Rich Rosen (born May 13, 1956) is a

software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, Computer programming, programming, software documentation, documenting, software testing, testing, and Software bugs, bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applic ...

and an author on the subject of

web development Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications ...

, who gained notoriety as an early high-volume contributor to

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

newsgroups A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...

Early life and education

Rosen grew up in

Forest Hills, Queens Forest Hills is a mostly residential neighborhood in the central portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It is adjacent to Corona to the north, Rego Park and Glendale to the west, Forest Park to the south, Kew Gardens to the southeast, ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. He attended

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

and later

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...

, where he received a bachelor's degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

. He later received his master's degree in the same subject from

Stevens Institute of Technology Stevens Institute of Technology is a private research university in Hoboken, New Jersey. Founded in 1870, it is one of the oldest technological universities in the United States and was the first college in America solely dedicated to mechanical ...

Hoboken Hoboken ( ; Unami: ') is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 60,417. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 58,69 ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, while working at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

and later at

Bellcore iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...

1980s - Bell Labs and Usenet

While at Bell Labs and Bellcore (now known as

Telcordia Technologies iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...

) during the 1980s, Rosen was a lead engineer on the team that beta-tested IBM's then brand-new DB2

relational database management system A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

, 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 A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...

used to keep telephone operating companies informed about

Bell System The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over one hundr ...

software standards. He also acquired a reputation there as a high-volume poster to

. 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 AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

's long distance telephone revenues.Reference t
quoted article
about Rich Rosen by Tom Richardson Weekly statistics collected during his heyday often showed that he, by himself, was responsible fo
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 A catchphrase (alternatively spelled catch phrase) is a phrase or expression recognized by its repeated utterance. Such phrases often originate in popular culture and in the arts, and typically spread through word of mouth and a variety of mass ...

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 Godwin's law, short for Godwin's law (or rule) of Nazi analogies, is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1. P ...

) 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 A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselv ...

of all time" polls, whose exploits were later expanded upon in the

newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...

rec.music.

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

. * 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 th
"Olfactory Transfer Protocol" (WebOdor)
He was known for participating in (some would say "inciting") numerous

flame war Flaming or roasting is the act of posting insults, often including profanity or other offensive language, on the internet. This term should not be confused with the term trolling, which is the act of someone going online, or in person, and causing ...

s with other Usenet contributors, including the notorious Brahms Gang, a pair of equally loquacious

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

graduate students from

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

(Gene Ward Smith and Matthew P. Wiener) 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/ttyA

pun A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic ...

on Magritte's famous painting as applied to

pipes Pipe(s), PIPE(S) or piping may refer to: Objects * Pipe (fluid conveyance), a hollow cylinder following certain dimension rules ** Piping, the use of pipes in industry * Smoking pipe ** Tobacco pipe * Half-pipe and quarter pipe, semi-circula ...

in the

Unix shell A Unix shell is a command-line Interpreter (computing), interpreter or shell (computing), shell that provides a command line user interface for Unix-like operating systems. The shell is both an interactive command language and a scripting langua ...

Usenet Citations and Acknowledgements

The volume and content of Rosen's postings evoked strong reactions in both advocates and detractors. People either praised him for his postings or denounced him as a threat to the future of Usenet. * His voluminous output and frequently abrasive postings led many to seek his removal from the net. He was never actually banned, censored or otherwise prevented from posting, but his

e-mail address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineer ...

was used on the

man page A man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation usually found on a Unix or Unix-like operating system. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and ev ...

for the

netnews Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis (computing), Jim Ellis conceived th ...

