The unintentional theme of today’s Link-o-Rama is, apparently, tech nostalgia and why old tools are the best tools. The File Transfer Protocol is now 50 years old. 50. FTP has outlasted quite a few protocols in that time, evolved a great deal, and been used to transfer Heaven only knows how many files. I hope that Abhay Bhushan is basking a bit in the knowledge that his creation is still widely used half a century later....
Email is a fantastic tool, when used correctly. It almost never is. Rikki Endsley asked me if I’d like to write something for USENIX ;login; logout, and it happened to be right after processing a slew of terrible email: people sending two-line replies at the end of several hundred lines of text, inexcusable top-posting, HTML-ized email sent to lists that reject HTML email (rightly), etc. Practicing a little courtesy when doing email takes a little extra time, but it makes it so much easier for the people who have to read your email....