Wednesday, August 01, 2007

The little search engine that could....

A couple of things if I may ask and add.  OK? Fine.  First let me inform you that should your fortunes change in some way, the chance of this news reaching you by email is nil.  This not to say that a faraway friend can't give you news in advance of a card or call. i.e. "The baby looks exactly like you!"  Whether this is good  or bad news is left to the recipient to ponder.  Still it is only part of keeping your bases covered. To that end, when someone tells me that he or she is expecting a critical email or even go so far as to say it is a life or death issue, I will wager it is a ploy to get me to repair their computer ahead of someone else's.    Why would somebody expect me to fall for this?  I suppose that people become used to emails ability to let them plot a conversation while seeming to be spontaneous chit chat.  People forget that email is nothing but an electronic letter that, unlike the traditional variety, is very easy manipulate or edit to their advantage up until the moment it is sent.  So anyone who allows that such a missive is of world altering importance, is just plain crazy.  No matter how often you exchange email with a person, you must always complete your business or "thread" with a telephone call or face to face meeting

Lets think about email some more.  The fact that you probably get several varieties daily is telling in that for most spam is generated by something you did, or even something an acquaintance did and in doing it let your address loose because they ccd their entire mailing list while forwarding their latest lawyer joke or vicious political lie. i.e. Senator Obama is a space alien terror jockey bent on destroying our land of perfection because all liberals hate freedom.  Hey folks, I'm just reporting the news.  Anyhow, the cc option on your buddies email header is there for anyone who wants some email addresses.  So spammers my know that you are interested in a product your friend told you about  and they release your address by selling it to other spammers and you keep getting spam forever.  Well that's a fact Jack and a bitter pill Jill, but there's  a fix Dick and you can look it up, Chuck.  Ah! there is the rub.  Look it up.  Where do you do that?  Da da da da! Blow a bugle for Google!  What a wonderful fountain of stuff!  It's like having a smarter brother or big Sis right there with you.  Unsure of an idea or fact? Need a picture of an eyeball?  Just plunk the magic twanger and the goods are there.  How can something so good be free?  How can it be so damn nice?  Well like most thinks that taste good, there is a bad side to this.  The best way to see it is to get a Gmail account.  It's free but you do need an invite.  I can fix that for you.  OK, here is what you get.  A web mail account which is  bit like Hotmail or Yahoo except, it is very easy to use and comes with 2 GB of storage. That is 2,000 MB and considering a 40 MB hard drive used to go for about $1000 bucks 15 years ago you will see that tech has gotten real big and real cheap very very fast.
OK the point of the Google 2GB mail account is, you need not erase a thing because you could put about a billion words in 2GB and you will not write that much in your life. So Google has all your mail.  Fine, now is when things get goofy.  If you have Gmail, go a head and start writing a letter.  You will notice that Google has little text adds off to the right margin.  You hardly even notice them, however; if you do you might be surprised to see that as you write, the adds change content to mirror what you are saying.  Type "fucking" and some clickable text on that subject will show up.  Type boat, plane, diesel engine or happy birthday Mom and the clickable adds will keep right with you.  Scary?  Well yeah.  If you know anything about software, make that Hell Yeah!  Because even though Google says they don't keep the information on file or share it.  They could.  Google is now a big and very rich corporation.  They trade stock.  Just take a minute to and think about some other big outfits who do that.  They may have screwed you over; you know sent their tech support where folks don't understand you.  They speak English in that they are able to read a script, but they don't understand the nuances that would make them really helpful.  They may have screwed you or someone you know by taking his, her or your job and making it vanish.  They may have bankrupted the retirement fund of someone you know. (one reason why you might see old guys working as bag boys over at the market) They may have jacked your credit cards up to loan shark rates so you will just keep paying the "vig" for ever and can't touch the principal without re mortgaging your home. Banks mortgage homes as well as issue credit cards.  So you see, a big corporation is very apt to do something really harmful just to benefit the bottom line for it's investors.  While you can be an investor your self, the corporation is interested in people with great big piles of wealth and those are the people it will serve. Not you, Sue.  Oh yeah, it is just business. I'm not trying to start a scare, I'm just saying if I can start with a comment about simple electronic messages and build to a climax where a search engine might have a complete profile of what you write plus copies of what you have written, it will be well to take note, for as a corporation will blindly serve the bottom line a corporate computer will gladly take aim on whomever is chosen and spit a bothersome line of data in the direction desired.  Now that would be a serious email indeed.   Texino

Texino wrote this right off the top of his head and, other than spell check, did not use sneaky email editing.

1 comment:

Ms. Moon said...

Oh dear. I do have a g-mail account, but I never use it. Is that a good thing or should we all just hide our heads in the sand?
You're a funny (good) writer.