[ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 10, Issue 1

[the keyboard of geoff goodfellow]

vis-a-vis "Bringing back an old signature below from back then, which i
think sums it up nicely." here are a couple more from that era:

"Computer scientists don't have to worry about the world.  They don't

have to develop theories of the world and then build tools to test it.

Rather, they just build tools to satisfy their own worlds.  Ask a

computer science graduate student what his or her thesis is and the

best they can answer is that the program or machine they are working

on will be a good thing to have."


-- Chuck Thacker, in "Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented,

    Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer";


"Sendmail is a nifty mailer whose flexibility ... is nothing short of

amazing.  How did Eric Allman embed this flexibility?  He used a

variation on Post Productions as address rewriting rules.  If he

hadn't taken a theory course, none of us would have sendmail today."


-- Mark Horton, in net.college, supporting the teaching of

        theory courses.


On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 4:52 AM Toerless Eckert via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> In fairness to X.400 (if that is permissible here on the list), the main
> reason why
> addresses where so long was IMHO because of the mindset of the people who
> created
> the naming schemes. They wanted email addresses to be as descriptive as
> those
> on snail mail envelopes. Hence the rfc822 addresses also turned out to be
> quite long.
> My official signature from the end of 1980th:
>
>              Toerless.Eckert at immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
>     /C=de/A=d400/P=uni-erlangen/OU=informatik/S=Eckert/G=Toerless/
>
> Policies for email addresses back then in german universities where
> typically made
> by the very same people who also made policies for snail-mail and phone
> systems,
> so its easy to see how historical references where important criteria. And
> as
> young engineers back then we also suspected those people where overlooked
> by
> de-nazification the way they where willing to discuss policies (not).
>
> As email postmasters we got ourselves a shorter domain (fau.de) back
> then. I think it
> took about 20 years and then that became the official name for the
> university
> and primary domain, because by then a new generation of policy makers was
> around.
>
> I think i see the very same thing today by people responsible for policies
> of the
> Internet after its leaderhip too is steeped in historical experience now.
> In fact,
> i just had one for me quite painful experience with the Internet orthodoxy
> about
> rfc822 addresses.
>
> Bringing back an old signature below from back then, which i think sums it
> up nicely.
>
> Cheers
>     Toerless
>
> "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
> shoulders of giants."
>                         Isaac Newton
>
> "If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on
> my shoulders."
>                         Hal Abelson
>
> "In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."
>                         Brian Reid
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 05, 2020 at 09:39:23PM -0700, Dave Crocker via
> Internet-history wrote:
> > On 7/5/2020 8:26 PM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via
> Internet-history
> > wrote:
> > > The standards themselves originally did not specify how these email
> > > addresses should be written
> >
> >
> > To the extent that x.400 use became common, it wasn't unusual to see a
> > business card with a multi-line email address, for all the attributes you
> > gave, but listing a /series/ of ADMDs, for all the carriers you could
> reach
> > the person through.  Each carrier, really, meant a different email
> address.
> >
> > (People often miss the wonderfulness of the MX record, and, more
> generally,
> > separating names from addresses from routes.  Someone should write about
> > that...)
> >
> > d/
> > --
> > Dave Crocker
> > Brandenburg InternetWorking
> > bbiw.net
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
> --
> ---
> tte at cs.fau.de
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True