[ale] OT:Policy change in usage of emoticons

[brian at polibyte.com (Brian Pitts)]

Scott Castaline wrote:
> Effective immediately we will no longer use :) or :( style of emoticons. 
>   Please go to the following link for the replacement symbols
> http://.../emoticons.html

I normally enjoy the off-topic discussions of a technically-minded group 
of people, but this kind of message isn't why I subscribe to ALE.

I did learn from it that the colon and parentheses are rendered by 
Thunderbird as graphics. If you want to disable this transformation of 
emoticons:

Edit -> Preferences -> Display -> Formatting -> Plain Text Messages -> 
uncheck "Display emoticons as graphics"

Respectfully,
Brian