Why Email is a Bad Collaboration Tool 245
An anonymous reader writes "Isaac Garcia follows up his popular "The Good in Email" article with "The Bad in Email or (Why Steve Ballmer is the CTO of Microsoft)":
"In spite of email's universal success (as a collaboration tool), and in spite of its many good traits, email contains deep, inherent flaws that force users and markets to seek alternatives to collaborating via email."
A few problems: (Score:5, Informative)
The summary states the title of the article as: "The Bad in Email or (Why Steve Ballmer is the CTO of Microsoft)"
Two problems with that:
Problem #2 is especially difficult to understand, as the article itself correctly identifies Ray Ozzie as Microsoft's CTO.
I don't know what happens where the author works.. (Score:1, Informative)
Where's the problem, again?
Scare Tactics (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, not necessarily. Especially in the IMAP world, see IMAP over SSL.
[insert story about linux box and IMAP/SSL/MUTT]
Here's the real problem: You tried to scare your audience with concepts that your target audience doesn't understand. You can't scare ignorant people, see low limit Texas Hold'em.
I'm not impressed by the article (Score:5, Informative)
1. "If you are using SMTP (the universal pipe, remember?), you need to know that it doesn't encrypt data/messages. If you are using POP or IMAP, you need to know that they both require you to send unencrypted authentication (username/password)."
None of these is true. Encrypted SMTP, POP and IMAP all exist and we've been using encrypted POP/IMAP where I work for over two years now.
2. In the discussion of encrypted e-mail, he jumps straight into certificates with no acknowledgement or apparently even clue that PGP/etc. exist and are a lot simpler to set up and use (even in Outlook, or even manually if you have to).
3. "Eudora Security Flashback: I still don't know what the hell Kerberos is and what it has to do with a dog much less my email?"
Considering that this guy is, judging from the content of his post, very Microsoft-centered, for him to not know what Kerberos is suggests he is not even close to any kind of expertise in the field.
4. "Most companies spend a fortune locking down their IT infrastructure. This results in either Total Lockdown, also known as Paralysis whereby no one can do anything without a password, passkey, keycard, signature and sign-in sheet; or in No Lockdown, also known as Free-Love-Utopia whereby everyone is equal because everyone is an Administrator."
Um... no? He says "This results" as though these alternatives are the only two possible. This is probably just sloppy writing, but it still sticks out at me.
5. "If everyone used Outlook (70% of Central Desktop users use Outlook), then the ability to assign priority to each message would actually work. But we don't live in a Microsoft world (in spite of what many of you might think) and instead, we usually measure and weigh the importance of an email message by the number of people included in the carbon copy. This is highly subjective and fails to address the need to order and sort messages and task by importance."
I know from personal experience that Eudora among others had the capability to set and recognize a Priority or read-receipt header as long as 10 years ago. Priority fell out of favor because of abuse by spammers, but it does exist. And that was valid for any message sent to or from anyone on the Internet. Can we trust Outlook's read-receipt and priority flags to be as portable?
6. "Its still challenging for multiple people to share business email accounts (i.e. support, bugs and sales messages). IMAP sort of works, but presents its fair-share of limitations."
Such as? How could IMAP be better? Given the inherent needs and limits of sharing what is essentially a file folder, I think IMAP is designed about as well as it can be. There could be improvements, but nothing I can think of that would make me go "wow! It's a whole different IMAP!"
7. "Email is Prone to Viruses - There is no need to elaborate here."
Yes there is, because (say it with me!) E-MAIL IS NOT PRONE TO VIRUSES. E-MAIL CLIENTS ARE.
There are some good points in this article, but you have to filter them out from the sophistry.
Re:This is offtopic.... (Score:1, Informative)
Email and Mail (Score:2, Informative)
If you need an instant reply, how about use something like "Instant Messaging", VOIP, a phone call, or come over in person?
I really hate people who expect email to be almost the same thing as instant messaging. Email is a lower priority messaging system, it should not be used for something that you need an instant reply to.
Re:Article is full of lies (Score:3, Informative)
Not to mention you can send an unencrypted stream of encrypted data, i.e. PGP encrypt your email.
Re:Better email (Score:3, Informative)
OK, here's where I think you are confused; perhaps no one has taken the time to explain things to you without getting too technical.
There are three* types of "undelivered" email, that would all get your mythical red dot, if I understand you correctly:
1. Email that was sent to an invalid address. A user sends an email to joe.m.bloe@company.com, except that he meant to send it to joe.t.bloe@company.com. In this case, the company.com mail server will "bounce" the email: the sender will get an email message saying, essentially, "I cannot deliver this message because there is no user named joe.m.bloe." If this bounce response is not sent, it is the fault of the administrator, not of the email protocol.
2. Email that has not yet been read. Some people might consider this "undelivered", although the server considers it delivered because it made it to the right mailbox. What happens after that is the responsibility of the recipient. If you simply HAVE to know when your message is read, then attach a read receipt, which is built right into the protocol. (Please note: most people don't like being spied on, and will not send a receipt when asked by the email client.)
3. Email that simply goes missing. This breaks down further into two categories:
a. Filtered email. The administrator of an email server can choose to filter mail, either to take out spam, curb inappropriate content, do virus checking, or whatever. False positives in this situation (non-spam email that was filtered and deleted) are the fault of the administrator/spam-blocker, not of the email protocol. The sender should be notified if a message he sent was filtered.
b. "Lost" email. "Oh, the reason why that report isn't finished yet is because
So the reason why most people on Slashdot aren't taking to your idea is that the current system can handle all the various contingencies that might come up. If your emails really are just disappearing without a trace (and you're sure no one is lying about it) then you need to have a serious talk with your administrator about what can be done, because there is something wrong with your company's mail system.
Many email servers are poorly administrated, it's true. But no amount of coding by the OSS community will fix that. It's not a technical problem at that point; it's a social one. The current protocol contains everything necessary to "guarantee" mail delivery, if such a thing is possible when humans are part of the system.
On the other hand, if you're just looking for an email client that will place a red dot next to an email conversation that received an Undeliverable Bounce from the server, then you might want to go suggest that feature to the Thunderbird [mozilla.com] people.
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*There is a fourth category--where an email was not forwarded on by one of the middleman servers between point A and point B--but given the generally robust nature of the internet, unless you are using some shady email server that might flake out at any moment (again, the fault of the administrator) or sending your email through shady proxies, the chances of this happening are so very slim as to be completely negligible.
Re:Why Email is Good: Accountability (Score:1, Informative)
email accountability can easily be faked.
Wiki's have good audit trails and are harder to fake.