• midiwall (unregistered) in reply to midiwall

    oops... we've been a bit had.

    Looking at the source for the Sam Ash page, this is just a labeling goof. The limits on the text fields are "correct" in that the email address maxes out at 60, the password maxes out at 16.

  • Cooksey (unregistered)

    I have run into several sites where my email address is too long. None on a high traffic site and I doubt their database has more then a few thousand rows of users.

    This is 8 bit thinking at its finest, lets save a couple bytes that don't need saving and break the application...

    My take is it was a good job by a "certified" developer when they shoulda got a trench warrior type of geek.

  • (cs) in reply to null

    I have the shortest email address I know of (user 'tom' at 'eh.net') - and that's 10 characters. I could trim it to 8, and maybe someone tricksy at x.org could do 7, or if some single-letter .us domain was there 6, but...

    The problem with short email addresses is dictating them. People tend to throw a ParseException of some sort when they come up with an email address that short.

  • Anonymous Hacker (unregistered) in reply to notme

    m@cc was a used address some time around 1999.

  • John (unregistered)

    The last one is not neccessarily a WTF.

    A lot of surveys ask the same question in multiple ways so they can weed out bots and people who fill in junk answers, trying to get the free gift at the end of the survey.

  • Adam (unregistered)

    If you had an iRobot email address, you could just type your username without the @irobot.com part, since most mail clients, if you omit the domain name, automatically send to their own domain. This assumes that there is no validation of the email address, since even the most brain-dead of validators checks for the @ sign.

  • weasel (unregistered) in reply to notme
    I don't think any TLD actually does that, though.

    .ai does.

    ai.                     14393   IN      MX      10 mail.offshore.ai.
  • Daemo (unregistered) in reply to iusto
    iusto:
    Well, I have a 255 char email address after taking some of the pills sent to my original one...
    whoa.. and i thought my email address of 68 characters was long. still wouldnt fit in their form though which is a little depressing

    captcha: vindico

  • ape (unregistered)

    all email addresses really are is a user@domain

    domains don't necisarily need a . in them ala www.com, where com is the domain.

    as long as it has an @, it could technically be a valid email address.

  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to N. K.

    It goes beyond the trilogy:

    Reinstall Windows and restore data from backups Defenestrate (Install Linux with the "Use entire disk" option) and rebuild the whole shop from scratch because the backups turned out to be corrupt.

  • enoz (unregistered)

    Someone ask Austria to setup their TLD email, because at@at would be awesome.

  • Thorfinn (unregistered) in reply to notme
    notme:
    I don't think any TLD actually does that, though.
    kre@au still works, I'm fairly certain. Not 4 letters, but I don't think there's anyone with a shorter email address.
  • Thorfinn (unregistered) in reply to enoz

    Not quite TLD email, but: [email protected]

    http://dotat.at/email.html

  • zzp (unregistered) in reply to notme
    notme:
    Suppose for some reason you are in a position where you can manipulate the zone data for a two-letter country-code TLD, say "aa". You could then insert an MX record for the TLD itself, pointing to whatever mail server you like. Next, create a user with a one-letter username on that mailserver and you can have an email like "a@aa".

    I don't think any TLD actually does that, though.

    If an SMTP server was running on 193.163.102.23 then "a@dk" could be a valid address because Denmark (.dk) has set up their TLD to resolve to 193.163.102.23.

    I find this practical because to test the Internet connection of a UNIX box, typing "host dk" is shorter than what most people do: "ping www.google.com".

  • zzp (unregistered) in reply to notme
    notme:
    I don't think any TLD actually does that, though.

    Actually a country is precisely doing that: Anguilla (.ai). So "x@ai" may be a valid address. So checking for length(emailaddress) >= 4 is not a WTF.

  • AC (unregistered) in reply to ape
    ape:
    all email addresses really are is a user@domain

    domains don't necisarily need a . in them ala www.com, where com is the domain.

    as long as it has an @, it could technically be a valid email address.

    [image]
  • Dave (unregistered)

    You can get email addresses as short as three letters, a friend of mine has one. I don't want to post the address for fear of getting him spammed, but it's along the lines of 'x@yz', where 'yz' is the CC for a place with not a lot of people in it.

  • Rhialto (unregistered) in reply to notme
    notme:
    Suppose for some reason you are in a position where you can manipulate the zone data for a two-letter country-code TLD, say "aa". You could then insert an MX record for the TLD itself, pointing to whatever mail server you like. Next, create a user with a one-letter username on that mailserver and you can have an email like "a@aa".
    You could even add an MX record to the root zone, and create an email address there. Too bad that the DNS syntax required for that, 
    a@.
    , is explicitly made invalid syntax for a mail address.
  • tommyd (unregistered) in reply to notme

    "a@aa" will not work. There must be at least one dot in domain name or it will be used as host name. SMTP server will try to resolve a@aa as a@aa.<yourdomain.com>. In this case email address must be written with "." (dot) at the end of domain name so the real domain name would be "aa." and shortest email address "a@aa." -- 5 characters

  • Paolo G (unregistered) in reply to midiwall

    The real WTF is having to give a year for your birthday. Everyone has a birthday every year, so this only works if you're between 1 and 2 years old. Obviously they meant what is your date of birth. "Birthday" is sometimes used in this way, but usually it means the anniversary of the day you were born.

