Tech Columnists' Day Without Email

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "When a recent power outage disrupted email service at WSJ.com, our tech columnists were plunged backwards into a time before every meeting, every little task, came with an email-program reminder, and where checking the bottom right of the screen for a new-mail envelope was futile. "Some of us quickly got a reminder that email is the lingua franca of projects that bridge different departments and involve a lot of people," Tim Hanrahan and Jason Fry write. "For all the talk of whiteboarding, it's email threads that we rely on to remember where we left certain questions and what our next moves are. Similarly, email has become our storage system for important documents and works in progress--how often do you email yourself? It's also replaced the telephone for lots of our routine touching base between colleagues, friends and families: Instant messaging is simultaneously too casual and too intrusive, and weekday phoning is reserved for more-substantive matters and emergencies. So a lot of that social lubrication went out the window.""

Comments

Interesting story, just one question:

[donscarletti]

Um, how is email hardware?

Re:Interesting story, just one question:

[Phisbut]

Um, how is email hardware?

It all started with a power outage... I guess you *need* the hardware to read the email...

Re:Interesting story, just one question:

[AviN456]

Well, all the email obviously must go through a server(s) at some point. If those go down, the email is effectively down. If the client computers go down, You could still get your email from elsewhere, but in an office setting, thats usually not feasable.

Re:Interesting story, just one question:

[OldeTimeGeek]

Um, how is email hardware

Could be because you need hardware to read it, hardware to store it and hardware to transmit it? Email itself may be software, but everything that supports it is done in hardware.

Power stops, hardware that supports e-mail transmission, delivery and viewing stops. No email for you.

Re:Interesting story, just one question:

[fiannaFailMan]

"Um, how is email hardware?"

Hardware failure. Caused the email to go down.

Re:Interesting story, just one question:

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

It's hardware because the 'business' or 'social hindrances' headings this particular article would go under are definitely NOT news for nerds. The news is that even the WSJ suddenly thinks Smart Nerds are Necessary, after one day of doing without 'em. Neat, eh? However, not something a proper heading should exist for.

Re:Interesting story, just one question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then I guess there's no such thing as a software issue since you need hardware to run any software.

Re:Interesting story, just one question:

[uhlume]

Huh? Did you even read the first sentence of the synopsis? What does this have to do with needing or doing without smart nerds?

Re:Interesting story, just one question:

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Smart nerds have redundant Power Supplies and E-mail Servers.

Ah, well that explains it

[Anonymous Coward]

our tech columnists were plunged backwards into a time before every meeting, every little task, came with an email-program reminder

Ah, well that explains the recent tech rumor flurry then; the WSJ had simply been transported back in time to 1996, when Apple was dying

Re:Ah, well that explains it

[koi88]

Ah, well that explains the recent tech rumor flurry then; the WSJ had simply been transported back in time to 1996, when Apple was dying

Did I hear "beleaguered"?
Ah, the old times...

I know what you mean...

[teutonic_leech]

I was working on a development contract when our CEO decided to cut Internet access for all consultants (someone was caught bidding on eBay - not me ;-) Anyway, I was so distraught, I quit the next day...

Re:I know what you mean...

[Leroy_Brown242]

For many, cutting internet access would mean a severe drop in productivity too. Internet access for me doesn't directly effect my job, but it sure does lower my stress levels a bit. :)

Re:I know what you mean...

[teutonic_leech]

Yeah, that was actually my reasoning. Although they offered to open up access to all java related sites I still refused to stay there. At the end of the day - if you treat people like children they will act like children. Finally, I also wanted to draw a line in sand - we techies have been taking a lot of sh...t in the last few years and sometimes it's good to tell them to f...ck off when they try to cross the line. Hey, don't mess with my slashdot access, alright? ;-)

Re:I know what you mean...

[Leroy_Brown242]

"if you treat people like children they will act like children."

Durring the great belt tightening after the bubble burst, I saw this happen countless times at several jobs. Once you start restricting people's freedoms at work, geeks tend to just push back or leave.

Re:I know what you mean...

[Phisbut]

I was working on a development contract when our CEO decided to cut Internet access for all consultants

I used to work at Ubisoft when they provided full internet access to employees... lately, to be coherent with the industry's concept of "let's piss our employees off as much as possible", they decided to completely cut off internet access. I'm not there anymore (left way before they cut), but I still have a couple of friends over there, and we used to MSN a whole lot on boring days (yes, they can have that sometimes...). Now, it's mostly just boring cause they ain't online anymore...

Re:I know what you mean...

[SatanicPuppy]

I'm one of those people who gets random CS projects thrown at them all the time...no standard languages, no general theme, just get it done. Without the internet I couldn't DO my job...I need to be able to hit forums and online documentation and download app frameworks and junk like that.

If I couldn't do that, I'd have to have a huge tech library, and some kind of dedicated Special Ops force that kept tabs on OSS developers, kept track of what their software did, then kicked down their doors and got copies of their files whenever I needed an upgrade.

Re:I know what you mean...

[tanguyr]

I was working on a development contract when our CEO decided to cut Internet access for all consultants

I know of at least one company where consultants/contractors don't have a telephone on their desk... real life is sometimes more dilbert than dilbert.

Re:I know what you mean...

[Professr3]

Personally, I know if my environment is good and work is pleasant, I'm delighted and happy to code my rear end off for a company. However, when they become distrustful/restrictive, I tend to get stubborn... It's a natural human response, I'm told.

Re:I know what you mean...

[coopex]

Scene: 2 am, Upper South Side. It's drizzling and there's a slight wind.
SatanicPuppy turns up his collar to the cold and damp. He hurridly walks along, always anxious to get these meetings out of the way. A car cruises by. He pauses, slightly alarmed, but it keeps going. Stopping to light a ciggarette, he takes a futive look around, then quickly turns into the alleyway. It takes a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness, but then his sees the dull red glow of a cigarette.
"You're late", his contact says, his voice monotone.
"There was trouble, I had to be absolutely sure that no one suspects anything's going on", he nervously replies.
His contact continues smoking his cigarette.
Stammering, he blurts out "I've got the money."
"Good."
After another long pause, his contact take a drag from his cigarette and continues "The files are at..." rattling off a random sounding website and the password.
His contact takes the money, vanishing into the darkness. SatanicPuppy sighs, makes sure he has the info perfectly memorized, and walks away, thinking how much easier it would be if he had internet access.

ugh

[Alcimedes]

Remind me not to work someplace where they promote "Social lubrication".

Re:ugh

[stinky wizzleteats]

Remind me not to work someplace where they promote "Social lubrication".

Nor where they randomly hurl it out of windows.

Re:ugh

[nizo]

The visual imagery from that term is horrible, something akin to a bunch of people standing in line to dip their hands into a really large jar of Vasoline which everyone shares.

Re:ugh

[kfg]

Oh I don't know. If I get to pick who I socially lubricate I can see certain advantages in it.

KFG

Re:ugh

[ArielMT]

F---edCompany.com - The official lubricant of the new economy. Not work-safe, but definitely worth hotlisting. :)

Re:ugh

[WGR]

Social lubrication: just another word for beer.

Re:ugh

[Lord Dimwit Flathead]

You should be grateful they're using their hands.

Re:ugh

[nizo]

Ahh, so the imagery can get worse after all. Many thanks while I go look for an icepick to start poking into my head until the imagery goes away.

Re:ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. Fingers with even standard-human-issue nails are astronomically more painful than certain other body parts when insert in certain bodily orifices unless you are VERY careful.

Re:ugh

[Aggrav8d]

Remind me not to work someplace where they promote "Social lubrication".

But they get such a great bulk discount!

Re:ugh

[mikael]

And Human Resources would be organising "group hug" days every week.

Re:ugh

[tool462]

Aim deep. The visual cortex is in the back of the brain ;)

e-mail... it's a natural evolution

[yagu]

Seems to me the advent of e-mail as a key role player in managing information is pretty natural evolution. In the face of all efforts to create information management systems, data mining systems, et. al., e-mail quietly assumes a central responsibility for more people than ever. And this has probably happened for a few reasons:

• e-mail has been around for a long long time, and has finally been socialized to be as everyday common activity or vernacular as "google" (ironic).
• e-mail is comfortable. People abstract e-mail easily from their previous snail mail universe. Interestingly I've seen people actually evolve e-mail habits to mimic their snail mail habits, e.g., checking only once a day, managing "turn around" times to the tune of days, not minutes, etc.
• e-mail has leveraged the rest of IT technology as processors and storage have increased through the years.
• e-mail is central, i.e., you can (once you get comfortable with this) pretty much start managing much of your data life around e-mail... why not? You have to pretty much go there all the time for communication anyway, why not send yourself reminders, links, data, etc., and use e-mail searching to retrieve.
• e-mail is now amazing with the leverage of third party technology like Google Desktop search. I've pretty much gotten to total (okay, heavy) reliance on Google Desktop and e-mail for managing data in my Windows environment.

