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For real. 
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This is a very interesting article about how email came about and why it is not a great messaging system for the Enterprise.
A Modest Proposal: Eliminate Email[^]
HBR writes:
A consequence of this workflow is that an organization’s tasks become entangled in a complicated network of dependencies with inbox-enslaved individuals sited at each node. The only way to keep productive energy flowing through this network is for everyone to continually check, send, and reply to the multitude of messages flowing past—all in an attempt to drive tasks, in an ad hoc manner, toward completion.
If you step away from your human network router duties, the whole apparatus can grind into deadlock.
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raddevus wrote: and why it is not a great messaging system for the Enterprise.
Yeah, those shirt communicators are so much more efficient. Not to mention being able to just beam somewhere!
Marc
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Ah, someone entrenched in "old school". 
I'm 100% joking. I just couldn't hold back.
Honestly though, I had the same reaction to the title of the article and then I read it.
Very interesting about workflow and creativity and focus, etc.
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Yes! My team currently sends all mails to everyone.
I get dozens of emails daily for projects I've never even been part of 
Our manager (and other team members) find this 'handy' as they keep 'up to date' on all projects 
Currently I'm only checking emails that are addressed directly at me (and not team@company.com or project.support@company.com).
Heck I don't even want to receive all emails on the project I AM working on!
I get emails about a customer wanting a coworker to change some colors, some texts, or some buttons... Good luck coworker, please don't bother me with such trivialities! If you have questions you know where to find me!
Such emails are even worse when they're for a project I'm not even working on (or even know nothing about)...
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Great reply.
I agree with you 100%. Lots of noise generated by all the email and it's a huge waste of time to sort out what is important to you and what isn't.
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Yes, an interesting read, though I do wonder what evidence he (she?) based the following assertion on:Quote: Humans are not wired to exist in a constant state of divided attention
It's a somewhat meaningless statement - you may as well say humans are not wired to sit in an office all day either - but anyway... try telling that to your average mum while she's doing the housework while keeping an eye or ear out for little Johnny in his playpen, and at the same time compiling in her head what she needs to buy from the shops that afternoon in order to make dinner for everyone, and making a mental note to remind hubby that his in-laws are coming to stay at the w/e so he must get the shower-rail in the bathroom fixed before then...
(Yeah yeah I know - in today's enlightened world men are just as... oh, never mind!)
Seems to me that humans are quite capable of dividing their attention and, more than that, this has been an essential survival tool - we would never have survived otherwise. But still, while I don't want to dismiss all the article says just on this (and I may be wrong in arguing it anyway), a part of me also thinks he's pissing into the wind. The ability to communicate instantly with people is not going away anytime soon, methinks. Those of us that can't function in such a world may well find ourselves left behind by those that can. That's simple evolutionary theory: adapt to your environment, or suffer.
I'm aware that I've quietly ignored the word "constant" in the quote, but I rather think that was a lazy addition to the sentence anyway. No-one has their attention constantly divided - what is constant is the potential for something to come along at any time - an email, in this case and, as I've said, we've always had to be able to cope with that. But, as individuals, we do not have to check our email or Facebook or Twitter accounts every minute, and all he's arguing for is a work environment that formalizes when we do and when we don't. Which is fair enough, I guess. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating - whether productivity and work-satisfaction goes up or not.
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Edit: This post was a false alarm of sorts. After booting into safe mode and checking the event log, the system reported a disk error in a paging operation. Maybe the chkdsk fixed the problem(s), but it has been stable now for a few hours, enough for me to do what I needed to do initially...rebuild a couple of installers. A good end to the week!  I hope yours ended nicely as well!
You may disregard the rest of this message...but I leave for your entertainment since weekends are pretty slow here.
It's within reason to have multiple new systems such as Win10, failing on different systems at the same time (more technically, within an hour), but how about two 7 yo systems running a 16 yo OS? The only other commonality besides the OS is that they coexist on the same HDD which I just checked for errors to find none. The systems don't blue screen or crash, they both just become almost completely unresponsive after just a few minutes. A couple of months ago, they were both fine. What are the odds? (rhetorical)
I might think virus, but these two systems have never been used for web browsing. I'll try a few things before I give up on saving them. At least all of the data is still intact...it just means that I have to rebuild a few older InstallShield projects from scratch. 
Now, before I start thinking conspiracy, I thought I'd see if anybody else has experienced problems recently with Win2k. From recent posts, I know there are a few out there. 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
modified 19-Feb-16 19:10pm.
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kmoorevs wrote: The only other commonality besides the OS is that they coexist on the same HDD...
Do they share the same motherboard, RAM, GPU, peripherals, etc...?
There are two types of people in this world: those that pronounce GIF with a soft G, and those who do not deserve to speak words, ever.
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lol I was also wondering that. Is there some sort of IDE Y-cable out there?
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Yes. This is a test machine with multiple drives, though usually not connected simultaneously. It's been running Vista all day without a hitch, which is what I used to error check the other disk. I suppose I could check out the other disks, but it doesn't seem likely it's a hardware issue, outside of the single drive failure.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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My Windows 7 machine will occasionally "freeze" and become near unresponsive. Looking at Task Manager, I found the culprit to be the Windows Update service. When I stopped that service, CPU usage went back to its normal 1-2 percent.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Thanks, that was my first thought, so the second time around I disconnected the network cable. I've edited the op with the real problem which event viewer pointed me to...a disk error. One thing that was kind of funny was that the caps lock still worked, but really slowly. Out of frustration, I held it down for a few seconds and was promptly greeted with a blue screen and an annoying alarm from the MB! That's when I just walked away from it for the day.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I have a Win2K box solid as a rock. I now only use it for running an electronics simulator and an old copy of MPLAB and a few other embedded systems in case any ghosts from my past materialise
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Someone at Infragistic discusses the merits of some nearby site[^].
Not really any new information, but it's nice to see everyone here get their due. They do miss one feature near and dear to my heart though 
TTFN - Kent
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I'm curious - will the article induce a spike in membership?
Perhaps a buy-out offer from Micro$oft?
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: Perhaps a buy-out offer from Micro$oft?
Not if they read the lounge!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Good publicity is always nice.
Now, what's Kent doing in the lounge???
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Kevin Marois wrote: Now, what's Kent doing in the lounge???
It's my day off! 
TTFN - Kent
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If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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So I guess this will be all over the Insider on Monday... 
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I know it's been discussed to death in other threads, but I have a different angle that just came to mind and I'm honestly curious if anyone else has seen/heard a similar thing happening anywhere (albeit likely at a much smaller scale).
For the sake of argument, let's pretend the courtroom dust has settled, and the end result is in: Apple is compelled to create a new tool/OS for the FBI to use for its hacking pleasure.
So here's where my question comes in. What if every developer in Apple's employ decides they'd rather quit than work on that project? What if they publicly announce a sort of conscientious objector or something? Where does that leave Apple (other than programmer-less)? Where does it leave the government? The ruling is against Apple, not any single developer, and you can't exactly threaten someone with jail for quitting their job, right?
Any thoughts?
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