Slashdot Mirror
Downsides to Intrafamily IM?
Frisky070802 writes "The NY Times has run a column on how many families now use instant messaging within a household, for instance to ask what someone wants for dinner. This is especially popular as whole houses get wired (or wireless) and computers are scattered throughout the house. This is the case at my house but I tend to be the only one who stays on AIM reliably. Can Slashdotters offer some personal experience, pro/con, with being instantly and constantly accessible to one's spouse and children? Does this tend to break down your 'personal time'?"
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Why can't people just do this by default? It took me 2 seconds to find...
What ever happened to just screaming/yelling down a hallway?
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Everyone in my family uses AIM to communicate around the house. There aren't really any cons to it aside from the fact that it tends to make you lazier and you lose the exercise of having to get up and walk to the person you want to talk to.
Does this tend to break down your 'personal time'?
instant messangers... yeah, they always break down my personal time. that's why I 'apt-get remove'd them all.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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I have a small house, but my wife knows I'm always on IM, so she does occasionally ask questions like "what's for dinner?"... I find it less intrusive than yelling through the house.
Sometimes my wife will use her PC while we're in my office, and when she wants to know where to find some stuff on the net, i'll usually just IM her a Google hit page..
Also, I spent the summer working at a contract a couple hours away from home, and would frequently use AIM on my cellphone while at dinner to let her know that I was still at dinner and would be calling a little late that night. My little contribution to be one less person yelling into their cellphone in restaurants.
Intelligent Life on Earth
It usually involves me yelling at the top of my voice. I envy those who have a house so large that my voice does not provide adequate coverage.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
My problem is having way too much virtual sex with my sister... it's taking a toll on our real social lives.
This definitely breaks down personal time between my Girlfriend and I. We share a 1 bedroom apartment, and everyday she and I go our seperate ways to work. While working we usually chat back and forth constantly about current events, what that nights plans are, etc. But I've found over the last several years that when we both arrive home together that evening, there's nothing left to talk about.
It hasn't really damaged our relationship at all, which is nice to know, but it does says something for instant communication while apart.
Put the mouse down.
Step away from the keyboard and nobody gets hurt.
Now go out and interact with people. They're in the same friggin house with you fer chrissakes.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Is it so big that you can't just call out or walk for 10-15 seconds to talk to somebody? I've used IM clients to have a silent conversation in a crowded room before but not for regular communication at home.
I don't like it because being the only true Nerd in the house, I get a lot of intrusions on life from a 13 year old brother who finds it fun in his spare time to take advantage of my good nature and techincal knowledge, many times ive had song lyrics and or stuff he shouldn't have seen shown to him by friends who get his AIM address I've tried blocking them but he managed to figure out how to undo such things and is now roaming free in the metasocial domain of my friends, constantly do i find myself explaining to my mom about why and how he saw a goresite a horsesex site and even Goatse, the kid just can't handle the internet yet and it shows. However the rest of my family still can't figure out how to use Earthlink so as for now I am safe.
You have been sig'd
HotMamma24242: hay guys wut up its dinnr time
LittleBro33: cool
OlderSis53137: i dont lik 2 eat im 2 fat
DadInCharge98324: shut it oldersis youl eat wut ur mom telz u 2 eat and like it 2 lol
LittleBro33: lolololol haha u got n trubl
OlderSis53137: shut up il run aimnuke on u
*LittleBro33 has disconnected
HotMamma24242: its not nice to aimnuke ur brothr
DadInCharge98324: ur gonna get a spankin
OlderSis53137: no1 n this famly understands me i h8 u all
HotMamma24242: but i made teriaki chikn
This is ridiculous. Just physically walk into the room they are in and ask them "What do you want for dinner?" Are people becoming so lazy and scared of others (including family) that they can only communicate via IM, cell phones, email...ect.
Trust me the small walk from room to room, will not affect your pear like body shape.
Why can't slashdot use the google partner link? Oh, I don't know, maybe because slashdot is not google?
IM is like our in-house intercom. For example, I'm at work in my office in the basement and the phone rings. It's for my 12 year-old son (way more often than not), who's in his room on the 2nd floor. Rather than yelling up the laundry chute for him to pick up the phone, I just IM him.
Thank God I'm an atheist!
In addition, when I travel, and for when I head off to college next year, it is much easier to send a quick IM rather than make a phone call.
Yawn.
So at night whichever one of us goes to bed first send the other an IM saying to please manage the internet connection. This means that when the other one of us goes to bed, we start up my sister's kazaa or shut down the gateway computer. (We are still on dialup, there's no broadband out here.)
It gets funny because sometimes I live in other cities for work purposes, but sometimes he still messages me at night, telling me to manage the internet connection and I have to remind him that I'm not even at home.
It's also great when we want to remind the other one that the over timer is beeping and our food is done cooking.
I often get calls on my cell phone from my wife at the other end of the house. At least people are communicating. When I was a kid, my mother would do anything just to get a few words out of me. She would have loved all of these new communication devices.
Maybe for those living in a trailer or shoebox, this concept is hard to understand! :)
If my sisters or my parents found out my IRC-nick, I'd have to change it!
:|
Since locking the door no longer would keep them away.
Well, I don't know about you, but in my experience I...oh, dammit! Hang on, my kid just IMed me, he needs help with his homework. I'll finish this later. To the living room I go...
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Why can't people post this crap AC?
Why can't people just do this by default? It took me 2 seconds Yeah, and it took me a similar time to register with NYTimes, we are using their service for free after all. And now I have a registration I can log into their website automatically without having to read through comments or looking at google, which saves me even more time
FREAK
I wish my family woulda done this when I was growing up. It woulda been nicer to avoid seeing them a little bit more.. No old wrinkled faces just before dinner, and the worst was breakfast.. Ugh.. I'm not a morning person at all.
So, there's nothing wrong with it. For the people that do use it in the household, they probably didn't communicate much to begin with, so I could see it actully bringing families closer together.
Are u sure you need to ask /. people what they think about every little detail of your life ?
/., read a book and write a comment. ;)
Please just wonder if you feel you loose your 'personal time' or anything and take your decision accordingly. Why asking ?
If you really want to put something on
I'm AIM'ing my brother right now from my laptop. Its actually really nice, since if you see a cool website, you can just send a link, instead of running upstairs and showing it to him on his computer.
What IM is really useful for, however, is keeping in touch with people long-distance. IM has a relaxed, conversational quality that you can't get from a phone call. With the phone, there is pressure to finish the call quickly, and it is something that you do on special occasions. With IM, you can just say hi, or share a random funny thought, without wasting anyone's time.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Thanks to the remote control features of windows XP, wireless networks and IM technology I can now see my wife play with herself on the bedroom webcam even when she's told me to sleep on the couch. Great stress relief and I don't have to fake I enjoy snuggling after sex. (I hope she doesn't read slashdot, she doesn't know I can remote control the bedroom computer.)
If you're going to moderate, read the damn instructions!
the constant screaming across the house where i grew up! :)
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I uninstalled Family 1.0.
hearing the "BLAH BLAH BLAH!"... "WHAT?"... "BLAAHH BLLAAAHH BLAAAHHH!!"... "WHAT?"... thankfully it's just me and 1 other at home, so I only deal with that at the family's...
I use it work to talk to people in the next cube over... because it cuts down on voice-noise at work, it allows me to be at my PC and doing other things while someone else's brain churns to come up with thoughts... It also offers some privacy against cube-snoopers who sit and listen to other people's conversations... of course IM is clear text so it's usually just idle jabber... anything more classified requires a trip to Chotchkie's for coffee
The family household is first, and foremost, the place you learn and strengthen your communication skills. I'm sure 10 years from now we'll know all the CONs of diverting most of our face-to-face communication to instant messaging. It will surely strain all form of communication, from retail customer service to inter-office discussions. We already bitch about working in cubicles. Now we want to make our childrens' rooms cubicles too? How utterly sad.
I use instant messaging with some of my extended family members. It's a great way of staying in touch. The only excuse for instant messaging someone in your own household, however, is if you do not possess muscle control over your legs. I mean, good god. Walk down the hallway and get a little excercise at least. That much laziness and your computer chair will give you bed sores.
Ok, enough is enough. I can't believe there are professionals in this world that think this is a GOOD thing. I regularly stop IM conversations with a phrase like - "Shouldn't this be a phone/face-to-face conversation?" The text medium simply leaves too much room for misunderstanding.
Families need to learn to DEAL with eachother, and having your body language and voice inflection sheilded sure as hell isn't going to help.
Kids these days. (I'm 22, and I get scared.)
Girlfriend and I share an apartment, 2 bedrooms, 1 as an office.. generally we just IM each other random links, but if it's anything else, i'll go through the motions of actually turning around in my chair to talk to her...
As far as families go, I can't imagine while growing up not being yelled at by my parents to tell me to "Get your ass out here, what in God's name did you do this time!?!?"
