Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-charlatan-and-a-fraud dept.

Mike Masnick at Techdirt lays out, once again, the evidence rebutting Shiva Ayyadurai's claim to have invented e-mail. Shiva Ayyadurai just settled with Techdirt over his repudiated claims. No money was exchanged in the settlement but Techdirt did agree to publish Ayyadurai's claims side by side with the actual facts for comparison. Ayyadurai rose to international attention a few years ago after he claimed the mantle for himself and went around accusing detractors of racism underwritten by large corporations. Now that the issue is officially settled, Mike Masnick has written another summary.

[...] And with that, we'll (hopefully) leave this saga aside. If Ayyadurai would like to respond to this, or to supply evidence to contradict the points and evidence raised above, he is, as always, welcome to provide it. He could have done so any time since 2012 when we first wrote about him and his claims, rather than taking us to court for two and a half years. I still believe that Ayyadurai should, in fact, be praised for what he accomplished as a teenager -- building a working email system as he apparently did, at the time he did, is no small feat. Our only issue with his claims is the decision to argue that his impressive creation was actually "the invention of email." It was not.

It may take a while for Techdirt to get back on its feet both regarding finances and workflow. The trouble from that particular charlatan cost not only a lot of time but also a fair amount of money. Mike Masnick ended up accepting support from the Koch brothers in order to keep going with writing and reporting, allowing the site to keep going but at the cost of tainting its reputation somewhat. With luck the site can become independent again.

Earlier on SN:
Case Dismissed: Judge Throws Out Shiva Ayyadurai's Defamation Lawsuit Against Techdirt(2017)
The Guy who Claims to have Invented E-Mail is at it Again (2017)
The Guy who Claims he Created EMAIL is at it; Again (2017)
  [...]
Huffington Post Shows the Importance Of Fact Checking (2014)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:43PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:43PM (#847652)

    Isn't this a red flag by itself?

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @05:28PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @05:28PM (#847667)

    Clockboy did the same thing... screamed racism for taking a Radio Shack clock apart, stuffing it into a briefcase with wires hanging out, taking it to school, and claiming he invented an alarm clock while at the same time making it look suspicious.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @01:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @01:37AM (#848057)

      > Clockboy did the same thing... screamed racism for taking a Radio Shack clock apart, stuffing it into a briefcase with wires hanging out, taking it to school, and claiming he invented an alarm clock while at the same time making it look suspicious.

      America got trolled by clockboy and his father [dailycaller.com]. His father is a sharia activist who had just lost a fight with the local government and wanted revenge. It worked and MSM swallowed uncritically the narrative fed to it.

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday May 25 2019, @06:16PM (3 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Saturday May 25 2019, @06:16PM (#847675) Journal

    The redder flag is wanting to be remembered as the creator of a banal and banally implemented protocol as the email one. Took decades to kind of fix it. The guys who come up with Tahoe lafs, or gnunet, and cryptocoin stuff, those deserve some recognition.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:27AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:27AM (#847794)
      His email program dates to 1978. RFC 563, which was the first in a line of RFCs that eventually became modern SMTP, dates to 1973. The Unix mail command dates to 1972. ARPANET sent its first email in 1971. The Compatible Time Sharing System at MIT had, around 1965, what we would understand today as an email system. That last was within the year that this clown was born.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:57AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:57AM (#847799)

        His claim is narrow, he claims a complete EMAIL system that duplicates/replaces the corporate interoffice mail system. This means his system was fairly complex (cc, bcc, forward, etc) and yet usable by nearly anyone (no special computer knowledge or jargon required). He's happy to give credit to various e messaging services going back to telegraphs...

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:07AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:07AM (#847804)
          Claiming to have "invented e-mail" doesn't sound awfully narrow to me.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:07AM (#847803)

    Isn't this a red flag by itself?

    Still better than to claim discrimination because of zer sex.