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Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies

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  Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2016-03-09 15:42 -0500
    Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2016-03-10 18:54 +0000
      Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Fred Smith <fred@smith.com> - 2016-03-10 20:47 +0000
        Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-03-11 04:20 +0000
      Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-03-11 04:20 +0000
        Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2016-03-11 21:12 +0000
          Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-03-11 22:05 +0000
      Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2016-03-10 21:48 -0800
        Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies "Sam Crean" <sg55443@gmail.com> - 2016-03-11 19:43 +1100
        Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2016-03-11 09:07 +0000
      Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2016-03-11 08:13 +0000
    Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2016-03-10 15:49 -0600
    Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2016-03-11 15:00 -0800
      Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2016-03-11 16:09 -0800

#160753 — Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/03/06/ray-tomlinson-inventor-of-modern-email-dies.html

I met Ray Tomlinson a couple times, he was at the Sussex conference in 
1973 and at the Washington conference on networking a few months later.

By the time of the Sussex conference in there was a working email system 
at ARPAnet. One of the evening sessions for the first time someone was 
logging into ARPAnet from the UK. Tomlinson was at the keyboard just as 
it was announced that he was going to get his email the then minister 
responsible for British Post left the room so he wouldn't be a witness 
to a violation of British law stating that the post office had an 
monopoly on mail services.

I think most of the news stories have it right, he made one change to 
the then quite common computer messaging systems to tie messages to an 
individual rather than a specific user account on a specific computer.

It was a small but important paradigm shift.

Ray Tomlinson's legacy can be summed up by a single character "@".

w..

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#160813

On Wed, 2016-03-09, Walter Banks wrote:

> I met Ray Tomlinson a couple times, he was at the Sussex conference in 
> 1973 and at the Washington conference on networking a few months later.
>
> By the time of the Sussex conference in there was a working email system 
> at ARPAnet.

And now in 2016, there's not really a working email system on the
Internet.  Outside work, most people I know seem to use email as only
a way to be fed information from various companies.  It's not a major
person-to-person medium.

I used to think in the future people would have reliable, permanent
mail addresses and use PGP for encryption.  But instead we seem to be
jumping between different proprietary services instead, like Facebook.

It's a pity, because internet mail as it used to work, between people,
was such a powerful idea.  On the other hand, so was Usenet ...

/Jorgen

-- 
  // Jorgen Grahn <grahn@  Oo  o.   .     .
\X/     snipabacken.se>   O  o   .

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#160820

On 2016-03-10, Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> wrote:

>
> I used to think in the future people would have reliable, permanent
> mail addresses and use PGP for encryption.  But instead we seem to be
> jumping between different proprietary services instead, like Facebook.
>
>
> /Jorgen
>

It's been proven by example many times that people only pay
lip-service to their desire for privacy. Most of the time they
want LOOK AT MEEEE!!!

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#160837

On 2016-03-10, Fred Smith <fred@smith.com> wrote:

> On 2016-03-10, Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> wrote:
>
>> I used to think in the future people would have reliable, permanent
>> mail addresses and use PGP for encryption.  But instead we seem to be
>> jumping between different proprietary services instead, like Facebook.
>
> It's been proven by example many times that people only pay
> lip-service to their desire for privacy. Most of the time they
> want LOOK AT MEEEE!!!

Either that or they gladly throw away their privacy in return
for the latest shiny bauble.

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

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#160838

On 2016-03-10, Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> wrote:

> On Wed, 2016-03-09, Walter Banks wrote:
>
>> I met Ray Tomlinson a couple times, he was at the Sussex conference in 
>> 1973 and at the Washington conference on networking a few months later.
>>
>> By the time of the Sussex conference in there was a working email system 
>> at ARPAnet.
>
> And now in 2016, there's not really a working email system on the
> Internet.  Outside work, most people I know seem to use email as only
> a way to be fed information from various companies.  It's not a major
> person-to-person medium.
>
> I used to think in the future people would have reliable, permanent
> mail addresses and use PGP for encryption.  But instead we seem to be
> jumping between different proprietary services instead, like Facebook.
>
> It's a pity, because internet mail as it used to work, between people,
> was such a powerful idea.  On the other hand, so was Usenet ...