--Less Thinkin', More Drinkin'...
My wife and I use this because we have a basement that's separate from the upstairs of the house (you have to walk outside and back in). Her office is down there, mine is up here, so it's a bit of a pain to talk back and forth.
We also had AIM reliability issues (and I dislike the unencrypted chatter going out and back in) so I set up Jabber on our server here. Works great -- even when the cable modem goes out it's still there. No one else snooping in on the conversations, etc. Also Gaim works with Jabber now (if somewhat buggily) so you don't need to switch clients or anything to add it.
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Are American houses so big that you can't shout to the other people in them ? I'm not sure the articles idea of a wicked sense of humour is quite the same as mine: "What do you want for tea ?" "A pizza and a beer mom." "What do you want for tea ?" "I dunno, my mate Hellbastard just brought round some sherbet, it was very nice but we've finished it all off now, can you get us more - bitch ?"
One reason that I don't talk to my family (other than my brother) on AIM is that I sometimes have things in my away messages and my profile that I don't necessarily want them to see. For example, I don't want them to read my away message saying that I'm at a party at 3am on a school night (the reason that they wouldn't know is that I go to school 3 hours and a few states away). I do, however, use iChat AV and my iSight to videoconference with my family.
As a college student in the dorms it's easy to be at AIM all the time because you really can't get very far from it. When I got an apartment I made the decision to dump AIM because otherwise I'd be in my bedroom all the time.
I don't spend so much time with the computer anymore, but I've found I never see my roommates unless I actually go into their rooms. They're ALWAYS on AIM and NEVER in the living room, kitchen, or other-room-we-don't-use. It's bizarre.
It's actually making me sick thinking about it. Wasting away in front of a computer while pouring over trash websites and talking to people online you should be hanging out with instead of talking about doing something.
you obviously don't have a baby. when you are in bed with sleeping baby next to you on the wireless laptop and wife is working in the home office, IM is a godsend.
screaming=kid wakes up = your 20 minutes of private time today is over!
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I've just been reading the past 30+ comments, and no one seems to think that this is a problem!!
Sure, for the teen geeks out there who like a lil privacy (I don't mean like thaT.. well, maybe I guess I do) this is OK for. But for a family to be a family this sure does pose major problems?
A poster a few messages up claimed his wife and him have nothing to talk about when they get home after talking all day. What about for the parent and child who would rather IM while around the house. Doesn't prolonged exposure to this make the child more unwilling to talk to his/her parent face-to-face about sex/drugs/abuse??
I know I tried my damnedest to remain an reclusive troll around my house, but thankfully my parents were active in my life and always asked questions. Hindsight being what it is, I'm glad we came to a good balance between privacy and parenting! That sort of thing requires you to LOOK at your parents and FACE your problems/fears.. not hitting "Block" or "Exit".
I know I have a point here, and I'm trying to find it.
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
For example: me, my brother, my mom and my dad all live in different cities. We keep in touch via IM.
- This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along, move along..
so families are using a new communication tool to, um, communicate, and people are asking if this is reducing communication within families?
is im or email or irc or phone or letter or videophone or telegraph the same as talking face to face? no, they're all different. and none are best, certain circumstances lend themselves better to certain methods. some people find letters a better method of telling family members bad news. i like people to email me info like addresses, phone numbers or email addresses. irc is a nice supplement to conference calls as it lets taking minutes be distributed.
but i supposed change always sees this. "oh no, it's different, it must be BAAAAD!"
whatever.
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Pre-IM, my roommate and I would exchange email... across our dorm room... while we were both sitting there.
American's, such as myself, have strayed away from the staple of the 50's and early 70's of having family time together. Where the family would gather around a radio or tv and listen together and discuss. When I grew up in the 80's and 90's there was no family dinner. We each grabbed our own plate and went our seperate ways.
IM is just adding another barrier to interpersonal communcations within the family environment. Is everyone in the family so glues to their individual computers that no one talks to one another anymore even to just shoot the bruise? Will American's and other families become secluded that we occasionally need to glance at pictures of our immediate family to remember what they look like?
I for one hope this changes and that family time can be a staple for all families. IM'ing inside a big home is not that much of a problem now just asking for dinner. But what happens when Mom and Dad need to do the mandatory "birds and the bees" talk will it be done by IM and video camera? Or will they just walk you through a Power Point presentation via IM and give you voice when you need to ask questions?
Make me your friend. All my friends get +1 modifier and I need friends :)
We're a 2-parent, 2-kid family. Most of our computers are in one room, a kind of in-home NOC. Often all 4 of us are in this room, on the computers, and often all on IM. There we sit, our backs to each other, and sometimes rather than talk we'll all IM each other. We all admit it's pretty pathetic and pretty weird, but dammit, we like it that way.
C'mon, baby, kiss The King.
Try living in a student house with 8 or so people in it.
Back in the day, we'd end up using IM more frequently than we'd actually go in and talk to each other. Not only was it more convenient, it also let us respond after studying, when we got home, or whatever. With the schedules so different, it was just easier than getting up, banging on the door, then going back and messaging them later on.
But then again, the best way to get each other's attention was to crank up Quake....
The old-fashioned wireless communications method - very nice!
To the newer geeks: The above post is referring to the old wireless technology that utilized a unique QOS priority technique. Messages were encoded using higher and higher DB levels that really worked well - the louder the scream the faster people responded....
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
After one particularly late night of studying in college 3 years ago, my roomate, a friend, and I started cursing at each other over AIM in our tiny freshman dorm room. It was memorable as one of those "everything is funny because you're tired" nights.
These days, AIM is useful in finding out if somebody is in their apartment before going down the hall to visit.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
Dad: What? You won't eat your vegetables?
Kid: Nope. They're gross.
Dad: (Goes to computer) +b #tvroom
Kid: NOOOOOOOO!!!! BUT DAAAADDDDD!!!!
you don't like osx, correct? you could have shown you're brother the software update option!
Tears for Fears comes to mind...what happened to bellowing "MOM...WHAT'S FOR DINNER?" across the house?
A lifelong geek, I still find the extremes some people go to insane.
I don't have a family, you insenstive clod!
I think I'll IM myself to ask myself what I want for dinner.
I worked at a .com during the boom and the entire company had ICQ installed. It was SO much better than playing phone tag. Hell if someone was on the phone you could pop-up msg them saying who was on the line wanting to talk to them. Or if I was on the phone I could still keep taking care of business via ICQ.
For the home I think it's just silly or at the least, lazy. The only time I've ever used it room to room in the home was joking around. "It's 10pm. Do youk now what your son is doing behind your back?"
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
we use sip phones in my house to communicate. i hv a asterisk server and all my laptops and desktops hv SIP clients configured (MSN Msgr and SIP Phone). Also i hv couple of Hardware SIP phones. Calling others is just a matter of right click and place a call. :-)
Also i hv hooked up my PSTN with asterisk. so when i get a land line call the call gets transfered to my all SIP phones (Laptops, desktops and hardware phones). if i am working on my laptop i just pick it up from my laptop. Its very cool.
-B
Wow, man I think my geek-o-meter just melt while I was reading this post. And I had to shut down my weird-o-meter to prevent it from melting as well.
Well, I like IM, I use it every day with. But when I'm a few meters away from the person I'm chatting with, I discovered that opening my mouth to talk was much better. You should do the same, and you'll see that real-life communication with people (especially family) is a nice thing.
____
nico
Nico-Live
Our big thing at work is email is great, but it pays to actually fly somewhere and talk to someone FTF as needed. You develop better interpersonal relationships, and you can better manage the people working on your project. Just like at home. You don't want to "parent" via IM, so yes, things like "dinner is ready" or "take the dog out" are probably fine, but you probably don't want to discuss family finances or Aunt Betty's latest breakdown over it.
you're an asshole and I cum in you
Why don't you just go an talk to your wife/grilfriend/boyfriend/children?
What rimes on recursion What rimes on recursion What rimes on recursion What rimes on recursion
simple. disconnect. or use the "away" feature, saying so. whats so hard?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
no text
I honestly hope you're a troll. Really. Linux in no way whatsoever 'forces' you to learn about security any moreso than Windows or OSX. So he had an SSH service he evidently didn't need? This is different from a linux box running a loose SSH how? I'm not an Apple fanboy by any stretch of the imagination - I don't nor have I ever owned an Apple machine (but I also wouldn't turn one down), but you really need a reality check. OS X isn't perfect, but it's definitely one of the nicer OS's I've had a chance to play with. As far as 'speed' goes, who cares about raw computational power if the powerbook does what he needs? 99.999% don't need a 2GHz P4 - why force it upon them?
Apart from that, "safari goatse.cx" doesn't work at all. The best shot you have is the following: "/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari http://goatse.cx", which doesn't open http://goatse.cx.
Shutdown won't work unless you sudo it. You knew his root password? Oh, yeah, well in that case he was screwed anyway. Giving a password to your asshole brother never helps.