Probably a lesson learned from the article is the importance of some contigency plan, but losing e-mail for a day sounds like it turned into a positive experience for the authors. Regardless, it appears once you lose e-mail access (in power outage, system outage, etc.), you've lost essentially your context of IT anyway, and contingency is pretty much old school interaction (phone calls, paper trails, MBWA, etc.)... no biggy.

Re:e-mail... it's a natural evolution

[donscarletti]

but losing e-mail for a day sounds like it turned into a positive experience for the authors

Similarly, accidental castration would probably make me more a more sensitive person, being wrongfully incarcerated would teach me to look after myself in all situations and getting terminal cancer would teach me the value of life. That doesn't mean I'd like any of those things to happen.

Re:e-mail... it's a natural evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

getting terminal cancer would teach me the value of life.

You know I believe that this is the entire point of the movie Saw.

As a bonus, it also seems to teach you the value of killing other people, horribly.

Re:e-mail... it's a natural evolution

[Uruk]

I hope that the natural evolution provides for changes to the email system. I'd agree with your points, but email is far from perfect for about a million reasons. Examples:

• E-mail is not a file transfer mechanism. Don't even try it with really huge files, and it probably shouldn't be used as a file repository (Everything you've gotten over the past 5 years, including 10 iterations of the same document, etc)
• It's lacking in metadata in many places. Headers are great, user-added headers are better, but there's some semantic metadata that's missing and would be helpful.
• People violate standards in creative ways about the main text of the message (is it text, is it an HTML attachment, is it HTML as the text, etc) and encoding of attachments.
• Interchange between systems like lotus, outlook, straight internet email, various groupware packages. These lose email addresses and only use name aliases with forwarded messages, and so on. You have a huge problem with gateways between systems
• Non-standard integration with other packages, such as sending meeting announcements as a very particular type of email message (Outlook). This is another example of missing metadata - rather than being a particular piece of text, it should be flagged as what it is - a meeting announcement

It seems that with IPV4, people designed a network to operate in a particular context (academic research 20-30 years ago). Later, it was acknowledged that the first cut standard doesn't do everything that's needed for a global distributed network, and now we're moving to IPV6. Why shouldn't the same happen with the email related standards and systems?

Re:e-mail... it's a natural evolution

[Detritus]

E-mail is not a file transfer mechanism. Don't even try it with really huge files, and it probably shouldn't be used as a file repository (Everything you've gotten over the past 5 years, including 10 iterations of the same document, etc)

Why not? I use it all the time for small to medium size files. It's the most convenient way for me to send someone one or more files. For example, I'll do some data analysis, plot the results to several PDF files, and send the PDF files as attachments to an explanatory email message. With the right email client, the plots get displayed with the message.

I'm sure there is some system administrator at the receiving end who is unhappy about his email system getting clogged up with attached files. I don't care, and he better get used to it. The email system was installed to meet the needs of the users, not the system administrator.

Re:e-mail... it's a natural evolution

[Uruk]

Why not? I use it all the time for small to medium size files

Ever tried using it for large files? It's not so much that you annoy your administrator if you do this, it's more that the actual software out there is just lousy at supporting these types of actions. It does work fine for small and medium files, but unless it works well for all files, it can't really be called a good file transfer mechanism.

It's the most convenient way for me to send someone one or more files

That's part of my point - there's no reason you should use something other than email to do this. It is the most convenient way to do it. It's just that the current software sucks to support that. You can't so much as tag a description of an attached file when you do attach something. You have to describe in the body of the email what r4242_b233.pdf actually is.

With the right email client, the plots get displayed with the message

With the right email client. I use Mutt, maybe you use Outlook, maybe the third person uses Eudora. Are we all going to see it?

I'm sure there is some system administrator at the receiving end who is unhappy about his email system getting clogged up with attached files. I don't care, and he better get used to it. The email system was installed to meet the needs of the users, not the system administrator.

Again I agree. The point I was trying to make is that the protocols, standards, software, and hardware aren't behind email to make it possible for him to support some types of usage efficiently. The course of action I'd suggest is not to fire the sysadmin or give up your hopes of doing things conveniently, but rather to revamp the idea of email a bit so you could continue doing the same reasonable things, only have them well supported and reliable.

Re:e-mail... it's a natural evolution

[Bob Uhl]

You can't so much as tag a description of an attached file when you do attach something.

Not true--you actually can, but only one email client that I know of supports it (gnus--of course).

Re:e-mail... it's a natural evolution

[GigsVT]

That points out a major problem that no one seems to be addressing... It's nearly impossible to move large files across the Internet, with a normal client machine doing the sending.

FTP.. sucks, not designed to work with firewalls, and there are many firewalls that choke it.

SSH/SCP/SFTP.. Great! But not many people have GUI clients installed for it. Web browsers don't support users clicking a ssh URL, entering their user and pass, and letting them drag and drop to the directory. Some browsers do support this for FTP, but FTP has problems mentioned above.

Email.. Not good for large files, many servers reject or choke if you try to shove much more than 20-30 megs down them. Also bloats binaries by having to 7-bit encode them. Spam filters are a problem, as are virus filters. Spam filters more prone to go off if you don't 7 bit encode your attachment, and the client might not know how to handle a nonencoded attachment.

HTTP.. Almost ideal! Except.. browers are TERRIBLE at giving feedback to the user about the upload progress. There's no way to resume the upload. Handling the files securely on the server side is difficult. Squid used to/still does ship with a default configuration that will cause any upload over 10 megs to fail. Other proxies can screw up HTTP uploads too.

WebDAV.. Not bad, but not something most people are familiar with. Client support is OK with recent OS versions. Still might have proxy problems. Not as easy to set up on the server side as other things.

AIM.. Only good for person-to-person transfers, not person-to-server. File transfer not well implemented in some third party clients.

Custom Client.. Good, because you control everything on the client. Bad in that the user has to install something, you have to write something, and maintain it for multiple platforms. Java applet can't be done without paying for a certificate and signing.

--

I work in prepress, clients often have to send us large files. The way it goes most of the time is they try one of these, then resort to fedexing us a CD/DVD, because something fucked up.

Please for the love of god someone solve this problem! It can't be that hard, it's what the Internet does at the lowest level, move files around.

Re:e-mail... it's a natural evolution

[saskboy]

We're slowly becoming more efficient in maintaining 24hour communication with our peers.

1800s, Telegraphs, then Telephone
1900s, wireless radio broadcasts
Then cell phones, email, then IM
2000s, Borg-like neural net? Let's hope so.

Re:e-mail... it's a natural evolution

[roell]

In a paper I wrote last year, I had a look at e-mail as a tool for knowledge workers and argued that it is being used so intensively, because it is both personal (it belongs to the user), private (no one else can access it if it is not shared) and personalisable (it can be configured to ones personal needs and work style). Most importantly however I find is that it combines storing information with sharing it: There is no other system in which people can organise their stuff in a personal space and share it with others so easily and flexibly.

I wonder what the consequence is: Shall we improve email clients further and further to make them even more flexible tools that then "can do everything"? (This paper from Xerox PARC would call that "overloading".) Or will we develop other tools? Or is the question irrelevant, as the new ways that we invent to share digital information will be integrated into what we call "email" today and the boundaries will be blurred?

asdf

[professorhojo]

they still had instant messaging to fall back on, right?

Re:asdf

[Ithika]

That would be difficult without power. Unless, by "instant messenging", you mean you write down a message and a hamster instantly runs along the hall with it to its destination. Hmm, I might be on to something.

Re:asdf

[CableModemSniper]

It was a power outage in the datacenter that held the email servers, not in the actual WSJ offices. You'll note that the article mentions some people still having email during the outage cause theres was on a different server.

Re:asdf

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn left, little hamster! Turn left! Not the CEO's office! AAAAARGH!

Get it in email

[Austerity Empowers]

Let's not forget the chant of the manager "Get it in email". In some companies email is also used for the Wheel of Blame, everyones favorite management technique.

Do not talk to someone on the phone. Do not talk to him face to face. Do not IM him (and hey, what IT department hasn't locked IM along with everything else down anyhow). Ask questions and expect answers in email, or do it in meetings with witnesses. Leave a paper trail and keep it documented.

This sounds like cynicism, I think it is, but it's not mine. This is how many corporations appear to "work". Email is the ultimate accountability tool.

Re:Get it in email

[metlin]

Yup, and from being optional it has become mandatory.

Hell, companies have lost billions of dollars for not documenting their actions and lack of email accountability - so you're absolutely right.

However, this is also a bad thing, it takes away excuses. ;)

Re:Get it in email

[aero6dof]

I think its more that email has become the most consistent form of corporate long-term memory of commitments (medium-term with most companies email retention policies).

