daniil's Journal: The Gmail meme: marking one's territory [updated]

First of all, i suck. I suck, because i got myself a Gmail account, even though i didn't actually want one. I didn't even need it -- my primary account has an 80 MB of quota, out of which i'm currently using about 20 (for the network login profile, of all things); my Hotmail inbox receives maybe one email a month, and i mostly use it for online registration. I have two more addresses, but i practically don't use them. So why the heck did i register with Gmail? One of the reasons is, that some friendly soul sent me an invite (thank you, aWalrus!). But that's not all. It just hit me that the main reason why i registered is, that by doing this, i'm marking my territory.

You all probably know that wild animals, especially predators, mark the borders of their territories, so that their competitors would know to keep out. "This is my territory, this is my home. Stay away." And it's not only animals that do this -- humans do it, too. It's unlikely that a picket fence will keep thieves out, but it marks the border of your territory. "It's my territory, keep out." And amazingly enough, these things work.

The situation is a bit different on the internet, in that there's not really much territory to defend. Most of the time, you're on someone else's turf. There is, however, one thing that you have to protect: your name. Your name is what counts. if someone knows it, they can hurt you. If your name and your nick are wellknown, it's easy for someone to pose as you.

Think about it. Do you have the habit of using the same handle all the time? I know that i have (even though the handle i'm using now is a deviation from the rule). I always use the same handle for logins. I use it on IRC, etc; if someone else has already taken this nick (not too probable), i use one that's close to the original one. Sometimes it happens that i register with a site, only to forget about it; however, as i use the same nick (and few different email addresses) everywhere, it's easy to recover the password. This is also how i ended up on Slashdot, by the way -- i stumbled upon it while searching for information on some thing or other, registered my nick* (simply out of habit), instantly forgetting about it, and only half a year later did i start to actively participate in the discussions.

So, i've left my mark on this thing called Gmail. Yay. Who knows, maybe some day i will actually start using it, but right now, it only serves as a sign of my existence.

* not this one, the other one.

Update: it's dead, Jim. I deleted it, as i figured that there's no point in keeping it if i'm not going to use it anyway. Yes, i would have done it even without Tomble going apeshit. Although i probably would have waited for another two or three days before doing it. Yes, i still suck. HAND.

will it let you forward

[js7a]

can you point your gmail at another address when you aren't using it?

Can you forward and keep copies at the same time?

Re:will it let you forward

[daniil]

Hmm, i did look for the forwarding option before i deleted my account, but i guess i probably didn't look hard enough, as i couldn't find it.

Veni, Vidi, Leavi.

Hey

[Tomble]

I'm glad you say you didn't delete it just because of my loony rant- I was only partly serious... It's not like I was going to go handing out "punishments" for people having GMail accounts ;) No, really! Honest!

As for the idea of marking your territory, I know there's several other Tombles in the world, and they have about as much right to the handle as me. I did hurry to create a Tomble account at everything2.com before any of them did, but I did plan on using it. I still do, but I probably won't node any

Re:Hey

[daniil]

If you think about it, wouldn't it suck if you were one of the other Daniils, you got your GMail invite, and you found somebody else had taken the username you wanted?

Actually, someone else had already taken the name 'daniil' :P That wasn't really a problem, as it's not my primary handle anyway. But i still had to pick a (slightly) different name than i wanted, as the bloody system doesn't allow for names shorter than six characters* (my "own" handle has five). But this isn't really that important.

I don'

Re:Hey

[Tomble]

Because it would really suck if you send a mail to someone, just to discover that the person behind the name had changed over the last few months. I've seen it happen with cellphone numbers.

Heh, I didn't think of that! Yeah, that could be potentially pretty bad... Plus, at least with the mobile phones, you'd probably know when you'd called the wrong person*. With the email, the person replying could (to some extent) pretend to be the person who they were expecting...

(*-unless you didn't already know the