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MIME Attachments Are 20 Years Old Today

Posted by Soulskill on from the trapped-in-a-box dept.

judgecorp writes "MIME email attachments have been around for 20 years, and we now send a trillion every day. The mountains of emails in corporate archives now contain vital information, says MIME inventor Nathaniel Borenstein, which can be mined to expose conspiracies and make businesses more efficient. He also says a one-penny tax on attachments would make him as rich as Germany — if it weren't for the fact that such a charge would have killed MIME."

7 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Larry Wall on MIME by Baldrson · · Score: 4, Funny

    Gad, I hate MIME.
    Larry Wall, 13 Sep 1995

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    Seastead this.
  2. a new (?) law of mathematics by fche · · Score: 5, Funny

    "He also says a one-penny tax on attachments would make him as rich as Germany"

    Just goes to show that the product of multiplying two meaningless numbers is a meaningless number.

    1. Re:a new (?) law of mathematics by JamesP · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hence the old joke

      Don't run after a bus, run after a taxi, you will save a lot more money

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      how long until /. fixes commenting on Chrome?
  3. Marcel Marcaux invented MIME, everyone knows that. by drwho · · Score: 3, Funny

    Or maybe he just popularized it? I don't know. But I get annoyed with these clowns attached to my e-mail messages.

  4. Re:uuencode FTW! by msobkow · · Score: 3, Funny

    Silly me.

    I used to just set up an FTP account and email the receiver the account name and address of the server so they could download it themselves.

    Passwords? What passwords? We were INVULNERABLE! Who in their right mind would bother downloading a student's project, and if they did, WTF would they do with it?

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    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  5. Re:Who is this we? by grcumb · · Score: 4, Funny

    The article says "I did some checking up, and thereâ(TM)s an estimate that MIME is used a trillion times every day"

    A trillion MIMEs? I'm speechless.
    *runs away without moving*

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    Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
  6. Re:uuencode FTW! by sootman · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nice, it's not often I get to bust out this old gem:

    User: What do I do with this attachment?
    Admin: You uudecode it.
    User: I I I decode it?

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