Re:Get it in email

[SatanicPuppy]

That's how it goes where I work, mainly for security reasons. If someone requests a report or system access, it's got to come through email.

Re:Get it in email

[arkanes]

........

Because of emails well-known resistance to impersonation and spoofing, right?

Re:Get it in email

[brickballs]

"and hey, what IT department hasn't locked IM along with everything else down anyhow"

I am half the it department at my company. I was trying to get ahold of someone and he hadnt responded to my emails. I noticed he had an msn account, so I signed up for one. we got the problem solved in 30 minutes.

The point is that we dont block everything, because some of it has legitimate uses. It's an innocent-untill-proven-guilty sort of thing.

Re:Get it in email

[Austerity Empowers]

I'm not sure it really takes away excuses. I find it's people who are really trying hard who get hurt by this more than the lazy "Wally" types. They will commit to the most ambitious deadline they think they can achieve, and sometimes fall short. I'd rather work this way myself, but it's more of a corporate culture issue.

People who make a job of being lazy tend to learn how to do it really well, there's a fierce Darwinian selection process to it. Those that can't evade work well, don't stick around. I would venture to say there is no system now or in the future which will adequately police a skilled wanker.

Re:Get it in email

[bonehead]

Yeah, tell me about it.

As someone who admins e-mail servers, it baffles me that an e-mail is considered to be "proof" of anything in any high stakes situation.

As an example of just how ridiculous this is, I once printed a copy of the logs on my mail server that showed that a female co-worker had checked her e-mail at 6:30 PM, so that she could "prove" to her boyfriend that she really was working late. I of course, snipped the logs down enough that he wouldn't see that she checks her e-mail at precise 5 minute intervals, 24 hours a day. He bought it.

Re:Get it in email

[jafiwam]

I hope you got lucky. :)

Seriously. I learned a long time ago to not use my position as IT guy to particpate in anything other than strictly business.

At first management might think it's useful, but the more clueful ones then figure out you could be a liability to them too...

Re:Get it in email

[bonehead]

Nope, didn't get lucky. I forgot to mention that on the night in question she was, in fact, working late.

As for the rest, I agree wholeheartedly, but this particular company was not the sort of place where there was a need to worry about such things. Extremely small company, and a very tight knit group. The typical corporate concerns just weren't an issue there.

Re:Get it in email

[MirrororriM]

Let's not forget the chant of the manager "Get it in email". In some companies email is also used for the Wheel of Blame, everyones favorite management technique.

Not where I work - my manager doesn't like email because it holds him accountable - therefore he prefers that "we speak to each other one-on-one versus using the 'impersonal' email system". IOW - he can always say "I never said that" rather than be held accountable by email.

Do not talk to someone on the phone. Do not talk to him face to face. Do not IM him (and hey, what IT department hasn't locked IM along with everything else down anyhow). Ask questions and expect answers in email, or do it in meetings with witnesses. Leave a paper trail and keep it documented.

Paper trails are a good thing - especially when it has to do with finances.

This sounds like cynicism, I think it is, but it's not mine. This is how many corporations appear to "work". Email is the ultimate accountability tool.

Well, I like to tell people that if you don't want to be held accountable for your actions, perhaps you shouldn't be working for this company...or at all. :)

Re:Get it in email

[Austerity Empowers]

Well around here managers are held to the same standard as their subordinates, and it's pretty uniform across the company. Hence if my manager gets cagey and compels his employees to do one on one's, he'd probably be distrusted and be on a limb.

I think also different types of work have different rules. I'm mostly familiar with engineering R&D situations. Being "accountable" means schedule deadlines, not theft or funny business. People can get stuck being "accountable" for something they promised that is delayed for some reason outside of their control. The question of "how long will it take to do " is never known with any accuracy. Unfortunately managers from different types of businesses try to apply their same thought processes to this and cause all kinds of idiocy. The guy who gives the lowest common denominator answer consistently ends up looking real good (because he's never late!), even though he's probably screwing off most of the time.

Re:Get it in email

[SatanicPuppy]

Yea, I left out the part where I have to print them out and get them signed. =P

Even beyond that, everything gets carboned to half the department, the person who gets the access, the person who requests the access, and that persons boss. It's certainly falsifiable, but I would say it's less so than a hardcopy paper trail or a phone message, and face to face just isn't practical.

Re:Get it in email

[Just Some Guy]

what IT department hasn't locked IM along with everything else down anyhow

The enlightened ones that've installed their own internal Jabber servers, for starters. Our company went from "IM is an interesting experiment" to "kill the email if you must, but keep that Jabber server running!" in a few short months.

IM doesn't have to mean AIM or ICQ anymore. Our internal IM system is every bit as secure as our email service, so sending sensitive data is perfectly acceptable and common.

Re:Get it in email

[Door-opening Fascist]

Do not IM him (and hey, what IT department hasn't locked IM along with everything else down anyhow).

IM is one of the most useful things for us. A substantial number of us travel and work on the go (conferences, presentations, etc.), so it's a good way to conference with a group without having to pay for a conference call and without the delay of email. Even when we're all in town, a couple of us walk/bike so things get dicey when the weather is bad. IM lets us communicate and work from home. We frequently deal with sensitive things (like code we have on an NDA), but an internal Jabberd Jabber server with TLS enabled solves that one easily.

Re:Get it in email

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. This is exactly why I often prefer to talk to people face-to-face or on the phone. They are not as afraid to deal wih real problems and look for solutions. Email if too often mostly politics, shrugging responsibility, you know...

Re:Get it in email

[Knetzar]

You know IM is importent when a company like IBM starts pushing it's own secure IM protocol, Sametime.

Re:Get it in email

[zerbot]

I know of a place that uses an internal IRC server for collaborative discussions.

Re:Get it in email

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be a manager and I insisted on email because it held me accountable. Did I say that? Oh yes, I did.

Memory is fallible. If you want to manage well you need all the help you can get.

Good old days

[moz25]

It amuses me to think back about arguments I've had several years ago about the merits of the internet and of using email. The other guy (management-ish type) didn't get the point and said that if he wanted to contact a person, he'd just pick up the phone and call them. Fast-forward to 2005...

Frankly though, I've had a bit of an internet-outage at home once or twice. To my own surprise, I found it a bit refreshing to not have access for a short while.

Re:Good old days

[iamlucky13]

I've found outages refreshing except when the weather sucks. A couple years ago, I was living on campus during Christmas break, so everyone else had gone home. Portland had a big ice storm, and since Portland isn't equipped to deal with rarities like that, doing stuff around town wasn't a good idea for several days. Comcast was being Comcast and was already 2 months behind schedule hooking up the campus with cable service after the old provider went under, so all I had was the local channels, which had cancelled most of the regular programming for "Winter Storm Watch," which was completely redundant after about an hour. Then the brand new Netscreen firewall, which we had literally installed 3 days before, loses a power supply. Nowhere to go, no TV, nobody around, library is closed, and NO INTERNET. After walking to Fred Meyers and back half a dozen times, I ended up borrowing a shovel from the grounds crew and clearing sidewalks until my hands bled, I was so bored.

One day it's "Everyone's addicted to email"

[Neil Blender]

The next it's "OMG WHERE'S MY EMAIL?!?!?!" Make up your minds.

Re:One day it's "Everyone's addicted to email"

[kfg]

Yeah? So where is the logical inconsistency in claiming that "everyone's addicted to email" and then giving a demonstration of such?

This story is a "See? I told you so."

In any case dude, you are neglecting the fact that saying, "I could quit if I wanted to," is one of the signs of addiction.

Addicts don't make up their minds. Their addictions do.

KFG

Re:One day it's "Everyone's addicted to email"

[zev1983]

"One day it's "Everyone's addicted to email" The next it's "OMG WHERE'S MY EMAIL?!?!?!" Make up your minds."

It's called withdrawal.

Re:One day it's "Everyone's addicted to email"

[temojen]

Could it be both? if you think "Everyone's addicted to Email" and "OMG WHERE'S MY EMAIL?!?!?!" are contradictory, you don't understand addiction.

No lube?!

[smooth wombat]

So a lot of that social lubrication went out the window.

So long as it was only the social lubrication and not the other kind. Non-lubed is definitely not a good thing.

Re:No lube?!

[mountiealpha]

Wait a minute - isn't this Slashdot?! How do you know if non-lubed is not a good thing?

Re:No lube?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lube is for pussies.

;)

Re:No lube?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lube is for tightasses...

The first step

[CausticPuppy]

The first step is to admit that you have a problem.

Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[ultimabaka]

(a) Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit much when coworkers who sit RIGHT NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER communicate only through e-mail? It's frightening how often that happens in my corporate office - how about you guys?
(b) So it occurred to absolutely no one in all of the Wall Street Journal that you could have asked to save a copy of your previous e-mails and Calendar information onto your own computer? Not being able to send e-mails in the present is one thing (and the phone works fine for that), but to tell me that your entire past was wiped out cuz you were too dumb to ask for your stuff to be saved? C'mon.

Re:Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[Zerbey]

Maybe they are not allowed to? Default setup for MS Exchange is to save everything on the server (which makes pretty good sense). You can configure Outlook to keep a cached copy on your local machine, but many places don't or have policies forbidding it. I'm sure most other groupware systems work the same way.

A better question is, why didn't they have a backup power solution?

Re:Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[Ann Elk]

Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit much when coworkers who sit RIGHT NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER communicate only through e-mail? It's frightening how often that happens in my corporate office - how about you guys?

It depends on the nature of the conversation. Sometimes it's good to have a durable record -- for one thing, it makes it easier to bring other people into the conversation.

Of course, sometimes it's best to not have a durable record...

Re:Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[AviN456]

At my office, we use NET SEND to talk to each other. It has nothing to do with productivity though, we're just all nerds.

Re:Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit much when coworkers who sit RIGHT NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER communicate only through e-mail? It's frightening how often that happens in my corporate office - how about you guys?

The last place I worked, the guy who sat next to me wore headphones and played the music very loud, so loud that I could hear it. The only way to get his attention was to AIM him.

Re:Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[hackstraw]

Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit much when coworkers who sit RIGHT NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER communicate only through e-mail? It's frightening how often that happens in my corporate office - how about you guys?

Am I the only one who gets annoyed when I'm trying to work and a coworker breaks my concentration to ask me a nonurgent and not necessarily time dependent question when they could have sent me an email?

Re:Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[crivens]

Yes you are the only one.

Re:Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[bluGill]

Apparently all your co-workers come from the same generally area as you. However the guy who works in the cube next to me comes from Pakistan. He is a good developer, but his accent makes him hard to understand. It is often easier to use email than person to person communication with him, because I can read email. (I've had to work with some folks who I needed to read and re-read to understand, his grasp of English is good enough that I don't have to go that far)

When my co-workers all speak with a Iowa accent, face to face communication is easier than email. When they have a southern accent email is better. Most other accents of English are only slightly less understandable than my own. This is related to where I live and work, southerners tend to have as much trouble understanding me as I do them.

Re:Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[cecille]

Our work has a policy like that...
All official documents and emails are kept on the server. For the documents it's because you don't ever want out of date documents floating around on desktops - we're a pretty highly regulated industry (medical software) and it's regulated that you have to have certain document management policies in place. Ours involves an online doc management system. Doesn't have to be that way, but it works great. when your server is up. The email thing is a bit more just for practical reasons - we book meetings online and if you're keeping your own copy you won't know if the meeting room changes etc. just easier to have it centralized.

I've only been here once when the server went down, and it was an unproductive day to say the least. Works fantastically well when it's up, but when it's down...you're screwed.

Re:Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[Webmoth]

Not as annoying as the receptionist at one of my customers' offices, who would use the INTERCOM to speak to someone at another desk FIVE FREAKIN' FEET AWAY.

Re:Social Lubrication is Good and All, But

[Peeteriz]

Email has many benefits even when you are sitting in the same room -

Absolute memory - if you need to know what was said a week ago about one of a dozen projects, you won't remember, but it's trivial to look up the email;
And people tend to busy concentrating on real work, and asking non-urgent questions disturbs concentration, slowing down work. If it's not urgent, then it can be answered when people have time for you - leave a mail message then.

What color is the sky on their planet?

[tverbeek]

I don't use e-mail in the way described by the article, not at all. It is too full of utterly useless garbage to be of any use as a reminder or storage system. I routinely go "a day without e-mail", and the only disruption it causes me is the extra time it then takes the next time I sift through my inboxes for things I might actually want to read.

Re:What color is the sky on their planet?

[MightyMartian]

At work, I'm pretty much dependent upon email. So going without would mean not bothering coming into work at all.

On my private address, I have a few friends that send infrequent correspondence, a few small mailing lists (no 300 messages a day crap) and a few writing projects I'm working on with some other people. None of these require me to look every day, and if I've got better things to do, email can wait.

Re:What color is the sky on their planet?

[kfg]

So going without would mean not bothering coming into work at all.

Hey, works for me.

KFG

How did they manage?

[falzer]

Without reading the article and knowing precisely what the story was, I would say that they all cracked eachother's heads open and feasted on the goo inside.

how often do you email yourself?

[smithberry]

Err, not very often. Is this how most slashdotters keep track of thoughts, or are the folk in the article unusual?

Re:how often do you email yourself?

[Short Circuit]

I frequently email files to myself, or store info in drafts. And with 2.2GB of webmail mailbox space, it's very, very convenient.

It makes for an easy way to transport data from one locale to another without resorting to a USB pen drive, or other portable media. It also gives me a way to download a file once from a slow server, and store it on a faster one for when I need to retrieve it later.

Re:how often do you email yourself?

[bluGill]

Actually I do email my self once in a while. When I decide to run to a store on my lunch break I'm best off sending an email from my home account to my work account. (why make a special trip for something I don't need tonight when the store is right next to where I eat lunch) I could write a list, but if I don't put it in my pocket the next morning I won't know what I needed. (besides, it is easier for me to type list than to hand write it)

Email doesn't forget (barring a rare system crash) until I tell it to. Email is always there - with webmail I can check my email nearly everywhere, so there is no excuse "unable to read the list".

True a PDA would do most of these tasks better, but I don't have a PDA. I have email.

Re:how often do you email yourself?

[matt me]

Seems like for these tech-incompetent tech-columnists the only two programs they run are their web browser and email client, and have forgotten how to save notes in a text file. Of course, for them, it's probably quick to email themselves than try and add "fix email" to their to do list to their 20KB blank file in word.

Re:how often do you email yourself?

[bablefisk]

I would hope slashdotters are skilled enough to find a more elegant solution than this.

I used to use rsync to keep my documents synchronized on several computers. Now I've started using subversion and a couple of homemade python scripts in my crontab to do the same job, and in a much safer manner. Subversion, combined with sunbird for calendaring and tuxcards for general notetaking pretty much eliminates any need to keep emailing myself any reminders, while providing a nice backup solution as well.

That explains it!

[mbbac]

This explains how the WSJ missed Steve Jobs' e-mail saying "we're not moving to Intel, jackasses!"

Re:That explains it!

[MustardMan]

Funny, maybe... but at the WWDC keynote just a few short minutes ago, Jobs officially announced the rumors are in fact true, and they WILL be going to intel.

Re:That explains it!

[Anonymous Coward]

You and all other AMD/Apple fanboys are just going to have to lick it up, because it is true.

Re:That explains it!

[Chyeld]

DUH! Are you brave enough to call the WSJ a liar?

Steve probably had to throw the idea together in the car on the way to the Keynote.

Phbt. Think what other rumors WSJ could publish about Apple if he got on their wrong side?

Re:That explains it!

[zCyl]

It's one of the few survival choices Apple can make, given their declining popularity due to relative high cost.

It also follows their transition nicely, in sequence with their switch to the BSD core. With the Apple BSD core, intel hardware, and the same industry standard components as everyone else, they essentially place themselves as a user-friendly proprietary alternative to Linux, with high Linux compatability. This moves them from a shrinking market into potentially a growing one.

TinyURL.com

[xbrownx]

Does anyone else take a deep breath before clicking on one of these links at work?

Re:TinyURL.com

[cuzality]

Yeah, and what's the point of using it when the actual link isn't even displayed except in the status bar?

Re:TinyURL.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a good use for a Greasemonkey script: go out and look up the redirected URL at tinyurl.com and display it when you hover over the tinyurl link.

Re:TinyURL.com

[Shadow Wrought]

Deep breath? No.
Total avoidance? Yes, yes indeed.

Re:TinyURL.com

[SatanicPuppy]

Heh. Same here. Clicking on /. is risk enough.

I've even had NSFW links off the main page here before, when people who were pissed off at being slashdotted changed their main page to a full screen of tubgirl or something.

Re:TinyURL.com

[mooncaine]

Nope, because I don't click them.

Re:TinyURL.com

[zev1983]

Well when I first read the title I thought it said "Tech Communist..." and thought it might be interesting. When I realised it was really "Tech Columnist..." I knew it would be completely worthless and let out a sigh.

Re:TinyURL.com

[Anne_Nonymous]

Not really, but TinyTUBGIRL.com or TinyGOATSE.org could give pause.

it's been my fault even ;-)

[downsize]

in my past, I have worked as an admin. actually not that long ago I worked for a company that still ran NT 4.0 with Exchange vDinosour. The machines ran on tar from the tar pits.

