« BackRim/Blackberry tales – reply allawadwatt.comSubmitted by cloudedcordial 6 days ago
  • 486sx33 5 days ago

    Some nice nostalgia for me

    -In high school we walked to that exact KFC for lunch and would discuss the previous nights antics playing StarCraft broodwar.

    -I used to fix computers (professionally) at a store on the same street as that gas station as an after high school job

    -In Dec/jan 2010 I worked 18 hours a day laying floors in the new RIM buildings at Philip/Colombia. A friend’s dad did a lot of the furniture moving. Both of us made over $4000 a week in our early 20s

    -Now out of those 4 buildings I think black berry only has two floors of one building

    -Waterloo has seen serious decline since the death of RIM

    -Not sure it will ever come back, most people including myself left years ago.

    -there has been a serious condo tower boom, but that sucks for “walkability” and it’s radically changed the area

    -if you attended university in Waterloo in the 2000s and lived off campus, wherever you lived is likely gone and there is a condo tower there now.

    • morkalork 40 minutes ago

      The wild thing about the condo boom in Waterloo is 77% of units are owned by investors. It truly exemplifies the mess that is the housing market. Rentors can't break into it and homeowners are doubling, tripling up on properties.

      • Waterluvian 2 hours ago

        Did you go to WCI too? This is all so nostalgic for me.

        Though I grew up in Waterloo and lived at home, yeah, the city sure has grown a ton. I moved away to raise a family.

      • hnthrowaway0328 14 minutes ago

        A few years ago we got the same thing: a guy sent a email to finance showing his bonuses and somehow sent it to everyone. Then everyone knows his bonus and salary.

        • easton 3 hours ago

          That random “J” at the end of the messages brings me back to mail circa 2010. As I recall, iOS also didn’t render Outlook’s smileys right, leaving a bunch of Js in mail from my Mom.

          (For the ones who ‘missed’ it: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060523-10/?p=31...)

          • nehal3m 2 hours ago

            !!!1one

          • dmalik 17 minutes ago

            Haha I was working there at the time. I don't remember how many emails came in but well over 100.

            Emails were so abused there though. I would get over 100 a day that were work related. Think Slack over email.

            • philipwhiuk 8 minutes ago

              Yeah, I'm pretty sure this isn't the only time it happened - I don't recall Sumit but I do recall others.

              I worked in the NOC and you quickly learned to basically ignore every non-personal email sent before you were on shift that you weren't directly copied on. If it wasn't your shift and it wasn't handed over, it wasn't important.

            • bsuvc an hour ago

              Reminds me of the time Nielsen disabled the Reply To All button in Outlook because an executive, who had a massive ego, embarrassed himself.

              https://techcrunch.com/2009/01/31/nielsen-deletes-reply-to-a...

              In my memory of it, Microsoft had to add this capability per Nielsen's request, but I could be mistaken.

              Anyone at Nielsen know if you still can't reply all? Or did they re-enable it after Mitch left?

              • ano-ther an hour ago

                This happens often enough (even MS itself broke their internal Exchange servers).

                And every story seems to end with admins having to improvise. Am curious: (why) isn’t there a “kill reply-all chain” button as a feature?

                (The article explains that this didn’t work for RIM because of BB’s architecture, but for Exchange?)

                • philipwhiuk 10 minutes ago

                  The standard fix is to massively limit who can send emails to DLs - which is an Exchange config option.

                  • wiredfool an hour ago

                    The search term for MS for is bedlam 3.

                  • arjvik 2 hours ago

                    Poor Sumit B. He never did anything - it was his manager!

                    • minkeymaniac an hour ago
                      • teddyh 2 hours ago
                        • lproven 4 hours ago

                          The world needs a driving licence for email. It would mandatorily include use of plain-text and bottom-posting.

                          • afandian 2 hours ago

                            Europe has one. I’ve got one. I am qualified to use 2004-era Microsoft software, and have a certificate to prove it… somewhere.

                            (Edit: since I got mine it’s acquired the word ‘international’ but lost the word ‘driving’. Swings and roundabouts.)

                            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computer_Drivi...

                            • beng-nl 3 hours ago

                              I used to think the same but I caved when I started using web interface email clients. Let’s face it, the world has moved on, new generations are online, and we are the wrong ones now.

                              • speerer 3 hours ago

                                I don't understand why this isn't configurable. Why can't the basic data structures (of one email after another in serial) be displayed in either order depending on mail client settings?

                                Admittedly I haven't looked into it because I'm perfectly fine with top posted emails. But I routinely sort files in my directory. Why not emails in a displayed thread?

                                • bregma 2 hours ago

                                  It's people quoting text, not threads of messages.

                                  The ability to semantically parse text to determine what order paragraphs should be displayed in to suit the tastes of the individual reader is a very recent development. Or, rather, will be soon. Maybe not very soon.

                                  • thworp an hour ago

                                    As the other comment mentioned, the email body contains the entire quote chain. The way clients accomplish threaded display is a combination of:

                                    - parsing the unstructured email body and looking for quote levels, html formatting and printed email heads

                                    - parsing certain headers like message-id, in-reply-to, dkim sig

                                    - looking for sections of the message body in the inbox

                                    This is done because there is nothing in the protocol to cleanly accomplish what you want. Even if there was, you could not rely on it at all. Doing anything with email is a gigantic PITA, you sometimes get emails where the msg-encoding header doesnt match the body's encoding, html in the plaintext section and other fun things.

                                    Since nobody really cares about the RFC and just does their own thing, there is no chance at improvement.

                                • csmattryder 3 hours ago

                                  I'm teaching the chapter, "Why is everyone signing off with J? A crash course in email from Windows users"