[Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail

[Shivam]

Dear Shekhar,
I would love to graduate to POP3 the day I have internet on my
desktop. i surf from cybercafes - perhaps there lies part of your
answer.
Thanks
Shivam

On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:39:00 +0530, Shekhar Krishnan
<shekhar at crit.org.in> wrote:
> Dear All:
> 
> This debate about GMail, and the request for information on POP3
> access, makes me wonder if this is all not a bit OT. But while we're at
> it...
> 
> The excitement around GMail baffles me, particularly since any form of
> web mail, no matter how sexy its feature set, cannot compare to a POP3
> mailbox used with your favourite mail client (Eudora, Mozilla, OSX
> Mail, Outlook). The widespread use of webmail is further baffling, when
> maintaining a POP3 mailbox costs less than Rs 200 a year, and doesn't
> tie you to a commercial domain, infringe your privacy by storing your
> mails on someone else's server, bombard you with advertisements, and
> confine you to the limits of your browser. The most baffling thing is
> the tenacity of these commercial webmail services and the fierce
> loyalty of people to yahoo, hotmail, and now gmail. Is this unique to
> India, where there is widespread difficulty in obtaining domain name
> registrations (especially .in domains, because of NCST's kleptocracy),
> and sheer laziness on the part of most institutions and firms (and
> their IT service providers!) in alloting mailboxes to their employees.
> 
> I have recently had an incident in a school where I teach and help with
> IT, in which the faculty is insisting on retaining their yahoo and
> hotmail addresses because they are more "secure" than using the
> school's own registered domain, hosted on a dedicated server for which
> the school has paid an annual contract. This faculty argued with me
> that anyone in my IT company, which is contracted to host their web
> site and mail server could see their mails. Why is the same fear and
> anxiety absent with large anonymous corporate entities like Microsoft,
> Yahoo and Google? When I argued with this person that using their own
> domain (whether through POP3 or web access) is much more secure, I was
> given a lecture on the wonderful features of GMail and how I too could
> get invited to join. I wanted to vomit on this person. When did trust
> in distant corporations replace a relationship with your local service
> providers? When did free beer replace free speech? Nearly every list to
> which I am subscribed has seen people hankering after GMail invitations
> (even free software activists), without any serious discussion of this
> phenomenon.
> 
> Why can't we start cooperative mailbox movements, or hosting societies,
> which will get unique domains registered for people and give them out
> for free or at a nominal fee, considering the neglible costs of hosting
> mailboxes? Or for a start, why can't most IT service providers give
> people mailboxes when they register domains for them, rather than just
> giving them websites? Anything is better than the gospel of GMail...
> 
> S.K.
> _____
> 
> Shekhar Krishnan
> 9, Supriya, 2nd Floor
> Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4
> Dadar, Mumbai 400014
> India
> 
> http://crit.org.in/members/shekhar
> 
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