Anyway, my job was to keep those damn things from extinction - it was a near impossible task.
On a couple of occasions the email server would get completely full (how's a total of 16GB for a 200+ person International company grab ya?) and email would stop. I would have to jump through hoops to get space back - force users to make personal .ost files yadda, yadda

The kicker was always that everyone would scream and bitch about loosing money and can't operate without email.

My point was always A) switch to linux and B) if you loose money and operations cease, why not spend ~$20K and get a stable email system in place? If they would have put any money into their cornerstone, life-blood system (email) or used an outside service provider - I'd still have a job and they would not be OOB! :-P

Re:it's been my fault even ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that if you wanted to you could set up warnings based on user mailbox sizes

in my lousy opinion, anybody who uses Email as an archive for important documents is playing with fire.

Re:it's been my fault even ;-)

[downsize]

You know that if you wanted to you could set up warnings based on user mailbox sizes

oh I wanted, believe me. there were all types of "i wanted to"'s that they never even considered. obviously I am getting the last laugh (for the most part).

that company was a POS, it was ran off personal feelings rather than business sense "but I like to see all the SPAM, I'd rather spend 3 hours going through spam than miss 1 potential lead" or "I don't want my mailbox limited to 2GB, I need everything in there dating back to 1992, including all my friend's comic attachments they sent me"

Re:it's been my fault even ;-)

[magarity]

everyone would scream and bitch about loosing money and can't operate without email... My point was always ... why not spend ~$20K and get a stable email system

No offense, but it sounds like you need to polish up your cost benefit presentation skills. You can't just bark out a nice round number like $20k and expect a signed PO for that amount. A fifteen minute powerpoint presentation with at least one three color bar graph on productivity lost versus to-the-penny costs of a new system should have gotten you a fine new rig.

Re:it's been my fault even ;-)

[downsize]

it was Impress and not PowerPoint and it fell on deaf ears/blind eyes. "it's been working fine for 10 years" And the number was more like $18,700 for Win2k3 + Exchange 2k3 and all the CALs.

I did not think it was required to get into such detail on a /. comment - you assumed a bit much.

Don't think everyone will sign a PO from a presentation with P&L/ROI charts, as I stated before, the company was ran on personal feeling/preference as opposed to logical business sense.

Re:it's been my fault even ;-)

[magarity]

it was Impress and not PowerPoint

OK, OK, just checking.

you assumed a bit much

Well you may have noticed there seems to be more than not admin types who WOULD just bark 'this place needs to spend some money!' and get mad that it doesn't happen.

Re:it's been my fault even ;-)

[downsize]

agreed, but wouldn't that be nice :-} ... I have heard/known friends that have been able to bark as much and their wish granted. Of course, that was mostly back in 98-00.

person to person vs person to group

[Colin Smith]

The first case, email. The second case usenet or other group forums. Email is too high priority for this kind of communication, or at least it should be, you end up sorting and filtering like mad to regain some control of the junk that is thrown at you.

Asimov knew it

[RealProgrammer]

In the Foundation trilogy (*), Isaac Asmimov portrayed a stilted society full of academic "scientists" who never ventured into a lab, but did their scientific work by critiquing the work of others.

While he was mostly lampooning the way academic scholarship can replace actual research, I think he would have smiled knowingly. A news organization whose workers are lost without the ability to have news delivered to them would have fit perfectly into the pre-Mule galaxy.

Or maybe I'm just reading more into the story than the WSJ folkd deserve. Maybe it's just a sign of the times that email has so thoroughly penetrated business operations.

---
(*) I haven't read Asimov in 20 years, so I apologize for my hazy memory and the arrogance to expound on it.

Re:Asimov knew it

[lottameez]

This is probably offtopic, but I remember the part in the trilogy where an ambassador from another planet visited for 3 days. After he went home, the hosts ran everything he had said thru an analyzer and found that everything cancelled out; he'd effectively said nothing for three days.

Reminds me of many a meeting or sales call.

Same 20 year disclaimer applies here. I should probably reread it!

Re:Asimov knew it

[chivo243]

Too bad we IT'er don't all the powers of the MULE!

Re:Asimov knew it

[magarity]

he'd effectively said nothing for three days.

Ever watch CSPAN when Alan Greenspan is testifying before the banking subcommittee? Nobody can say nothing that sounds like something like that guy!

Re:Asimov knew it

[clohman]

Yes, the only thing more vacuous than scientists critiquing each other's work would be people critiquing and commenting on news! Er, wait a sec...

Re:Asimov knew it

[sjames]

Ever watch CSPAN when Alan Greenspan is testifying before the banking subcommittee? Nobody can say nothing that sounds like something like that guy!

I still say Ronald Reagan was the master of not answering the question. I watched in fascination as he got through complete press conferences without ACTUALLY answering a single question, and none of the press seemed to be at all aware of it.

Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[rsax]

Similarly, email has become our storage system for important documents and works in progress

If I had a penny for each time I have repeated this to users frustrated with their email account quotas: "Our mail server does not exist to fulfill your file storage needs." The file server is where people can store their important.......wait for it........FILES!

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[mooncaine]

This is becoming an issue at my workplace, where internal clients need files quickly, but are a diverse group, largely without much technical knowledge or even interest. It serves them best if I can just send/receive files, but the email server admins have gone nuts about it, saying basically "does not exist to fulfill your file storage needs". I don't doubt it, but I think that it should -- that is, I think we should plan on using it what way, if possible. It's far simpler for most users here [a university] to use email than to figure out how to transfer files in other ways [btw, there are no other officially sanctioned ways except sneakernet!, which is sad]. Users aren't permitted to FTP, SSH, IM or use web space [where quotas are too small to be of any use]. A great deal of productivity can be realized by just building out the email system so that users can send and receive their files and use the email as storage.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[fishbowl]

"Users aren't permitted to FTP, SSH, IM or use web space [where quotas are too small to be of any use]"

I think I've just identified your underlying problem.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[Enigma2175]

A great deal of productivity can be realized by just building out the email system so that users can send and receive their files and use the email as storage.

The problem with this approach is that email is one of the most inefficient ways to transfer files. MIME encoding was just a hack on top of a text-based system. Sending files via email tends to add about 50% to the size of the file (i.e. if you send a 10MB file it will make a 15mb email). To use email in lieu of a file server you need 50% more space.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[Snowmit]

If I had a penny for each time I have repeated this to users frustrated with their email account quotas: "Our mail server does not exist to fulfill your file storage needs." The file server is where people can store their important.......wait for it........FILES!

And here is the fundamental problem with IT departments. IT departments do not exist for the sake of IT although they sure do act like it a whole lot. IT departments exist for the sake of users, you know the people that it's so fashionable to arrogantly hate.

I suggest that if a great number of your users are using email as a file storage system that you as a diligent IT guy should spend some time figuring out ways to make it work for them.

Shouting "You're doing it wrong!" does not count as making it work.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[Jacobine]

I think the issue is more that there are often very good systems in place, but the users don't utilize them. My company, for example, has a (exceedingly generous) 500 MB limit on available server space for each user's email. Every user also has their own private network share only accessible to them, which we encourage them to use to store important documents (they are not quota restricted); they are mapped to it at login. Additionally, each user has a location on the network that goes with their site -- a private share for the site where permissions can be set -- and a public share that is intended to be used for sharing data between sites. If they want a folder on their site's private share created and locked down, they submit a request to us and we'll create it and set permissions. We also have internal IM, which we encourage them to use for any file over 10 MB. And yet people still are always running out of space and complaining to us. I don't think having yet more storage space on the email servers and bumping quota is going to help. Keeping email down to a size that is easily converted to a pst without corruption is important.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[rsax]

I suggest that if a great number of your users are using email as a file storage system that you as a diligent IT guy should spend some time figuring out ways to make it work for them.

Every new employee gets trained how to make efficient use of the services that are offered to them. They have access to email, small FTP quotas and larger Samba shares. They are shown how to archive any important emails or attachments and store them in the appropriate file shares. They are also notified that emails will be deleted after 180 days so it is their responsibility to archive important documents.

IT departments do not exist for the sake of IT although they sure do act like it a whole lot. IT departments exist for the sake of users, you know the people that it's so fashionable to arrogantly hate.

You see, end users aren't concerned with technical details - for good reason, it's not their job. My job is to be aware of the technical details. If a messaging software vendor tells us that we should keep our mail spools maintained, trimmed, junk/attachment free for performance purposes then we make sure that happens. Then we write up these tutorials and training material to let users know what to expect. Then users ignore all of this, do the opposite, bitch when they pass quotas (which have been set for important reasons that I stated) and then all of a sudden, systems administrators are the arrogant ones. Nice.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[ragnar]

As one of those people who use an email program as a filing cabinet, let me explain it for you. I've been a system administrator, programmer and now I'm a project manager. Therefore, I've become gradually evil, but don't hold that against me for the time being. I used to say the same stuff as you are saying now, but here's the real rub... inbox.mbx is a file.

