[Ilugc] Check out my Facebook profile- Security issues
- From: kapil@xxxxxxxxxxx (Kapil Hari Paranjape)
- Date: Mon Jun 9 16:58:01 2008
Hello,
On Mon, 09 Jun 2008, Sarad AV wrote:
they have the numbers. that puts them right where they want. they
can dictate now.
The tyranny of the majority! :-)
As long as we don't have the numbers, what we say
is only a ideology. there isn't much we can do about it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That is certainly not true. Since there is a mukta O/S and a mukta
network to connect to we do have a choice and we can exercise it.
What are we going to do about? what do you propose?
Answer:
That is, unless you regularly backup all _your_ data from
gmail to a local disk.
You can at least do this. Backup your data. It _is_ your data and
external USB storage is not too expensive. Incremental backup does
not use too much bandwidth. Write some pipe or plugin to do this and
make it a floss project.
I don't think it would be a good move from google's side. if google
screws everyone, everyone screws google. but i don't know how
business can work and it may turn in their favor.
To violate freedom, Google or any other "public service" provider does
not need to turn the screws on everyone; they need to do it only to a
few people. Let me explain with examples.
1. There are many more MS users (at least one order of magnitude) who
exchange documents and e-mail than non-MS users. So MS _can_ and
_does_ make life difficult for all non-MS users by using proprietary
and undocumented formats for documents. Don't even get me started on
"IE-only" web sites!
2. Blu-ray is a technology currently not supported (AFAIK) on FLOSS
platforms. Suppose that data distributors tomorrow decided to support
only Blu-ray since _most_ users do not use FLOSS?
In both cases, the majority of users are not affected. Only the
"eccentric few"! So it is important that we support freedom for
_everyone_, not just for the majority of users.
Some other solutions:
A. It is possible to setup pooled community servers and services. I read
about a group called SAGE (Australian System Administrator's
Group?)[1] which does this.
B. Avoid monopolies. If your friend uses Gmail then insist on using
Yahoo! and complain loudly if the two services do not co-operate.
More choice is mostly better!
Other people on this list might come up with more suggestions.
Regards,
Kapil.
[1] Not to be confused with the free mathematical computation package
called SAGE.
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