OFF: Gmail (Re: NIK: HW: Burg Herzberg etc.)

[Drill]

On 7/22/05, Paul Mather <paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 21:04 -0400, Drill wrote:
> > The service is killer, compared with everything I've used in the past.
> > No Spam, alot of user control and really well thought-out automatic
> > organization of your messages. "Benevolently" what it does is scan
> > your messages and fills about 1/18  of the screen with text blurbs and
> > links to sponsors' pages. It's actually interesting even and hard to
> > even notice if you don't want to. For example right now it thinks I
> > like Fleetwood Mac and is helping me out by telling me where to
> > download "billions of mp3s".  But shortly after I started using it I
> > got a message from someone about a Japanese woodcut illustration and
> > it showed me where to buy them. Wasn't in the market, but hey, if I
> > was I would have looked at the vendor. For free anonymously subscribed
> > webmail it's way better than the annoying ghettos I've known in the
> > past let's say. 2Gigs storage, POP, sophisticated or plain HTML
> > webmail, the works and it's not even officially released!  As for what
> > they do for advertising if you use POP service I don't know yet since
> > I don't get internet for my home computer right now.
>
> I'm familiar with what Gmail is, having in my time fended off enough
> people trying to foist invites on me. :-)  (They can't seem to
> understand when I say "thanks, but no thanks.")  Worse still, we have
> some folks in our lab who have interned with Google, and they come back
> like proselytising zombies.  (It must be something Google puts in the
> Kool-Aid.)  I'm glad you like the service.  It's amazing to me what a
> corporation can buy for only 2 GiB of space...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Paul.
>
> PS: I run my own mail server, with a few tens of GiB of space for my
> e-mail.  Plus, I know that when I delete an e-mail, it really is
> deleted.
> --
> e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu
>
> "We know you will be very happy here.  Nobody has complained, yet..."
>      --- Hawkwind, "Utopia"
>
Hear hear. If I weren't a cheapskate I'd get an account with
portalofevil because you can choose from domains like  destroy.the.us
and chlamydiaisnotaflower.com. Drank some Koolaid yesterday and that
animate pitcher thing always seems willing to help out with things.
It's in the order of things to persuade long-time acquaintances to
stop using softhome.net* like rats on a sinking ship. But there is
some kind of pathology in mentioning Gmail anytime the subject comes
up. They're a front of the US National Security Agency. They get on
your case telling you to NOT delete old messages, which many people
normally wouldn't because they sometimes need to recover needed
information or they send notes to themselves to have access to from
the web. There's all kinds of hypnotic suggestions, you pick things up
that a re written all over the edges of the screen " why delete your
messages, silly? Relax! Leave everything to us! We're Google, we can
do anything, here have some money, not kidding! We want nothing from
you!"

*(server always on the fritz and over the course of years the
operators got more jaded and nasty towards all the freeloaders.
Finally they were imposing a 100 message storage limit (100+ msgs on
their server and they start rejecting any incoming mail ) and they
made sure you'd get betwen 10 and 30 unsolicited ads a day so you'd
throw up your hands and order the "professional" service!)