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Email Inventor Ray Tomlinson Dies At 74 (techrepublic.com)
vikingpower writes: ARPAnet pioneer and networking legend Ray Tomlinson, who is best known for his contributions in developing email standards, has died at 74. Tomlinson was best known for choosing the @ symbol to indicate a message should be sent to a different computer on a network. He also led development of standards for the from, subject, and date fields found in every email message sent today.
When Tomlinson first showed his invention to his colleague Jerry Burchfiel, Tomlinson said, "Don't tell anyone! This isn't what we're supposed to be working on." May Ray rest in peace in /dev/null.
... we'd still be living in a pre-wheel society.
Requiesc@ in pace.
I would have put the apostrophe key on a 35 foot extension, since most people seem unable to grasp that it's means it is.
Thankfully the real inventor of modern email is getting due credit, rather than charlatans like VA Shiva Ayyadurai.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So if a towlie blows hizelf up and 100 others he gets to go to paradise and this guy, this guy gets a send off to dev and null? that's where my spam goes.
Doesn't require me to hit shift on my Japanese keyboard, and I like it that way (it's on the key to the right of P)!
You know, last time that shit happened they immediately started to make a religion out of it...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Then we are lucky that you where not on the board ;D you InSeNsItiV ClOD ... shit, did I typo somewhere?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Only thing I wish he had done - make the thing case SENSITIVE. Like Foo@Bar.com would have been different from foo@bar.com or FOO@BAR.COM.
Which would have lead to endless confusion, leaks due to case bugs, and phishing attacks. Thank goodness he took the smart option.
The part after the @ is a domain name. According to RFC 1035, domain names are case insensitive. Technically however, the local part of the address (the part before the @) is case sensitive, or rather can be case sensitive. It would be wrong to send mail to user@domain.example when you were given the address User@domain.example. In practice the local part is almost always case-insensitive too.
The man did so much to change the world.
Now, will someone please tell us when the guy that invented SPAM dies, so we can celebrate there being one less evil bastard in the world?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
HELO
MAIL FROM: 80sgeek@early.inter.net
RCPT TO: raytomlinson@cloud.hev
DATA
Subject: Thanks.
Ray,
Thanks for all your work on this new tech. I've found it especially useful and it has given me great joy at times.
One of the best times is when I emailed the school staff list "from the District Superintendent", clarifying the dress code for staff on "Casual Fridays".
I started with a few stolen lines from a real memo. I included some choice text from the district's student dress code for maximum troll effect and ended with a school colors clown nose requirement.
I actually got to hear one of the office staff say: "I didn't know the district had a casual Friday!". Everyone laughed, and I did not go to jail. The district IT staff got the message and updated their SMTP server to use authentication.
-A grateful user.
Thank goodness he took the smart option.
If you mean he decided to make email addresses case insensitive, then you're wrong. The interpretation of the local part is up to the receiving end. "User@example.com" and "user@example.com" are different email addresses and mails to these addresses may end up in different mailboxes. In practice this is rarely the case, but the standard does not allow the sending MUA or intermediate MTAs to make any assumptions about the interpretation of the local part by the destination MTA.
Context > grammar. You have the most powerful context analyzer in the known universe sitting between your ears, use it. Complain about ambiguities, or untruths, not grammar. You are noise in the signal.
Good-bye
Because the invitation went into your junk folder.
You'd think if it were that powerful, people would never mistake it's for its.
I would have put the apostrophe key on a 35 foot extension, since most people seem unable to grasp that it's means it is.
Slashdot is a forum without integrated spelling or grammar checking. Cut and Paste doesn't work reliably: "it's" becomes "itâ(TM)s." For even more fun, try posting a timely response to a Slashdot story from a tablet or smartphone.
Had that been the solution, you could have had JohnSmith@acme.net, johnsmith@acme.net, JOHNSMITH@acme.net and any number of other combinations to support the various John Smiths out there in the world and using the same service, such as gmail or icloud or outlook.com
All I can say is that being a pre-internet email sysadmin in the era that transitioned between <machine1!machine2!user> with some atrocities of decnet mail addressing thrown in and sent over modems with uucp/uumail, the appearance of <user@machine2.domain> email addresses really helped to make sendmail.config parsing files totally insane with both left to right and right to left name resolution and routing rules that persisted until we could afford to get directly attached directly to the internet and talk to other mail servers directly...
I think I still have nightmares about those days ;^)
Microsoft Exchange being a bunch of dickheads that promote case sensitive usernames on email. Fucking retards.
This is a fine example of "making shit up". Good job Anonymous Coward.
To be clear, with Exchange you can set SMTP addresses to use mixed case for readability purposes (JohnSmith@mydomain.com) but it has zero impact on accepting mail; that mailbox will accept jOHNsMITH@mydomain.com as well.
"Oh no... he found the
Split by =
The 'mailbox' bit of the address can be split using the = character to add on
Also membership, semi-formal titles and indication that the recipient in the first instance is a machine.
This means you can send an email to =salesdept@... or Mary=salesmanager@... or Mary@...
Details at http://vulpeculox.net/ob/Email...
Benefits
Is there any computing standard or practice that hasn't already become a matter for religious wars?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
You mean SHIFT-8? SHIFT-2 was double quotes. Something about just needing to flip a bit to turn the "8" into a "@". This was long before the IBM PC keyboard.
Daniel Klugh
I pulled a VERY similar stunt except the content was highly sexual, and was "from" the principal and to a female teacher, and I got kicked out of the National Honor Society and 2 weeks suspension.
There were no tablet based software keyboards then, so the @ symbol was as accessible as 2 - just use the shift key.
Whoops, on an ASR33 shift/2 was ", not @.
('cos ASCII 1, 2, 3, 4... maps to !, ", #, $... when you flip the bits).
Only thing I wish he had done - make the thing case SENSITIVE. Like Foo@Bar.com would have been different from foo@bar.com or FOO@BAR.COM.
Jesus fucking Christ am I glad that they didn't do that.
You mean SHIFT-8?
Shift-P on an ASR33.
"1" is 061. shift 1 is "!", 041, shift is done by XOR with 020.
"P" is 0120, 0120 XOR 020 == 0100, "@".
Also, "O" is 0117, 0117 XOR 020 == 0137, backarrow (or, later, underscore).
Ray Tomlinson created the @ symbol and text messaging. Email was invented by Shiva Ayyadurai @va_shiva http://vashiva.com/correction-...
And they think that an apostrophe ess added to any word makes it plural.