So, I doubt this little brother of you existed. Besides, are you proud now? He is probably runnning Windows XP with all it's security holes and is infected with more spyware by using Internet Explorer. Yes, you really did a good deed to the world....
I'm not even a Mac fanboy, but you need to check your facts.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Well, this is what happens when you take a family of four, put them in a 5000 sq ft house, and then give them all individual massive closets, bathrooms, play areas and so on. You get a break down in communication since it's too much damn work to go upstairs, find your relative, and ask them what they want for dinner.
Add extra kitchenettes scattered about and the problem compounds itself.
BBWC - Bevel-Base WadCutter
BT - Boat-Tailed
CB - Cast Bullet
DEWC - Double Ended WadCutter
FMJ - Full Metal Jacket
FP - Flat Point
HBWC - Hollow-Base WadCutter
HP - Hollow Point
JHP - Jacketed Hollow Point
JSP - Jacketed Soft Point
LHP - Lead Hollow Point
LRN - Lead, Round Nose
LSWC - Lead Semi-WadCutter
MC - Metal Cased
MRWC - Mid-Range WadCutter
PB - Lead Bullet
PSP - Pointed Soft Point or Plated Soft Point
RNL - Round Nosed Lead
SJHP - Semi-Jacketed Hollow Point
SJSP - Semi-Jacketed Soft Point
SP - Soft Point or Spire Point
SPTZ - Spitzer
SWC - Semi-WadCutter
TC - Truncated Cone
TMJ - like _Totally_ Metal Jacketed, dude
VLD - Very Low Drag
WC - WadCutter
This seems absurd to me, but then again, I think the current trend of buying 1000-sq foot per family member is also breaking down family communication.
Just as typing for 20+ years has KILLED my penmanship (Penpersonship?) using IM intra-family is the equivalance to emailing the guy in the cubicle next to you.
It will lead to a break-down in communication.
For example, growing up, I had 4 flights of stairs to travel to get to my main family's floor. I occupied the basement. I got tired of going up and down the stairs and decided to install an intercom. Even less reason to interact with my family I soon became the "hermit".
Kids need to go outdoors, interact with PEOPLE not just for their own good, but for the good of the human race's future communicative skillz!
Yes I know I put a z.
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
If your house is too big to shout to your family members then, quite simply, your house is too big. In certain parts of the world, people live in huts and here we are worrying about using 21st century technology to help mommy tell little billy that dinner is ready... if he could only make it as far as the east wing. And for all those Bel Air mentalities out there, let me remind you that it is quite possible to live in comfort and show off your wealth to your heart's content without simultaneously showing off your ignorance.
</rant>
Can Slashdotters offer some personal experience, pro/con, with being instantly and constantly accessible to one's spouse and children? Does this tend to break down your 'personal time'?
No more than having a cell phone on your hip when you go to the toilet:
"Hello?! Uh... I'm busy... Doing... stuff. Nevermind that sound, what do you want!!?"
Sheesh, that's the worst.
I planned on inserting something witty here but never got around to it.
kewlkid: okay baby i'm taking off ur pantz...
gran1922: okay
kewkid: fuck i thought you were melissa. sorry gran
gran: dont stop...!
Whoa, I wonder what it's gonna be in a few years... Instead of your citizen ID, your primary identification record will be your Microsoft Passport? Damn... I don't understand people. Do you like virtual sunsets or do you prefer being there. I am a network admin but the thing I cherish most in my life is nature itself. I do use IMs at work to answer short questions from collegues, but at home, I talk with my wife and children. We play games, we take a walk, we cook dinner together, we go on a car ride somewhere we never went, we dance to music, we wash the dog.. Damn what's boring you so much people? Have you seen it all already? I don't. Shssh...
Humans NEED other Humans in their environment, or else they may go insane. IM is no substitute for actually seeing (as in the physical world) of another person.
I had this happend to me.. My Xwife, Bitch, would IM even though I'm sitting in the same room with her. It used to piss her off when I would answer her outloud instead of IM her back.... Bitch...
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Shouldn't you be sleeping with your wife instead of playing video games? I know I have.
Images of that annoying Sprint guy kept coming to mind, but it's really very appropriate given the typical lack of ability of parent and teen to communicate with each other.
This idea could be turned into a neat commercial wherein you see parent and child finally having a "dialog" without rolling their eyes behind each others backs.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Can Slashdotters offer some personal experience, pro/con, with being instantly and constantly accessible to one's spouse and children? Does this tend to break down your 'personal time'?"
IM me and I'll tell you.
Here is a typical day for me when I have to work at a client's office:
wife> you'll never guess who called
me> can it wait? I'm working here.
wife> oh it'll just take a sec...
wife> blah blah blah
me> *insert random emoticons to make it appear that I am actually paying attention*
wife> ok, so when will you be home?
me> soon, I just got to finish this one last thing...which I will get done as soon as we quit talking.
wife> ok bye
* a couple of minutes pass *
wife> guess what happened on *insert dumb soap opera here*
and so on. Once I put her on my blocked list but she figured that out and really got pissed.
I'm reading this topic with much interest and interested on how other people deal with IM. I like it and hate it at the same time!
-Pat
Lots of pros, pretty much combines the pros of IM (instant, and already integrated with your buddy list) with SMS (can get it anywhere). No cons yet though I can see plenty if your SO is the kind that uses it as a new anger communication channel.
The meal coordination stories are classics of course... I know a guy that used this to make a quick IM bot for his office, listing all local menus and allowing eeveryone in his office to vote for what they wanted to eat that day. Cool stuff. (yes, I am the author of the project)
If for no other reason than you might catch him doing something he's not supposed to be doing. I know that, as a child, I was terrified of doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing because my mom/dad could wander into my room at any moment.
;)
As if the threat of going blind wasn't enough...
-- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
The implication seems to be that it's yet another way families are disconnecting. I agree somewhat, that "facetime" between family members is a bit lacking these days.
However, there are other reasons, non-technological that are at fault - two income, multi-job families, and an increased use of nannies/babysitters and other caregivers taking the place of parents.
I'd rather see a family that communicates all day via cell phone, email and IM, but actually has dinner together fairly often, with a good amount of in-person family interaction, than a situation in which one parent is ensconced in a loft office doing paperwork until 10:00 PM, while the other spouse is at the office for yet another late meeting, or is away on a business trip all the time.
NET SEND at your fingertips?
Or with win9x, winpopup?
I have a wife, three kids, three cats and a dog. What is this 'personal time' concept?
It's not a bad way to give someone a heads-up when there's food or you need a favor. I would imagine with real family members, I would find myself signing off of IM more often than not, or just having an additional screen name just for when the 'rents were breathing down my neck.
My $.02
Why doesn't everyone wear pagers while in the house so that they can get those urgent messages in the event that they are away from the computer? Or even better, everyone in the household should wear a GPS tranceiver so that your location in the house is known. Personally, how many people live in a house so big that you can't either yell or walk over? And if you do live in such a huge house, wouldn't you just use an intercomm?
I use various messengers to talk to my family around my house. No, I'm not lazy. It just seems stupid to get up and go walk across the house for a simple question that can be done in a few seconds. (There are 4 computers in this house, 2 in the same room.) I also use it to keep in touch with friends and distant relatives. :)
R.
This is crazy. In college we had more fun yelling down the halls at each other when we fragged someone...why IM when you can tell the rest of the floor who your bitch was right after you wasted his sorry ass?
We have a DECT phone in each room - If I want to ask my other half somthin, I just phone her! - two key presses on the phone handset, is much easier than spending a good 20 seconds activating IM, and sending her a message (assuming that she even has her PC on at that time)!
Tony.
I asked my daughter why she preferred IM to the old teenage standby -- hours on the phone. The answer surprised me. She could see who was online.
From her perspective it solved two problems
1. You knew in advance who was available to talk (lowered chance of rejection).
2. It avoided the unpleasant experience of having to mediate access through a parent ("he's not in", "he can't come to the phone", "he's been grounded and can't talk"). This is actually a variant of #1.
So it's all about saving face and managing rejection. IM provides lots of strategies and aids to do just that.
Given that it solves or mitigates two teenage problems (potential rejection by absence or parent, and parental control), I predict the first cellphone company to implement a usable buddy list wins.
My wife and I IM all the time, even when we're 10 feet away. Within the house, IM messages tend to be "check out this link" or "hey, it's dinner time." Real conversations don't happen over IM within the house for the very reason several folks pointed out -- it's silly and it isn't a real conversation.
An amusing side effect is that it becomes possible to improve your writing and typing skills with IM so long as both parties don't tolerate IM shorthand. i.e., no "u" or "ur" crap. A friend of mine recently learned about the wonders of IM when his fiance worked across the country for a few months. His typing skills really improved as did his written english. IM actually forced him to become an effective communicator. Granted, it's rare for that to happen, but it can if everyone chatting doesn't tolerate broken english. =)
Bottom-line -- IM isn't a substitute for conversation and when I have kids they won't be allowed to get away with not talking, but it does have a place and it can be useful.