I know it takes up resources, but my email message contains a lot of context. I can search for any number of mental cues (who sent the email, part of a subject, phrase in the message, etc) that hones in on what I'm really looking for. The whole email becomes a type of metadata, but if I save the file off on my hard drive (which I also do for some things) it can be harder to find things, especially when they fit into two or more hierarchies.

I used to develop complex taxonomies to maintain my computer. Now that search technologies (thank you Mac spotlight!) have matured, it actually works to use my mailbox as a storage device. It saves me time and effort, which is a legitimate use of technology. I know it isn't quite this easy, but I would direct energy into upgrading the SAN than to tell users to not do something that works.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[EvilStein]

Oh, I bet spam & antivirus scanners just LOVE it when users mail huge ass files around. ;)

Not all of that is inbound.. some organizations scan outbound email for spam/virii as well.

Novell's iFolders were supposed to help with this situation as well..

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[Stiletto]

I suggest that if a great number of your users are using email as a file storage system that you as a diligent IT guy should spend some time figuring out ways to make it work for them.

Shouting "You're doing it wrong!" does not count as making it work.

You could say:

"I suggest that if a great number of your users are scheduling appointments by writing them on the wall clock with a big black magic marker rather than using their calendar book, that you as a diligent secretary should spend some time figuring out ways to make it work for them."

The point is, when users are doing it wrong, telling them that they are doing it wrong and showing them how it is supposed to be done is often the best solution.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[Anonymous Cow herd]

I suggest that if a great number of your users are using email as a file storage system that you as a diligent IT guy should spend some time figuring out ways to make it work for them.

Genius thinking like this is how we wound up with e-mail applications that'll happily and silently run any macro or executable you send to it, operating systems where everything is run with administrator privileges by default, the list goes on.

IT departments exist for the sake of users

Yes and no. IT departments exist to provide solutions to users problems. In the case quoted above, a perfectly viable, standard solution exists and is in place (the file server). If you want to blame the IT department for anything, it's for 1. not educating users sufficiently about the file server to make it useable, and 2. not enforcing the 'no large files' policy and/or having it documented as part of a larger IT/email policy.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[technos]

"Our mail server does not exist to fulfill your file storage needs."

But they'll never use the file server. They'll just set Outlook to download emails older than a couple weeks to local folders. And then they'll have a huge honking archive on the machine *most* likely to fail in the scheme of things. Most users are barely comfortable with email.

If the file shares aren't mounted on login, you should look into that. And then configure Outlook/whatever to download all mail and store it there on all new installations. It can be automated easily.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[Geo]

You wrote, "I suggest that if a great number of your users are using email as a file storage system that you as a diligent IT guy should spend some time figuring out ways to make it work for them."

Your opinion neglects the fact that gigabyte sized email accounts total up to terabyte sized email stores. Backup and restore times for such large databases are unreasonable. Hardware costs are increased.

Sure it is possible to mitigate these factors, but your one sided view is not healthy for the user base or the IT staff.

Regards.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[Nick Mitchell]

why are disks that store email so much more expensive than disks that store anything else?

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[mibus]

1. MIME & Base64

2. Group emails get a copy of the attachment each in most mailservers

3. People don't usually delete old emails - if you're working on a file on a share, you usually might keep a couple of copies. With email, you'll usually keep every revision. (Usually once for each person in the email, plus the sender - see #2).

I'm as guilty of this as anyone, but I admin the mail server and we only have a dozen employees - almost all of whom use FTP and shares regularly.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

a perfectly viable, standard solution exists and is in place

You can't implement whatever solution you happen to like and then proclaim that your users' needs are met. That is the genius thinking that gives us software bloated with useless features nobody likes. The only way to tell if users' needs are met is to *listen to them*. And what they are saying is file shares don't meet all their needs.

"Educating" them isn't really a solution. It isn't something you can do once and then walk away; you have to continually educate new people, remind the old ones, and deal with the stubborn ones who refuse. Furthermore, they will just keep forgetting, and they will resent you for trying to "educate" them in the first place. It's futile to bend the users to your way of thinking; instead just give them what they want. It's easier for you and better for the users.

Re:Just the type of users who I like to avoid

[nahdude812]

Although I agree with the idea that IT exists to satisfy the needs of the users, IT also exists to assist users fulfill the needs of the organization.

There are a number of problems with using email as a file storage technique that are *unrelated* to the technical details of email storage and the like, but instead are a result of the nature of email.

For example, although using email as the storage mechanism provides a sort of version history for a given file, it fails to provide a mechanism for the authoritative copy of that file. So although the version you have in your email was current when you received it, you don't have any way to find out if someone else has made changes to the file and failed to provide you with a new copy of it.

If the user(s) who controlled the file leave the company, their replacement(s) have *no* way to get the most recent version of that file. I.T. might be able to dig this out of the previous controllers' email accounts, but it's a time consuming process and not necessarily guaranteed to provide accurate results since they don't understand the surrounding issues (for example, has ownership of the file currently been handed off to a third party).

Aside from issues with detection of the most recent version, there are other issues, such as that every version of the file has multiple copies being retained for each applicable party. If I share a file with my 20 person department, the storage for this is at a minimum of 20 times larger than the storage if an *appropriate* mechanism is used.

Further, users will not clean up old email data unless they are forced to. This includes data that is trash data. For example, that 6 mb video forward that's been going around, or the 30 jokes the user received today. These are things that aren't going to go on a file server.

Email quotas in a corporation exist for a reason: to require users to exercise good file management practices. They're not just I.T. arbitrarily deciding to prevent evolution of email usage.

Email works excellently as a file storage mechanism when only one or two people are going to be using that file, and when those users either will never leave the company / change positions, or when their leaving their position invalidates the usefulness of that file. And although such situations exist in every day business practices, those situations also evolve themselves into the sort of situation which email is poorly suited to manage, usually with out the user being aware that that evolution has happened.

Hence it's better to encourage users to use tools which *are* appropriately suited by their very nature to the actual problems which the users are attempting to resolve.

Email Considered Harmful

[Nyhm]

The focus of email-as-life-manager within this article concerns me. To me, this article is a cry for help: WSJ is in desperate need of a software system engineered to meet their actual work environment. It sounds like they need some type of dynamic workflow and collaboration tool. Discovering and documenting their work environment would be very challenging and interesting. Further, deriving software requirements and architecting a software system to aid in their daily jobs would be a very valuable undertaking. This could help everyone at WSJ communicate and collaborate more effectively.

My resume is available upon request.

What do other /. folks feel about this type of "abuse" (i.e., not using/developing the right tool for the right job)? Should we just use what is immediately available or take the time to develop tailored solutions? Does anyone know of a Free and open source system for building workflow and collaboration systems? Does JBoss fit these scenarios, or should we start from scratch?

Re:Email Considered Harmful

[mooncaine]

All the effort you describe would no doubt be rewarding to you, but the client, WSJ, would be better served by having more robust email with larger storage capacity, ubiquitous user access, and appropriate security. Far better to use a pencil you already understand than have someone come build you a fancy pantograph with optional 3-handled family gradunzas attached, just to do the same thing you happily accomplished with a pencil.

Re:Email Considered Harmful

[BiAthlon]

So you want to change the way people work to better suit the computer?

I bet the mule would be more comfortable if you pulled the plow for him too.

I've met and worked with far too many admins that insist that they way the tool was intended to work is the only way it should be used. Any deviation from the intended use should be stopped at any cost, including productivity.

Maybe instead of forcing new software on your unsuspecting users you should look at what they are accomplishing with email, why they use it to store all the bad things they do instead of using your file server.

Don't misunderstand, I believe in the right tool for the right job. I just believe that a hammer has more utility than just pounding nails in and email has more utility than just sending and receiving messages.

Re:Email Considered Harmful

[dr_pump95]

Should we just use what is immediately available or take the time to develop tailored solutions? Does anyone know of a Free and open source system for building workflow and collaboration systems? Does JBoss fit these scenarios, or should we start from scratch?

Building a workflow or collaboration system that doesn't zip you into a gimp suit with its rules is very difficult. For assembly-line processes a structured workflow is OK, but as soon as the participants need flexibility and autonomy you effectively need to allow them to modify the process on-the-fly. There are some commercial products that claim to allow this in a structured way, for example, http://www.ultimus.com/ and http://www.actiontechnologies.com/index.cfm but nothing approaching them in open source as far as I know. This is why people use email.

Of course, if you like gimp suits ...

Re:Email Considered Harmful

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the reporters live and die by email but it's not considered a 'production' tool. The business units did not want to pay the bill for a quick failover. This email outage was caused by a freak power outage, dozens of systems lost power. Out of the dozen of so exchange servers, two wouldn't come up because the IS was corrupted. The had to replay the log files from the last backup from the night before. Thats why he was without mail most of the day.

