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I feel it should be more than it is. A great deal of what comes into my mailbox are action items: Fix this. Attend this meeting. Do this by end of the week.

by bdunbar 14y ago

I feel it should be more than it is. A great deal of what comes into my mailbox are action items: Fix this. Attend this meeting. Do this by end of the week. Tell me what you think. Don't forget your appointment at the dentist. What should happen is that 'mail' decides 'fix this' goes to a service desk, 'attend this' goes to a calendar, and so on. It is not. It's all manual with a veneer of pretty mouse clicks and it sucks.

khyryk 14y ago
The fact that I'd really like my car to be able to travel at the speed of light doesn't make it broken when it can't. My car also doesn't fix me dinner, which would be really cool, but the lack of satisfaction of my own personal wishlist doesn't mean the objectives that are set out to be achieved by cars have not been sufficiently met for most people.
- bdunbar 14y ago
  Bad analogies. Your car would fall apart long before it cranked up to a speed even approaching speed of light. It's not designed to do that - it's just a hunk of iron and plastic. Mail is 1s and 0s. There is no reason why we can't have intelligence acting on those bits: doing rote tasks is what computers are good at. If you're happy with mail as-is, great. But consider that it could be better.
  - khyryk 14y ago
    I've failed to prevent people from getting caught up on the less important parts. Okay, how about this: MS Excel is a product that accomplishes a certain set of objectives for a great number of people. Suppose the title of this thread were "Why do people say Excel is broken?", to which someone would respond that they can't clickity here and there and have Excel take complete care of their investment portfolio. Whether or not this is technologically feasible, saying that Excel is broken just because it fails (out of the box, at least to my knowledge) to support a particular feature in some particular way that someone may want is silly. Of course anything can be better, but let's be realistic about what's broken and what isn't.
    - bdunbar 14y ago
      Of course anything can be better, but let's be realistic about what's broken and what isn't. Fine. But I'm going to hold on to my fantasy of wanting an app that does in bits what a secretary used to do in real life.

by bdunbar 14y ago

khyryk 14y ago

The fact that I'd really like my car to be able to travel at the speed of light doesn't make it broken when it can't. My car also doesn't fix me dinner, which would be really cool, but the lack of satisfaction of my own personal wishlist doesn't mean the objectives that are set out to be achieved by cars have not been sufficiently met for most people.

bdunbar 14y ago
Bad analogies. Your car would fall apart long before it cranked up to a speed even approaching speed of light. It's not designed to do that - it's just a hunk of iron and plastic. Mail is 1s and 0s. There is no reason why we can't have intelligence acting on those bits: doing rote tasks is what computers are good at. If you're happy with mail as-is, great. But consider that it could be better.
- khyryk 14y ago
  I've failed to prevent people from getting caught up on the less important parts. Okay, how about this: MS Excel is a product that accomplishes a certain set of objectives for a great number of people. Suppose the title of this thread were "Why do people say Excel is broken?", to which someone would respond that they can't clickity here and there and have Excel take complete care of their investment portfolio. Whether or not this is technologically feasible, saying that Excel is broken just because it fails (out of the box, at least to my knowledge) to support a particular feature in some particular way that someone may want is silly. Of course anything can be better, but let's be realistic about what's broken and what isn't.
  - bdunbar 14y ago
    Of course anything can be better, but let's be realistic about what's broken and what isn't. Fine. But I'm going to hold on to my fantasy of wanting an app that does in bits what a secretary used to do in real life.