18 Jul
2016
18 Jul
'16
2:35 p.m.
Just to be clear: I don't pine at all for UUCP.
I do still think it's a mistake that e-mail addresses and
domain names run backwards from the way directories and
filenames run. That's what I miss about !norman vs
norman@.
But it's all a Beta-vs-VHS matter these days, like a lot
of unfortunate design decisions that have become standard
over the years. Like git winning out over hg, which is
sort of like the VAX/VMS command language winning out over
the Bourne shell. (To toss another pebble into the pond
to see what the ripples look like, rather in the manner
of Rob and Dave.)
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
18 Jul
18 Jul
2:44 p.m.
New subject: Of login names
It does seem counter-intuitive that email addresses go right-to-left
like postal addresses rather than left-to-right like phone numbers. But
these days with auto-complete, I can type the first couple of characters
of an email address and the correct one pops up. That would never work
with com.whatever
When they were both in use at the same time, email routers had to deal
with ambiguity. Greg Chesson gave his email address as
research!greg@Berkeley and that only worked from the ARPANET and systems
running pathalias.
Mary Ann
On 07/18/2016 07:35 AM, Norman Wilson wrote:
Just to be clear: I don't pine at all for UUCP.
I do still think it's a mistake that e-mail addresses and
domain names run backwards from the way directories and
filenames run. That's what I miss about !norman vs
norman@.
But it's all a Beta-vs-VHS matter these days, like a lot
of unfortunate design decisions that have become standard
over the years.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
2:55 p.m.
New subject: Of login names
One of my great stories from the early internet days was I received an email from another
site that had a from line of:
From: Hi There! Will Martin of AMSAA Here <will(a)amsaa.mil>
I responded by setting mine to:
From: Hi There! Ron Natalie of BRL Here <ron(a)brl.mil>
Of course, I promptly forgot about it. Amusingly it got written up in a HUMAN-NETS
discussion of signature lines but it also croaked a few people who had imperfect RFC822
vs. UUCP handlers because of the !.
6:07 p.m.
New subject: Of login names
what fun we had in the early 1980s when the uk universities ran coloured book networking,
that used arpanet style names but in the reverse order. I was
ssimon(a)uk.ac.leeds-poly.ee.pe.
formulating valid routed paths with % could be taxing...
-Steve
On 18 Jul 2016, at 15:35, Norman Wilson
<norman(a)oclsc.org> wrote:
Just to be clear: I don't pine at all for UUCP.
I do still think it's a mistake that e-mail addresses and
domain names run backwards from the way directories and
filenames run. That's what I miss about !norman vs
norman@.
But it's all a Beta-vs-VHS matter these days, like a lot
of unfortunate design decisions that have become standard
over the years. Like git winning out over hg, which is
sort of like the VAX/VMS command language winning out over
the Bourne shell. (To toss another pebble into the pond
to see what the ripples look like, rather in the manner
of Rob and Dave.)
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
19 Jul
19 Jul
9:50 a.m.
New subject: Of login names
Steve Simon <steve(a)quintile.net> wrote:
formulating valid routed paths with % could be taxing...
This is a good summary of the state of the world of email (from the uk.ac
point of view) in 1990
https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/reference/net-directory/documents/JANET-Ma…
Tony.
--
f.anthony.n.finch <dot(a)dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ - I xn--zr8h punycode
Fisher, German Bight: West or southwest 3 or 4, backing southeast 4 or 5
later. Smooth or slight. Fog patches developing later. Moderate or good,
occasionally very poor later.
26 Jul
26 Jul
12:45 p.m.
New subject: Of login names
On 18 Jul 2016, at 19:07, Steve Simon <steve(a)quintile.net> wrote:
what fun we had in the early 1980s when the uk
universities ran coloured book networking, that used arpanet style names but in the
reverse order. I wasssimon(a)uk.ac.leeds-poly.ee.pe.
I have a possibly-invented memory that the CS department at Edinburgh (and probably
others) ended up being called DCS because cs is a valid top-level domain, and so the
horrid sendmail magic which worked out whether addresses needed to be turned around (and,
I suppose, knew all the TLDs -- it certainly had a huge table of things) would get
confused by uk.ac.ed.cs and send things to Czechoslovakia (as then was).
1:07 p.m.
New subject: Of login names
I have a possibly-invented memory that the CS
department at Edinburgh (and
probably others) ended up being called DCS because cs is a valid top-level
domain, and so the horrid sendmail magic which worked out whether addresses
needed to be turned around (and, I suppose, knew all the TLDs -- it
certainly had a huge table of things) would get confused by uk.ac.ed.cs and
send things to Czechoslovakia (as then was).
No, that's a genuine memory, though I don't remember whether it was just a
worry or whether things actually got lost. Electrical Engineering (aka "ee")
was another similarly affected. I still have books on my shelf with a
sticker in them with my coloured-book "cs" address listed.
--
gdmr(a)uk.ac.ed.cs, then gdmr(a)uk.ac.ed.dcs then gdmr(a)dcs.ed.ac.uk (which
still works), then eventually gdmr(a)inf.ed.ac.uk.
George D M Ross MSc PhD CEng MBCS CITP, University of Edinburgh,
School of Informatics, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH8 9AB
Mail: gdmr(a)inf.ed.ac.uk Voice: 0131 650 5147 Fax: 0131 650 6899
PGP: 1024D/AD758CC5 B91E D430 1E0D 5883 EF6A 426C B676 5C2B AD75 8CC5
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
2830
days inactive
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days old
6 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
George Ross -
Mary Ann Horton -
Norman Wilson -
Ronald Natalie -
Steve Simon -
Tim Bradshaw -
Tony Finch