[ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)

[Mike Padlipsky]

At 04:57 PM 4/27/2006, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>Ooops. I proofed it, and fixed a number of errors, but must have missed that
>one.

speaking of missed errors, 'couRand' pretty clearly ought to be 'command'.

but what i don't understand is who forged this thing.  note that i'm 
NOT, repeat NOT, accusing you, it's just that i find it extremely 
difficult believe the real jon would've been so sloppy as to fail to 
show 'the argument' in the command line in some explicit form, much 
less so sloppy as to offer such vague descriptions of what the 
argument[s] should be, and i find it impossible to believe that the 
real jon could have written:

It is suggested that a modest volume of mail service should be free; 
i.e., it may be entered before a USER command.

since i know he knew the difference between i.e. and e.g., having 
discussed it with him at some length [i won't say taught it to him, 
honest i won't] when i did rfc 491.  he also knew the base ftp spec 
allowed Hosts, especially multics, to require a user command before 
mail, or any other command, was sent.  so i think that by occam's 
razor the choice between jon had an utterly uncharacteristically bad 
day when 'he' wrote this thing and he didn't write this thing must 
fall to the latter.

unless, of course, he did it deliberately to get a rise out of me and 
somehow neglected to make sure i even knew it existed, which i didn't 
until now ... but i still think somebody pretending to be him having 
snuck it into the protocol handbook is the simpler hypothesis.


cheers, map

[whose shoulder problems caused him to break down some time ago and 
create a 'signature' file to apologize for the lack of his formerly 
customary e-volubility -- and who's been employing shiftless typing 
for a long time now to spare his wristsnfingers, in case you didn't 
know ... and who's further broken down and done 
http://www.lafn.org/~ba213/mapstuff.html , rather grudgingly]