Rich Rosen - 1980s - Bell Labs and Usenet

Bell Labs and Usenet

While at Bell Labs and Bellcore (now known as Telcordia Technologies) during the 1980s, Rosen was a lead engineer on the team that beta-tested IBM's then brand-new DB2 relational database management system, which would become one of the first commercially available relational database systems on the market. He also developed one of the earliest online bulletin board systems used to keep telephone operating companies informed about Bell System software standards.

He also acquired a reputation there as a high-volume poster to Usenet newsgroups. The volume of Usenet postings he produced led to rumors that many people were actually using his account, or that he was an AI program produced by Bell Labs to increase the amount of Usenet traffic and thus augment AT&T's long distance telephone revenues. Weekly statistics collected during his heyday often showed that he, by himself, was responsible for more than 2% of the entire volume of Usenet postings. The phrase "We are all Rich Rosen" was coined during this period and persisted as a Usenet catchphrase for a number of years.

Rosen posted in a number of newsgroups on a variety of topics, most particularly music and religion. Among his contributions:

• Rich Rosen's Rules of Netnews Debating, a satirical post intended not so much as a set of guidelines to follow when posting, but rather as a statement (like Godwin's Law) about the irrational and often obnoxious behavior often observed in Usenet discussions (which Rosen himself admittedly engaged in).
• The Book of Ubizmo and the religion of Ubizmatism, a parody of the extremes associated with mainstream organized religions.
• The story of Toejam Jawallaby, a fictitious musician who was the winner of several bogus "greatest guitarist of all time" polls, whose exploits were later expanded upon in the newsgroup rec.music.jazz.
• Several musical compositions that appeared on the first Usenet compilation tape, a little net.music (1985), including A Fair Exchange and Vegetableland (which was ostensibly performed by the aforementioned Toejam Jawallaby).
• Several Usenet April Fool's jokes, including the (now doubly ironic) "Microsoft Windows for the Macintosh" and the "Olfactory Transfer Protocol" (WebOdor).

He was known for participating in (some would say "inciting") numerous flame wars with other Usenet contributors, including the notorious Brahms Gang, a pair of equally loquacious mathematics graduate students from Berkeley who posted from a server named brahms.berkeley.edu. His verbal battles with the Brahms Gang in particular were sometimes referred to as "The War of the Rosens". He was also known for his variety of frequently-changing .signature files, including:

• Anything's possible, but only a few things actually happen.
• Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts.
• Look for significance where there's none intended, and you'll surely find it.
• Now I've lost my train of thought, I'll have to catch the bus of thought.
• echo "This is not a pipe." | cat - >/dev/tty