"Just some content for now"



  • Awesome. I just signed up for a new carrier hotspot, so they sent me the welcome kit. Well, they sent it to me as a text/plain-alternative-text/html email, and for many reasons, I prefer reading the text/plain fork primarily.

    The entire text/plain fork was:

    Just some content for now.

    Nice.



  • Just some content for now.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

     <content>Just some content for now 2.0</content>



  • SELECT * FROM content WHERE timestamp = NOW() LIMIT some



  • @Ben L. said:

    LIMIT some

    Have this Internet.



  • Actually, I overlooked the whole "for now". Maybe if I had just waited long enough, the message would have updated itself to be the real content.



  • @realmerlyn said:

    Actually, I overlooked the whole "for now". Maybe if I had just waited long enough, the message would have updated itself to be the real content.

    Print it out first - I hear dead trees are good at getting updates automatically.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Ben L. said:

    @realmerlyn said:
    Actually, I overlooked the whole "for now". Maybe if I had just waited long enough, the message would have updated itself to be the real content.

    Print it out first - I hear dead trees are good at getting updates automatically.

    Please consider the environment before printing it out.



  • @FrostCat said:

    @Ben L. said:
    @realmerlyn said:
    Actually, I overlooked the whole "for now". Maybe if I had just waited long enough, the message would have updated itself to be the real content.

    Print it out first - I hear dead trees are good at getting updates automatically.

    Please consider the environment before printing it out.

    This email was studied in a lab.



  • Just some comment for now.

     



  • Re: "Just some subject for now"

    @DaveK said:

    Just some comment for now.

    Just some reply for now.

     



  • Guys! Put some stahp to it!

    At least for now...



  •  Just some co
    NO CARRIER



  • @realmerlyn said:

    Just some content for now.

    This is actually better than the text/html-only monstrosities that my employer's system sends customers. God, I hate email marketing. One thing that I genuinely like about my current gig is that I am no longer involved in any discussions about email marketing "open rates" and "conversion rates", aka "How many of the thousands of people we just spammed actually bought our shit".

    Come to think of it, emails that lack a text/plain version are probably all machine-generated. For a while I've been thinking of having a filter in place so that only emails written and sent by human beings get into my inbox, with a "Notifications" folder or some such for machine-generated mail. This might be a starting point.



  • @GNU Pepper said:

    Come to think of it, emails that lack a text/plain version are probably all machine-generated.


    Sadly, no. I can think of one web interface which I use to compose e-mails that are then sent without text/plain (and with various other markup WTFs which cause it to trigger enough SpamAssassin rules to be flagged as spam).



  • @FrostCat said:

    @Ben L. said:
    @realmerlyn said:
    Actually, I overlooked the whole "for now". Maybe if I had just waited long enough, the message would have updated itself to be the real content.

    Print it out first - I hear dead trees are good at getting updates automatically.

    Please consider the environment before printing it out.

    I considered the environment, and then printed the mail



  • @SamC said:

    Just some signature for now.
    Just some location for now.

    Nice.



  • @GNU Pepper said:

    Come to think of it, emails that lack a text/plain version are probably all machine-generated. For a while I've been thinking of having a filter in place so that only emails written and sent by human beings get into my inbox, with a "Notifications" folder or some such for machine-generated mail. This might be a starting point.

    I actually do that... HTML-only emails get diverted, and I autoreply saying "I didn't read your email... please use plain text". Of course, most of those are to bots, so they never see that, and every few days I review my "HTML Email Inbox" to see if something important landed there.



  • @GNU Pepper said:

    Come to think of it, emails that lack a text/plain version are probably all machine-generated.
    Ok, I'm curious. Why exactly do you think that?

    I'm not saying you're wrong, I wouldn't know, I'm just curious about what your reasoning may be.



  • @Zecc said:

    @GNU Pepper said:

    Come to think of it, emails that lack a text/plain version are probably all machine-generated.
    Ok, I'm curious. Why exactly do you think that?

    I'm not saying you're wrong, I wouldn't know, I'm just curious about what your reasoning may be.


    Email clients generally send text/plain because they understand HTML enough to be able to strip out the fancypants parts. They send html too, of course.

    I have my client set up to recieve text and html (html has priority), but only send text. That way, I can read all my emails and not require the sending of half a megabyte of CSS and non-helpful images in my replies to anyone who sends that bullshit. I'm not saying it will save the planet, but it sure saves me a half a minute of waiting for image-over-smtp-over-tls-over-tcp-over-htcpcp-over-ip-over-avian-carriers to get its packets acknowledged.



  • Oh, I get it. Spammers are too lazy to generate both HTML and plain text versions of their important messages, so they just stick to HTML. Okay.

    Man, how unprofessional. It's like they don't respect their recipients.



  • @Zecc said:

    It's like they don't respect their recipients.


    QFT



  • At least it wasn't that "lorem ipsum" crap. "Lorem ipsum" is apparently fake Latin for "I'm a dumbass."


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @TheRider said:

    @FrostCat said:
    @Ben L. said:
    @realmerlyn said:
    Actually, I overlooked the whole "for now". Maybe if I had just waited long enough, the message would have updated itself to be the real content.

    Print it out first - I hear dead trees are good at getting updates automatically.

    Please consider the environment before printing it out.

    I considered the environment, and then printed the mail

    That's what I meant, yes.



  • I printed it, but the part asking me to consider the environment printed on a second page.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Buffalo said:

    I printed it, but the part asking me to consider the environment printed on a second page.
     