  • El Dorko (unregistered) in reply to Flash

    It's free for the taking so knock yourself out. Sorry 'bout the typo, I'm not a native English speaker...

    (oh and btw: just today I got a "Page could not be displayed" error on a vendor's site because my email address was too long on a form - auuuuughghgghhhh!)

  • notme (unregistered) in reply to Dave
    Dave:
    You can get email addresses as short as three letters, a friend of mine has one. I don't want to post the address for fear of getting him spammed, but it's along the lines of 'x@yz', where 'yz' is the CC for a place with not a lot of people in it.

    That's four characters.

  • Val (unregistered) in reply to notme

    So let's found a micronation, get a TLD and do it! After that, get $$$ by marketing and renting it as "the world's shortest e-mail address".

  • anonymouse (unregistered)

    k, Brent, for that iRobot Birthdate, can I just say it's weird to see my EXACT birtday in an example? I mean right down to the year & everything...

    ...strange

  • Xanni (unregistered) in reply to notme

    I don't know if anybody still has such an email address, but it's definitely been done in the past. I've heard of sean@ai, rt@mu and i@am.

  • Loosely_coupled (unregistered) in reply to El Dorko
    El Dorko:
    So you, yes you, next time you think of those field lengths: think big, or be prepared to die a horrible, script-language infested death with a mouse with it's vertical axis movement reverted!

    Hahahaha! Excellent..

  • Loosely_coupled (unregistered) in reply to SQB
    SQB:
    Ah, I never saw that cartoon when it came out. Couldn't read yet, two years before birth.

    1972? 12 years before birth for me..

  • (cs) in reply to Rhialto
    Rhialto:
    notme:
    Suppose for some reason you are in a position where you can manipulate the zone data for a two-letter country-code TLD, say "aa". You could then insert an MX record for the TLD itself, pointing to whatever mail server you like. Next, create a user with a one-letter username on that mailserver and you can have an email like "a@aa".
    You could even add an MX record to the root zone, and create an email address there. Too bad that the DNS syntax required for that, 
    a@.
    , is explicitly made invalid syntax for a mail address.
    Actually, according to RFC 2822: address = mailbox / group 
    mailbox         =       name-addr / addr-spec

addr-spec       =       local-part "@" domain

local-part      =       dot-atom / quoted-string / obs-local-part

domain          =       dot-atom / domain-literal / obs-domain

domain-literal  =       [CFWS] "[" *([FWS] dcontent) [FWS] "]" [CFWS]

dcontent        =       dtext / quoted-pair

dtext           =       NO-WS-CTL / %d33-90 / %d94-126

dot-atom        =       [CFWS] dot-atom-text [CFWS]

dot-atom-text   =       1*atext *("." 1*atext)

    and <atext> is defined as any character except controls, SP, and specials. This means that although you cannot use a dot-atom to represent the root domain, you can use a <domain-literal> for the <domain>. This gives oyu the address: a@[.] to send to your address, although this is of course five characters. It is still an impressive address.

  • (cs) in reply to Loosely_coupled
    Loosely_coupled:
    El Dorko:
    So you, yes you, next time you think of those field lengths: think big, or be prepared to die a horrible, script-language infested death with a mouse with it's vertical axis movement reverted!

    Hahahaha! Excellent..

    Well, I was quite serious about the t-shirt thing. I think you could make a profit on individual runs of around a hundred or so, maybe less. All you need to do is to stick the TDWTF logo around, say, the left nipple, and wrap the text around it. Just don't use any of that goddamn crap that tends to get blue-lighted...

    I mean, these suckers would be collectibles.

    Sales tip: Use Wooden Table. Take photo of Iris"£$%^&(... beeeeeep ...£%^&$ The rest of this transmission has been cancelled on the grounds of good taste.

  • dec0de (unregistered) in reply to notme

    Well.. [email protected] by example is possible and is only 4 characters...

  • flabdablet (unregistered) in reply to N. K.

    Nah, the trilogy is

    ◦ Active Desktop Recovery ◦ Safe Mode ◦ Reinstall

    Restore Point bombed at the test screenings.

  • ithcy (unregistered) in reply to notme

    You can also send email to a user at a hostname on the local network as long as they've got an email server, no TLD needed. I can call my computer aa and give myself an email alias "a", and other users on the network can email me at a@aa.

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