The irony here is that the overuse of trans fats is largely caused by prior FDA actions. Back in the '70s when I was a kid, we were told that it was butter that's evil. Everybody should lower their cholesterol by switching to margarine instead.

I'm not trying to make the argument that the FDA is stupid. There are doubtless a pile of really smart scientists there. The point I'd like to make is that it's folly to believe that we can really understand anything as complex as all of the interactions within the human body and with its environment, in order to come up with a single list of simple rules that will affect everyone. When we act as if we can do this, the result is inevitably that mistakes are made, such that unforeseeable effect lead to unintended consequences, such that, however well-intentioned, the effort ends rather worse than we were initially promised.

I'm reminded of the old children's song about "I know an old woman who swallowed a fly". Every time we try to force a correction like this, we cause other problems down the road, so that we must continually keep swallowing spiders and birds and cats, just to maintain equilibrium.

At one time gmail was superior.  Now, not so much.  But when all of your data is with a service, it's hard to change.

-wraith808 (November 14, 2013, 08:37 PM)

That's part of the point. It may not be superior in the list of features it supports, or in the responsiveness of its UI, or things like that. But taken as a package, the total product they offer, is demonstrably better than others. We know this is true, because if it weren't, you would have switched.

Apparently for you (and for most of us), the convenience of having our old emails in there is a compelling feature.

(And from a technical perspective, it is possible to download all of your email history from Gmail. You could, if this need was greater than your disdain for other parts of the service, do this. But apparently your disdain is less than the convenience factor derived from not having to go to the trouble.)