Yahoo Groups: Upgrades & Changes

        "If you are using one of the Yahoo Groups and your Mac is not at the latest OS update, you may find that you can’t upload files/photos to your Yahoo Group anymore," John Carter says.  He goes on to explain,  "A friend of mine posted this comment:

Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, etc. have all recently made significant "upgrades??" - in their minds, not mine - to include numerous social networking capabilities to their e-mail sites, group sites, etc. They all require significant upgrading of the Mac OS on my primary desktop computer from OS 10.4.11. I cannot upgrade the OS for this computer because it's a PowerPC G5 and I still want to maintain OS 9 Classic for a couple of legacy programs. It appears that the changes Yahoo, Google & Microsoft made to the functioning of their various sites are incompatible with OS 10.4.11. I only get rudimentary e-mail capabilties on my desktop now - barely functional. The sites work perfectly fine on my MacBook Pro OS 10.6.8 - for now."

        John explains his conclusion, "So, if you thought that you could continue to use your old OS for years to come, then the changes that are happening with websites are in the direction of what’s happening with the new versions of any OS, be it Mac or Windows, will leave you behind and not able to work with those websites. If upgrading your computer or OS means giving up a legacy app, welcome to the 21st Century! Find the best alternative, if any at all, and move on. And all this just to be able to continue browsing the Internet and using online services!"

Google Defends Sanning Email

"Here is an article discussing how Google defends their scanning every email sent or received through Gmail. Google says this is a 'normal business practice', and uses the info to tailor ads that appear beside your inbox."  Jim Hamm continues,  "I use Gmail, and the adds don't bother me, but I'm not fond of the idea of Google scanning the contents of every email sent through their system. On the other hand, Google is providing a useful service for free, so something or someone has to foot the costs.

        Jim goes on to comment,  "Perhaps Google already states this in their terms of agreement when one sets up a Gmail account, but wording somewhat to the following seems fair to me: as a user of the free Gmail email service the user agrees to having all sent or received emails subject to scanning by Google. If one doesn't like this, then don't sign up for the Gmail service -- use something else for your email service.

        So, this is Jim's question,  "I don't know, but perhaps other free email services such as Yahoo, Outlook Express and others may do the same thing. What do you think about Google's scanning of your emails? Armed with this knowledge, surely you won't send any of your passwords via email anymore, will you...(grin)."