The important distinction is that Usenet and e-mail belong to nobody.
Things have come full circle.  In the '60s computing was centralized
for the simple reason that computers were so expensive that only medium
to large corporations could afford even one.  The Internet and cheap
personal computers made distributed processing possible.  But now the
pendulum has swung back, and computing is once again becoming centralized
in the hands of agencies such as Google and Facebook.  The Cloud is the
final step, for those foolish enough to entrust themselves to it (or
unfortunate enough to not know how to resist).

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

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#160873

On Fri, 2016-03-11, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2016-03-10, Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 2016-03-09, Walter Banks wrote:
>>
>>> I met Ray Tomlinson a couple times, he was at the Sussex conference in 
>>> 1973 and at the Washington conference on networking a few months later.
>>>
>>> By the time of the Sussex conference in there was a working email system 
>>> at ARPAnet.
>>
>> And now in 2016, there's not really a working email system on the
>> Internet.  Outside work, most people I know seem to use email as only
>> a way to be fed information from various companies.  It's not a major
>> person-to-person medium.
>>
>> I used to think in the future people would have reliable, permanent
>> mail addresses and use PGP for encryption.  But instead we seem to be
>> jumping between different proprietary services instead, like Facebook.
>>
>> It's a pity, because internet mail as it used to work, between people,
>> was such a powerful idea.  On the other hand, so was Usenet ...
>
> The important distinction is that Usenet and e-mail belong to nobody.

> Things have come full circle.  In the '60s computing was centralized
> for the simple reason that computers were so expensive that only medium
> to large corporations could afford even one.  The Internet and cheap
> personal computers made distributed processing possible.  But now the
> pendulum has swung back, and computing is once again becoming centralized
> in the hands of agencies such as Google and Facebook.  The Cloud is the
> final step, for those foolish enough to entrust themselves to it (or
> unfortunate enough to not know how to resist).

True, but it's not enough for me.  I want to communicate with the
foolish people I know and love across a medium controlled by us.

I wonder if that will ever happen.  We were close in the early 1990s,
but that's over 20 years ago.

/Jorgen

-- 
  // Jorgen Grahn <grahn@  Oo  o.   .     .
\X/     snipabacken.se>   O  o   .

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#160874

On 2016-03-11, Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> wrote:

> On Fri, 2016-03-11, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> Things have come full circle.  In the '60s computing was centralized
>> for the simple reason that computers were so expensive that only medium
>> to large corporations could afford even one.  The Internet and cheap
>> personal computers made distributed processing possible.  But now the
>> pendulum has swung back, and computing is once again becoming centralized
>> in the hands of agencies such as Google and Facebook.  The Cloud is the
>> final step, for those foolish enough to entrust themselves to it (or
>> unfortunate enough to not know how to resist).
>
> True, but it's not enough for me.  I want to communicate with the
> foolish people I know and love across a medium controlled by us.

Unfortunately, the foolish people fall for the flash and dazzle
offered by the monopoly providers.

> I wonder if that will ever happen.  We were close in the early 1990s,
> but that's over 20 years ago.

Well, major social trends seem to run on about a 40-year cycle.
Hang in there for another 20 years; hopefully the pendulum will swing back.
(The foolish, alas, will remain foolish.)

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

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#160840

On Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 1:54:48 PM UTC-5, Jorgen Grahn wrote:

> And now in 2016, there's not really a working email system on the
> Internet.  Outside work, most people I know seem to use email as only
> a way to be fed information from various companies.  It's not a major
> person-to-person medium.

Well, I know lots of people, including myself, who use email to 
communicate for non business purposes.  It's not the only medium,
of course, but IMHO it remains popular.



> I used to think in the future people would have reliable, permanent
> mail addresses and use PGP for encryption.  But instead we seem to be
> jumping between different proprietary services instead, like Facebook.

It would be nice if we had permanent authenticated email addresses.  I
don't know if that will ever happen.



> It's a pity, because internet mail as it used to work, between people,
> was such a powerful idea.  On the other hand, so was Usenet ...

The power of the Internet is due to its open nature.  But the Internet
is very weak due to its open nature.

People knew back in the _1960s_ that computers could be abused, either
by accidental or malevolent means.  Likewise with anonymity.  As the 
Internet grew beyond a tightly controlled restricted environment, 
the designers clearly should have early on installed far better 
safeguards in the very structure of it.  Perhaps its growth would've
been slower, but we'd have a better and safer system today.

