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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.