[pianotech] Protest the loss of PianoTech by responding

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, Jim,

On 2/26/2013 8:56 AM, Jim Moy wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Susan Kline <skline at peak.org 
> <mailto:skline at peak.org>> wrote:
>
>     ...but I don't really trust Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, and
>     all the
>     rest of them. They monitor every key stroke you make, for their
>     own purposes...
>
>
> They do, indeed, whether pianotech is hosted on the PTG server or on a 
> Google Group, there is little difference. Witness:
>
> https://www.google.com/search?q=susan+kline+site%3Amail.ptg.org

Thanks very much for making an important point.

Google and Facebook make the billions of dollars they do by being able 
to provide prospective and actual advertising clients highly 
targeted/selected audiences for whom advertising selections may be 
created, literally on-the-fly (realtime) for individual persons.  They 
do that precisely by what you have presented via the above line.

However, what your demonstration also points out is yet another reason 
why using something like mailman is preferable to any web-based service 
(particularly, but not exclusively anything Google or Facebook).  That 
is that, yes, no question, they can, and obviously do, use their 
"web-crawlers" to mine data from everything that hits the wire, when 
running something like mailman, no one (other than the administrator) 
has to put up with anything like a web interface once they are 
subscribed.  That means, they don't have all the various advertisements 
cluttering up either screen, dropping tracking cookies on their 
computers, sucking up CPU and line time with Java or ASP-based 
popups/moving pictures/etc.  While that might not matter for some, it's 
not "non-trivial" for folks who are still on dial-up and/or satellite 
connections connections, or who don't have the latest/greatest 
hard-/software.

Again, thanks for so clearly demonstrating why Google-/Facebook-based 
solutions may not be the best answer.

> We could tuck pianotech away into a nice, secure, private server, but 
> then that wouldn't be pianotech, would it?

Sorry...wrong, altogether.

There's no reason why pianotech could not be setup up in exactly that 
way and continue to function as it has.  Even if the administrator(s) 
were willing to dedicate the time to "approve" each subscription, the 
existing policies of all comers being welcome would necessarily be 
continued...complete with what seem to be the occasionally obligatory 
flame wars.  That's not the point; and to concentrate on things like it 
is to miss the point altogether.

The point is that this list has been one of the primary sources for the 
free and open exchange of information re: all things piano (and many 
things not) since 1994.  Some of us have been around for that entire 
span; and have both contributed and learned a great deal through thick 
and thin.  One of the beauties of the format is that, however annoying 
it may be that subject lines occasionally become meaningless, the list 
conversations can and have included and incredible range and domain of 
topics over the year...many of them multiple times.  Shutting it down is 
just braindead; and it really should have been reasonably conceivable 
that people would have come up with other alternatives to the 
still-only-partially-really-usable HL application...but, that's another 
topic.

I'm happy to pursue what it might cost to set up pianotech at Sonic; and 
would hope that some others would check with their ISP to see what their 
costs might be.  We may be able to find some really competitive rates 
out there.

Kind regards.

Horace