[GTALUG] Planning April Meeting

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Christopher Browne via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| On Thu, 2 Apr 2020 at 19:00, Scott Allen via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

| > On Thu, 2 Apr 2020 at 18:39, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
| > <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
| > > And this, reported today:
| > > <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/technology/zoom-linkedin-data.html>

| It all suggests to me that we shouldn't consider it as more than a
| temporary stopgap measure.
| 

| And I'd think that individuals should consider things like the following...

But wait, there's more!

The linkedin mining is a concern.  It means that individuals should
create a throw-away email account to then create a zoom account.
Don't use your real email account.

In what other ways do they abuse your email account?

The one time I've used zoom (for a talk by Myles) I used a chromebook
that hadn't otherwise been used for years.  I thought I was safe.  But
no, I used my main email account to create a Zoom account.

So: Zoom has so many and so varied a set of problems that I'm now quite 
unhappy with it.

It's a great argument for free/libre software.

================

I've also used Cisco's webex once.  Documented Linux support has
severe bitrot.  Its Linux app is 32-bit only.  Its browser support
requires Java of some particular type.  It seems to require obsolete
versions of CentOS (6, if I remember correctly) or Ubuntu (16.04, if I
remember correctly).  Cisco has signalled several ways over a couple of 
decades that it hates Linux (and the GPL in general).

I ended up using Windows.  And even that was bad: the mic didn't work
in Windows, even thought it did in Linux.  So I had to switch to a
different Windows notebook in the middle of a very expensive meeting.
Even with the new computer, connectivity dropped out a few times.