Rich Rosen
Rich Rosen is a software developer and an author on the subject of web development, who gained notoriety as an early high-volume contributor to Usenet newsgroups.
Early life and education
Rosen grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, New York. He attended Cornell University and later Queens College, where he received a bachelor's degree in computer science. He later received his master's degree in the same subject from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, while working at Bell Labs and later at Bellcore.1980s - Bell Labs and Usenet
While at Bell Labs and Bellcore 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 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:', a satirical post intended not so much as a set of guidelines to follow when posting, but rather as a statement about the irrational and often obnoxious behavior often observed in Usenet discussions.
- The Book of
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
Post-Bellcore (1990s)
Rosen left Bellcore 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 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 , a widely used textbook for senior and graduate level college courses in Web application development.