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Noel - great detective work! I'm deeply aware of the issues with
memory. In fact, when I was at Interval Research, we did a bunch of
work on memory prosthetics (prior to Gordon Bell's "MyLifeBits"), and
as part of that several of us studied the literature on
autobiographical memory in cognitive psychology (Hank Strub, a
psychologist, was our guide). There's a wonderful paper: <font>Neisser,
U. (1981). John Dean's memory: A case study. <i>Cognition, 9</i>,
1-22. I could not find the paper online (it's in my files in
hardcopy), but here's a couple of 'graphs about it from a psychology
today article online
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/PTO-19950101-000021.html"><http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/PTO-19950101-000021.html></a>.
It supports what you said.<br>
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</font></font>
<blockquote>
<p>The fragility of source memory explains why, in a famous
experiment by psychologist John [sic - DPR] Neisser, John Dean's
testimony about Richard Nixon was shown to be both incredibly accurate
and hugely inaccurate. "His initial testimony was so impressive that
people called him a human tape recorder," recalls psychologist Charles
Thompson, Ph.D. "Neisser then compared the actual tapes to his
testimony, and found that if you really looked at the specifics, who
said what and when, Dean was wrong all over the place. But if you just
looked at his general sense of what was going on in the meetings he was
right on target. His confusion was about the source." In general,
supposes Thompson, this is how memory works. We have an accurate sense
of the core truth of an event, Out we can easily get the details wrong.</p>
<p>"Memory is more reconstructive than reproductive. As time passes,
details are lost. We did a study where we asked people to keep a daily
diary for up to a year and a half, and later asked them questions about
recorded events. The memory of the core event and its content stayed at
a high level of about 70 percent, while the peripheral details dropped
quickly."</p>
</blockquote>
So now I have some corroboration and correction to my memories of the
core event. I guess it was in January 1978.<br>
<font><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica"><br>
<br>
</font></font>Noel Chiappa wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid20060405003855.2AD01872E1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> > From: "David P. Reed" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:dpreed@reed.com"><dpreed@reed.com></a>
>> David, I wonder, are you conflating two different meetings in your
>> memory?
>> ...
>> the UDP spec didn't come out until January 1979 (IEN-71, Reed,
>> 21-Jan-79, "User Datagram Protocol") - over a year later.
>>
>> Also, I do seem to recall the final format for UDP being hashed out at
>> a meeting I was at, shortly before you published the spec.
>>
>> Is it possible that the *basic concept* of UDP was worked out at one
>> meeting (at the time of the [TCP/IP] split), and the final *details*
>> of the protocol were hashed out at a much later meeting (shortly
>> before the spec was published)?
> I didn't conflate the meetings - in fact, I believe the '77 meeting is
> the one I was describing from memory. There was a basic agreement on a
> UDP at the first meeting. Since no one was implementing UDP, there was
> no need for a spec at that point.
> ...
> I recall the spec of UDP (which is barely worthy of the name, it's so
> simple in concept) being written as part of a cleanup process, pushed
> by Postel to close some loose ends. Remember the point of UDP was to
> support such things as packet speech, message exchange protocols like
> DNS, ... and we were still far from understanding what might need to be
> in UDP for such things. So a long delay from conception to spec'ing was
> actually what happened.
I don't see that our views necessarily conflict - as I said, I felt it was
likely only the last details that were worked out that the later meeting.
{Added later...]
In just now looking through the IEN's which were just posted, I found the
following in IEN 63 ("Internet Meeting Notes - 30-31 October 1978" - at SRI,
apparently), on page 12 (comments from me in '[]'}:
DATAGRAM PROTOCOL - Danny Cohen [discussion lead - JNC]
There was discussion of the need for a Datagram protocol on top of IN
[the contemporaneous name for IN - JNC] to multiplex IN datagrams to
various datagram application processes, such as the name server process.
Dave Reed suggested the following and was then asked to prepare a memo
on it:
[Picture of UDP header - JNC]
So it seems my memory of discussion of "the final format for UDP" at a
meeting shortly before the publication of UDP spec (in January, '79) was
correct, although my memory of where that meeting was was wrong (I had
thought it was at ISI).
[Parenthetical note about memory: I'm not a trained historian, but I've done
a certain amount of amateur work, and I gather that historians are wary of
memories, because they do play tricks. I have had several prior experiences
with this, including a rather amusing one in the field of Lotus Indianapolis
race-car history (something I specialized in), which is written up here:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://users.exis.net/~jnc/nontech/tmlotus.html">http://users.exis.net/~jnc/nontech/tmlotus.html</a>
I have come to believe that it's dangerous to rely on memories unaided by any
contemporaneous records, because human memory is so fallible - and when it
"drops a bit", there's often no clue.]
Noel
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