OT: Cloud-dependencies, privacy, decentralization (was: Conducting end user surveys and analyze data)

[Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at>]

* Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> wrote:
>
> On 2015-01-01, at 17:22, Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> wrote:
>
>> * Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2014-12-31, at 14:49, Ista Zahn <istazahn@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes, google is very convenient.
>>> That's why they're so dangerous.
>>
>> In case you're survey data contains privacy-related sensible data,
>> you can not use Google anyhow - I do think that there's no need to
>> mention this explicitly in this community.
>
> Yes, but not only this.  You get accustomed to a nice service, like
> Google Reader, and then boom! and it disappears.  

I am 100% on your side.

In my opinion, you should avoid cloud/vendor lock-in as much as
possible wherever you can even with additional effort. You'll be
rewarded on the long run. 

Org-mode is able to replace *many* things including some fancy cloud
services like Evernote.

> How could one rely on Gmail now?

Even I do think that Gmail will never be discontinued (in general)
as long as Google will exist. It will be changed in a way that you
are not going to like - this is for sure. But Gmail is going down
not before the day that Google will go down. And I do also think
that we are going to see both days in the next twenty years.

However, I also grieve for Google Reader, Google Code Search, Google
Wave and lots of other discontinued services I was investing my
time. I learned from these mistakes. Most people don't.

> (Disclaimer: I use neither, i.e., I /do/ use Gmail, but not for critical
> stuff.  Anecdote: I used to use my private mail account for one
> particular purpose, but when people I exchanged email with started to
> send me scanned documents in pretty high resolution /and in bmp format/,
> I decided it's time to switch to Gmail...)

I do not use any Google service at all besides Google search
which is giving me better search results than DuchDuckGo -
unfortunately.

And no cloud service is ever going to get my complete set of emails.
This is *way* too sensible in my opinion.

Although I have to confess that GMail offers the best mail
experience out there, I stick with my ssh+mutt+gvim setup. It works
quite well for me and I can do tons of stuff that Gmail (or any
other cloud service or MUA) will never be able to deliver. 

For example, my mail address book is generated from my org-contacts
file. And the same goes for my mail filters (whitelisting) and
from-addresses (I am using different addresses for different
purposes). This flexibility is not possible when you've got a
monolithic MUA with no open interfaces.

This is no strategy for an average computer user - I agree. But hey,
I want to get advantages out of 25 years of learning IT :-)

-- 
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