Slashdot Mirror
Email Turns 34
34019 writes "The original Gmail engineer, Paul Buchheit, reminisces on the creation of email, and how he designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate. From the article: 'Of course that wasn't the only reason why I wanted to build Gmail. I rely on email, a lot, but it just wasn't working for me. My email was a mess. Important messages were hopelessly buried, and conversations were a jumble; sometimes four different people would all reply to the same message with the same answer because they didn't notice the earlier replies. I couldn't always get to my email because it was stuck on one computer, and web interfaces were unbearably clunky. And I had spam. A lot of it. With Gmail I got the opportunity to change email - to build something that would work for me, not against me.'
We were plotting against Paul. We were trying to destroy his life, bit by bit.
-- Paul's former email
...Socrates is to Bette Midler.
E-mail is throwing a birthday party! It's next week, the same day as Spam.
Unfortunately, they agreed that Spam should send the invites. Expect them in your mailbox soon along with the free drugs and Nigerian relatives.
wow... i wish i was on the AOL 34 years ago. I bet I could download the whole AOL over my modem in just one minute!
Anybody know when the term Snail Mail was first published?
I have a postmarked envelope from the early 90's mentioning Snail Mail on the front.
Anybody else?
Acording to wikipedia, network email existed prior to 1971.
The main contribution that happened in 1971 was the introduction of the "@" symbol and the use of email on ARPANET. But prior to 1971 there was email being sent between computers.
From wikipedia:
"The early history of network e-mail is also murky; the AUTODIN system may have been the first allowing electronic text messages to be transferred between users on different computers in 1966, but it is possible the SAGE system had something similar some time before."
I don't wish to take away any from what Ray Tomlison acheived in 1971 which was a great contribution to introduce email to ARPA net and make it really convenient.
The original Gmail engineer, Paul Buchheit, reminisces on the creation of email, and how he designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate.
Sorry, but I don't buy the google altruistic angle - they did this so they could better serve us ads. This is all about information, and who controls it. I doubt highly that it had anything at all to do with improving anyone's way of life. Google is a corporation, it's primary motive is, and always will be, profit.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
just like I'm not fond of writing letters IRL I don't like writing E-mail and I only do it when there is no other choice (usually for official stuff or things I want to have a record of). I rather have IM. (or IRC, but that's officially dead...)
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
I think Google's innovations are great, but the Everything's Beta syndrome, in email, in Usenet news archiving, etcetera... It's all wearing a little thin.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Just because you can search through your email doesn't make it less a mess, it's just easier to find things.
And what is wrong with more than one person answering a question, maybe the 2nd or 5th person has a way better solution.
How much in that article summary is a Gmail ad, and how much is about the history of e-mail?
Hmm, better go RTFA...
Hmm, now wait a minute! It's on Google's blog.
And it still just talks about Gmail.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Gmail needs a calender.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I appreciate all he's done for Gmail, but he can't take credit for their excellent spam filtering. That credit should go to Steve Linford and XBL from the Spamhaus project. As stated before, Gmail uses XBL to filter out spam. Needless to say - the XBL is pretty cool.
So, does anyone still have a working email address from 1971? If not, I wonder who has the world's oldest currently working email address?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
MS Outlook is the bane of my email existence. Its inability to group conversation threads encourages replies to include the conversation in its entirety. Its insistence that the reply precede the original drives me batty. I have not used GMail, but that "conversations" thingy looks moderately interesting, if it can display more than a single line of previous messages... Why not an email interface more like IM for conversations? Cut out the redundant headers and signatures. Oh wait, MS Outlook doesn't do the standard "-- \n" signature prefix. Lack of PGP/MIME support just kills me.
Can't remember where I saw this:
Also, I'd like a clearer picture of who sent it, who got it (the Cc: list), and when they sent it. I find this very difficult in MS Outlook which I use at work for various reasons mostly outside my control.
On a slightly different note, there is little I hate more than receiving an email that's been forwarded 700 times and having to scroll through a million >>>>> > >> just to see the message (using mutt for these forwards; perhaps MS Outlook doesn't display all that preceding crud, I don't know).
In conclusion, Outlook has done more to make email a painful experience than Sat^H^H^HAlan Ralsky himself.
Maybe google is waiting for gmail to turn 34 in order to promote it to a finale release and left the beta in the past.....
