I'm probably feeding trolls here, but here goes..
Renegade Penguin wrote:
I know that old nettiquette *required* bottom posting, but the truth of the matter is that societal conventions can actually change.
not anybody have dsl links. please follow the standards
jdd
In other words, "We do it this way because we've always done it this way." I don't subscribe to it, and neither do a LOT of people. In fact, rebelling against that attitude is why so many people switch to Linux. If enough people lobbied their congressmen about this in the US, the law could be changed. Imagine DSL speeds over regular phone lines, utilizing current POTS. Easy enough - just change a couple of chips in already incredibly inexpensive modems. It could be done easily and it wouldn't be TOO expensive for the ISPs. Not to mention they could charge for it, etc.
Isn't that the whole point of DSL? DSL doesn't 'just' require replacing 'a couple of chips' to magically get higher speeds. It requires DSLAMs, a backbone that is ready for the high speeds (ie., fiber up to the local exchange, and just DSL for the 'last mile'). But that's not really the point of this discussion.
And top-posting has ZERO to do with having a 56K dialup connection. It takes LONGER to read messages that are bottom-posted. (Scrolling MANDATORY vs. no scrolling UNLESS you want to see the rest of the context.)
On a mailing list you are not mailing back and forth with your colleague about what to do for lunch. Context is essential here. If I want to re-read a discussion on a mailing list a few months from now and everybody top posted, I'd get RSI from just scrolling back and forth trying to comprehend the context. If everybody bottom-posted, I can just read from top to bottom. (Because English is a top to bottom language, like you said). Anyway, this argument has been beaten to death, and I haven't seen a single reasonable argument for top posting. If you want to continue your top-posting html mails I can't stop you, but don't expect (m)any more replies from me, and apparantly from lots of other subscribers. L.