That's extremely insightful. If you have a "competitive advantage" only because the government erects barriers that restrict the rights of the people to make informed economic choices regardless of national boundaries (i.e. restricts free trade), then your product is crap. If your product is any good and you are good at making it, you will succeed without the government passing draconian laws to ban competition from better products. If you oppose free trade, that means you support the idea that the government should make your own personal economic decisions.
"How is this any different than 'assertion without explanation'? Seems to be par for the/. course..."
There's still silence from the guy who made the claim. I did, however find "war on the middle class" on Google used as a partisan insult-charge basically devoid of meaning. I think Sethstorm wants the government to force companies to give away money to workers for work they never did.
I look for the union label and use it as a guideline of what not to buy. I respect workers too much to buy from a company like Ford that forces its workers to join unions whether they want to or not. With Honda and Toyota, at least, the workers are free to give money to unions or not give money. Their choice.
The "explanation" is that the "war on the middle class" simply isn't in the overtime rules. I looked, not there. I think now it is up to the guy who claimed that it was there to back it up.
If you care about this anymore, I have the reply in my journal, about how having meaningful subject lines is actually a long-held standard, and with good reason.
"I would hate emailing with you. I prefer the new topic = new email thread method,"
I guess gmail works best with gmail, and the rest of the internet mail world workss best with itself. But tell me, what would you rather see if using eBay: 10 mails with the subject "EBAY ITEM #10021010" never changing, or descriptive subjects like "EBAY ITEM #1002101 PAYMENT SENT" describing each thing going on?
"I already posted the feature suggestion link in a prior reply in this thread."
It must be buried somewhere then. I expected to see it in the "you could go here" sentence, but you had no link on the "here" like I would have expected.
"How many times have you edited the subject of a reply you are sending??? I make a practice never to do it. th subject links the reply reliably to the original"
More than half the time! Why? Because I want the subject line to ACCURATELY REFLECT THE EMAIL CONTENT, and the content topic often changes within a "conversation". That's a pretty big weakness of Gmail's automatic system if it breaks by doing something as positive as making sure the subject reflects the content of the email. Yahoo and even Hotmail do not punish you for practicing this basic part of email ettiquette.
"Also, Quit trolling. you have posted basically the same thing ~4 to 5 times in just this story. enough is enough"
You must not be a mod then, or pay much attention. The negative moderation that applies is "redundant"
"now if you really want to use this feature, you have to start combining it with filters and multiple labels per mail"
Sounds like a real kludgey way to get it to try to behave properly. Not that THAT will happen: from discussion with others, it sounds like one big reason my Gmail groups things into meaningless clumps is that I insist on having an accurate subject in outgoing emails (including replies). This often means editing it mid "conversation", and trying to make the subject accurate breaks the groupings.
"Why do you want to change the subject within an existing thread?"
Why change the subject? To make it accurate! It is an old ingrained behavior from using email for years: to make sure the subject is accurate, and if the topic within the email during a "conversation" has changed, change the subject to reflect what is going on inside the email. Now, for some reason, this is a bad habit??? I'm glad I don't use Gmail for eBay. It would be hell to watch it turn the emails for a single tranaction into 4 or more Gmail groups just because I like to be considerate to others and put "payment sent" or "box mailed" or "have you paid yet?" etc in the email subjects. I just think it is nice to have accurate, succinct subjects so you can tell what is in an email (in many cases) without having to open it first.
" Instead of ranting on slashdot you could go here and suggest they give preference to the "In-Reply-To" header instead of the subject header"
Where is "here"? If I can trick it into think every single email is part of the same conversation "group", that would accomplish something close to that I want. I'd like to bypass the grouping thing entirely, then I can enjoy gmail's clean looking UI and superior spam blocking without as much drawback.
"This issue is related to why conversations appear all split up. You can't change the subject and have gmail pretend it's the same thread. I wish it would actually use the "References" field in the email to construct the thread so that you *could* change the subject and have it grouped, but gmail basically seems to just use the Subject."
I suspected that it was something like this. I like to insist on subjects for emails being as accurate as possible. That's only fair to outsiders who care more about an accurate subject than they do about how my internal Gmail grouping works. It's too bad that you have to have inaccurate email subjects in order for Google's automatic system to work well.
This is more like the recent bestseller "Tyrannosaur Canyon" by Douglas J Preston than it is like Jurassic Park. That book involves the discovery of a complete T Rex fossil with soft tissue.
