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Email could have been X.400 times better

buttondown.com

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Re: Email could have been X.400 times better

#181

Post by o10449366 »

kelnos wrote: post #129
addaon wrote: post #99

I still think the missing opportunity with e-mail was for the USPS (back in the US-dominant internet days) to take a leading role and implement "e-stamps." Provide a subscription service that managed a per-user account, cost a 1¢ stamp to send a message, and guaranteed delivery of messages received with a 1¢ stamp on them -- with the received stamp value being put in the user's account, so a user who received more ma…

> We could have had a world without spam I doubt it. USPS charges everyone to send snail mail, and I get plenty of spam in my mailbox. I end up with way more spam in my snail mailbox than in my email inbox, since the latter has filtering.

Yes, I throw away maybe 98% of the physical mail I receive. But I have to sort through it for the 2% that's maybe important and for some reason MUST be received by physical mail.

There's obviously a lot of physical waste in this day and age and it's arguably small by comparison, but the paper waste from mail spam still disgusts me.

Re: Email could have been X.400 times better

#182

Post by tengwar2 »

addaon wrote: post #99

I still think the missing opportunity with e-mail was for the USPS (back in the US-dominant internet days) to take a leading role and implement "e-stamps." Provide a subscription service that managed a per-user account, cost a 1¢ stamp to send a message, and guaranteed delivery of messages received with a 1¢ stamp on them -- with the received stamp value being put in the user's account, so a user who received more ma…

> We could have had a world without spam

You might have had an American walled garden, but I don't see this being accepted internationally.

Re: Email could have been X.400 times better

#183

Post by tengwar2 »

ogurechny wrote: post #68

An article from Microsoft Systems Journal in 1993 ends with a bunch of different electronic mail addresses: https://jacobfilipp.com/MSJ/1993-vol8/qawindows.pdf By 1995, the “Internet” e-mail address was the only remaining one.

Just looking back, we were using the hybrid ".uucp" pseudo domain in 1995, e.g. see the contact details for the third author on this papes: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2291331_Beyond_Hack... (not me, a colleague). For those who don't recognise this, .uucp was an unofficial "TLD" used for UUCP-based email systems accessible via an Internet relay by a dial-up modem. The relay would rewrite jlc@bmtech.uucp to bmtech!jlc, a short UUCP bang-path email address.

Re: Email could have been X.400 times better

#184

Post by tengwar2 »

chuckadams wrote: post #76
philipstorry wrote: post #22

SMTP won because it was simpler, but it's probably good to look at why it was simpler. SMTP handled routing by piggybacking on DNS. When an email arrives the SMTP server looks at the domain part of the address, does a query, and then attempts transfer it to the results of that query. Very simple. And, it turns out, immensely scalable. You don't need to maintain any routing information unless you're overriding DNS for…

> so your email address was effectively a list of hops on the route Who can forget addresses like "utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!rms@mit-prep"

I am still trying to forget setting up sendmail.cf in that era.

Re: Email could have been X.400 times better

#185

Post by ButlerianJihad »

ogurechny wrote: post #68

An article from Microsoft Systems Journal in 1993 ends with a bunch of different electronic mail addresses: https://jacobfilipp.com/MSJ/1993-vol8/qawindows.pdf By 1995, the “Internet” e-mail address was the only remaining one.

In 1995, I had an AIM screen name, an ICQ UIN, a Jabber thing, which we began consolidating in Pidgin, and my girlfriend was experimenting with Cu-SeeMe and some kind of “microblog” twit thing.

You could also reach us by knowing our character names on certain MUDs, which implemented a spectrum of “real time IM” to “leave a message with the bot” to “virtual room full of mailboxes which are also rooms and contain objects that are notes”.

I didn’t really use IRC, but everyone else did.

