On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 11:17:14 -0700, Nick W <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Storage now is <$1/GB, I have 100GB of potential mail space on my laptop. If I > need to send/recieve a huge file I use my FTP server...a GB isn't that big > nowadays. > You're comparing the wrong thing. Congrats, you have 100 GB of space on your laptop, but is your laptop a mail server? The proper comparison is that Hotmail only gives you 2 megabytes. Compared to that, 1 gig is a kickload of space. That's the comparison, that's the reason people want GMail accounts. They want an email account they can access from anywhere and not have to worry about running out of room and deleting that cute picture of their niece that someone mailed them two years ago. And before you get to the next argument to be made by any self-respecting geek, you may be technical enough to set up a mail server with terabytes of space and get web access to it, but your average user is not that skilled.
As for Aaron's privacy argument, I'd say your life is only as private as you choose to make it. I use this GMail account to receive this list and some other mailing lists. Am I worried about Google reading my mail? Um, duh, no, they're public mailing lists. Google has already spidered the archives for its web search engine, it's just reading the same thing again. I get the odd email from my wife because this is the best way for us to both communicate while we're both at work. We plan what we're going to have for dinner, or if we're going to work out. Do we pass each other bank account numbers via our gmail accounts? Again, duh, no. The positively ancient adage of "don't put anything in an email you wouldn't put on a postcard" holds as true for GMail as it does for any other email service, including the one you set up on your own home/work server. It may be "your mail server", but what other systems scanned through that message _before_ it got to your computer? People shouldn't be all smug about not using GMail accounts because it somehow better protects their privacy. It most certainly does not. You want privacy? Encrypt. Simple as that. Nothing short of that will do. :-) And then all GMail puts up is a bunch of ads for PGP. ;-) Ian _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