Sadly, in the 1980s, lots of computer advocates strongly defended
the 'open' structure of the Internet.  IMHO, they were naive, and
ignored existing lessons and factors of human nature.  By as early
as 1975, any high school computer teacher could've given them an
earful about what some people will do.


Many years ago, Western Union carried stock market orders and 
confirmation back and forth from NYC to brokerages.  They also
carried "wire transfers" of money between banks.  Presumably there
was both physical and logical security and controls on these 
transmissions so a thief couldn't just wire himself some money.
I wonder if such controls ought to be applied more so today to protect
our communications.

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#160846

<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote in message 
news:09a54edd-2171-4c8f-980f-d72549e2da9a@googlegroups.com...
> On Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 1:54:48 PM UTC-5, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
>
>> And now in 2016, there's not really a working email system on the
>> Internet.  Outside work, most people I know seem to use email as only
>> a way to be fed information from various companies.  It's not a major
>> person-to-person medium.
>
> Well, I know lots of people, including myself, who use email to
> communicate for non business purposes.  It's not the only medium,
> of course, but IMHO it remains popular.
>
>
>
>> I used to think in the future people would have reliable, permanent
>> mail addresses and use PGP for encryption.  But instead we seem to be
>> jumping between different proprietary services instead, like Facebook.
>
> It would be nice if we had permanent authenticated email addresses.  I
> don't know if that will ever happen.
>
>
>
>> It's a pity, because internet mail as it used to work, between people,
>> was such a powerful idea.  On the other hand, so was Usenet ...
>
> The power of the Internet is due to its open nature.  But the Internet
> is very weak due to its open nature.
>
> People knew back in the _1960s_ that computers could be abused, either
> by accidental or malevolent means.  Likewise with anonymity.  As the
> Internet grew beyond a tightly controlled restricted environment,
> the designers clearly should have early on installed far better
> safeguards in the very structure of it.  Perhaps its growth would've
> been slower, but we'd have a better and safer system today.
>
> Sadly, in the 1980s, lots of computer advocates strongly defended
> the 'open' structure of the Internet.  IMHO, they were naive, and
> ignored existing lessons and factors of human nature.  By as early
> as 1975, any high school computer teacher could've given them an
> earful about what some people will do.
>
>
> Many years ago, Western Union carried stock market orders and
> confirmation back and forth from NYC to brokerages.  They also
> carried "wire transfers" of money between banks.  Presumably there
> was both physical and logical security and controls on these
> transmissions so a thief couldn't just wire himself some money.
> I wonder if such controls ought to be applied more so today to protect
> our communications.

They are with the communications that matter, online
banking, wire transfers, stock trading etc etc etc. 

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#160848

On Thu, 10 Mar 2016 21:48:14 -0800 (PST)
hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> Many years ago, Western Union carried stock market orders and 
> confirmation back and forth from NYC to brokerages.  They also
> carried "wire transfers" of money between banks.  Presumably there
> was both physical and logical security and controls on these 
> transmissions so a thief couldn't just wire himself some money.

	There were - my security lecturer told a story about the time he
outlined a fairly simple method for subverting that security (he was
consulting on security with a large bank) only to be told "We know about
that one, securing it would cost more than our total fraud losses so we're
leaving it open". A thief could just wire himself some money - if he knew
how to go about it, I (along with a lecture hall full of students) was told
how to do it - that knowledge is of course now obsolete. At the end of the
term we were informed that we now knew enough to subvert the ATM network -
this was news to all of us and to this day I do not know how what we were
taught could be applied to that purpose.

> I wonder if such controls ought to be applied more so today to protect
> our communications.

	For this purpose we have SSL and certificate authorities. I
believe they're harder to subvert than the wire transfers were.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN                                      | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins.                |    licences available see
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    http://www.sohara.org/

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#160845

On 10 Mar 2016 18:54:46 GMT
Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> wrote:

> On Wed, 2016-03-09, Walter Banks wrote:
> 
> > I met Ray Tomlinson a couple times, he was at the Sussex conference in 
> > 1973 and at the Washington conference on networking a few months later.
> >
> > By the time of the Sussex conference in there was a working email
> > system at ARPAnet.
> 
> And now in 2016, there's not really a working email system on the
> Internet.

	Mine works just fine.