Re: Email could have been X.400 times better

#186

Post by PeterStuer »

SoftTalker wrote: post #176
projektfu wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a little sus. AT&T basically created the cellular mobile phone, and built up an analog, then digital system (D-AMPS/TDMA). AT&T sort of sold out the mobile business in 2004 to Cingular (BellSouth) because TDMA was a dead end. They then bought BellSouth back in 2006 and carried on with CDMA. Those old phones had a long range. It was hard to make small ones because the old AT&T towers were much farther apart, up…

Early cell phones were so limited it's sort of amazing they gained adoption. They were big (literally the size of a brick), heavy, and expensive. Battery life was poor. The EM radiation was possibly harmful. Due to all of that most mobile phones were permanently installed and could only be used in a car. Plans were either pay-by-the-minute or had pre-paid minutes with expensive charges if you went over. Roaming off y…

Because there was no alternative. Even small suitcase size meant you could make a call from your car instead of driving away to find a payphone.

Re: Email could have been X.400 times better

#187

Post by SoftTalker »

PeterStuer wrote: post #186
SoftTalker wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early cell phones were so limited it's sort of amazing they gained adoption. They were big (literally the size of a brick), heavy, and expensive. Battery life was poor. The EM radiation was possibly harmful. Due to all of that most mobile phones were permanently installed and could only be used in a car. Plans were either pay-by-the-minute or had pre-paid minutes with expensive charges if you went over. Roaming off y…

Because there was no alternative. Even small suitcase size meant you could make a call from your car instead of driving away to find a payphone.

Payphones were everywhere though. And if you were somewhere that didn't have a payphone, you probably were out of cell phone coverage also. They were a bit more convenient, you could use them without stopping, and you didn't need to have a pocketful of coins (but most people did carry some coins in those days, too). And they were a status symbol.

Re: Email could have been X.400 times better

#188

Post by projektfu »

SoftTalker wrote: post #187
PeterStuer wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there was no alternative. Even small suitcase size meant you could make a call from your car instead of driving away to find a payphone.

Payphones were everywhere though. And if you were somewhere that didn't have a payphone, you probably were out of cell phone coverage also. They were a bit more convenient, you could use them without stopping, and you didn't need to have a pocketful of coins (but most people did carry some coins in those days, too). And they were a status symbol.

I remember an absurd ad where a pushcart hot dog vendor was taking orders on the cell phone and I'm like $0.99/min for a $5 or less sale? Yeah the ad was for a service that charged by the tenth of a minute or something but it was still crazy. It was mostly doctors and traveling salespeople that had them.

I love the scene in the beginning of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me with the car phone.

Re: Email could have been X.400 times better

#189

Post by PeterStuer »

SoftTalker wrote: post #187
PeterStuer wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there was no alternative. Even small suitcase size meant you could make a call from your car instead of driving away to find a payphone.

Payphones were everywhere though. And if you were somewhere that didn't have a payphone, you probably were out of cell phone coverage also. They were a bit more convenient, you could use them without stopping, and you didn't need to have a pocketful of coins (but most people did carry some coins in those days, too). And they were a status symbol.

Absolutely not "everywhere". In a city or municipality centre, sure. In the harbour, out on the docks, nada.

Re: Email could have been X.400 times better

#190

Post by jcelerier »

pjc50 wrote: post #25
MisterTea wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the entire reason "internet" standards won over "telco" (in this case ITU) standards - the latter could only be deployed by big coordinated efforts, Anyone remember the promise of ATM networking in the 90's? It was telecom grade networking which used circuit switched networking that would handle voice, video and data down one pipe. Instead of carelessly flinging packets into the ether like an savage, you had a…

> Ethernet had to adapt to deterministic real-time needs Without being able to get too into the telco detail, I think the lesson was that hard realtime is both much harder to achieve and not actually needed . People will happily chat over nondeterministic Zoom and Discord. It's both psychological and slightly paradoxical. Once you let go of saying "the system MUST GUARANTEE this property", you get a much cheaper, bet…

> People will happily chat over nondeterministic Zoom and Discord

Only because they don't even know how a good system feels like

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