[rescue] Corrupted list messages

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 30 Sept 2021 at 18:18, Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> wrote:

> > The five minutes or so per month really cuts into my schedule, so I
> > get that.
>
> Now now.  For you, for me, yes, that's about it.  But we've had decades
> accumulating the knowledge and expertise that makes it that (I'm 55
> myself).  I was lucky enough to be paid to wrangle email systems for
> decades.  Not everyone has been.

You did note that the "5min a month" line was from Jonathan, not me, right?

I don't accept it, TBH. I run a Raspberry Pi home server with a 6TB
ZFS RAID. It has no internet access and it takes me more than 5min a
month to run.

I only run Windows when people pay me to, and similarly, I would only
sysadmin internet-facing Linux servers if someone paid me to do it. I
am probably minimally competent to, but _I don't want to_. I want my
computers to just work, with as little maintenance as possible, and
that's why I am typing on a Mac.

Also, notably, a Mac 2 OS releases behind $CURRENT because life's too
short to run any macOS version x-point-zero, and this also applies to
MS Office. If I updated from 10.14 I'd need to update Office too, and
I loathe the newer versions. At least with my decade-old copy I can
turn off the odious Ribbon.

I only run Office for Word and I only run Word for Outline Mode, which
no other modern WP has AFAIK. I write for a living, and I like working
in outline mode.

I would prefer a pre-ribbon version but they won't run on x86 macOS.
So, I run the oldest I can.

> But, BUT...I firmly believe anyone with enough brain cycles to handle
> this list, probably anyone with enough brain cycles to handle email at
> all, could, if they cared to, do the research and the digging to find a
> civilized email provider instead of depending on Google or Hotmail or
> their ilk.  There aren't many of them left, but they exist.

It seems you did not register the other things I carefully enumerated.
Gmail is not just an email tool. As I said, my primary email is 30
years old. I am well aware of the capabilities. I spelled out that
Gmail is _also_ a network-synched address book for my 5000+ contacts,
and a network-synced diary for my 1/2 dozen devices.

It's also a photo sync tool, and it's also a shared drive and online
office suite, although I barely use those because gDrive has no native
Linux client.

If you know of a decent secure email provider that can also provide
those services for me, do please tell me. I would seriously like to
know.

If it's tied to a single OS such as Apple iCloud, then no thanks.

> It likely would cost you a little money.  That's to be expected.

As I said, *I pay for Gmail*.

I don't want to, I don't like doing it, but I have 26GB of email and
that's  too much for a free account. I used a free account for 15
years but it filled it. I was into day 3 of planning how to
redistribute and move everything around when my partner pointed out
that the time I was spending was worth a lot more than the B#16/yr
Google would cost me, and she's right.

>  Using
> Google or their ilk saves you that cost on the surface - but that's
> because it's pushing it off onto the rest of the net in general and
> your correspondents in particular.

No, not really. There is no incremental cost to anyone of receiving
Gmail. It's not like Outlook/Exchange, pushing incompatible formats
and attachments at people.

> The real problem is the culture of entitlement: people expect, and even
> seem to feel they have some kind of right to, services like email
> without any (upfront) costs.

Again: I PAY. I have been paying for 30 years.

> People [...] wouldn't dream of expecting[...] a copywriter to write ad copy
for free

Hi. Hello. Professional writer for a living here. Oh yes they bloody
well would, let me assure you.

> I do, however, consider them somewhere between selfish and sociopathic,
> unless they're simply ignorant.  (Unless they *are* paying Google,
> which some people do - that company I mentioned, for example.)

As I do.

> That's, in large part, the problem: in the large, and in 100% of the
> individuals in my experience, they don't know what their selfishness is
> doing to the rest of the net, and, when it's pointed out, don't care.

I frankly think Google is a less toxic company to deal with, and in
terms of its tools and its compatibility, and in terms of its
contributions to FOSS, than are, say, Apple, MICROS~1, Facebook,
Amazon or Google.

> That's to be expected.  Freeloading usually does serve the freeloaders
> well.  (Almost) all your costs are being pushed off onto others.

Again for the people at the back. I am paying.

> And some would do well to remember what the net Postel's "Law" applied
> to was like, and how different it is from today's net.

Yeah. A lot of stuff works now that didn't in the bogus golden age
that many older techies look back at.

E.g. I live in a country and must use a language that contains about a
dozen letters that do not exist in English. My work address is
in KEiE>C-kova in KarlC-n and 1980s/1990s email simply cannot convey that
street name or that district name.

*I* am nostalgic for a lot of the old days and the old tech. That's
why I'm on this list.

But the fact that entire new countries have joined the free world and
their languages involve letters that cannot be expressed in 7-bit
ASCII or 8-bit ANSI and yet the modern Internet can cope with this is
a *good thing*.

For an American or a Canadian or a Brit to maintain that the 7-bit
days were good enough for them so to hell with everyone else is
arrogant and wrong.

I live in a country that calls itself Desko and its inhabitants have a
perfect right to be able to email that name and it to return to them
legibly.

I am not in Russia. I am not using Cyrillic. I am using a language of
the modern European Union and that language uses the Roman alphabet.

If old stuff has to change to accommodate the Czechs and the Slovaks
and the Poles and Hungarians, then change it. The iron curtain has
gone.

I want to be able to mention CatalhC6yC<k, and the RendErsC)g in
Budapest, and talk about TimiHoara or WrocEaw (which I visited earlier
this month, and was lovely) without it being mangled.

There is nothing wrong with that, and whatever it takes is justified.

> If we still had a Jon Postel at the apex of Internet governance,
> Postel's Principle might still be useful.

If the world had listened our email servers would all be running some
descendant of Plan 9 now and all of this would magically Just Workb".

--
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