Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 22:04:10 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Different subject now,you have been warned! [was:Re: [WSFA] Re: Has anyone read any goo
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 06:59 PM 3/28/05 -0500, Ted White wrote:
>
>Top-posting is standard in the business world, which is where Microsoft
>operates.

Which came first, business world top-posting or Microsoft's mail software?

Prior to regular business use of e-mail there generally wasn't any quoting
in replies.  Just, "In reference to your letter of March 22...".

Microsoft's mail software has been around since at least the mid-90s, which
is when most businesses started getting access to the 'net.  Public access
was really hard to get prior to ~1993 (that's when I got a dial-up account
for the first time).  Yes, Virginia, this whole e-commerce world is only
about 10 years old (the Web was created in '93...and the first browsers
were text only.  Netscape was pretty novel when it came out a year or so
later).

Prior to that it was mostly universities, the government and government
contractors and generally used Unix, though there were feeds and links to
networks based on other systems.  Fidonet had a gateway through somewhere
or other and the DECnet-based SPAN (Space Physics Analysis Network) hosted
at Goddard and three other centers was linked in through JPL.  I once sent
myself mail from my home Fidonet BBS system to the Arpanet gateway to SPAN
to my account at Goddard.  Took about an hour to arrive, but I was mostly
just amazed that it was even possible to do that.  That was about '88 I think.

This stuff is still pretty new really....

-- Mike B.
--
Things are more like they are today than they ever were before.