VsiFax and filePro -- frustration! --- RE: Filepro-list Digest, Vol 79, Issue 39

[Fairlight]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 06:20:25PM -0700, Bill Campbell may or may not have
proven themselves an utter git by pronouncing:
> 
> But not if there's an intervening MX server that doesn't take
> large files.

Ooh...didn't think of that.  I don't usually deal with that topography.

> >Lovely to know that Big Brother is alive and well.  NOT.  :/
> 
> More so than you might think.

No, I think it...I just try not to get depressed dwelling.  :)

> Use gpg or similar encryption on the entire e-mail, and let the
> other end deal with it.

I have GPG on mutt.  I haven't installed it yet for Thunderbird.  For
years, I've used mutt as my sole MUA.  I then started using Thunderbird
strictly for email from my family, since they send things with so many
inline images that detaching, scp'ing, and trying to read the text and
correlate images is just a pain.  Now I actually use TB as a glorified biff
client for several accounts.  I got a plugin that does notification sounds
better than the stock internals, a minimise-to-tray plugin, and a
quickstart plugin, and start it at boot now.  It's nice for those emails
with all the images yet, and it's also nice for things that have
half-screen long activation links that I hate to copy&paste in pieces.  But
I still use it mostly as a biff client, and read most of my actual mail in
mutt.

But I digress.  I should get GPG plugins for TB.

> >I'm waiting for encrypted VOIP.
> 
> You got it already with Skype.  I read something recently that
> NSA was looking for people that could break Skype's encryption.

Huh.  I didn't know Skype was encrypted.  I'm so used to voice channels
being easily tappable, I never even thought to check.

Tellya what I'm -REALLY- loving for support right now:

Google Voice + Skype + ScreenConnect

ScreenConnect is just pure bliss...it's actually faster at under 400kbit
than UltraVNC is on full 100mbit.  It's incredibly painless because you
don't have to dink with firewalls...just mail a link to someone, they click
on it, it downloads a ~100KB mini-client, and you're up and running.  No
subscriptions.  No "always available", so it requires an actual person to
approve the inbound connection--which is -good- in terms of things like
security best practises, and especially HIPPA-sensitive situations.  You
self-host it, so it doesn't rely on a third party relay...cutting out one
leg of the trip.  No weird device driver stuff, either.  It's just -really-
nice remote desktop control software.  Oh, did I mention cross-platform
functionality?  Windows, OS/X, Linux, and even Android phones...all with
the same suite.  (Some of those platforms require Java be installed,
although Windows doesn't.)

But Skype...I've been loving the Google Voice + SkypeIN thing since I
got it.  Hands-free, no echoback like my cell speakerphone annoys people
with...  It's just sweet.

> The Horde/IMP webmail client has a setting that will
> automatically upload your attachment(s) to the web server, then
> put a link in the outgoing e-mail to retrieve them.  We always
> configure webmail to work only with https so retrieval should be
> reasonably secure.  I don't like using webmail particularly, but
> do use our horde server when I want to send large attachments,
> particularly when sending to a mailing list or other large number
> of recipients.

I'm really, -really- not fond of any webmail interface I've ever tried.  I
use GMail (when I bother with those accounts) from Thunderbird.

To me, webmail interfaces are really clunky.  It's not the appearance, it's
the limited widget sets in the browsers, and the lack of a lot of keyboard
hotkeys that even Outlook (beast that it is) has.  They all seem to be
hobbled in some way or another, so I just avoid them all.  :)

I don't think anything could pry me off mutt entirely.  I didn't think that
about elm, either though--although mutt is kinda like elm on crack, speed,
and steroids all at once.  :)

I imagine one could do a fairly nice Flash webmail client.  It's pretty
neat what they can do with Flash nowadays.  Look at something like Zynga
Poker, and you get a feel for how powerful it's become.  It even has column
re-sorting with no reloads.  One of those widgets that's missing from
webmails.

mark->
-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis.