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On 29/04/12 00:48, bad apple wrote: > > But the entire reason that I migrated inexorably from the DOS/CPM/VMS > environments of my youth to the open systems like BSD and linux was > because I valued my own independence and skills, and wanted to be free > to tinker, recompile, host my own webservers, mailing lists, IRC > channels, mail servers... You still can. Although there is a certain irony in using Yahoo! mails servers given.... > I'm aware I sound a bit like a rabid American > pro-gun supporter or something when I say you'll prise my privacy from > my cold dead hands Possibly, you are conflating privacy here with other issues. I suspect the privacy issue is but one of the issues to consider, and with Facebook, LinkedIn and the like you are essentially choosing to be less private. One should view "privacy controls" in such systems as a way of filtering your audience, not to who you want (as it may well be shared with others), but to who will be interested in what you have to say. > I can > always do things myself, rather than having to sell my soul to giant > corporate monstrosities like facebook or google. RMS himself is struggling with these sorts of services. Recent: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/network-services-arent-free-or-nonfree.html Older: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html I think we can agree the ability to take one's data back is a minimum first. I'm not so worried about the javascript issue, which I think is a side issue. I see Javascript here as like a transient cache of stuff to make a website work better (Okay some websites require it), yes it is non-free but I run it to access a system that is closed to me (even if it is made of free software I don't have those freedoms). I do think that free software should be preferred. But these things depend on network effects, and so even if we do decide there is a much better system written as free software then persuading folks to migrate will be extremely difficult, even if the folks who feel like me migrate away or never join. Also for where to draw the line, RMS draws a line at your computer as far as software freedoms go - no non-free Javascript - I think this view has more consistency than others (including my own), but I get the impression they also feel this answer isn't quite sufficient in this case. As for remedies, I suspect we'd all agree a free software, peer to peer system, with strong privacy controls (non-public items encrypted for the recipient say) and reasonable security would settle our concerns here (even if they haven't been fully articulated), but such systems are notoriously difficult to make stable (especially when new features will need adding) and that along with other ease of use aspects will need sorting before you can migrate most of your facebook friends to it, well unless they are all geeks. I can envision solutions that encompass the whole desktop. i.e. Flickr - shares photos - so open the Photos folder to sharing, create a diary/blog - share that, assign privileges to address book items so that others can update their own address book entries on your system etc. Would have the advantage that it is part of what you do. I've always though the fix to all this office networking pain (ADS, LDAP) was to build functionality into every client so they are designed to work as a client (and server) in the Internet itself rather than simply as a client of one network. So when you join a company they just push (and allow you) access to lists of people and groups (think GPG "keyring"), when you write a work document (on your device) you just assign the permissions to those groups and it is a work document, and some clever sharing takes care of the rest. You can of course have multiple key rings - joining one domain is so silly - except Windows domains (typically - I don't think it is required) conflate access and authentication with items like client security configuration). The problem with utopia is you'll never get there. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq