Email Inventor Ray Tomlinson Dies At 74 (techrepublic.com) 58
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.
Re:@ symbol... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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You'd think if it were that powerful, people would never mistake it's for its.
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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.
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There were no tablet based software keyboards then, so the @ symbol was as accessible as 2 - just use the shift key.
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.
About his colleague telling him that that was not something they were supposed to be working on, reminds me of the original UNIX creators who were trying to build a platform where they could play 'Space Travel'.
RIP, Mr Tomlinson
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Then we are lucky that you where not on the board ;D you InSeNsItiV ClOD ... shit, did I typo somewhere?
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Re:@ symbol... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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)!
If not for skunk works... (Score:2)
... we'd still be living in a pre-wheel society.
RIP (Score:2)
Requiesc@ in pace.
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requiescat@pace
Fixed that for you.
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Thankfully (Score:5, Insightful)
Thankfully the real inventor of modern email is getting due credit, rather than charlatans like VA Shiva Ayyadurai.
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I have never heard of Mr. Ayyadurai, so you can feel good about that.
dev and null? (Score:1)
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.
Re:Bounceback (Score:4, Funny)
You know, last time that shit happened they immediately started to make a religion out of it...
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Is there any computing standard or practice that hasn't already become a matter for religious wars?
Very sad (Score:2)
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?
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Well Siegel died
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Gary Thuerk [computerworld.com] sent the first spam email [wikipedia.org] in 1978. It was an ad promoting DEC computers in ALL CAPS. In 2004, when he was asked if he feels guilty for sending the first spam, he said: "I never feel guilty. Someone would have done it..." He is on LinkedIn and offers this: "You can have the Father of E-spam be a speaker at your company function. You can watch people line up at your technology conference booth to meet the Father of eMarketing."
Other people who worked hard on killing the usefulness of the internet
telnet Ray Tomlinson 25 (Score:5, Funny)
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.
I did that too! (Score:1)
But you won't be going to the funeral (Score:2)
Because the invitation went into your junk folder.
user@machine.domain (Score:2)
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 intern
Now add = (Score:2)
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... [vulpeculox.net]
Benefits
The Inventor of Email is Alive (Score:1)
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Ayyadurai started working on his "EMAIL" program in 1979, one year after the first spam email had been sent to several hundred recipients on the ARPANET. Congratulations to him on being alive, but he is not the inventor of email.