Advances take time: just because you have an idea about how to solve a problem doesn't make it so. The process of investigation, research, formulation, trial, testing and revision is repeated and repeated until an answer is found. Detours, false positives, and promising solutions which crash and burn are par for the course. Eventually, if everything breaks just right, an effective answer can be found, though it can be years until that happens.
For sure that's the current state of affairs with the pandemic affecting us all. However, this is not about that. Yes, it's a story of scientific advancement and problem solving, but one that has nothing to do with masks or hand washing. Rather, it's about another insidious infection that's been around far longer than COVID-19. And while it may be less deadly, in has also made people freak out for years.
To understand the significance, you have to go back to the root of the problem. In 1971, MIT graduate Ray Tomlinson was working on ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet. His focus was on creating a system to send messages from one computer to another. Eventually he developed a protocol that sent a message across his office to another machine, a distance of about a meter. Behold, the birth of email.
By 1977, the format was standardized, with the now familiar From/To/Subject heading. Also included was a feature to be able to send out the same message to multiple people. Taking its name from its paper-based ancestor, it was called "CC" which in a "Mad Men" world meant carbon copy, a way of making a hard-copy clone of a document. That advance also engendered the equal and opposite reaction, namely that recipients of the note could respond to all who were on the original address listing with a single click. And that was the birth of the dreaded button labeled "Reply All."
Perhaps no technological advance meets with such scorn when abused. Used correctly it does make it convenient to keep multiple interested parties in the loop. Used incorrectly it's a mass mugging, wherein countless people have to wade through useless information for which they have no need. A first world problem to be sure, but still.
Examples are the stuff of nerd legend. In 1997 a Microsoft employee innocently requested to be taken off a distribution list called "Bedlam D3." He or she used the "Reply All" function for the request, sending it to 13,000 people. Many used the same function to respond, with variations of "me too." Others admonished the first batch of people to stop the madness by, you guessed it, replying to all. On top of that, for many a receipt was generated when the message was sent, another when it was read. The net result was 15.5 million messages in an hour, which chewed up about 195 gigabytes of traffic. That's roughly the equivalent of the complete works of Beethoven. Times five.
That's just one example of a Reply Allpocalypse. In 2007, one at the Department of Homeland Security generated more than 2.2 million messages. In 2013, another at Cisco produced over 4 million messages and 375 gigs of network flotsam. And in 2015 Thomson Reuters had a little back and forth over seven hours after an employee requested a password reset that went to just about everyone in the company, resulting in 34.5 million messages, including a reply all that said "CAN WE PLEASE STOP REPLYING ALL. Kind regards."
It took until now for a vaccine to be released. Rolled out his past week by Microsoft and called "Reply All Storm Protection," it detects possible non-no's and institutes a temporary time-out to solve the problem. If invoked, it blocks all replies in the thread for the next four hours and sends a notice to the originator, giving them a chance to make atonement before their sin goes public.
The company promises tweaks and fixes as they see how it is received. Unfortunately, in this initial iteration, it's aimed at large organizations, and is triggered if 10 reply-all emails are sent out to a distribution list of at least 5,000 people within an hour. So for now, you and your trivia group, your golfing buddies and your knitting circle are still on your own: it's you against them. So think before you press send: in the name of all that is holy, don't be that guy.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford is very careful to whom he replies. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
For sure that's the current state of affairs with the pandemic affecting us all. However, this is not about that. Yes, it's a story of scientific advancement and problem solving, but one that has nothing to do with masks or hand washing. Rather, it's about another insidious infection that's been around far longer than COVID-19. And while it may be less deadly, in has also made people freak out for years.
To understand the significance, you have to go back to the root of the problem. In 1971, MIT graduate Ray Tomlinson was working on ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet. His focus was on creating a system to send messages from one computer to another. Eventually he developed a protocol that sent a message across his office to another machine, a distance of about a meter. Behold, the birth of email.
By 1977, the format was standardized, with the now familiar From/To/Subject heading. Also included was a feature to be able to send out the same message to multiple people. Taking its name from its paper-based ancestor, it was called "CC" which in a "Mad Men" world meant carbon copy, a way of making a hard-copy clone of a document. That advance also engendered the equal and opposite reaction, namely that recipients of the note could respond to all who were on the original address listing with a single click. And that was the birth of the dreaded button labeled "Reply All."
Perhaps no technological advance meets with such scorn when abused. Used correctly it does make it convenient to keep multiple interested parties in the loop. Used incorrectly it's a mass mugging, wherein countless people have to wade through useless information for which they have no need. A first world problem to be sure, but still.
Examples are the stuff of nerd legend. In 1997 a Microsoft employee innocently requested to be taken off a distribution list called "Bedlam D3." He or she used the "Reply All" function for the request, sending it to 13,000 people. Many used the same function to respond, with variations of "me too." Others admonished the first batch of people to stop the madness by, you guessed it, replying to all. On top of that, for many a receipt was generated when the message was sent, another when it was read. The net result was 15.5 million messages in an hour, which chewed up about 195 gigabytes of traffic. That's roughly the equivalent of the complete works of Beethoven. Times five.
That's just one example of a Reply Allpocalypse. In 2007, one at the Department of Homeland Security generated more than 2.2 million messages. In 2013, another at Cisco produced over 4 million messages and 375 gigs of network flotsam. And in 2015 Thomson Reuters had a little back and forth over seven hours after an employee requested a password reset that went to just about everyone in the company, resulting in 34.5 million messages, including a reply all that said "CAN WE PLEASE STOP REPLYING ALL. Kind regards."
It took until now for a vaccine to be released. Rolled out his past week by Microsoft and called "Reply All Storm Protection," it detects possible non-no's and institutes a temporary time-out to solve the problem. If invoked, it blocks all replies in the thread for the next four hours and sends a notice to the originator, giving them a chance to make atonement before their sin goes public.
The company promises tweaks and fixes as they see how it is received. Unfortunately, in this initial iteration, it's aimed at large organizations, and is triggered if 10 reply-all emails are sent out to a distribution list of at least 5,000 people within an hour. So for now, you and your trivia group, your golfing buddies and your knitting circle are still on your own: it's you against them. So think before you press send: in the name of all that is holy, don't be that guy.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford is very careful to whom he replies. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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