"I almost forgot to ask about this. What exactly are you referring to here? Are you saying you had to click a link to be able to edit the subject of an email you're composing?"
When I click reply, I always check the subject line of the email and quite often edit it to make it more accurate. In Gmail, not only do I have to click edit to edit the subject, I have to click it to even see it without scrolling way up. For some dumb reason, it is not where it is most useful: near the Add BCC, etc options.
" I haven't ever once seen a gmail compose mail window without a plain editable text field for the subject. If you're talking about anything, you'll have to clarify."
Just now I went to Gmail, grabbed the first incoming mail I could find, and clicked on "Reply". I get an edit box, with options to add CC, BCC. etc. Right there is "edit subject". There is NO plain editable text box that comes up without having to click on this annoying little link. If yours works differently, let me know what setting you found to make it work.
"You say "design flaws" when you really mean things that you personally do not like"
Taking one flaw specifically, do you actually LIKE having to click "Edit subject" to get a box to edit the subject in, when all other email services already have the edit box (no clicking necessary)?
"This illisurates why you do not like GMail. You sound like an old man clamoring on and on about how "cars were more reliable in his day", totally ignoring the statistical facts."
To complete the analogy, it is like if I hate a car with a very loose steering wheel that crashes into the wall every time you try and go somewhere in it.
"The whole point of GMail is the exact reason you say you hate it."
Actually, it's got some kick-ass spam filters. That is what drew me to it, and that is one reason I've not shut off my Gmail account.
"You shouldn't have to organize your email, it's 2006. Let the computer (aka GMail) do it for you"
No thanks. Gmail does a terrible job of it. I just looked now and there is one SInGLE "conversation" I had with someone named Bob organized into 5 or 6 clumps of emails with some sort of way too terse variation on "me, Bob" telling me where it came from. That's a pretty bad job of organizing it has done.
" think you'd be surprised at how much time Gmails archive+search saves you over a year."
How does it "save" me time when Google's organization is so poor I can't rely on it at all, and have to use "Search" in order to find any email at all?
"I've read your other comments (which are bascially minor variations on a theme) and have come to the conclusion that you really don't know how to use Gmail."
Yes, the messages are TOO similar. However, I DO know how to use it. I just don't LIKE it due to the extra steps involved in doing things due to its design flaws. I don't LIKE it that emails are much harder to find and I have to use search to find everything. If you have used it, you have seen the "scrambling of the messages" into the "conversation groups": something which is half-assed as to be useless. Most of the time, my single email "conversations" are broken into several scrambled clumps. I do not like the threaded nature of the emails at all. I know how to use it, but prefer the superior standard. organization.
The "Gmail groups them all into one nice little threaded message" you claim just does not happen (unless there is a configuration setting that I am missing). One exchange broken into several variations on "me, Bob" just does not cut it. I'd also rather not have them grouped even if Google was actually good at doing it automatically (which it is not)
I'm not the only one who dislikes Google's scrambling. There's a good reason that the many other free services have not copied the idea. It's not a very good one. My opinion may not be important, but it is more important than yours here (as most users still prefer cleanly organized emails instead of random clumps).
Gmail's worst design flaw is not having a switch to let the users go to the superior (in the opinion of must email users) standard organization. Do you also defend the design flaw where you have to click on "edit subject" to edit the subject? Every other service I've seen has the subject in a text-box, no extra click necessary. That's a minor annoyance comapred to message-scrambling, but a flaw nonetheless.
"The title of the briefing is "Bin Ladin Deteremined to Strike in US."
I don't really know now. Maybe the spell check choked on it? What is more likely is that Bush saw the word "strike", mumbled something about the funny name of the new AFL-CIO chief, and passed the report onto the Secretary of Labor.
Welcome to Slashkoz. Next up: discussion about Howard Dean's iPod list, and how George Soros is getting out of politics so he can concentrate on politics.
"I use the Trilogy of Yahoo Mail, Messenger, and Yahoo Advanced Search, so I'm a customer for life unless they make the mistake of trying to charge."
Stay away from gmail. After using Yahoo's clean organization of what comes into your inbox, you will be sorely disappointed at Gmail's scrambling of incoming messages. Some like it, but most say "no way". They don't even give an option to switch to standard organization.
