Comments on: Thunderbird New Mail Notifier

by: Jaap

Sat, 03 May 2008 18:23:35 +0000

Oke, exactly what I was looking for :) Thanks!

by: Scott Carpenter

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:31:05 +0000

You’re welcome, Ion. Glad to have been of assistance. :-)

by: Ion Freeman

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:11:41 +0000

Thanks, Scott! I just finally lost patience with Evolution and came back to Thunderbird, but I missed Evolution’s mail notifier. And I have fond memories of biff and xbiff, so I like the name.

by: Scott Carpenter

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:27:43 +0000

Hi, Mario. I was wondering where that came from.

Although unrelated, reminds me of B1FF and his posts from his brother’s Commodore 64.

by: Mario Stargard

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:02:38 +0000

One of the things I love about Unix systems is the history. From the jargon file:

biff = “BIFF”

This command, which turns on asynchronous mail notification,
was actually named after a dog at Berkeley.

I can confirm the origin of biff, if you’re interested.
Biff was Heidi Stettner’s dog, back when Heidi (and I, and
Bill Joy) were all grad students at U.C. Berkeley and the
early versions of BSD were being developed. Biff was
popular among the residents of Evans Hall, and was known
for barking at the mailman, hence the name of the command.

Confirmation courtesy of Eric Cooper, Carnegie Mellon University