I have dial up and it takes forever for anything on a page to show up if there is a YouTube on any part of that page.
While I understand your frustration, only about 1% of our posts contain any embedded video, and while that may increase slightly, the vast majority of our pages will not contain embedded anything. As to YouTube specifically, they are headed towards requiring linkers to embed, not link to their videos, as they will be presenting small commercial elements in their embedded player that they want people to see even if they don't run the video.
On the broader subject of dial-up, within five years, most remaining dial-up Internet providers are going to be ceasing operations -- many already are. AOL, Earthlink, and most of the national ISPs have business plans that will basically eliminate dial-up from their menu of services by the end of this decade. At that point, outside of some very rural areas or for business travellers, dial-up will become a thing of the past. Part of the reason for this is telephone networks are accelerating deployment of Voice Over IP pathways to transport calls, and these do not work well with dial up modems at higher speeds (although they are fine for faxing). Some local phone companies are beginning to use this technology for local calling -- cable company telephony products already do. As this technology rapidly gets deployed, dial-up access is going to go the way of the horse and buggy.
Because of the rapid development of this technology, the FCC is pushing carriers to develop lower cost broadband plans, realizing that those unable to adopt to broadband are going to be cut off from the Internet at some point in the near future. While the most rural areas are still likely to have dial-up available, and some ISPs will offer limited dial-up to their broadband customers for on-the-road access, dial-up costs are going to be increasing before the service goes away altogether, and I think people need to begin planning for the reality that this technology will not be around too much longer.
A lot of folks don't realize that broadband speed-restricted discount plans are available for DSL and cable modem services often at prices less expensive that many national ISPs are charging for dial-up. In some areas of this country, slower speed DSL is available for around $10 a month that is still many times faster than dial-up.
I will begin researching options and posting them for those who may be unaware they don't have to rely on dial-up access when better alternatives exist (often at around the same cost).
In the meantime, considering the very low percentage of posts that contain embedded material, and the fact all of the trends point towards a diminishing number of dial-up users accessing websites in general, I don't want us to restrict our ability to meet the needs of the majority of our users who use faster alternatives.