"Gmail is superior in every way to any mail platform except some corp/gov custom environments."
It's better when it comes to how the UI looks (colors, characters) and the lack of add clutter. It's much worse the way it jumbles inbox/etc emails into "groups" that have nothing to do with anything and make it hard to find past received emails. This idea isn't that hot: notice the lack of other companies immitating the useless scrambling of Gmail's folders. (I understand how it is MEANT to be used, and how it is SUPPOSED to work. However, I prefer my email properly organized for ease of use, and don't like how Gmail is not good at what it is supposed to do and ends up breaking a single "conversation" into several different groups).
"Gmail has real innovation in an email client. Discussion topics are grouped,..."
They are grouped poorly by some sort of random criteria that basically renders looking at the inbox uselsss. I had two email exchanges with someone named Rob. Now I have these inscrutable "me, Rob" groups for them. One single conversation has been broken up by Gmail's inbox-scrambler into 5 or 6 of their "conversation" groupings. The "group by conversation" idea is bad one and is poorly implimented. It's senseless, annoying, and I sure with there was a configuration option to go back to useful, standard inbox/etc organization with complete email addresses and names showing. Not only that, there is the serious design flaw that Gmail has that no others have where they hid "change subject" behind a link. I guess they want to encourage users not to have accurate subjects! Even Hotmail makes it easy to edit the eubject.
I've used Gmail for well over a year, side by side with Yahoo, and with Gmail it's like everything falls into a black hole, and I have to "search" every single time I want to find something. At least with Yahoo, the organization makes a lot more sense, and I have to do "search" a lot less.
"On top of that, when you compare the sheer number of features that come with gmail, yahoo mail falls too short."
I'd consider Gmail if not for an important feature it lacks that Yahoo has: organization of the inbox. The useless scrambling of messages in Gmail is basically a black hole where I have to rely on "Search" to find anything at all (unlike Yahoo where I can page down through the inbox). All they need to add is an option switch. There's a reason that few if any other email services have copied the "scramble mailbox contents into an useless pile" approach that Gmail has.
Slashdot Mirror
That's extremely insightful. If you have a "competitive advantage" only because the government erects barriers that restrict the rights of the people to make informed economic choices regardless of national boundaries (i.e. restricts free trade), then your product is crap. If your product is any good and you are good at making it, you will succeed without the government passing draconian laws to ban competition from better products. If you oppose free trade, that means you support the idea that the government should make your own personal economic decisions.
"How is this any different than 'assertion without explanation'? Seems to be par for the /. course..."
There's still silence from the guy who made the claim. I did, however find "war on the middle class" on Google used as a partisan insult-charge basically devoid of meaning. I think Sethstorm wants the government to force companies to give away money to workers for work they never did.
I look for the union label and use it as a guideline of what not to buy. I respect workers too much to buy from a company like Ford that forces its workers to join unions whether they want to or not. With Honda and Toyota, at least, the workers are free to give money to unions or not give money. Their choice.
The "explanation" is that the "war on the middle class" simply isn't in the overtime rules. I looked, not there. I think now it is up to the guy who claimed that it was there to back it up.
If you care about this anymore, I have the reply in my journal, about how having meaningful subject lines is actually a long-held standard, and with good reason.
"I would hate emailing with you. I prefer the new topic = new email thread method,"
I guess gmail works best with gmail, and the rest of the internet mail world workss best with itself. But tell me, what would you rather see if using eBay: 10 mails with the subject "EBAY ITEM #10021010" never changing, or descriptive subjects like "EBAY ITEM #1002101 PAYMENT SENT" describing each thing going on?
"I already posted the feature suggestion link in a prior reply in this thread."
It must be buried somewhere then. I expected to see it in the "you could go here" sentence, but you had no link on the "here" like I would have expected.
"How many times have you edited the subject of a reply you are sending??? I make a practice never to do it. th subject links the reply reliably to the original"
More than half the time! Why? Because I want the subject line to ACCURATELY REFLECT THE EMAIL CONTENT, and the content topic often changes within a "conversation". That's a pretty big weakness of Gmail's automatic system if it breaks by doing something as positive as making sure the subject reflects the content of the email. Yahoo and even Hotmail do not punish you for practicing this basic part of email ettiquette.