> Outside work, most people I know seem to use email as only
> a way to be fed information from various companies.  It's not a major
> person-to-person medium.

	I use it for the more distant members of my family and a few other
people, but yes the bulk of my email is mailing lists and commercial.

> I used to think in the future people would have reliable, permanent
> mail addresses

	They're available. I've had the same email address for over twenty
years, come to that the one I use for USENET is even older.

> and use PGP for encryption.

	As is this - but ICBA to encrypt my emails.

>  But instead we seem to be
> jumping between different proprietary services instead, like Facebook.

	I completely fail to understand the popularity of Facebook, but it
does seem to be popular with chatty people.

> It's a pity, because internet mail as it used to work, between people,
> was such a powerful idea.

	It still works - most people just don't use it.

> On the other hand, so was Usenet ...

	Similarly it still works but most people just don't use it.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN                                      | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins.                |    licences available see
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    http://www.sohara.org/

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#160823

"Walter Banks" <walter@bytecraft.com> wrote in message 
news:nbq1r3$1vu4$1@gioia.aioe.org...
> http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/03/06/ray-tomlinson-inventor-of-modern-email-dies.html
>
> I met Ray Tomlinson a couple times, he was at the Sussex conference in 
> 1973 and at the Washington conference on networking a few months later.
>
>            [snip...]                     [snip...] 
> [snip...]
> It was a small but important paradigm shift.
>
> Ray Tomlinson's legacy can be summed up by a single character "@".
>

So perhaps his name should be spelled R@y Tomlinson.  :-)

-- 

numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

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#160879

On Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 3:42:16 PM UTC-5, Walter Banks wrote:
> Ray Tomlinson's legacy can be summed up by a single character "@".

Based on inflation, if Western Union were around today, a telegram
would cost about $25 for only fifteen words, and the message would be
relayed over the phone, hard copy delivery cost extra.  In 1975, 
you were basically paying for an official legal record of the 
message and faster transmission than via postal mail.  Sadly, 
you were also paying for a lot of labor and obsolete technology.

Western Union attempted to provide an email service, called EasyLink,
but it didn't work out, and helped bankrupt the company.

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#160881

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
> Based on inflation, if Western Union were around today, a telegram
> would cost about $25 for only fifteen words, and the message would be
> relayed over the phone, hard copy delivery cost extra.  In 1975, 
> you were basically paying for an official legal record of the 
> message and faster transmission than via postal mail.  Sadly, 
> you were also paying for a lot of labor and obsolete technology.
>
> Western Union attempted to provide an email service, called EasyLink,
> but it didn't work out, and helped bankrupt the company.

In early 90s, AMEX spun off a lot of its dataprocessing and other
businesses (including Moneygram) as First Data, in the largest IPO up
until that time. Later in the 90s, First Data merges with First
Financial (which owns the troubled Western Union and FDC has spin off
Moneygram in the merger). However, by the middle of last decade, illegal
workers sending money home have increased Western Union business until
it was half of FDC's bottome line .... and Western Union is spun off in
IPO. President of Mexico had earlier invited FDC executives for a
Mexican visit and promised to throw them in jail (for what WU was
charging).

A little later, FDC corporate hdqtrs is lopped off and the remaining FDC
is taken private by KKR in the largest reverse-IPO/LBO up until that
time.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity

Much earlier, AMEX and KKR had been in competition for LBO of RJR
and KKR wins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco

KKR runs into trouble with RJR, and hires away the president of AMEX
to turn it around.

IBM has gone into the red and is in the process of being reorged into
the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breakup. The board then hires
away the former president of AMEX to reverse the breakup and resurrect
IBM. Uses some of same techniques at IBM that had been used at RJR
http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

Later the former president of AMEX leaves IBM and becomes head of
another large private-equity company which does LBO of company that will
employ Snowden:
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner

As mentioned above, companies in the private-equity mill are under
intense pressure to generate income any way possible, including those
that security clearances have been outsourced to ... which were found to
be just filling out the paperwork and not doing the background checks
(although as periodically mentioned, victim companies in the
private-equity mill account for over half of corporate defaults).

Note it is illegal for (including beltway bandit) companies to use money
from gov. contracts to lobby congress. However, a private-equity firm
could lobby on behalf of their subsidiary which might not have any
income other than gov. contracts (theoritically using money from other
private-equity operations).

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

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