No. The commercial cc:Mail, first released 1985, acquired by Lotus 1991, predates Lotus Notes. In addition CompuServe had Email™ service back in 1983. Yes you read right TM. CompuServe had a filed trademark application on the word Email in 1983, and abandoned it in 1984, because back than Email was already in common use.

Edit, Back from Lunch:

Also Hotmail, or HoTMaiL as it was known back then, was launched July 4th 1996. The unique selling point was less that it was offering e-mail, but that it was offering e-mail as a website based service. Now known as "webmail". Allowing to access your e-mail from any where were you had a internet access and a computer with a web browser, you know such as Mosaic or Netscape. It doesn't even had to be your own computer, any computer worked. Once the idea of webmail was born there were many copycats, and in 1998 there were already 10 Million Hotmail users and an additional 40 Million users with other webmail service providers. Not to forget all those users which had internet e-mail accounts with there ISP or University and accessed mails using the traditional way of POP or IMAP with a standalone mail client. But still, all those millions of internet e-mail user could not send an e-mail to an Lotus Notes user until one year later.

Look, you are "arguing" with a geek, you can only lose. And I didn't even start about the fact the 200 x 10 Million does not equal 3 Billion.

__________________
On Strike - ChatGPT knows more than I, so use it (or doesn't it?)

A safe deposit box in a Cantonal bank costs Chf 94.50 (including TVA) per year and you can fit in 20 x 1kg gold bars

Thank you, but bank is not considered, since three is a risk of bail in, or confiscation like 1933 in USA.

Even FINMA has it in its kit.

https://www.finma.ch/en/supervision/...ons-(bail-in)/

If this is your problem than better invest in steel, lead, and brass.

Thus are industry metals and are not liquid, they depreciate during recessions, I would rather put money in ETFs like (stocks/bonds), but looks like we are entering into recession, so makes no sense to put money In stocks of overvalued market, especially at the end of the cycle.

So think we are in similar situation to 2007, which confirms: inverted yelled curve, market capitalization is way ahead of the GDP in USA, record high debts, lowest unemployment rate in US. to me looks like recessions is just over the corner. Do you share my thoughts? If so, seems reasonable to restructure portfolio towards assets naturally growing during recessions like gold/silver, to have some cash basket CHF/USD/JPY also would be nice, and less debts(hypoteks, personal loans).

I agree that gold especially physical is not the best purchase. It has negative rate, don't pay dividends but my bank pays me 1% first 3 month, and then 0.2% p.a (CHF), this is not negative, but still pretty small. Storage cost may seem expensive 300-700 chf, on the other hand it is same/similar to medical insurance here is CH per month. Still looks like only few are really interested to put money in physical gold. May be I don't know something?

Would appreciate your thoughts in regards to this.

There are a nice forms which incorporates all three metals in single, trade able units: https://www.munitionsdepot.ch/Sturmgewehr-90-Munition
https://www.munitionsdepot.ch/9mm-Para

If you want to prepare for doom, where bank storage boxes get raided, you have to go in full.

Well dig a hole in the garden then !

If you list your gold holdings in your tax form then how will you avoid confiscation if such an event occurs?

I appreciate the well researched correction of my numbers and dates. Perhaps my sources were different from @aSwissInTheUS or perhaps I just forgot the precise details.


The real point that I was trying to make is that email started slowly. Not many people knew what it was even after a decade in existence. Then it exploded in use to billions of users over the following decades.

The context is the relatively new technology, called bitcoin. It is at a very early stage in its cycle. It is still in the “early adopter” or even “geeks” phase. We don’t know if it will reach a larger audience. If it does, the price will have to go higher because there can never be more than 21 million bitcoins of which nearly 18 million have already been mined. Not everyone can own one.

If, and I really mean “if”, you believe, that bitcoin can get past the current early adopter phase, like email did, then bitcoin has a number of advantages over physical gold, one of which is more price appreciation potential.

On the other hand you can treat it as a worthless set of digits in the ether that you can’t hang on the wall or wear round your neck. - A bit like your bank balance really - just a bunch of bytes.

Personally I think that individuals and institutions in all wealth bands are starting to look at it as a diversification in their asset allocation. That is why some are calling it “Gold 2.0”. I personally don’t think it will die out. Plenty of others think it is a fad like baseball cards. Take your pick.

so how much will my MCR coins be worth?

"If bitcoin gets adopted as an asset by the millionaires, then there would be a lot of demand and the price would have to rise. "
Good point. That's the same reason I keep all my old coke cans. When the billionaires all want it, I'll be rich!![/QUOTE]

There is an unlimited supply of coke cans. Everyone can own them. No value.

There is an unlimited supply of coke cans. Everyone can own them. No value.[/QUOTE]

but there are only 10m MCR coins. that means they'll be worth more than double bitcoins, right?

Rarity on its own does not make something valuable. The thing needs to be coveted. Then rarity can play a big role in making it valuable. There is no doubt that gold is highly coveted.

We might be getting there with bitcoin, but sadly your MCR coin is worthless until you give people a motive to own it.