Most of the WSJ reporters are not computer literate.

Re:Email Considered Harmful

[Nyhm]

Believe it or not, I agree with your pencil argument. Consider this for argument's sake:

Wouldn't Michelangelo have welcomed an advance in paint application technology when creating the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Let's say we offer him an airbrush. Yes, it would take some engineering to build, would require an air source and special paint. It would also break down (clogged nozzle, broken tubes) more often than a brush. Also, it would require him to adjust his painting style (*), but wouldn't he welcome a technology that would make his painting (lying on his back day after day) more efficient?

(*) OK, under this analogy the impact to the final result would be very disturbing. Can any /. artist paint us an airbrush version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling?

Re:Email Considered Harmful

[mooncaine]

"Gimp suits?" Interesting image. I think I know what you mean, but I'm curious about where you got the idea for the metaphor, "Harrison Bergeron" or the movie Pulp Fiction, or ...?

WSJ != Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be news for the WSJ, but this should be no more than a big fat "Duh!" for Slashdot readers.

Why is this a front page story????

slashdot

[3770]

How would productivity be affected if /. was down for a day?

Re:slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you close your browser window and find out?

Re:slashdot

[GweeDo]

None, I would still hitting refresh and praying it was back.

Re:slashdot

[aztektum]

Would all the stories be considered dupes if they would have been posted the day /. was down?

Re:slashdot

[pablodiazgutierrez]

It's amazing! I swear when I clicked to see the replies to the parent, I got a "503 error, service unavailable". Then I turned around to look for the hidden camera. This must mean something.

Re:slashdot

[Vantage13]

Well after this article it may very well be down for the next day or so...

"weekday phoning..

[BigGerman]

..is reserved for more-substantive matters and emergencies"

I think I missed this new trend: so basically you supposed to call people on weekly basis to summarize all the heart attacks and child births that happened?

;-)

Document storage?

[Ars Dilbert]

email has become our storage system for important documents

No yuo! E-mail should be used only for collaboration. Documents belong on a file server or some kind of a Web based document management system.

How big is your mail store? How long does it take to backup? How long would it take to restore in case of a failure? Half a day? I'm guessing that 95% of your mail store are file attachments that shouldn't even be there...

How do you share those documents with others? Forward them via e-mail of course. Thus compounding your document versioning problem, and increasing the mail store size. (Single instance storage can only do so much.)

Re:Document storage?

[It doesn't come easy]

Yeah, but...

Storing your documents in the email system means you can access them from anywhere and any machine. I store three of my most important documents in encrypted form in email. This also provides a simple offsite backup method that also helps protect against loss and outages.

(and the encryption program I use and highly recommend is this one...

Re:Document storage?

[downsize]

that's how I found and why I started using shinyfeet.com. I have backups at home and the office, but 1) not aways accessible - shinyfeet's file manager is, and 2) it is tied nicely with their email application, so it makes it easy to manage attachments.

That axcrypt looks cool, but I just use my own that I wrote to encrypt and keep the keys written down (for the highly important docs) - others I just keep the keys in an encrypted text file, and that key is easily accessible in another file/email :-} not the best for security, but it's more used for privacy and a couple hoops if anyone was to try and jump on my machine while I forgot to lock the desktop when out to lunch.

Re:Document storage?

[migurski]

Documents belong on a file server or some kind of a Web based document management system.

Perhaps, but this is a great a example of technology being bent to serve the needs of its users. It may be ultimately more productive to modify a mail server to more easily handle this form of folk file storage, than to force users to adapt themselves to the IT department. I expect that a huge market is waiting for the first group to elegantly merge file storage and mail accessibility in this way.

Re:Document storage?

[myz24]

I think in a way Apple's Spotlight and desktop search tools like Google Desktop are already doing this for people. I'm becoming quite reliant on using Google Desktop to find bits of information from my Outlook email because Outlooks search for what ever reason...can't.

I also agree that perhaps email should be changed rather than the users. It's not very efficient to get an email and basically copy the contents somewhere else "because that's how it's supposed to work." To me that's as efficient attaching a text document to an email.

Re:Document storage?

[Anonymous Coward]

I moderated in this article already so I have to post AC, but come on! If you need to access them from anywhere, USE THE PROPER APPLICATION. Find online storage (plenty of free spots). Set up an FTP/SFTP repository with your friend who runs a server and gives out free shells. Better yet, try and run your own if it's feasible.

What is truly amazing is

[BronxBomber]

[sarcasm] that humanity managed to go nearly 2000 years without email, yet we still managed to invent:

• Fire
• the wheel
• the printing press
• electricity
• the telegraph
• the microprocessor
• any of the myriad other major innovations of the past 20 centuries

Frankly, I dont know how Gutenberg got any work done without being able to email, text message, IM, or phone his associates back in the printing press office.

Humanity is truly amazing indeed

[/sarcasm]

Re:What is truly amazing is

[kfg]

Aside from the obvious gaffe that others are already taking you to task for, I might point out that the rise of email on ARPANET ran very slightly ahead of microprocessor development.

Think about it.

Other than that I'm with you.

KFG

Don't Despair!

[ImaLamer]

Don't worry, their systems are back online and back to reporting the current news: the death of *BSD

Hehe

[BlightThePower]

Or maybe I'm just reading more into the story than the WSJ folkd deserve.

On the other hand if we were talking about the New York Times...ahem.

2000?

[3770]

Did we have Email 2001 years ago but forgot about it?

We tried using only telephones

[Anonymous Coward]

An employee suggested to me that we install telephones in a few offices here as an evaluation. I was skeptical at first but he explained the benefits of using telephones instead of having to buy Eudora. I decided to let him install them in 5 offices to see how the employees got on. Besides, our IT manager had been using telephones at home and he hadn't reported any problems - why not try it on our employees?

Once he'd got the employees up and running with telephones we let them try it out. It all seemed fine to start with: The telephone system was a pretty good replacement for those shitty Eudora boxes we'd used before and the employees could still do their work as normal.

Alas it did not stay that way. After a few days, I had lost count of the number of complaints received from our employees. Users could not do things they could before (like manage their contacts). The final straw came when one employee lost several hours work when the PBX suddenly froze up, effectively destroying our communication infrastructure.

Needless to say, the community offered no support whatsoever. I made the employee destroy the telephone system and lets just say he's not with us anymore.

Re:We tried using only telephones

[jacksonj04]

You may laugh, but my school recently moved to Cisco IP phones. It now takes around 2 days for voicemail to actually reach them, because the system we have installed just isn't designed for 80+ extensions, voicemail, call queueing, and the rest.

Re:We tried using only telephones

[crabpeople]

use avaya man. our site has about 50 real phones and 100+ software phones with plantronics headsets.

voicemail is instantanious, uses VOIP and POE switches for the unpowered phones. also you can fax to peoples phones which is sort of the cool.

i have my ext forwarded to my cel phone so i can pick up a call on my cel when it rings on my desk phone. this alone is invaluable, as i can be sitting on the beach or at a bar and people will just dial ext x549 and blamo im in the office!

Re:We tried using only telephones

[jacksonj04]

All nice, except for the forward. When I'm on the beach I don't like to be at the office - the only time I do that is if I'm on wireless in which case my softphone hooks up to my office number anyway.

I found some evidence....

[BlightThePower]

From: urgh813@homonidcave.com
To: urgh212@homonidcave.com
Date: Tue, Mar 18 160,000BC 14:36:14 PST
Subject: Urgh

Urgh Urgh Urgh Ugg.
Urgh Urgh Ug. :0)
Urgh.

Re:I found some evidence....

[3770]

Haha...

Aaah, I see they had smileys back then too.

And they seemed to have bigger noses back then. :)

How often do you email yourself?

[mooncaine]

Almost daily. Since my work is entirely Internet-based, I must check my email constantly. Sending reminders to myself, shopping lists, contact info, etc., works well for me because I'm so often using email.

Good day

[fred fleenblat]

Your emails account have been suspended for improper activity. Please see the enclose attachment for instruct.

Bill & Ted's Email Adventure

[NitsujTPU]

When a recent power outage disrupted email service at WSJ.com, our tech columnists were plunged backwards into a time before every meeting, every little task, came with an email-program reminder

Bill: Ted we are about to embark on a most
excellent journey through time!
Ted: Where are we going?
Bill: 1984 or so should do the trick!

Apple using Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if he were going without email today, he'd have missed Apple's announcement that they really are going to use Intel chips starting next year...press release available here

On the job lubrication

[Hoi Polloi]

The Bunny Ranch in Nevada maybe?