E-mail's fine and dandy. However, thanks to spam (or, more specifically, the self-righteous, over-zealous spam blocking lists and filters that have been set up because of the spam) e-mail is not a viable option for delivering critical messages anymore. I still use fax and phone to deliver those.
The owls are not what they seem
Maybe he could celebrate by unscrewing Gmail's MIME handling. That would
y pe: text/html; charset=us-ascii
n t-Type: image/jpeg; name="file.jpg"
c
improve the way we communicate. Gmail does not appear to handle recursive
mime, such as a multipart/related inside a multipart/alternative. Yahoo,
Hotmail, Thunderbird, Microsoft all seem to manage it ~ Why can't Gmail?
Example:
From: someone@domain
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="[BOUNDRY]"
This is a multi-part message in MIME format with text and recursed Mime alternative.
--[BOUNDRY]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; name="message.txt";
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
This is the text message. Gmail does not even show this.
--[BOUNDRY]
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="[BOUNDRY2]";
--[BOUNDRY2]
Content-T
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline;
<HTML>This is the HTML message with pictures. <IMG SRC="cid:whatever"></HTML>
--[BOUNDRY2]
Conte
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID: <whatever>
Content-Disposition: inline;
/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEASABIAAD/4QAWRXhpet
--[BOUNDRY2]
--[BOUNDRY]
Many rich people put their money in Banks. Although they don't know it and hate the idea .. the money they put in banks is utilized to give out loans to people. When loans are given out .. that creates jobs. (eg: houses get built etc). And you may say that "well what if the economy tanks and people default on the loans" .. Guess who loses out .. the rich .. cause then the houses get owned by the bank. And get resold at a loss at a low price .. Maybe even back to the people they repossessed the home from. LOL.
.. quality of life translates to many things .. fundamentally probably "energy at disposal" (stuff you own requires energy to make, and food itslf is just energy (energy to grow and energy to retriev). So fundamentally we cannot run out of raw materials becaue even when you throw things away it remains on the erath. The extraction of the material from mining or from landfills or wherever is what costs money. So anyway .. what we have is an energy problem. But even that is solvable .. For example the entire Sahara desert can be covered with solar panels or clean energy systems (deep geothermal or fusion if that ever becomes possible) and provide enough energy to sustain a decent quality of life for everyone on Earth. The only downside is that the improved quality of life may cause a stagnation or decline in global population because population growth rate tends to decline and become negative in rich countries (US is probably the only exception for a variety of reasons including immigration).
Anyway
Because it breaks the thread of conversation.
Why is top posting bad?
So when did this become standard? I ask because both my boss and my sister have commented on my tendancy to reply after bits of email - breaking my reply into several section - answering individual parts. My sister claims to have never seen it before! My boss was just complaining about having to look for my answers.
I explained to my sister the history and logic to my style of posting. I've been on the 'net a while - but not since '71 but more than 10 years er... make that 15 years (I'm getting old). She understood and agreed it made sense. I didn't argue with my boss :^) .
Note I have never used Outlook. But then I haven't used Windows on a personally owned computer either. I know that when I try to help someone I know who uses Outlook and isn't particularly computer literate, she claims it can't do what I ask her to do. I'm not sure if that is her, or the computer. Since this is usually done by email - I can't check myself.
ZK (who has a gmail account - but doesn't use it. There is no reason for that - just too lazy to change)Time flies like an arrow Fruit flies like a banana
I guess everyone that wants an invite has one by now but if there is anyone else send me an email to cdonges at the mail provider we are talking about.
...there is no sig...
b1gc0K@aol.com
Google is good, good! See, they have the same three first letters! Goo!
And you're on Slashdot! How dare you disrespect the great Google! Take that talk to Redmond, mister. It's not welcome here!
(Yes, I'm kidding. No, seriously. I'm kidding. As in not flamebait).
Well, not e-mails but there is a list of 100 oldest .com domains.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
"From the article: 'Of course that wasn't the only reason why I wanted to build Gmail."
;) .
People tend to react badly if you come out and say, "strive toward complete world domination by the Google Corporation"
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
good to know that.
is there any copy of first email? I have seen "peace of history" that put Aleks Totic the first html page to demo capabilities of Mosaic the first web browser.
http://www.totic.org/nscp/demodoc/demo.html
Why does any message with the same subject get marked as part of the same conversation ? This is not always desired, and can cause a lot of confusion. This behavior should be configurable.