"Also, Quit trolling. you have posted basically the same thing ~4 to 5 times in just this story. enough is enough"
You must not be a mod then, or pay much attention. The negative moderation that applies is "redundant"
"now if you really want to use this feature, you have to start combining it with filters and multiple labels per mail"
Sounds like a real kludgey way to get it to try to behave properly. Not that THAT will happen: from discussion with others, it sounds like one big reason my Gmail groups things into meaningless clumps is that I insist on having an accurate subject in outgoing emails (including replies). This often means editing it mid "conversation", and trying to make the subject accurate breaks the groupings.
"Why do you want to change the subject within an existing thread?"
Why change the subject? To make it accurate! It is an old ingrained behavior from using email for years: to make sure the subject is accurate, and if the topic within the email during a "conversation" has changed, change the subject to reflect what is going on inside the email. Now, for some reason, this is a bad habit??? I'm glad I don't use Gmail for eBay. It would be hell to watch it turn the emails for a single tranaction into 4 or more Gmail groups just because I like to be considerate to others and put "payment sent" or "box mailed" or "have you paid yet?" etc in the email subjects. I just think it is nice to have accurate, succinct subjects so you can tell what is in an email (in many cases) without having to open it first.
" Instead of ranting on slashdot you could go here and suggest they give preference to the "In-Reply-To" header instead of the subject header"
Where is "here"? If I can trick it into think every single email is part of the same conversation "group", that would accomplish something close to that I want. I'd like to bypass the grouping thing entirely, then I can enjoy gmail's clean looking UI and superior spam blocking without as much drawback.
"This issue is related to why conversations appear all split up. You can't change the subject and have gmail pretend it's the same thread. I wish it would actually use the "References" field in the email to construct the thread so that you *could* change the subject and have it grouped, but gmail basically seems to just use the Subject."
I suspected that it was something like this. I like to insist on subjects for emails being as accurate as possible. That's only fair to outsiders who care more about an accurate subject than they do about how my internal Gmail grouping works. It's too bad that you have to have inaccurate email subjects in order for Google's automatic system to work well.
actually... I read the overtime rule. It does not wage war on the middle class.
This is more like the recent bestseller "Tyrannosaur Canyon" by Douglas J Preston than it is like Jurassic Park. That book involves the discovery of a complete T Rex fossil with soft tissue.
"I almost forgot to ask about this. What exactly are you referring to here? Are you saying you had to click a link to be able to edit the subject of an email you're composing?"
When I click reply, I always check the subject line of the email and quite often edit it to make it more accurate. In Gmail, not only do I have to click edit to edit the subject, I have to click it to even see it without scrolling way up. For some dumb reason, it is not where it is most useful: near the Add BCC, etc options.
" I haven't ever once seen a gmail compose mail window without a plain editable text field for the subject. If you're talking about anything, you'll have to clarify."
Just now I went to Gmail, grabbed the first incoming mail I could find, and clicked on "Reply". I get an edit box, with options to add CC, BCC. etc. Right there is "edit subject". There is NO plain editable text box that comes up without having to click on this annoying little link. If yours works differently, let me know what setting you found to make it work.
"You say "design flaws" when you really mean things that you personally do not like"
Taking one flaw specifically, do you actually LIKE having to click "Edit subject" to get a box to edit the subject in, when all other email services already have the edit box (no clicking necessary)?
"This illisurates why you do not like GMail. You sound like an old man clamoring on and on about how "cars were more reliable in his day", totally ignoring the statistical facts."
To complete the analogy, it is like if I hate a car with a very loose steering wheel that crashes into the wall every time you try and go somewhere in it.
"The whole point of GMail is the exact reason you say you hate it."
Actually, it's got some kick-ass spam filters. That is what drew me to it, and that is one reason I've not shut off my Gmail account.
"You shouldn't have to organize your email, it's 2006. Let the computer (aka GMail) do it for you"
No thanks. Gmail does a terrible job of it. I just looked now and there is one SInGLE "conversation" I had with someone named Bob organized into 5 or 6 clumps of emails with some sort of way too terse variation on "me, Bob" telling me where it came from. That's a pretty bad job of organizing it has done.
" think you'd be surprised at how much time Gmails archive+search saves you over a year."
How does it "save" me time when Google's organization is so poor I can't rely on it at all, and have to use "Search" in order to find any email at all?
"I've read your other comments (which are bascially minor variations on a theme) and have come to the conclusion that you really don't know how to use Gmail."
