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Benjamin Pollack has blogged about why he hates the proprietary chat tool, Slack, which competes with IRC. He covers six points as to why you should too:
"Yeah, that’s right: there’s finally something I feel so negatively about that I’m unsatisfied hating it all by myself; I want you to hate it, too. So let’s talk about why Slack is destroying your life, piece by piece, and why you should get rid of it immediately before its trail of destruction widens any further—in other words, while you still have time to stop the deluge of mindless addiction that it’s already staple-gunned to your life."
[Ed. addition] I had troubles accessing the site, even wget failed to download anything... but lynx.exe on Windows 7 Pro worked on the first try!?! For the curious, here are the six points from the blog post alluded to above:
1. It encourages use for both time-sensitive and time-insensitive communication
2. It cannot be sanely ignored
3. It cannot be sanely organized
4. It's proprietary and encourages lock-in
5. Its version of Markdown is just broken
6. It encourages use for both business and personal applications
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:22AM (7 children)
I don't really agree.
4 is an annoyance, but not a showstopper. It is, however, perfectly true.
5 is an annoyance, but not a showstopper. It is, however, perfectly true.
6 is fucking retarded. This is a good reason to have a smartphone for work only, that you lock in your desk drawer before going home. Or turn off at 5PM. However, it is still not a complete showstopper.
On the other hand, 1, 2 and 3 are serious, and in the context of Slack, basically unavoidable problems. Mixing the ephemeral and the enduring, in terms of communication, is bad because problem 1 directly leads to problem 2. If any given message could be URGENT, or LOLCAT, with no external way of telling the difference, and no enforceable way of requiring people to keep the two segregated, it turns into a stream of priority interrupts - or slush. Neither is a good outcome.
Slack is pretty much a thing that I would tuck into a corner, with permanent DND settings, and ignore until I could find a different job because obviously the boss is retarded.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:40AM (5 children)
No, proprietary software is a showstopper. Software that doesn't respect your freedoms cannot be tolerated, mainly for ethical reasons but also for practical reasons. It has been shown time and time again (Windows) that those who develop proprietary software have power over their users and they will often abuse it to varying extents. I see no reason to allow someone else to control my computing and hope and pray that they don't abuse me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:42AM (4 children)
Ok, I'm with you on the proprietary software, but in the context of the PHBs of the world, it's not a showstopper level of importance unless they're trying to get some kind of OS brownie points.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Sunday July 09 2017, @12:07PM (3 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:19PM (1 child)
Counterexample: The Cloud.
"We're going to put all our servers in The Cloud!"
"Uh, there are regulations about customer data and payment data and stuff..."
"Cloud, bitches! Now!"
"Fuuuuck ..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @07:57AM
That's when you remind them that cloud is a buzz-word, and the technical term is "someone elses server".
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday July 10 2017, @06:24AM
You mean those same businesses that let Google handle their email?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:25PM
I don't agree: his first three issues are easily dealt with.
The first thing I do whenever we are using Slack is set up an "alerts" channel. Then make sure important automated alerts, and time-sensitive posts from people are posted there.
You can tune the notify option options by channel. I get pinged for "alerts." The other channels I look at when it is convenient and don't get bothered when it is not.
Have been using Slack for years off and on. It is not a panacea but it can work well when their isn't an alternative in place already and you have nontechnical users.