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The big limits of today's email: privacy, barriers and robustness
Email is one of the most useful and more widely used applications of the Internet. So far, however, I have met very few people that seem aware of how suboptimal its usage is, or of the problems that may arise when many people will start to realize it. Please note that, while the rest of this page explains these statements only in the case of email, most of it applies to any other form of direct, person-to-person communication through the Internet (chat, IM, VoIP phone calls, social networking through Facebook or Ning…).
Cut and paste mail-bombing? No, thanks!
Preface: this is the translation of a post written on April 2, 2010, to explain to all italian Internet users, with a real-life example, of the complete uselessness of copying or forwarding protest email about whatever argument to politicians or any organization.
The real obstacles to personal email management: unaware users and (absent) laws
Email is a crucial, basic service that is almost impossible to not use these days, but the way email is normally used these days has serious limits. The most common answer I get when I try to explaine those limits is some variation of “you may be right, but… I’m not I software programmer and never will, so I have no choice but to use what’s around”. This is wrong.
New documentation project for blind Linux users and all the others
When he realized that custom documentation for Free Software is needed for vision-impaired users, Tony Baechler offered to launch a dedicated service. I asked Tony what exactly he hopes to set up and how it should work.
Who cancels your email? Warning to Infostrada and Barracuda users
Infostrada is one of the biggest Internet Access Providers (IAP) in Italy. Barracuda is a software filter that analyzes all the email messages entering the network of an organization in order to block spam, viruses and similar.