pynchon-l-digest V2 #7708

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 8, 2010, at 4:07 PM, Krafft, John M. wrote:

> Are other people getting messages like the one below? It came to me  
> as part of a digest, and I wondered whether others got it as an  
> individual message. I didn't check the archive this time, but when  
> I've gotten garbage (that's a technical term, not a critical  
> judgment) like this before and checked, I've found the same thing  
> there. But nobody ever seems to comment about it on list, and no  
> sender who has not managed to communicate (presumably) ever seems to  
> post a retry. So what's going on? (Is the lack of response or self- 
> correction a sign that people aren't really trying to communicate  
> here? Hey, that would explain ... ) And how much longer do we have  
> to limp along with network software that isn't up to the job? I'd be  
> happy to chip in for an upgrade, but nobody seems able (willing?) to  
> do anything.
>
> John

Dear John [doesn't that sound awful?],

It appears that there is some sort of problem here, a problem that is  
not solved by sending the E-Mails in plain text.

I've noticed that the names of the senders are stripped from the  
Digest, but not the archives. I've also noticed that a number of my  
posts land on the digest with inexplicable garbage, I.E. -- not the  
garbage I intended to send.

Is small joke, very small . . .

I suspect what we have here is system software that is too old to  
handle modern text messaging.

The reason why you haven't seen a full-scale revolt from regular list  
members is that the messages we receive via regular E-Mail are  
perfectly OK, at least as regards HTML garbage.