Balance.
-Steve
And what if you don't spend every waking moment tied to you PC? What if you actually went outside and did something else for a change? Like maybe in a garden or got a real life where you didn't sit surfing trash all day?
I use computers in my work. Have every since they were invented. That means I am not on them continously ESPECIALLY if I got home from doing the same damn thing at work.
What the hell is it with you people?
Get a fscking pet and quite stroking your desktop.
...to any normal person, but my relationship was my brother has only went UP since we've started IMing each other. I'm in college now (still living at home) and since we're not both going to the same high school we don't know some of the same people, or hang out as much as we used to. I've got my computer in my room and he's constantly on the computer in the living room and though a lot of time it's just idle chit chat, or passing links or questions about when dinner is, etc.; it's given us a link that we didn't have for a while. I'd be at school all day and return dead tired and plop down in front of the computer, at least now we'll chat instead of before we would IM and I could go weeks without having any sort of conversation with him.
IMs with him will actually end up provoking real life conversations, and we get to find out we have a lot more in common than we had previously thought.
Downsides? Can't think of any.
The MAJOR upside is you can turn it OFF - I think that outweighs any possible "downsides" when dealing with one's family..!
It does seem strange though especially to visitors. My mother-in-law spent Christmas with us for the first time and seemd to have a bit of difficulty accepting the "impersonalness" of paging your kids. I felt funny about it too until I realized that I actaully communicate with them MORE than if I had to get my lazy ass up, walk all the way across the house, down the stairs and to their bedrooms to ask them a quick question. Besides, I'm generally calling them to come to me (for dinner or to talk face-to-face) so by paging them it actually see them sooner.
I think it is the sign of the times. When new technologies come out there are the early adopters who try to use it in every way imaginable - they "work out the bugs". If the use is truly usefull it will survive. If not it will decline, eventually settling into an equilibrium between "coolness" and effectiveness. for my personal situation IM is NOT effective so it was replaced with slightly older (paging) technology.
We recently got the last of my extended family off windows (and on to OS X) which gave us all the ability to use iChatAV. At first it was cool and new, but then it became a pain. Just because my "buddy list" claimed my sister was on didn't mean she was - it usually was one of her kids or she was outside and she'd see a stack of connections when she'd get back in. Thinking it was important she'd try to IM me only to find me not at my computer so she'd call me long distance only to find out I didn't really have much to say except "Hi".
Half the time I had my iChat activated I was actually "in-and-out" of the room and when I got a call I had to stay by the computer to talk and I was unproductive. So I started setting my iChat to offline or busy and eventually just turned it off when I didn't want to be interrupted. Pretty soon everyone started doing that. I have iChat on right now and NO ONE ELSE IS THERE - not even my kids - and I know they are online because my cablemodem's blinkenlights are going nuts and I'm just typing this.
I think every generation will use new technology in such a way that will dismay the older generation. Heck, I recall reading that blackboards were hailed as the worst thing possible for schools (because students would be looking at it instead of the teacher) when they first came out. Technology changes much and society will change with it. I have to admit that with my wife working nights the kids and I, more often than not, have dinner together around the "magic-expando" coffe table in front of the TV than around our dining room table. My mother would have a fit! All our meals were around a formal table when I was a kid.
Change is the only constant in the universe. And when things change too far in one direction the pendulum always swings back. I NEVER write snail mail any more - but I communicate with my parents (they live in southern Mexico, I live in Alaska) way more now via email than I ever did by snail mail. At first, my mother missed the "hand-written" letters, but now much prefers the quick reliability of email.
There may come a day when students sit at home in front of a "hollow-teacher" instead of in a classroom and people will lament the loss of social interaction. But I know one thing: If physical contact is truly important to human developement we will get it one way or another. If not, our society will evolve into one where socialization will occure "virtuall
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
About a decade ago, back when we were poor student and sucky job having types, we used IRC as a means of communicating when one of us was out of town. It was cheaper than long distance at the time.
We still IRC some, because we have friends there. And we do use AIM around the house, mainly for slinging urls back and forth.
Yes, we actually speak to one another too.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
We occasionally use AIM here for things like that; everyone here has their own computer (or three in my case: gotta have the Linux desktop, Windows laptop, and a caching DNS server since your ISP's sucks) and at least one screenname (or 20+ if you're really pathetic... *cough*) on AIM.
What happens more often is that someone'll call me on my cell phone from the cordless phone in the kitchen to let me know it's dinner, since there isn't a computer it in the kitchen. Yet. (We're due for a cell phone upgrade, really. Maybe it's time for phones with AIM.)
I never realized until now how pathetic I am... I should e-mail a memo to my family suggesting that we occasionally talk to each other in person.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Since the whole family's spending the day sitting on their fat asses, don't we already know the answer?
McDonalds
Seriously though, get off your duff and talk face to face. If the kids are being lazy about coming downstairs, make them come down.
My wife recently got hooked on http://science.slashdot.org. Trying to call her is useless, she doens't hear it, so I have to IM her. It's the only thing that will get her attention even though her desk is only 6 feet from mine.
...Voice Over Air. The problem is that it's encumbered by patents related to an intermediate mechanism that's part of telephone, intercome, and remote radio communication.
A friend of mine, though, is working for a company which is working on a technology where you fill a building with another breathable fluid and use that as a mechanical transmission medium stimulated by human vocal cords, and I believe they're looking at a flat one time purchase fee for purchase of the fluid, rather than licensing costs.
Tweet, tweet.
"The Intensive Care Unit" in which a man is living his entire life through television channels, never has any physical contact with the rest of the world, and when he finally meets his wife and children (whom he had by artificial insemination of his wife), they blow out and tear each other to pieces. Of course this is practically impossible, but it's a neat take on the sensory deprivation you get from not interacting enough with your physical friends. I see more the use of IM in cases where it can't be easily replaced (baby is sleeping, physical distance, or the need to pass an URL), but otherwise you should raise your ass from the chair.
Generally, I agree that it borders on silly/worthless to "IM" each other when you're both in the same house.
I've had a few exceptions to the rule, though. For example, a couple times I've been sick and pretty much lost my voice. If I was in the basement and my wife was upstairs, it was nice to be able to get and easily respond to simple messages, like "I've almost got dinner ready." or "Can you come upstairs for a minute and help me with...." It really sucks trying to yell back to someone when you have a sore throat.
I've also used it as a way to "multitask" communications while I'm talking on the phone to someone. Instead of having to put the person on hold or interrupt the converstion, I can type in the background.
To keep him/her warm, of course.
Text messaging? That's old stuff. We have video conferencing between everyone in the house. Room to room. iChat and iSight. Great combination. Can't beat it.
IMHO, Isaac Asimov already explored this kind of social interaction in the Robot Series of novels. The two main characters are Elijah Baley and his partner R. Daneel Oliva, who are both detectives in the series.
Of particular importance is the world of Solaria where the society had evolved to such a point that any direct human contact was avoided as much as possible and people rarely met in person.
My copy shows a print date of 1983. So that puts The Robot Series well before the Internet was routinely available. However, there are some significant implications that he seems to have identified rather well in this series.
By the way, the entire human population of Solaria died off and no one was left except for one robot. It's an interesting story. I do hope that AIM isn't the beginning of this here on Earth.
It's a funny thing. It seems a little easier to be frank with someone, or ask a hard question over IM. Maybe it's because you can't see the other parties face. Whether the impact is positive or negative I don't know, having a blazing row with someone because of that frankness is not nessecarily bad, getting it out in the open to be dealt with rather than letting issues simmer for ages.
Inter household IM could have a really big effect on the way families communicate.
More like disgusting.
My husband and I often work long or odd hours, or other committments will have us coming and going, but we usually have access to a computer while at work, besides what we have at home.
It's very easy to chat about the day (vent frustrations, really, or the question of what's for dinner and who's picking it up, etc.) while it is happening or we have a free moment. There are days that if we see each other, one of us might be sleeping, so we may not get to chat at home for a few days in a row, but through email and IM we can still communicate ("don't wait up for me" - "dinner is on your own", etc.)
If it weren't for IM, I'd fear that we wouldn't get to talk very often or know what's going on in each other's lives. But since we're usually both wired, we can still communicate even when we're not in the same physical place.
-mrv
I think the movie was Honey I Shrunk The Kids. For everyone looking for downfalls, I think this one is pretty obvious.
n/t
I was initially very happy when I became a telecommuter - I have a nice house in the suburbs, entirely covered by wireless network, so I can read slashdot even in my bathroom. However, I am also a father of three and to most of my family my work hours are also leisure hours - since daddy is at home, why not go to his room and tell him what a good Dexter's Laboratory episode he just has missed on the Cartoon Network? Soon I discovered I need some way to mentally separate myself from my family just during the work hours - and working with headphones turned out to be the best solution. My family still needs to contact me sometime during my work, but the popping iChat windows with questions like "dad, can I play on PS2 now?" or "honey, what do you think of salmon for dinner?" don't distract me. So yes, we do use IM to chat with each other even when all of us are at home - and I see nothing wrong in that. After 5PM I take off the headphones and I can say the proverbial "honey, I'm home".