Instant Messaging

[dep01]

Instant messaging is simultaneously too casual and too intrusive

I don't necessarily agree with that. That seems a pretty subjective statement, in my opinion. I will say that email is a different medium than Instant Messaging. They are used to accomplish different tasks. They're the phillips head and flat-headed screw-drivers in the electronic messaging toolbox.. IM might be good for quick instances where a fast-answer is needed to a short question, whereas Email would be more appropriate for more long-winded, thoughtout dialogues involving several complex viewpoints. IM would be better served for a quick back-and-forth transfer of information..

Basically email is to writing a letter as Instant Messaging is to using a telephone.

Re:Instant Messaging

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say the statement was more common sense. Instant messaging and phone calls are intrusive. Both require the receiver to drop everything they are doing to reply - immediately - because some moron believes their message or question is more important than your time.

While time spent with email can be better managed by the receiver. Any other method which does not allow this is rude and selfish.

I don't have IM, and my cell phone number is known by three people (wife and children). Everyone else gets voice mail - I don't care who they think they are.

Re:Instant Messaging

[AussieVamp2]

Don't like your mum and dad then? :)

Re:Instant Messaging

[dep01]

Careful. Not everyone's lucky enough to still have those :)

How I manage my email...

[v3xt0r]

I prefer to store all my emails (from multiple accounts, domains, etc) into one centralized database table, using mysql, php, imap, and cron. The project I'm working on, is programmed to scour all of my inboxes (from each account/domain) every 10 minutes, and add new msg's to the database (without duplicating existing msg's). I then have it integrated into 1 centralized web interface, which allows me to delete unwanted msg's, as well as view/compose/reply/fwd/attach/etc. It also has an integrated filtering system, but that's a given. =) It makes my accessing/backing-up my emails a simple task.

Isn't it amazing...

[KC7GR]

...How social skills that are so downplayed today (I'm talking about those you need for face-to-face communication, writing a real letter, conducting yourself on a live phone call) suddenly become of critical importance when E-mail suddenly becomes unavailable, for whatever reason?

I think many have become TOO dependent on being 'wired' for their own good, and it's not just adults. I've seen all too many kids walking with their parents at the mall, bus stop, or wherever, eyes and attention riveted solidly to their handheld GameBoy, or whatever the current portable hypnosis-inducer is, instead of paying attention to the world around them (and there's a lot to see, if you really LOOK and LISTEN!)

So E-mail's down? Fine. If you need to write something, just use your word processor to create a POSTAL letter. Remember those? If your computer's broken, see if there's an old typewriter available. If you really need to talk to someone right away, phone them. If they're out, it won't kill you to just leave a message.

Failing all the above, why not just take the rest of the day off?

The point I'm driving at is that the world is NOT going to suddenly end just because we lose one of our favorite paths of 'instant gratification.' Patience is a virtue that is sadly absent from much of the world today, and it is one that I think we would all do well to cultivate.

Re:Isn't it amazing...

[starkravingmad]

If you really need to talk to someone right away, phone them. If they're out, it won't kill you to just leave a message.

If their answering machine is down, do I just send a pigeon?

Re:Isn't it amazing...

[KC7GR]

Yes, but you have to bribe the bird with a triple-shot light-foam cafe mocha. ;-)

Use cURL

[Lord Dimwit Flathead]

I use cURL on these:

>curl http://tinyurl.com/8xdkf

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>302 Found</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<H1>Found</H1>
The document has moved <A HREF="http://forwarding.tinyurl.com/redirect.php?n um=8xdkf">here</A>.<P>
</BODY></HTML>

>cURL http://forwarding.tinyurl.com/redirect.php?num=8xd kf

Location: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB11178280 8075750561-moOzLbwRfVRAe_SqomVwCyG2Qds_20060606,00 .html?mod=blogs

Ha!

[CGP314]

From the WSJ:

So how'd we fare this time around? Well, we're glad to report that the removal of cold, impersonal email from our workplace reminded us of the value of getting up and talking with each other, reforging lasting connections that will do far more for us than any fancy software system could ever do. Yeah right. And then we went out and planted a tree.

Just in case you missed an important comment:

[Anonymous Coward]

503 Service Unavailable

The service is not available. Please try again later.

Rename article: How WSJ Was Frelled From The Start

[Goose42]

Seriously, this is a perfect example of why e-mail is so horribly, horribly mis-used in the modern workplace. WSJ, you were fracking frelled from the start.

• If you have no project management methods other than checking e-mail threads, you're fracking frelled. Seriously, how hard is it to set up a file-server, and keep a couple text documents detailing project status? Or how about an intranet-style web server with a few wikis! Or, if you enjoy being fracking frelled, get yourself a few copies of Microsoft Project.
• If you use your e-mail as a file storage mechanism, you're fracking frelled. Others have already commented on this, but seriously, what organization doesn't have a file server, or at the very least can't spend $300 putting together a shitty computer with a backup mechanism for network file storage.
• If you use e-mail as a file transfer mechanism, you're fracking frelled. If you're actively working on a project with remote users, get yourself an FTP server, or some silly web-enabled file-access mechanism so that they can access the necessary work and actively collaborate.
  
  On the same note, if you e-mail yourself, you're double-fracking-frelled, and should be taken out into a field and Office Spaced. For smegs sake, get yourself a bloody USB key drive, and stop being retarded.
• If you use e-mail as a personal organizer, you're fracking frelled. Get yourself a bloody calendar, or a PDA, or something that actually is capable of bringing organization instead of the sticky mess that e-mail provides.

In short, WSJ, quit your whining, its your own fault. You were fracking frelled ages ago.

Wouldn't it be cool if...

[csoto]

you could get an email account with, say, a 2GB quota and you basically just "archived" emails instead of deleting them?

Maybe one of the big tech companies could come up with something like this!

No email? Try no power!

[ChrisF79]

Last friday, the power went off in our office for about 3 hours when a transformer went down in the area. Not only did we not have email, but we had no power at all. The funny thing was, we had nothing to do at all. I even went looking to see if there was some filing I could do just to keep busy. Just think, it wasn't that long ago that there would still be plenty of work to be done even if the power went out.

STOP PIMPING YOUR LAME WEBSHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

And check his posting history before you mod this, please. ~1/3 posts are ads.

There are better choices than Email

[Lodragandraoidh]

A content management system, such as this one, I find to be a better repository of information.

For one thing additional meta-data about the items can be stored in the CMS. Secondly, the built-in search capability beats the pants off what I have to deal with in MS Outlook (100 times faster). Finally, it has the flexibility for me to extend its functionality beyond what I find out-of-the-box (e.g. to manage appointments, and link related information to those appointments).

I get so much cruft in Email, and I have so many other sources of information I use in my day to day job that a CMS is a better choice for more intelligently filtering and organizing my information.

Sadly, too many folks are enamoured with thier particular (annointed) Email systems, and force the rest of us to play in their very limited world.

E-mail is *so* 1995!

[pestie]

I rarely use e-mail for anything like what they're describing. If I want to send files to myself I'll use scp to send them to my server at home. If I want to send myself URL's or notes, that's what IM is for. Even our intranet calendar application here at work notifies us with IM's and/or SMS in addition to e-mail (our choice).

I have very well-tuned spam filters, so it's not even the 100+ spams I get a day that keep me from using e-mail. It's just the fact that most of its extra utility has been supplanted by other things.

Power corrupts...

[Anonymous Coward]

...power failure corrupts absolutely (well it applies to hard disks anyway). It also knocks out e-mail (and if you don't have one of those super smart phones that requires local power to work) then power failure doesn't knock out phone service (the phone company has redundant power, and more often the dial tone is louder than when they use the normal power grid). You might just have to schedule meetings using telephone. Oh the horror!

Re:Rename article: How WSJ Was Frelled From The St

[DA-MAN]

frelled, fracking?!!? Times like this I wonder if anyones working on a universal translator . . .

Re:One day it's "NoOne's addicted to email"

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull Bull Bull!!! i say,

This bull about addiction to e-mail, its bull.

Office/ e-mail = boring

Home/ e-mail from momma= rare

SMS/ to friends= common (why place call to Adam while he works mission critical grave shift)

IM/ to classmates= Common.... with unemloyed teens using parents broadband.

Having Sidekick with your doggs name for password.....Priceless:-D

Re:Rename article: How WSJ Was Frelled From The St

[AcornWeb]

Actually, it sounds like they are on an Exchange sserver, which probably explains why both a) they couldn't get to past email and b) they couldn't get to their calendars as they are all stored on the server

Just the type of admin I hate to encounter

[Anonymous Coward]

If your mail server does not exist to serve user requests, then what does it exist to do? If users want to store their files on the e-mail server, then just maybe you should try to allow it. Why does the file server have higher quotas than the email server anyway? Buy some hard drives, they're cheap. If your server software can't handle it, maybe you should look into replacing it with something that actually meets the needs of your users.