    I don't believe you. Please make a photocopy of the second page and post it.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Buffalo said:

    I printed it, but the part asking me to consider the environment printed on a second page.
     

    I don't believe you. Please make a photocopy of the second page and post it.


    I did, but someone left the copier set to make 100 copies and turned the contrast way up, so I will have to try again later after I replace the toner.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Zecc said:

    Spammers are too lazy to generate both HTML and plain text versions of their important messages, so they just stick to HTML.
    Most spam I get seems to have both formats (though they never actually seem to check that the plain text is working properly). Unfortunately, my employer thinks that HTML by itself is a much better idea, and some of that is actually relevant. (That they sometimes put useful things in their newsletters is TRWTF, of course. C'est la vie.)


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @dkf said:

    Most spam I get seems to have both formats
     

    Most spam I get is from the forum re: fake passports. =(



  • @Severity One said:

     Just some co
    NO CARRIER

    Geezus, that's so 80's.  How about:

    Just some co
    Connection closed by foreign host.
    [severity.one@winky:~/pr0n]$


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @nonpartisan said:

    @Severity One said:

     Just some co
    NO CARRIER

    Geezus, that's so 80's.  How about:

    Just some co
    Connection closed by foreign host.
    [severity.one@winky:~/pr0n]$

     

    That's so Web 1.0. How about:

    $.ajax({
    url: "Content.php",
    data: {contentAction:1},
    method:"POST",
    success:function(jsonResult){  $("#content").text("Just some content for now: " + $.parseJSON(jsonResult)[0].content;  },
    fail:function() { $("#content").text("No Content For Now =( "; $("#FailWhaleRipOffImage").show();  ); }
    });

     



  • You know what else is evil? HTML on the browser. Gopher all the way!

    Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you anti-HTML-email people? Is there any other profession where people are this deluded? How many doctors do you go around saying "I just don't believe in antibiotics; they interfere with the effectiveness of the leeches!"



  • But don't you see ?! HTML makes it harder to read email on the CLI !!



  • @Zecc said:

    But don't you see ?! HTML makes it harder to read email on the CLI !!

    Hypertext killed the BBS star.



  • @FrostCat said:

    @Ben L. said:
    @realmerlyn said:
    Actually, I overlooked the whole "for now". Maybe if I had just waited long enough, the message would have updated itself to be the real content.
    Print it out first - I hear dead trees are good at getting updates automatically.
    Please consider the environment before printing it out.

    paper in the landfill is carbon sequestration.....



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you anti-HTML-email people?
    My main problem with HTML mail is that 2 out of 3 messages I receive either have text colour set to black, or background colour set to white (but not both at the same time), which results in invisible text because I use an inverted colour scheme (which hurts my eyes less). Using plain text view works around the problem.



  • @ender said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you anti-HTML-email people?
    My main problem with HTML mail is that 2 out of 3 messages I receive either have text colour set to black, or background colour set to white (but not both at the same time), which results in invisible text because I use an inverted colour scheme (which hurts my eyes less). Using plain text view works around the problem.

    That's actually a legitimate complaint, but isn't there a way to override the default styles so it looks correct? That's what you must do with a browser, right?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @ender said:
    @morbiuswilters said:
    Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you anti-HTML-email people?
    My main problem with HTML mail is that 2 out of 3 messages I receive either have text colour set to black, or background colour set to white (but not both at the same time), which results in invisible text because I use an inverted colour scheme (which hurts my eyes less). Using plain text view works around the problem.

    That's actually a legitimate complaint, but isn't there a way to override the default styles so it looks correct? That's what you must do with a browser, right?

    You set the foreground color iff you set the background color. It's that simple.



  • @Ben L. said:

    You set the foreground color iff you set the background color. It's that simple.

    But usually there's a way to override CSS so this precise situation doesn't happen.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    It could be worse. Much worse. (I remember adjusting our college Windows systems to be forced to use this as their theme in “celebration” of the organizational color scheme. It looks bad here, but the longer you look at it, the more it makes your eyes water.)


  • @morbiuswilters said:

    That's actually a legitimate complaint, but isn't there a way to override the default styles so it looks correct? That's what you must do with a browser, right?
    It's not a problem in browser, but I don't read my e-mail in browser, and I haven't seen an e-mail client that supports style overriding yet (then again, Outlook and Thunderbird probably do it automatically when you're in high-contrast mode [which is the requirement to set custom colours in Windows 8], but based on the way IE and Firefox render pages in high contrast mode, the result is probably even worse).



  • @dkf said:

    It could be worse. Much worse. (I remember adjusting our college Windows systems to be forced to use this as their theme in “celebration” of the organizational color scheme. It looks bad here, but the longer you look at it, the more it makes your eyes water.)
    This looks almost as bad as what an ancient prank program I wrote did (though since Microsoft introduced themes, it's not nearly as effective as it used to be).


  • Considered Harmful

    @ender said:

    @dkf said:
    It could be worse. Much worse. (I remember adjusting our college Windows systems to be forced to use this as their theme in “celebration” of the organizational color scheme. It looks bad here, but the longer you look at it, the more it makes your eyes water.)
    This looks almost as bad as what an ancient prank program I wrote did (though since Microsoft introduced themes, it's not nearly as effective as it used to be).

    Random EXE file from someone I barely know (who proclaims it is a "prank")? Let me just run that right now.



  • @joe.edwards said:

    Random EXE file from someone I barely know (who proclaims it is a "prank")? Let me just run that right now.
    That's what virtual machines are for.


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