I think interfamily instant messaging is great especially for arguing with loved ones or best friends. It involves no yelling and reduces the emotions involved. I often use instant messages to argue with someone in the same room! The other benifit to arguing over an instant mesaging is that the argument isn't about who can yell the loudest or make the nastiest face, what you have to say actually counts and the other person cannot just simply talk over you or finish your sentinces to include passive agressive things. I LOVE IT IT MAKES MY RELATIONSHIPS SO MUCH EASIER WHEN I DON"T HAVE TO HAVE AN ARGUMENT FACE TO FACE! I would much rather duke it out on an even playing field in cyberspace. And for all you women out there just log the chat for easy reference. You said that you don't love me, check the damn logs!
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
True Story
With technology has come a multitude of conveniences, time savers, and capabilities of which our primitive ancestors could never have conceived. Take for example, the instant message. It is instantaneous, travels at the speed of light to its intended recipient, delivering important potentially critical information at the click of a button. It can be sent across the world, around the block, or to the next room.
Toxic waste disposal emergencies such as the one above could have not been addressed with such efficiency before the days of IM. Thank the Lord!
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
My spouse and I share an office. We sit across from each other. We can each look to the left of our monitors and see the other's face -- no yelling required (especially after putting the Athlon with jet-engine-like fan in the next room; door shut).
We still IM each other, every day. Why? Because we read a lot of web information and it's just so convenient to post a link to the other about our findings.
Or when a family member IMs one of us, it's easy to just copy the Jabber log out of gaim and paste it into the other's message window and share a conversation.
Or when a client IMs one of us, we can let the other in on the question or panic-stricken demand for help and colaborate on a course of action.
That's why!
The only problem I see with this sudden increase in instant communication is the eventual rise of linguistic entropy. Have you ever read an old collection of letters? I remember being impressed at some of the letters foot soldiers in the Civil War wrote to their families. Even moderately educated people seemed to write very well. I'm sure I sound like an old fogey, and that's okay. I also understand that language is an evolving thing. However, I think we are slowly degrading our language much in the same way instant mass media has eroded our art.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
And it's not stupid, and it's actually helpful.
:)
When we're both concentrating on whatever project that we're cooperating on, being able to send messages asynchronously to each other is fantastic as we can send replies to each other when we've finished a section of work.
Think of it as computer-assisted cooperative multitasking.
I use it when I need to get through to my daughter from work. Typical teenager, she has a phone glued to one ear and her KB stuck on AIM. So I IM her and tell her to hang up, I (or her Mom) needs to talk to her.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
I can't imagine anything worse than that kind of "Instant access."
I work at home and am online most of the time, but I use my IM particularly to stay in touch with a group of people who belong to the same Yahoo Group and who share a mutual interest in writing. It's the perfect gathering spot; when you fire up your YM, people in the group know you're "at home" as the old-fashioned term once ran, and ready to receive visitors. We use it to hold a weekly hour-long conference, too--sometimes inviting "guest speakers." Works quite well.
My spouse, kids, and Aged Parent can get me in a million different ways--there's the phone, e-mail, or a simple HEY, MA yelled upstairs. I prefer to keep the messaging to a civilized minimum and to have it on my own terms.
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
It was called collision avoidance. When your old man was communicating you avoided interrupting him otherwise there would have been a collision between you and him...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
So far, I've seen over a dozen posts suggesting that me chatting with my teenage sons are: an example of the breakdown of the modern family, an indication that we're a bunch of lazy geeks, or a sign that we need to go out and socialize. It's interesting to see these judgements, as they all assume that you know me or my family.
Yes, my oldest son and I IM each other when we're in the same house. We have even IM'd each other when in the same room. Typically, we both had parallel conversations going on with other people online, and also were talking "face to face" along with the IMs. Oddly enough, many of the posters in this thread don't seem to realize that some things are simply more funny when written than when spoken, and if both parties are reasonably good typists, the conversations can flow quite freely.
Also, there are some conversations that are awkward or uncomfortable to have in person. One of the reasons that lonely people use IM to establish new relationships is because of the comfort and anonymity of the medium. This can also be beneficial to people who know each other well, if there's an awkward subject that you want to discuss.
Recently, my son and I were discussing an article on the NY Times (I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't mind that they know I read their articles) about teenage sexuality, and the incidence of intercourse falling in the past couple of years. Now, this would be a bit of an odd conversation to have with your dad at any point, but especially when you're a teenage boy, currently in a dating relationship. Because of the medium, I was able to cast my question in a non-threatening way, and he was able to compose his response without me watching his expression, or second-guessing his body language.
Last but not least, I correct his grammar and spelling, and encourage him to learn to express himself with the written word. IM seems to be as good a place for immediate feedback and correction as any.
In short, before you assume that families chatting is another sign of impending doom, please be a bit more informed.
Tim
P.S. WRT us being a bunch of lazy geeks, he's 15, playing JV & Varsity basketball and football, and we regularly compare weightlifting routines. He regularly challenges me (typically by throwing a cross-body block in the kitchen), and is looking forward to the day (not far off) when he can "take dad down." Unfortunately for my wife, he weighs 190 lbs, and I weigh 230, so when we wrestle, things usually get broken. I'm no stud, but it's not like we sit around on our butts all day in front of the PC.
lets face it, star trek style comm badges is were this is all heading.
Between your intercom and IMing is that your intercomm required a specific action from you in order to communicate -- one that took you away from whatever else it was you were doing. You used the intercom *only* when you wanted to tell them something.
The IMing family works because the family is already on their own computers anyway. If the people are already on their computers, the IM does not take them away from what they're already doing, it's asynchronous communication, so can wait a few minutes if you're very involved in something, in short, it can make communicating between families easier.
Now, it's true that kids need to get outdoors and have some direct interaction with people, but IMing isn't the problem here.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
And I send email and IMs to the guy in the next cube over all the time, for two simple reasons:
a) Email, because there's no reason for me to try to verbally explain a problem when I can just send the original report, with all the details, over for his review
Or...
b) IM because there are just some things that shouldn't be shouted in a corporate environment, even though I'm already known by my coworkers for loud strings of four-letter expletives, especially when dealing with the marketing, revenue, or legal departments. Also good for sending backchannel thoughts while sitting on giant conference calls (and my phone doesn't have a mute button)
People complain about it because it is a repetitive waste of time and memory to deal with all this, not to mention a privacy violation if you actually enter correct information in an attempt to simplify your account management.
People resent it because practically no one else makes you register to read their silly articles.
And just to cut any repliers off at the pass, as a matter of fact, I don't read the articles because I have to register.
I'm not trashing on you in particular about not posting the Google cache. you are correct about that. I'm just offering an answer to your question. People complain about it because a significant subset of slashdotters have simply too many computers/too many login accounts/or care significantly about privacy, and so registration is a huge annoyance to them and they won't do it. Consequently, even the presence of a NYTimes article is a waste of their time.
Personally I would like to see a filter to hide all slashdot articles that require registration to access.
Thanks for your submission nonetheless.
What we've done is set up teamspeak on all hte machines in the house, all connected to an internal server.
The laptops have mics and speakers built in, and mics for the desktops are easy enough to come by. They're all set up for push-to-talk, and communications throughout the house is simple.
I was thinking of getting an intercom system when it hit me that I already have machines in most rooms in the house, and with teamspeak, it doesn't matter what OS each machine is running, and it's free...
Why can't people register, for free, without complaining?
Because we don't want to?
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
My entire family (all five of us) have had aim accounts since '99. My mom uses it at work to message us at home and we use it at home to message each other throughout the house rather than yelling (it pisses dad off). All in all, it's made our life a little quieter and peaceful. Downside is, you have a better chance of talking to someone on AIM than in person around here. Eh, welcome to the digital revolution I guess...
see sig. see sig run. run sig run.
the google cache isn't intended to bypass site registration policies.
To paraphrase from Johnny Mnemonic, the street finds its own use for Google (apologies to William Gibson).
It doesn't matter that the Google link isn't intended to bypass site registration policies. Policies are not law. People tend to take the path of least resistance.
If letting people read their articles through a Google referral wasn't in the interest of the New York Times, it would be no problem for the NYT to disallow referrals.
FYI, if you look closely, it's not a cache. It's a business relationship. partner=GOOGLE should be the first clue. The number of readers that the Google referral gives the NYT means that it can charge more for advertising. So it's a win-win-win proposition.
Google gains loyalty and repeat traffic from its users, the reader gets to read the article without registration and login hassles, and the New York Times gets more readers and can charge more for advertising.