"expire" command as an example of how this command could be used t
delete all postings from a particular user
The use of his address in this manner wa
viewed by some
as an endorsement of

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

and it was eventually removed. * His notoriety also led

Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold (born 1947) is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a t ...

to use his name in
A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community
' (an article propagated through its inclusion in the ''Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet'') as an example of how people use

kill file A kill file (also killfile, bozo bin or twit list) is a file used by some Usenet reading programs to discard articles matching some unwanted patterns of subject, author, or other header lines. Adding a person or subject to one's kill file means t ...

s: *: ... putting the name of a person or topic header in a ``kill file'' (aka ``bozo filter'') means you will never see future contributions from that person or about that topic. You can simply choose to not see any postings from Rich Rosen, or that feature the word ``abortion'' in the title. * A column by ''Mr. Protocol'' (Michael O'Brien) in ''Sun Expert'' magazine (now called ''Server/Workstation Expert'') used the word ''"Rosenesque"'' to describe a person who produces a substantial volume of

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

messages large enough to overwhelm a local network. * The Net.Legends FAQ says: *: How can a Net.Legends list omit Rich Rosen? I think he still holds the record for amount of spontaneous, germane text in a single newsgroup (net.

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

). * In contrast, one system administrator wrote an article entitle
"Proposed deletion of Rich Rosen"
*: ''If net.bizarre and net.flame were threats to the network's continued existence, then Rich Rosen is doubly so. ... Rich Rosen's volume is enormous. His postings comprise two percent of the network's volume. ... Expressed as a raw number of bytes per week, the number is horrendous. It is impossible for one man to produce this much cogent thought in a week. Speaking only for myself (perhaps a poor comparison) I don't think I could even type that fast. ... Due to his high volume and near-total lack of redeeming value, I propose that Rich Rosen be removed from USENET. In order to preserve the usual facade of democracy, I'm doing this as a poll. ...'' * On the other hand, an article by Thomas Richardson from 1995 said: *: ''Rosen was particularly noteworthy, because he posted pages nd/nowiki> pages of coherent material in just about every group I read. ... This was back when you could read the entire Usenet feed in a single afternoon. That doesn't explain how Rosen managed to post on every subject, though. I think he must have been a speed typist or he must have had some kind of augmented metabolism or something. ... He also managed to stay coherent and to largely avoid repeating himself. Maybe there really was no Rich Rosen. Maybe

Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He is most well-known for creating the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system and B p ...

was just playing a weird joke on everybody.''

Post-Bellcore (1990s)

Rosen left

in 1989, but continued to post occasionally to Usenet from various outside accounts. He was one of the early members of the Panix user community in New York through the mid-1990s. He hosted his own popular "

Monty Python Monty Python (also collectively known as the Pythons) were a British comedy troupe who created the sketch comedy television show '' Monty Python's Flying Circus'', which first aired on the BBC in 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four ...

home page" that was cited by both Lycos and the Global Network Navigator. During the latter part of the 1990s, Rosen worked at Pencom Web Works with Leon Shklar, with whom he would later collaborate on
Web Application Architecture: Principles, Protocols, and Practices
', a widely used textbook for senior and graduate level college courses in

Web application development A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

Later life

Rosen lives once again in

with his wife, Celia. He "retired" from posting to Usenet but maintained his ow
blog
writing on the subject of web application development, including articles for various online and print journals, while also working with Leon Shklar on a second edition of ''Web Application Architecture''. In addition, he contributed material to the fourth edition of ''Mac OS X for Unix Geeks'' which was published in 2008. He continues to record his own music, some of which was accessible on his website.

Publications

* ''Web Application Architecture: Principles, Protocols and Practices, 2nd edition'', Leon Shklar, Rich Rosen, 2009, Wiley, . * ''Mac OS X Leopard for Unix Geeks, 4th edition'', Ernest E. Rothman, Brian Jepson, Rich Rosen, 2008, O'Reilly, .

Notes

External links

Rich Rosen's web site

Rich Rosen's blog

Rich Rosen recalls his days on Usenet

Web site for ''Web Application Architecture: Principles, Protocols and Practices'' book

Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeable Phenomena Of UseNet) Part 4/4

Usenet accusation that Rosen's output was autogenerated
- archive from 1985. {{DEFAULTSORT:Rosen, Rich 1956 births Cornell University alumni Living people Usenet people Panix (ISP) Queens College, City University of New York alumni Stevens Institute of Technology alumni