Re: How to make Emacs popular again.

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > The server could report that you did so.

  > That is something that should be known about a server, isn't it?

How could it ever be known?

                                                                      The
  > default dict.org server runs dictd, the server built from the
  > dict-1.12 package.

You can never verify independently what code a server actually runs,

                        dict is a GPLed package and its source can be
  > scrutinized to see if anything like that is there.

(I am sure it runs many other programs in addition to that.
But let's suppose all of them are libre.)

The people who run any particular server can alter the copy running there, or
add other programs and scripts.

The only way you can have confidence that a particular server does not
try to identify you is if you personally trust the people who run it.
I don't know anything about the people who run that dict server or
any other, so I have no opinion.

There is a defense against this: to go through Tor and make your browser
look like lots of other browsers.

Meanwhile, there are other reasons why it is bad to adopt "talk to a
server" as your default way to do something, and for bad the community
to adopt "talk to a server" as its default recommendation and practice.

  > I think it's the other way around.  I very rarely need to search for a
  > single word, and when I do, I can use "M-s M-w" to do that, because
  > search engines consult these dictionaries as well.

Even if my local dictionary took more work to search, which it
doesn't, I would I always prefer my local dictionary over anything
that requires network communication.



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)