The Smileys(Emoticons) are used very often in the sentences of e-mails. They started in USA where the internet had also started of course. In Japan, the Smileys(Emoticons) grew in different manner from U.S.A. Now, there are several kinds of them.
Josh Berkus is well known as a PostgreSQL hacker, but, as it happens, he also picked up some valuable experience during his stint at "The Laboratory for the Destruction of Communities," otherwise known as Sun Microsystems