I know the gmail has a "delete-nothing" philosophy, but can we still have a keyboard shortcut to move messages to trash ?
I know google is all about searching
Don't get me wrong. I love gmail. It's right up there with pine and mutt as far as usability is concerned - and thanks to firefox/mozilla, I can use it seamlessly across platforms. I have learn't to live with it's quirks.
But my point is gmail is still lacking in the area of customization. It's like we all share Paul's gmail.conf file. Just because it works for Paul, doesn't mean it works for everyone else.
34 is a round number in base-34 notation. That's why it's so important to observe this anniversary, in case any non-geeks who happened to be misdirected to this page for some strange reason were wondering.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Hey everybody, jihadi_31337 here again. You may remember me posting from the Internet Measurment Conference earlier this week. I'm on a road trip for the weekened, and I'm at a friend's place. One of my favorite things about going to friends' places is that I can do a bunch of jihad posts and get their IP banned too :)
Ok, here we go. Thanks for reading the intro.
Ever notice the "beat the rush and see it early" link at the top of slashdot when a new story is about to come out?
Sounds good, doesn't it? To be able to view the pages linked to in the article before the tens of thousands of other slashbots click to view them.
Did it ever occur to you that you're taking part in cyber-terrorism?
That's right: Slashdot's editors are cyber-terrorists. They coordinate a DOS against small websites, and they attempt to collect moeny from people who wish to be spared the effects of said DOS. Terrorism, plain and simple.
You can fight this and other crimes by slashdot's editors by joining anti-slash. Anti-slash is committed to forcing the editors to own up to their numerous crimes against the geek community. Until our demands are met, we will relentlessly discredit them as a news service through trolling and other means.
Also, props to poopbot and the alan thicke troll. We remember your accomplishments.
In sacred jihad,
jihadi_31337
| _ __ | |
_) |_|_)__/_| |
(_) o
No text.
I remember in 1974 using IBM's TSO and clists to write messages and print them at distant locations at a large mfg. plant with over 6 million sq. feet under roof and 16,000 employees. Sort of email in - telegraph out, but better than nothing when you could not reach someone by phone, did not have the time to cross a 1700 acre site, needed to give precise information, or wanted a record of what was sent.
It was a few years later that true email showed up at that company, CCmail on early Macs and something else (? DSmail ?) on the mainframe terminals.
got rid of my college account 1 year ago - it was from 1983 (fresh year). That was the era of BBSs and if you even knew what the internet was it was all FTP ing around with GOPHER and ARCHIE and playing MUDs. I remember when MOSAIC came out (1992?) and was thinking "Huh -this might catch on." Little did I know.
..........FULL STOP.
i was just wondering how much google is paying slashdot for these daily adverts?, anyone?
Apple's # 64, in 1987.
Microsoft as usual played catch up in 1991, according to WHOIS records...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Love it or hate it Gmail was a breakthrough for email by generating a renewed interest in improving web based email. Webmail had been basically the same since what, 1996?, then Gmail comes along and turns it on its head. Everyone is a winner as a result. Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google are now all competing and innovating in an area of the web that had been stangnant for years.
I just got rid of my mindspring address from 1997, in recent years it was getting well over 100 spams a day. No doubt that's nowhere near a record number.
And when was the first "Dave Rhodes" spam received? This probably came from the SECOND email address ever to exist.
Tag lost or not installed.
Both Thunderbird (and the OS X Mail.app) do all that, and I have unlimited storage, I can remote in from anywhere on earth, I have backups, and best of all GOOGLE ISN'T WATCHING (my email).
Beat that.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
That song is copyrighted by law. Please email Time Warner with all your personal details and "Copyright infringement" on the subject.
Favorite quote: "
It's electronic. It's words. It counts.
Heck you could even argue it's digital.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
hey
that's copyrighted!
Time to hang my head in shame!! Gmail works fine.
I made a coding error, missing off the trailing "--"s from the closing boundries. ie: The closing boundries should be:
--[BOUNDRY2]--
--[BOUNDRY]--
It is just that the others mail clients are more forgiving of fools and led me into a false sense that my code was OK. Very sorry to have posted. Andy.
So, basically you say Gmail needs to be pressed and rolled?
:P
Man, if you hate Gmail just stop using it
I just read
Joe: "I can't find things on the Internet."