Why can't people see that there's no harm done, so there's really no need to get holier-than-thou?
Cake isn't much good unless you can eat it...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Except sometimees I tell my gf that there's no need to msg me when I'm in the next room.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
I often talk with my roommate by IM. We can have quite delightful conversations while he's in the privacy of his own room, but getting much out of him outside of it is impossible.
Posted anonymously, for obvious reasons.
Maybe you could eat someone else's cake?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
... I'm running IRCD on linux so we can have our own private personal channels.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
You receive the award for "Biggest Slashdot Loser Weenie of the Year", and it's only January 3rd. Way to go, twatbox.
Heh, that's funny I was wondering exactly the same thing and came up with some startling discoveries.
Granted, we're somewhat geographically distanced now (one of my sisters lives with the folks in the burbs, and the other is in college, while I am in the city), but we talk a lot more now.
I don't call my sister on the phone to chat, we do it on IM. It's a lot easier, and I don't think anything is "lost"; as other posters have pointed out, the communication is async. I can chat with my college sister while watching TV, or doing work. And she does likewise.
The one that always amuses me is when I talk to my mother through my sister - the sister at home will be on IM, and my mom is in the same room watching TV. So little sister becomes the conduit. Yes, I could call my mom to ask these questions, but it is much easier to tell my sister to just ask her. What becomes funny is when the quick "ask mom what time I should come over on Saturday" becomes a long conversation all done via the third party. Especially when little sister editorializes the messages.
Photography, technology, and my dog Scout - http://mattstratton.com
It's particularly useful for sharing URLs (who wants to shout those?) and interesting little snippets of articles, etc.
There are some weaknesses, of course - mainly that my wife tends to have a bunch of windows open, and chat windows (particularly mine) get lost in the clutter. :)
The article really only gives summary of what IM is and does without really looking at the impacts as the title may suggest. When 75% of teenagers and 50% of adults online are using/have used IM of some sort(and I'm sure the percentage is higher for /.ers), who is this article targeted towards?
When I'm working, I really don't like being interrupted. We've got an internal IM system at work which some of the people use; it's mainly useful when we've got 3-hour training conference calls and you want to converse with someone without filling up the whole screen with Outlook.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I realise thats not what this is about.... but I live in New York and my parents in Bombay, India. So IM and text mnessaging on the phone is really the only practical way for me to keep in regular touch. I can't really afford to make phone calls more than once every week or two.
It's way easier to just say hi and a few quick things than calling -- sometimes it's just to leave a quick message even if i'm away.
I also got a digital camera for xmas and have lots of pictures up too... haha they'll love all the beerse i hold!
Berto
A friend told me that after her husband retired, he IM'd their son at college so much that the son blocked the dad's messages.
I've never used IM because it seems too distracting and obtrusive, but my wife and I e-mail each other sometimes, usually to forward e-mail or web links. If she needs an answer right away, she calls from her office phone to mine.
And if she needs computer help, I log onto her machine with pcAnywhere.
Ever since we got multiple computers and I taught my mom how to use aim, when dinner is ready I will get an IM instead of her screaming at the top of her lungs, much more civilized.
Not so much anymore since I live in an apartment at college but it has resumed now that I am home for the holidays.
Also getting mom and Dad used ot talkign to me on AIM has caused them to pickup more and more computer skills and experience and they nw chat with family and friends online, as well as myself when im at college.
If its important I will still get a call on my cell phone but if its your avg. "how was your day?" I get an IM, I like it that way.
If you have to IM your family members to find out what they want for dinner, then you, my friend, have a sad family.
Not only would this break down the barriers between family members, but it will ruin your communication links and skills. Remember, emotions cannot be portrayed through text.
--If only there was a license required to use a computer.
My two roommates and I moved in all not knowing each other, and we haven't exactly become friends. It's not like we hate each other or something, we just have our own lives. When we see each other around the apartment, nothing really gets said. But we're often all home, in our respective rooms, at our computers.
I think it'd be a good way for the three of us to start forming a bond.
Here and here
We have wired computers in near every room of the house, plus a wireless set up. When my brother, from out of town, came home for Christmas, there would be three of us sitting in the living room with our laptops. We wouldn't always IM, or at times do it as a joke. It's easy to IM link. We'll be talking, "Whoa, hey, check this link out!" Or, at one time, my mom and I were discussing what to get my dad for Christmas over IM. Why IM? He was sitting in the same room as us. I'd look at things I wanted to get him, send her the link. She approved, I eventually ordered it all right there, and he never knew the better? As well, I live in the attic. One post above mentioned how the guy lived in his basement and had an intercom. Well, that's me, but in the attic. And yes, I am a hermit. Often times my mom and I will talk on IM cause she doesn't like to come up here, and there is nothing for me to do down there. Normally though, I use it to talk to friends, people out of town, etc... I don't substitute it for normal conversation, but it is useful.
Xhentil Do'ana
We live in an apartment and IM across the room...it tends to keep the general noise level down in the house. (and our 2yr old can't read that mommy and daddy are plotting to get him to bed)
IM is especially beneficial in dissagreements - people are forced to support their claims with coherent and logical arguments, rather than increasing the volume of their speech.
My brother and I are in adjacent rooms down the same hallway. His computer is 1 wall and 15 feet away. If we even speak a little louder than usual, we can hear each other without any problems. This is why when he sends me an IM I call him a lazy bastard and tell him to come to my room if he has something to say. Every time. Without fail.
There was once a young man who walked around Seattle. Every time he visited a popular store, he would first have to stand still as some random part of his body was pierced and a little tag hung from the piercing. Of course, he was free to dodge this little nuisance, but he would often be denied access to the store. (The most popular and chic stores would always do this.) Of course, to receive the "convenience" of wearing a more permanent tag, one would register with the store, giving far too much personal information. But it was worth it, wasn't it? After all, it wouldn't be annoying at all to be tracked by this tag, along with others from advertisers, while going through life, would it?
Give me a break
Cookies were, in concept, a great thing, but they have become abused by advertisers. However, to block cookies is unwise, since many websites require cookies to allow entry. I take a compromise and have all cookies deleted at the end of the current session.
The New York Times asks for registration, and the parent post argues that this one-time exploitation of personal information is enough--cookies will sign the particular user back in for subsequent sessions. There are, however, problems with this:
I take offense to having my personal information exploited, even if it only occurs in one instance. (n.b.: not "one instance" here, since the data is kept on file.)
I take offense to being tracked, and having my viewing patterns and other information available to a party. (n.b.: this applies to NYT as well as their advertisers.)
I should not be penalised for my pursuit of privacy (a right which should already be enforced by others) by having to take extraordinary measures to perform regular tasks.
I recommend the parent author to rethink his words for accuracy.
So that means there are actually two users of ICQ out there?
Photos.
The very fact we are even discussing this is sad.
It just another example of the slow destruction of the family.
Spend time with your family.. dont go hide and send them messages.. geesh.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I've got no problem with cookies for sites that you obviously need you to be log in to, like Slashdot and forums, but why does the NYT need this?
/. from at least 10 different computers on any given day, and it's very annoying when I click on just-another-article-link and get hit with yet another NYT login page.
I browse
To me this sounds ludicrous.
If you can consistently IM your family, then I guess that (1) your family is using computers too much, (2) you are not spending enough time together, and (3) you are getting too sedentary.
I imagine a house with 4 computers in 4 different rooms where mom, dad, son, and daughter all sit alone staring at the phosphorus. It sounds lonely and brings up images of the BORG.
Oh get off your high horse.
Without IM:
"Darling, I'm ordering the Tescos - do we need any more shower gel?"
"Sorry?"
"Do we need any more shower gel?"
"WHAAAT I CAN'T HEAR YOU?"
"DO WE NEED ANY MORE SHOWER GEL?"
"NO - I ORDERED TWO BOTTLES LAST TIME"
"THANK YOU"
With IM:
(Tappitty Tappitty Tappitty)
(Tappitty Tappitty Tappitty)
(Tappitty)
There are some things it's not worth stopping what you are doing and going downstairs to just say 'yes' or 'no' about - it's not laziness. These are the things you normally shout around the house about. If you're both on IM you can just ask without needing to bawl the house down. Lovely.
Seriously, every single time you talk to a family member do you get up and make sure you talk face to face? Of course not. Some stuff you just call out about.
It's just like intercom systems, i mean it's just the further lazification of north american society and the degradation of families,
Sometimes it's being unique, sometimes friendly, sometimes convenient...
In college, we used it to ask someone to bring us a beer...our apartment was long and narrow and it was easier when the stereo was on than shouting or getting up...after all, college is for laziness.
Now, at work, I use it all the time via Vivster to communicate with my fellow programmers...yes, they're in the same office without walls or cubes to separate us, but when you're deep into code, an IM is much less intrusive than a spoken word...you can queue an IM until a bit later whereas spoken information flips an interrupt in your brain immediately.
