Saturday, April 08, 2006

The Email Blunder

This story dates back to Mughal era, when Akbar was the emperor of India. Akbar was an IT savvy guy. One day he got a nice forwarded mail. As usual he forwarded that mail to his two Begums(Queens). This time he also forwarded that mail to his close friend Gabbar who was the ruler of a neighbouring country. As his usual practice he put addresses of all recipients in "To" => "First Begum, Second Begum, Gabbar".

All recipients got the mail. This was just start of Akbar's bad days. Second Begum was furious because Akbar put First begum's name before her. She thought, "In informal mails people always put addresses of recipients in order of priority or closeness". Hence Second begum left Akbar's palace.

This was just beginning. The playboy Gabbar got email address of Akbar's favourite First begum, and then both started emailing each other. Gabbar and First Begum fell in love and First begum eloped with Gabbar.

Akbar was very frustrated. He consulted Birbal (The wisest minister in his cabinet). Akbar narrated the complete story and said , "A silly forward screwed my life. Find some way so that other ignorant people should not fall in misery like me".

Birbal researched for some days and invented a miracle. He narrated his invention to Akbar, "I have invented a new field 'bcc' which should be used while sending all informal mails and stupid forwards. The recipient of bcc mail would not know who else received the mail and addresses of other recipients"

Akbar issued an order to use bcc for all informal mails. All his subjects followed the order and lived happily.

Are you doing the same mistake that Akbar did while sending mails?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

these ridiculous stories always make me laugh my guts out :) keep them comming.

Jyoti said...

Interesting story, good way of bringing notice to trivial but important problems, which people usually choose to ignore!

Raj Beniwal said...

This can be termed as bollywod's new formula for movies ;)
Hystorical movies with a touch of technology... :D :D

My analysis:
The two deiiferent eras were nicely *integrated* and the *derivation* was a much needed advice for the readers.

Cheers!!
-Raj

Shailesh said...

Friends,

Please share this story with everyone you know.

Save people from The Email Blunder.

Suchi said...

I never see the point of using bcc, coz I don't have two wives:) nywaz it can be irritating at times to receive a forward knowing hundreds of others have got it too...like being a part of a big crowd till your identity is lost. so point taken:)