[TUHS] Of login names

Mary Ann Horton mah at mhorton.net
Tue Jul 19 00:44:20 AEST 2016


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 at 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 at .
>
> 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




More information about the TUHS mailing list