Try standing in a market posting a bid and ask price for your MCR coin. Change the price up or down every few minutes. Get your friends to do the same thing. Make sure your price changes are really big. Sooner or later someone will think you are an idiot that they can take advantage of. Then they will buy some coins from you expecting to sell them back next time you or one of your friends put your price up. If lots of people get the same kind of idea to take advantage of the regular price changes then you have miraculously given your worthless coin some value.

Without a quoted price, and without the prospect of a higher price for buyers, your coin is worthless.

So far gold, property, antiques, works of art, commodities and bitcoin have a market like that. Your MCR coin does not. That’s why it is worth nothing so far.

Sorry, that was a very serious answer in reply to your short comment which was obviously not so serious but brought me a smile.

Antiques have lost their appeal, it's now known as brown furniture & auction houses are really fussy by what they accept. Most stuff now ends up on a skip, which 20 years ago would have sold for 1000+

but there are only 10m MCR coins. that means they'll be worth more than double bitcoins, right?[/QUOTE]




Treble probably

If if we set the number aside, Lotus notes just has nothing to do with the e-mail as we know and use in the past and today.

Also the WWW started slowly, to grow exponentially. The rise of e-mail is strongly linked to the rise of the WWW and affordable powerful CPUs. And the internet is also the reason SMTP won over other e-mail implementations and forced others, such as Lotus to adapt.

Bitcoin is not a technology. Bitcoin is an implementation of the block chain technology.

The history of e-mail started in the early 1960's. None of those implementations have any relevance as of today. In the early 1980's the SMTP/POP implementation was invented, which together with later introduced IMAP shall become the currently most used and de facto standard e-mail implantation.

In the late 1980'ies and early 1990's many propitiatory, commercial e-mail systems were competing on the marked. All while SMTP could have been had for nearly nothing, specially after 1992 when Linux was introduced. If you had asked experts back then what would be the e-mail exchange protocol of the future between different organizations the answer would not have been SMTP, but ITU-T X.400 which is also from the early 1980'ies. Microsoft build there initial Exchange Server around that.

Collectibles, like baseball cards, Pogs, Beany Babies they come and go. So do IT and specially internet technologies: BBS, Usenet, Geocities, Altavista, Gopher, Eudora, Netscape either gone or replaced by something else. But I think the block chain technology is here to stay. Bitcoin on the other hand I am not so sure. Will it be useful a device to store wealth? I highly doubt.

The history of e-mail shows that different implementation of the same idea compete which other and the one which is commercially successful neither has to be the winner nor the most well known and commonly used in the end. And your Hotmail example also shows that and idea can be copied, and although it might be the first it might be no longer relevant in a few years. But let me be honest, I expected Alt-Coins much sooner.

__________________
On Strike - ChatGPT knows more than I, so use it (or doesn't it?)

Let me add some more of the nearly obsolete things that we thought would last forever, and which now look like they are on their way out:


Paper Maps (you might need one after the internet fails).


Encyclopedias (I keep 30 volumes of my 1960 version of Encyclopedia Americana on the shelf. It takes a lot of space, but when the lights go out, it could come in handy if I want a list of ex-American Presidents.




Porn mags: Yes, I've thrown away the Health & Efficiency collection I built up in the Early 70s.


SLR film cameras: Even the Hasselblad which went all the way to the moon, taking those amazingly focused and well lit photos, is now nothing more than a museum piece.


Cassette tapes: The downside was that you had to listen to side A before you could turn it over and listen to side B. At least with LP's and Singles you could turn the disk over anytime you felt like getting out of your armchair.


Home landline phones: When was the last time it rang?


Long Wave, Medium wave, Short wave and FM: Ahhhh, how I miss my old wireless.




Here are a few of the old technologies that make me feel nostalgic:

IRC, ICQ, Napster, PalmPilot, Psion, Minitel, Leisure Suit Larry (game), Leather Goddesses of Phobos (game), MySpace, and MSN Messenger.





Disks: Floppy disks and DVDs)

Disks deserve a special place in history. A 1980s book of future forecasts predicted that when we would colonize Mars, we would be taking magnetic disks full of words because books are too heavy.



The concept of "disk" will be lost on future generations. I have drawers full of 256KB floppies and also the hard backed 720KB and 1.44MB "floppy" disks. I don't want to them throw out.



An iPhone XS has 512GB which is equivalent to 364'000 1.44MB disks. With a fatness of 25mm per disk, I would need a box nearly a kilometer long to store that much data on them.



Most of my disks were actually 720k (single side), but like many people, I discovered that if you punched a hole in the upper left corner, you could use the other side thus doubling the capacity. The same technique worked for a 256KB floppy.



Unfortunately my iMac doesn't have a DVD reader, let alone a floppy drive. I will probably never use my floppy disks again.



I keep an old DVD player and 100s of old movies just in case they shut down Netflix.



Bitcoin

As always, Bitcoin is having a roller-coaster ride this week, up and down 10% in minutes. Speculators and market-makers are loving the thrills of trying to beat the next guy.

Palm Pilot.....I certainly keeping mine !

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...g-off-big-time



Bought Gold at Credit Suisse, Parade Platz, last October
for USD 1180 (OZ) : )

Hi Henk,

What is their buy back price, or what is the spread between CS purchase price and spot market? Just curious, since never bought from bank.