'Tone of the list' discussion

[Lorenzo Taylor]

It would seem to me that any device that feels that advertising itself and the 
phone company to which it is bound is more important than allowing its user to 
properly edit email messages should never have been called a "smart" phone. In 
fact, I prefer to call it a dumb phone. I have seen email headers of all shapes 
and sizes, and most of them are conveniently hidden from the non-curious. At the 
same time, if I am curious about your mail provider or client, all I have to do 
is look in the headers. They will tell me everything about the path the mail 
took to my inbox as well as the application and/or device used to send it.

Note that I am fully aware that the user of the Blackberry or any other dumb 
phone has no control over the apparent need for recognition that the device 
seems to display. I only feel that the companies responsible for this nonsense 
should be flooded with "stop that" emails and text messages. I would love to 
have a mobile device that I could use to send and receive email that wouldn't 
cost me almost 1000 USD, but even if they could make a Blackberry talk free, I 
wouldn't want to use it, because I'd end up locked into my phone company's way 
of doing things with no real control over the content of my mail.

Note also that my personal definition of a "smart" phone probably differs 
greatly from the name given to the traditional dumb phone like the Blackberry. A 
truly smart phone should be able to be activated with any company the customer 
chooses and should be fully compatible with the communications protocols without 
serious user intervention. It should also be able to do simple tasks like full 
editing of emails and editing while forwarding. Such a phone would also have to 
be built on open and free standards which would need to be supported by all 
service providers, making both the phone and the companies much smarter. Such a 
phone should also not be programmed with the need for recognition that current 
dumb phones appear to have. There is a difference between stating in my email 
that my message isn't up to my usual standards because I'm using a mobile device 
and having advertising placed within the message rather than the headers without 
my permission, giving me no option to change or remove it. Not only is such an 
advertisement technically a violation of the CoC for this list, but it's 
actually inappropriate in most situations. At the very least, the companies who 
add these tag lines should be forced to separate them from the above message 
using the traditional "-- " separator. That alone would make a dumb phone just a 
little smarter.

Peace and long life, (Pacon kaj longan vivon),
Lorenzo
-- 
Nia diligenta kolegaro
En laboro paca ne laciĝos,
Ĝis la bela sonĝo de l' homaro
Por eterna ben' efektiviĝos.
--La Espero, himno de Esperanto