Yes, the messages are TOO similar. However, I DO know how to use it. I just don't LIKE it due to the extra steps involved in doing things due to its design flaws. I don't LIKE it that emails are much harder to find and I have to use search to find everything. If you have used it, you have seen the "scrambling of the messages" into the "conversation groups": something which is half-assed as to be useless. Most of the time, my single email "conversations" are broken into several scrambled clumps. I do not like the threaded nature of the emails at all. I know how to use it, but prefer the superior standard. organization.
The "Gmail groups them all into one nice little threaded message" you claim just does not happen (unless there is a configuration setting that I am missing). One exchange broken into several variations on "me, Bob" just does not cut it. I'd also rather not have them grouped even if Google was actually good at doing it automatically (which it is not)
I'm not the only one who dislikes Google's scrambling. There's a good reason that the many other free services have not copied the idea. It's not a very good one. My opinion may not be important, but it is more important than yours here (as most users still prefer cleanly organized emails instead of random clumps).
Gmail's worst design flaw is not having a switch to let the users go to the superior (in the opinion of must email users) standard organization. Do you also defend the design flaw where you have to click on "edit subject" to edit the subject? Every other service I've seen has the subject in a text-box, no extra click necessary. That's a minor annoyance comapred to message-scrambling, but a flaw nonetheless.
"The title of the briefing is "Bin Ladin Deteremined to Strike in US."
I don't really know now. Maybe the spell check choked on it? What is more likely is that Bush saw the word "strike", mumbled something about the funny name of the new AFL-CIO chief, and passed the report onto the Secretary of Labor.
Welcome to Slashkoz. Next up: discussion about Howard Dean's iPod list, and how George Soros is getting out of politics so he can concentrate on politics.
I thought that Bush had started the recession in order to take our minds off terrorism.
I think she had the spam filter set way too high again at pianobabe56@hotmail.com
Isn't that a kid's cereal? We all know what Speigelmock is, though. Just a mag that makes fun of a German newspaper.
"I use the Trilogy of Yahoo Mail, Messenger, and Yahoo Advanced Search, so I'm a customer for life unless they make the mistake of trying to charge."
Stay away from gmail. After using Yahoo's clean organization of what comes into your inbox, you will be sorely disappointed at Gmail's scrambling of incoming messages. Some like it, but most say "no way". They don't even give an option to switch to standard organization.
"Gmail is superior in every way to any mail platform except some corp/gov custom environments."
It's better when it comes to how the UI looks (colors, characters) and the lack of add clutter. It's much worse the way it jumbles inbox/etc emails into "groups" that have nothing to do with anything and make it hard to find past received emails. This idea isn't that hot: notice the lack of other companies immitating the useless scrambling of Gmail's folders. (I understand how it is MEANT to be used, and how it is SUPPOSED to work. However, I prefer my email properly organized for ease of use, and don't like how Gmail is not good at what it is supposed to do and ends up breaking a single "conversation" into several different groups).
"Gmail has real innovation in an email client. Discussion topics are grouped,..."
They are grouped poorly by some sort of random criteria that basically renders looking at the inbox uselsss. I had two email exchanges with someone named Rob. Now I have these inscrutable "me, Rob" groups for them. One single conversation has been broken up by Gmail's inbox-scrambler into 5 or 6 of their "conversation" groupings. The "group by conversation" idea is bad one and is poorly implimented. It's senseless, annoying, and I sure with there was a configuration option to go back to useful, standard inbox/etc organization with complete email addresses and names showing. Not only that, there is the serious design flaw that Gmail has that no others have where they hid "change subject" behind a link. I guess they want to encourage users not to have accurate subjects! Even Hotmail makes it easy to edit the eubject.
I've used Gmail for well over a year, side by side with Yahoo, and with Gmail it's like everything falls into a black hole, and I have to "search" every single time I want to find something. At least with Yahoo, the organization makes a lot more sense, and I have to do "search" a lot less.
"On top of that, when you compare the sheer number of features that come with gmail, yahoo mail falls too short."
I'd consider Gmail if not for an important feature it lacks that Yahoo has: organization of the inbox. The useless scrambling of messages in Gmail is basically a black hole where I have to rely on "Search" to find anything at all (unlike Yahoo where I can page down through the inbox). All they need to add is an option switch. There's a reason that few if any other email services have copied the "scramble mailbox contents into an useless pile" approach that Gmail has.