Google: "We solved your internet search problems!"
Joe: "Search the Internet!?"
Google: "Yeah, we indexed the Internet."
Google: "Also, we solved your desktop search problems!"
Joe: "How did you do that?"
Google: "We indexed your hard-drive."
Joe: "Oh, cool I guess."
Google: "We solved you email organization problems!"
Joe: "How?"
Google: "We indexed your inbox!"
Joe: "Wow, this brute force thing never gets old with you guys huh?"
The gmail spam filter uses many inputs; XBL is just one of many.
purely out of boredom I went through the top 10 and with a little help from the wayback machine (which doesn't go far enough back!) here's my results.
.com land innit. 6 out of the top 10 have basically vanished and been replaced. hey hoe.
SYMBOLICS.COM - dead, well... it's there but is not much more a place holder
BBN.COM - blimey! it works!
THINK.COM - 1/2 dead. links to the oracle "think" project but the original site would've been Thinking Machines Corp Lisp Boxen... miss you guys!
MCC.COM - dead, 100% dead.
DEC.COM - links to HP - effectively dead REALLY miss you guys!
NORTHROP.COM - dead (merged with grumman)
XEROX.COM - still going strong.
SRI.COM - seems to still be going & the same org
HP.COM - now part of the hp/compaq/dec mega corp
BELLCORE.COM - dead, redirects to telcordia
Well, 20 years is a long old time in
The early bird may catch the first worm but he'll still be hungry by dinner time. or something...
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
so I can finally go to buy that "over the hill" tee-shirts for our good pal, email.
Coderz 4 Life
Granted, this is old SCO not new SCO, but it's amusing they show up on this list.
Strangely, I don't see ALGORE.COM on that list.
OK, OK, I'll read it soon! I've been busy.
for techbirthdaydot.org, I would never have known otherwise about all these useless milestones.
Responding to my own AC post.
Let me rephrase that, to "When was Snail Mail used in context to email?"
The envelope I have is just that, and compares the internet, and regular mail.
This link is hardly about e-mail's birthday. Although the first few lines do mention the creation of e-mail, the blog entry itself is an explanation of how great gmail is and why you should sign up. Eh. I'm not that impressed.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Oddly enough, the average penis size increased by three inches that year too.
I assume this means they will be introducing a delete button and providing a way of hiding mail inside folders instead of just labelling it. As for the rest, I can hardly wait!
No, cars are a LOT more complicated than a general-purpose computer. The average person could not ever learn to assemble a car (which can contain up to a couple dozen computers, all with specialized code), but high-school kids make money by assembling computers at the local store after school.
You are confusing computers with the software that runs on them. Computers ARE single-purpose devices - they have only one function - execute a series of instructions and generate outputs, with flow altered based on various input. That is IT.
Cars, on the other hand, have to start and run at anywhere between -50 and +150 F, have to ensure the survival of their occupants in real crashes (not "computer crashes"), have to generate their own power, have to keep their users comfortable, etc. And they have to do this for at least 10 years with no updates, no rebuilding everything from scratch, etc. Just replacing a spark plugs, tires, brakes, filters and oil - stuff anyone can do.
Most software is not held to the same standards as cars are. For example, Microsoft could never make a car - the quality would be too low. The thing would crash regularly, would require special proprietary roads, have to be patched every week, and rebuilt every 3 months. Even then, your mileage would continue to deteriorate.
Contrast that to todays cars (particularly the japanese) - they run for years with only an oil change or two. They don't crash by themselves. If YOU crash it, it will protect you (seat belts, air bags) even sacrificing itself (crumple zones). When something goes wrong with the engine, it will even tell you WHAT went wrong (diagnostic codes). And, on top of that, it has resale value.
Its also possible to write bug-free software. NASA does it.
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml
The problem is that people accept shit from commercial programs. The EXPECT it to have bugs. If your toilet overflowed as often as the average Windows box crashes, you'd shoot the plumber. If your fridge failed as often, you'd go back to a box with a chunk of ice, just to save money by not having your food rot on you unexpectedly. If your TV or radio b0rked as often as that, you'd return it and demand a refund. If your wife or kid went all stupid as often, you'd take them to a doctor. If your dick stopped working as often, YOU would see a doctor. If the company you worked for forgot to pay you as often, you'd quit. If your ... well, you get the point. This is the ONLY area where people accept such shit.