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What a wonderful and innocent time in the computer world it was back then. Thanks for sharing this. It seems they all treated mail as a message board; just a me
by eksith 13y ago
What a wonderful and innocent time in the computer world it was back then. Thanks for sharing this. It seems they all treated mail as a message board; just a means to share ideas publicly. And if you weren't going to put it on those lists, they it didn't belong in email after all.
- cromwellian 13y agoYeah, the Morris Worm was the first big strike against such openness. A lot more stuff got locked down after that. I remember a lot of universities allowed you to telnet in and log in as 'guest' with no password back then. IIRC, I could telnet into Berkeley XCF and UIUC.
- dredmorbius 13y agoMany of us who aren't quite as old-school as RMS still treat electronic communications in this way. Yes, there's communications we'll make which are more privileged, but we understand that fundamentally the system is open to observation and snooping. If we've got something to say we don't want others to know, we say it in person, using crypto, or through code (formal or informal) which will be difficult for others to understand, if at all. And there's still good old mail. First class will often reach someone faster than they'll dig through their mail spool these days (and a letter indicates an investment in communication), even next-day mail is pretty cheap (much less expensive than FedEx).