a timely reply.
I currently use Yahoo! web-based email. About a year ago they "improved" their front-end to be more interactive and to have more of the look and feel of a client-type email program. This has definitely slowed down my use of the system, as my email method, like my browsing method, is based on offline reading, and highly optimized use of connect time, which I am not in a position to take for granted.
The old Yahoo! email system implemented the inbox as a hypertext page, with the individual messages implemented as linked-to hypertext documents, with subject headers as anchor text. I could simply use their check-box system to delete spam, and use the right-mouse "save target as..." functionality to "download" messages. This had the disadvantage of requiring at least one mouse click for each message processed in either fashion, but in the new system I haven't yet figured out a method of "downloading" messages other than copy-paste, which requires an instance of Notepad for each message "downloaded." As a result I have become pretty much unreachable by email, even on a vagrant netizen's timetable.
I see this as an illustration of <a href="davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/0...uot;>my "loss of innocence" hypothesis</a> concerning technological progress, and of course the accompanying evolution of "business models." What Moore's Law giveth, bandwidth dilution taketh away. In the early nineties, my portal to cypherspace (for all of $100/yr) was a dial-up UUCP bulletin board of the "public access Unix" variety. Offline mail reading was as simple as downloading /usr/spool/mail/lori. At 2400 bps (probably less than 1/1000th the connect speed at the library where I currently exercise my netizenship) I spent a small fraction of the time (connect time or PC time) per message.
Hopefully I can find an email system (preferably free/gratis, alternatively "nominal" fee) that is both "web based" and "batch oriented." Sounds oxymoronic, but such are the needs of the vagrant netizen.
I currently use Yahoo! web-based email. About a year ago they "improved" their front-end to be more interactive and to have more of the look and feel of a client-type email program. This has definitely slowed down my use of the system, as my email method, like my browsing method, is based on offline reading, and highly optimized use of connect time, which I am not in a position to take for granted.
The old Yahoo! email system implemented the inbox as a hypertext page, with the individual messages implemented as linked-to hypertext documents, with subject headers as anchor text. I could simply use their check-box system to delete spam, and use the right-mouse "save target as..." functionality to "download" messages. This had the disadvantage of requiring at least one mouse click for each message processed in either fashion, but in the new system I haven't yet figured out a method of "downloading" messages other than copy-paste, which requires an instance of Notepad for each message "downloaded." As a result I have become pretty much unreachable by email, even on a vagrant netizen's timetable.
I see this as an illustration of <a href="davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/0...uot;>my "loss of innocence" hypothesis</a> concerning technological progress, and of course the accompanying evolution of "business models." What Moore's Law giveth, bandwidth dilution taketh away. In the early nineties, my portal to cypherspace (for all of $100/yr) was a dial-up UUCP bulletin board of the "public access Unix" variety. Offline mail reading was as simple as downloading /usr/spool/mail/lori. At 2400 bps (probably less than 1/1000th the connect speed at the library where I currently exercise my netizenship) I spent a small fraction of the time (connect time or PC time) per message.
Hopefully I can find an email system (preferably free/gratis, alternatively "nominal" fee) that is both "web based" and "batch oriented." Sounds oxymoronic, but such are the needs of the vagrant netizen.
Advertisement
Advertisement
