I was recently chatting online with one of my cohorts using the venerable MSN chat service. I, shunning all things Microsoft, use this network via a chat client called Adium. After many long pauses, strange and out-of-place statements, and general awkwardness of conversation, I had the suspicion that MSN was not properly sending or receiving all the messages involved in the conversation. My suspicion was confirmed when the other party quoted something they had just said moments before that did not show up in my chat window.

The other party (you know who you are), seemed annoyed to a minor degree, if at all. This kind of behavior from my software, however, drives me completely insane - especially when I am relying on it as a sole form of communication. My frustration was only magnified by the other parties' lack of interest in the subject of lost IM messages (or maybe they weren't hearing my complaints at all?)

Let me give you a scenario. You're telling a story to a friend. Something like "Hey Joe, I was walking down the street and this guy came up to me and said 'I'm a child molester and I kill nuns!' So I freaked out and beat him up and turned him into the police." Your friend is listening, but all he hears is "I'm a child molester and I kill nuns!" All this because the air on which the sound waves travel decided not to pass the rest along.

I was trying to make plans with my friend, but instead a five minute conversation became an hour long conversation with both parties (and by both I mean myself) wondering what the heck was going on.

I contacted Microsoft about this bug. They informed me that this wasn't actually a bug, but a feature! It's called selective messenger gateway service, and is provided free (as in beer) to all MSN users! My contact at Microsoft informed me that "bandwidth is expensive, and we figured we'd cut down on costs by only passing along a percentage of messages that go through our service. This will cut down on fees from ISPs and will eventually trickle down to the consumer." While the economics are sound, I'm not so sure this is a great strategy.