Sometimes an IM can get a conversation started between my fiancee and I that would have been difficult to start in person, just due to the sensitivity of it. Sometimes written word can be more explicit than spoken.
The right tool for the right context, I say.
Blog,Twitter
I find it extremely annoying when my each family member hogs 20-25 threads on our system when all they are doing is being on AIM, broadcasting an away message. This makes it impossible for me to do any decent graphical calculations (or play ArmyOps). "reliably being on AIM" merely causes fights over CPU time between family members.
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
I'm having trouble deciding which as more packet loss, my house or my ISP...
Pinging 12.0.0.2 with "What's for dinner?"
Reply from 12.0.0.2: "What?!?!!?"
Reply from 12.0.0.2: "HUH?!!?!"
Request timed out.
Reply from 12.0.0.2: "I still can't hear you!"
Reply from 12.0.0.2: "Oh - Meatloaf!!!!!"
Ping statistics for 12.0.0.2:
Packets: Sent = 5, Received = 1, Lost = 4 (80% loss)
Bad parenting is no longer limited to the uneducated, drug-addicted set. Now geeks can neglect their children too. Why spend your time parenting when you can sit your kid in front of a TV or computer so you have time to yourself? Why walk in the next room to talk to your kid and see what they're up to, when you can just an IM and forget it?
See, the thing is, parents today want to live the same lives they did before they made babies. They treat their children like adults, regardless of age, so that the parents can continue enjoying adult things.
I explain this just so you don't wonder about it when you notice a plethora of kids under 6 years of age watching Return of the King, Last Samurai and Cold Mountain.
I think this one is a no brainer. It is all about the way that people use IM. We had the same discussion at work recently (which sadly meant IM got banned).
IM is only a problem/imterruption/hassle what ever if you let it be. If you let it rule your life then , just like email/cellphone/any new comms method, it will.
Good luck, hope you find a way that suits you.
Take care - RL
... is that a new trillian window has an annoying tendency to break him out of whatever fullscreen program he was running, and occasionally to crash it.
:)
And we're sitting physically *next* to each other. On the same desk, with two computers. And we still message each other.
Generally either to paste a URL or when we're arguing (argue with PRECISION - keep logs!)
Messages are occasionally sent upstairs to the other generally-on-the-computer member of the household, but she tends not to respond quickly, so if you really want an answer out of her we go and ask in person. If it's non-urgent we message.
I laughed at your post and then perused your site until I got to your blog.
On behalf of all of us here at Slashdot, deepest condolences for your loss.
If that is someone else's blog... nevermind.
In the case of a high conflict divorce with children involved, IM'ing can be a relatively low conflict way, for the children to keep in touch with the parent they're not currently with at a given time. (In many cases, the children feel on the spot if they're on the phone with one parent while within earshot of the other.)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I might be able to help you with that.
All I can say is: Wow...
So, I've been defensive about this, and am getting modded as offtopic in this defense (unlike the others commenting on the privacy issue, oddly enough).
This debate notwithstanding, the grandparent of this made an excellent point about the tension between the desire of the stores/websites to get this info and the desires of individuals to be left alone.
And, for the record, I've recognized my mistake in thinking the google link bypassed the NYT site, and will be happy to at least try to identify such links in the future. Just like it's the prerogative of the NYT to ask for registration, it's the prerogative of others to use a back door left so wide open.
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
I admit it, I have used er, abused IM to the point where I have told the kids supper is ready. It was an exparament sorta. I actually think I got a better response then just yelling for them.
I do seriously use it to IM them when they are at their friends or boyfriends. I hate to admit it but one of their friends will know where they are and get the word to them. There is a new culture brewing with teens today, they are all online and it is a secondary means of communication for them.
One of the more unique things that I am aware of is that my daugter has several classes where the kids do their homework together via IM/chat with the full approval and santion of their teacher.
I can't use IM. I guess I haven't learned to use it well.
I don't know how allocate appropriate resources to IM while trying to get something done. It also seems like it results in endless small talk. I'm just really bad at that in text. Does this happen to other people too?
Result: alienated friend or stupid mistake at work or both.
This is similar to what used to happen when I'd try to write a letter. I'd either convey approximately nothing, or get so caught up in details that I was suddenly on my way to writing a novella. It's a personal problem, I guess.
The same thing can happen when I'm on the phone, but I've learned to multitask better there, and my friends can recognize my tone of voice even if I don't realize it's time to hang up.
I'd really like to learn to use this tool better. I guess it's just practice. Any other suggestions? (Don't be a dumbass doesn't count.)
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I'd be more worried about the fact that I considered being on IM as "being instantly and constantly accessible to one's spouse and children."
Intracranial wireless AIM ! And a double-monitor setup - one per optic nerve ! Extra space in the cerebellum can be used as the Doom server.
Well, okay, it wasn't a frat, just 5-6 guys living in 1 fairly small house. Almost every one of us had computers. We'd regularly be IMing each other (and then laughing out loud), because it's a pain to shout through an open doorway. Sound never seems to travel distinctly through doorways.
Then there was the time the roommate sitting next to me sent me email to (basically) say 'yes'. Our computer cases were less than 6 inches apart at the time.
If you think that's bad, you should see the response a kid has when he discovers that technology means you can be watching even when you're not standing right there.
Enter one copy of Ethereal and one copy of a remote desktop viewing software package, installed in stealth mode.
You never saw a teenager clean up their act faster than when they saw a replay of an IM conversation through a sniffer after they complained about slow network access.
When a kid's friends - like his parent's friends - are scattered throughout the planet and aren't local, IM is a great way to keep in touch. It sure saves on phone bills.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
mom:wow, you really don't eat much for lunch. I'll get it ready
(translation: kid is doing weed with his friends and getting the munchies)
mom: are you ready for dinner?
dad (autoreply): don't bother me for 30 minutes in the bedroom, I've got a videoconference
(reality dad's screwing the babysitter)
Once mom gets her own bot figured out this family will really be f'd up
I find that IM-ing with my wife is in some ways more intimate than talking. This is nothing new, people have been having deep and intimate relationships via the post for hundreds of years.
You should rethink your rights in regards to private corporations and how they operate.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Then what are they developing by talking to people? Anti-social skills?
Me and my room mates always use ICQ to talk to each other, lots of the time the phone will ring, and u will get a IM saying that the phone is for u. it is a great working system.
It's not obvious to find the download for this. Here.
Some script on some server doesn't give a shit what you put down for a name and address. Make something up. Sign up an enemy. Be obscene in your falsification of data. Wallow in lies. You're lying to a computer. This will not come back to bite you in the ass.
Hell, my ISP has no idea what my real name is. I signed up in person and prepaid in cash. Let the New York Times "track" Chochi Gonzalez of Forest Park, Illinois, for example (that's what I am. Feel free to use it.)
Additionally, the NYT doesn't give a shit what web sites you look at. I doubt they're tracking you, especially for personal data; perhaps they'd want aggregate data, in which case you have nothing to fear anyway. You're in far more danger of letting the phone company know your real identity.
Oh wait.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
When I'm home from college, the only IMs my mom and I send back and forth are usually "could you come here a minute?" Being part of a geek family, we send links, pictures and such back and forth. It dosen't have to be all about "conversations."
My brother is constantly on the phone with his girlfriend and forgets what he is doing online. He tends to barracade the cat in his room to play with her while hes talking on the phone or playing on the computer. I logged off Ymessenger last night and I heard this loud laugh. My brother came in and said that when I logged off yahoo, the sound his messenger made (a door closing) caused the cat to attack the computer beating at the keyboard as she was sitting beside the laptop.
Funny, I wish it was on tape.
DRACO-
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
My husbands PC is in a loft that over looks the living room. The living room is usually where I am with my laptop. We can see each other through the banister, and occasionally talk in IMs. Not because we're lazy, or antisocial, but because it becomes an easy way to "talk" without making noise and waking up our 7 month old baby.
- Spring
because our house is small, so voice works just fine. However, I do IM from work. My kids will ask when I am getting home, help with homework questions, and deliver the wife's to-do list. (Hate that last one...)
:)
Anyway, it's pretty cool in that my kids know they can reach me before the early evening hours. I also know they are home
IM in the house seems really silly to me, but maybe some folks like the quiet...
Blogging because I can...
Good way to avoid doing work without the boss knowing.
Why would a mobile phone company implement it when it already exists?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Hear, Hear!
All my friends and I at school IM each other (yes, even my roommate/suitemates), but we use proper spelling/typing/grammar.
I also make a point to harrass anyone - especially my little sister - who spells words with numbers, or uses horrid abbreviation, or anything mutated beyond belief.
Enter one good parent, with the intent of installing good morals in their teenager. Beats the Hell out of using software to spy on your kids all day long.
You never saw a teenager clean up their act faster than when they saw a replay of an IM conversation through a sniffer after they complained about slow network access.
