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Own Your Identity

marco.org

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Re: Own Your Identity

#31

Post by BenS »

One of the most valuable parts of an online identity is the attention you receive from other people. Social networks make getting attention more efficient. In this way, proprietary tools do a lot to enrich your online identity.

For me, this is a great tradeoff. For example, I'm happy to put my pictures on Facebook because my family and friends see those pictures and leave comments that I enjoy. In comparison, my local copies feel like those dusty old photo albums in my parents' basement that nobody ever opens.

Re: Own Your Identity

#32

Post by maigret »

naner wrote: post #28
Fargren wrote: post #4

Going on a tangent, but hotmail is really good nowadays. My non-serious-mail-from-friends account is on hotmail, and it's as good as gmail, a bit better in some stuff and a bit worse in others.

Going on a tangent, but hotmail is really good nowadays. I hope you're joking. Live Mail (which subsumed Hotmail) is atrocious, the interface sucks. Live Mail also doesn't do a good job of catching spam. The only thing worse I've used interface-wise is Yahoo! Mail.

If it sucks, can you give the name of five others that don't?

Re: Own Your Identity

#33

Post by baxter »

kiba wrote: post #27
nikcub wrote: post #24

'owning it' doesn't mean your own domain. you are only leasing that domain name until you either no longer pay for it or the government in control feels you no longer deserve access to it.

That is why you use namecoin, the p2p domain name system. Unfortunately, it lacks adoption.

I hadn't heard of namecoin until you mentioned it. It looks interesting.

But shouldn't it be called bitname?

Re: Own Your Identity

#34

Post by loup-vaillant »

wmf wrote: post #29
zobzu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately having a domain is not enough you have to be on twitter maybe youll have to be on g+ sometime soon too then you dont own it anymore additionally, ive always worried about the fact that the dns registar generally own your dns and just let you use it for a fee.

You have a point there. I went through all the trouble of owning my identity (I don't even use Gmail) and then someone told me that he can't read my blog unless I pipe it into Twitter, because he only reads Twitter now. Am I a free man or a crackpot? I'm not even sure any more.

That "someone" is doing far more harm than he realize. His refusal to use any syndication system but twitter is akin to a refusal to use any text messaging system but Facebook. (There is RSS on the one hand, and SMTP/XMPP on the other.)

People like this are powerful contributors to the network effect favourable to proprietary services like Twitter and Facebook. I know that true freedom is not easy (Postfix configuration through SSH is not for my mom). But one can at least use proprietary providers of open protocols.

Re: Own Your Identity

#35

Post by icebraining »

zobzu wrote: post #17
sixtofour wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, for some reason we say we "own" our domains, but I always seem to have to renew my lease.

its funny that i get minus karma for this post lol. but yeah id prefer some decentralized dns system where i would own my domain somehow well then again, dns depends also on static ips which we dont really own. with ipv6 we can be one step closer to owning the ip without being an isp however. can also setup rdns more easily.

>dns depends also on static ips.

Not really, there's dynamic DNS. My home connection has a dynamic (well, semi-static) IP, so I use a dynamic DNS provider and a small monitoring utility to auto-update the IP when it changes.

Re: Own Your Identity

#37

Post by Elepsis »

ctide wrote: post #14
Fargren wrote: post #4

Going on a tangent, but hotmail is really good nowadays. My non-serious-mail-from-friends account is on hotmail, and it's as good as gmail, a bit better in some stuff and a bit worse in others.

I still have a hotmail account that I check periodically, and while it may be ok in IE, it's a terrible experience in Chrome. All the AJAX interface is really slow to the point where you can easily end up deleting messages that aren't even the message that you're currently viewing. I have no idea how it is in Firefox, but, I don't care enough about my Hotmail account to bother using a different browser for it.

Consider giving it another shot (in Chrome, even). Hotmail has gotten a _lot_ faster in the past couple of months.

Re: Own Your Identity

#38

Post by dvdhsu »

Interesting that he mentions Hotmail.

Hotmail addresses are indeed notorious for their lack of permanence. Last time I checked, if you do not log in for 270 days, your account is deleted, and your username is up for grabs. [1] If somebody else were to come along and take your username, they could easily gain access to your passwords that can be restored restored via e-mail, as well as your whole online identity.

---------------

1. http://www.redd.it/ej321

Re: Own Your Identity

#39

Post by svat »

dvdhsu wrote: post #38

Interesting that he mentions Hotmail. Hotmail addresses are indeed notorious for their lack of permanence. Last time I checked, if you do not log in for 270 days, your account is deleted, and your username is up for grabs. [1] If somebody else were to come along and take your username, they could easily gain access to your passwords that can be restored restored via e-mail, as well as your whole online identity. ----…

Well, that's his point: if he had simply trusted the best webmail provider, he would have ended up trusting Hotmail.

Re: Own Your Identity

#40

Post by tim_iles »

Fargren wrote: post #4

Going on a tangent, but hotmail is really good nowadays. My non-serious-mail-from-friends account is on hotmail, and it's as good as gmail, a bit better in some stuff and a bit worse in others.

Hotmail, despite improvements, is still terrible.

There are three (or 4) areas of action links on the page, to ensure that I never remember where the print button or Reply all button is.

It regularly junks emails from lists I'm subscribed to, apparently hitting "not junk" is not enough to mark it safe for next time?

The login page has a session that can expire - if I haven't logged in within five minutes of opening the login page, I get thrown backwards again for session expiration. Sometimes I consider not bothering attempting to re-log in.

Perhaps I've just been spoilt by Gmail.

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