And watch how fast the trust breaks between teenager and parent. Keeping a constant eye on your kids will probably deter them from doing anything you wouldn't approve of, however, in doing so, you not only break the trust, but also risk having your kids despise you.
Also, the conversations your teenager has with his/her friends are private, and, for the most part, none of your business. One day your kids will have to face the world on their own, and you won't be there to hold their hand and watch over them.
If you think that's bad, you should see the response a kid has when he discovers that technology means you can be watching even when you're not standing right there.
The immediate response is that they fall in line pretty fast. However, you are also telling them how little you trust them to do the right thing without your immediate supervision.
I have recently moved off to college, but I guess I was fortunate in my home; I held all the keys when it came to the network and the Internet connection. However, I do remember back in the early days of instant messaging when I left a computer sitting wide open with ICQ running. My mom took the opportunity to poke through my logs, and, of course, she was rather displeased with some of the language I had used. She had every right to be angry about what she found, but the fact that she poked around caused an irreversable change. She had proved to me that she did not trust me to handle myself accordingly, and it forced me to lock down every electronic device I owned. It also caused me to withdraw from my family. I used to keep my computer(s) downstairs, in plain view of my parents. However, I moved up to my room after hearing one too many "What are you typing over there?" comments. It caused me to withdraw from my family, but it was the only way I could escape constant harassment and have a little privacy.
And the language 'problem'? Well, it wasn't solved by my mom chewing me out. As I became older, I realized when certain language could be taken as crude and inappropriate.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, instill good morals in your children, show them that you trust them, and it will probably lead to a better relationship.
I've actually pretty much concluded that it's a pretty decent indicator of intelligence. Of the people I talk to on IM, I've noticed that the ones that tend to be a bit smarter are the ones that tend to go 'the extra mile' needed to like one extra character to spell "to" instead of "2." And from talking to my friends, it seems I'm not the only one. IMing me with "hey, whut do u want 2 do 2nite?" is a surefire way to make me not want to do anything.
I'm this way, too. The only 'aol-isms' i use are the occasional LOL or smiley in IRC, and this is mostly for lack of a better solution. I pretty much ignore anything with numbers substituted for syllables.
I know we tend to use emoticons or even XML tags (okay, only the truly geeky do this) to communicate ideas that would only be communicated via body language or the inflection of a person's voice. However, one has to remember that the letter was the primary means of communication before the telephone. Many of the great thinkers also had large volumes of correspondence. Thomas Jefferson wrote so many letters, he even "invented" a device to create multiple copies (like a very crude multi-tipped pen) of his letters. Historically, has there ever been a convention for conveying body language or meta-information in letters or did these writers learn to work within the limitation of their medium?
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
My dad uses Yahoo messenger and my sister uses MSN I use linux for everything but play games - so they are "You buy Windows games... why cant you talk on yahoo/MSN?" I had GAIM but Yahoo and MSN keep breaking itso they are "You PMed me last month why cant you now?" At the end of the day, I dont want to buy Viagra or watch people get pissed upon so I killed GAIM/my ICQ# as the primary source of spam in my life. i use Email now - because it just works
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
My mum was constantly contacting me on MSN saying things like "breakfast is ready!" or "lunch is ready!" or the worst one, "dinner is ready!". It got to the point that I blocked her. My sister and my mum are always chatting with each other though and they exchange various clothes websites with each other etc and take up double my bandwidth instead of just sitting round one computer and looking! *sigh*
The benefits of using Mac OS X, with Apples free iChat (or "iChat AV" (read: webcam ready), free with jaguar) lets you message everybody remotely on your network over rendezvous, without needing an Internet connection, or indeed, having to create an account with any of these clients.
I'm surprised nobody pointed this out sooner...
But when I'm a few meters away from the person I'm chatting with, I discovered that opening my mouth to talk was much better.
Oh, I don't know. IM lets you use hyperlinks. If you know how to make audio, picture, and video content, or where to find it, you can augment your usual text-speech-text transmission pathways with sound and image. This is great for sharing experience without having to laborously describe in words. Want to give a family member directions to somewhere? Forget spelling it out in words talking to them in person. (They're good at tuning out your voice by now anyway.) Go AIM them a Yahoo Map to where you mean.
A lot of family communication is about relaying experience, but movies might be easier than text in this regard.. "Hey mom! My friends and I just got back from the skatepark- I learned how to do a 360 Stalefish today!" "Uh... uh that's nice dear, what is that?" "Well you catch some air off the lip and then grab the board behind your..."
In the future communication will likely be even more multi-media. After all, the ability to send images and soudns along with speech has some of the magic of telepathy.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
...from the ill-fated Miranda/AJ romance (storyline starts a few days earlier, Nov 6).
I wish Adelphia or Comcast let you do this.
Of course, right now I'm sitting in the terminal of a major international airport, using a free WiFi connection I don't even know where-from (the SSID is just "guest"), so it doesn't get more anonymous than that I suppose. But it'd be nice to have at home.
Well, it's a local ISP with only two numbers - one for my city and one for the bordering city. It's called Quantum World. They make the bulk of their money through their internet cafe and catered (Doritos and Dew) D&D tournaments - two services I never used. So, if you live in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, there you are. As you may have guessed, they only offer dialup, but it's only $8/month, and pretty reliable as far as $8/month goes.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
While in spite of my efforts, I have fallen victim to some of the most ubiquitous "net slang", I do tend to completely dismiss those who use it to the point that the language is completely unrecognizable.
I do use "lol", and even will allow "u" and "r" in place of "you" and "are" to slip out on rare occasions, I find that even if I am able to understand some of the butchered language, I refuse to communicate with someone who insists on using such obfuscated language that I cannot immediately recognize it as english.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
aitch.
-calyxa
Decay! Decay! Decay! -Helium
If you don't want to be tracked on the net while visiting the New York Times web site, then here's a novel suggestion for you:
Buy a bloody newspaper. It's what, a couple of dollars? Complete privacy. You can even keep it for later reading (as opposed to the free NYT website articles, which aren't accessible when they're archived)
The NYT web site is free in money terms, non-free in other ways. Deal with it.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
try this at
/domain:workgroup dinner's ready!
:)
/DOMAIN[:name] | /USERS} message
/DOMAIN[:name] Sends the message to all the names in the workstation domain. If name is specified, the message is sent to all the names in the specified domain or workgroup. /USERS Sends the message to all users connected to the server.
/.*
c:\net send
at commandline
C:\>net help send
The syntax of this command is:
NET SEND
{name | * |
Sends messages to other users, computers, or messaging names on the network. The Messenger
service must be running to receive messages.
You can send a message only to a name that is
active on the network. If the message is sent to a
username, that user must be logged on and running
the Messenger service to receive the message.
name Is the username, computername, or messaging name to send the message to. If the name is a computername that contains blank characters, enclose the alias in quotation marks (" "). Sends the message to all the names in your group.
message Is text to be sent as a message.
NET HELP command | MORE displays Help one screen at a time.
*and thanks for the useless formating
http://www.jabber.org/wiki/index.php/E2E - I can personally vouch for Jabber having an encrypted mode.
Since I live across the ocean from my folks, IM really helps us stay in better touch, as long distance phone calls are really expensive, so we only use those for emergencies or special occasions. I feel IM has actually brought the family closer together in some ways, its somthing to do with type I think, things you wouldnt normally talk about in person, you seem more open to do so through type.. so go cry in a closet.
I realize this is a couple of days late, have been on the road.
I find it somewhat amusing that you seem to think that I have a bad relationship with my stepson - matter of fact, he's one of the most responsible 16-year-olds I know, we allow him to have his computer in his room, and as a result of the incident (which actually happened years ago), he knows where the limits are and why they're there.
You are correct, however, that software supervision is not the only thing necessary - and certainly, that isn't the only piece of the puzzle - there does have to be good communication as well, explaining why it's important and outlining what the consequences are for actions - and that he needs to take responsibility for his actions.
But parents need to take some time to learn how the technology works as well - and I think that's one difference in our household than in others; I work with technology on a daily basis, and consequently, know more about how this all works than the average parent. My stepson knows this, and respects my knowledge, frequently seeking my advice.
It also prepares him for the real world, so when he gets out there and gets a job, he knows what's acceptable in the workplace and what is not, and also what means are out there to catch him if he does something wrong. He knows the importance of keeping a password secure, and will never write it down on a post-it note where someone can frame him for inappropriate use of a company's computing resources.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
I've surfed through a number of comments on this, and I haven't yet seen a discussion on learning styles.
Frankly, I'm not someone who absorbs information well by audio. I have to pay attention to talk radio to understand what's going on, even though I am interested in the topic. On the other hand, written information registers. I remember things people type to me, sometimes verbatim, and catch typos even when I am not paying attention. It only makes sense that I would prefer the method of communication with which I am natively most comfortable.
Any other writerly types feel the same way?