[ih] NCP and TCP implementations

[the keyboard of geoff goodfellow]

vis-a-vis

*In a lighter vein, The Book has been called "... beyond doubt the funniest
technical book ever written."*


The Book, also, beyond doubt, perhaps, contains, in

*CHAPTER 9 "Low Standards: A Critique of X.25" *

the most laconic conclusion yours truly has ever seen:

*Conclusion *

*X.25 is not a good thing.*


geoff

On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 7:57 AM Don Hopkins <simhacker at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 5:41 AM Tony Finch <dot at dotat.at> wrote:
>
>
> Sounds like MULTICS. I read Mike Padlipsky's Elements of Networking Style
> a few months ago, and I'm fairly sure he had some choice words about
> Multics and ARPANET billing, probably the exact incident mentioned in
> RFC425? Despite the lack of index I found it at the end of chapter 4:
>
>
> That’s an excellent and classic book!
>
> I quoted it on HN a while ago, in response to something Gumby posted.
>
> -Don
>
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19865180
>
> gumby on May 9, 2019 | parent | favorite | on: Amazon S3 Path Deprecation
> Plan – The Rest of the ...
>
> I just now realised that if the web required two-way links there would be
> no way to put them into books!
>
> Some context:
>
> Back when the www was first released the most common criticism was the
> lack of back links. This is such a stupid and obvious deficiency that it
> really wasn't worth even looking into a system that was an obvious
> stillbirth. It wasn't just the "experts" saying this, but so many of them
> did because it was just so dumb. So you've probably never heard of this
> "world wide web" thing -- not only were there only one-way links, but it
> had its own homegrown markup language dialect and instead of using an
> ordinary protocol like FTP or even gopher it pointlessly used its own http
> protocol.
>
> (Also back then there was this research protocol called TCP/IP, which was
> another waste of time given that the OSI protocol stack was poised to
> dominate the networks just as soon as a working one was written. I wonder
> what the modern equivalents are).
>
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19866389
>
> DonHopkins on May 9, 2019 | parent | favorite | on: Amazon S3 Path
> Deprecation Plan – The Rest of the ...
>
> Pfff, TCP/IP will never succeed. It doesn't have enough layers! /s
>
> https://archive.org/details/elementsofnetwor00padl
>
> "The Book": The Elements of Networking Style: And Other Essays &
> Animadversions of the Art of Intercomputer Networking, by M. A. Padlipsky
> (1985)
>
> The World's Only Know Constructively Snotty Computer Science Book:
> historically, its polemics for TCP/IP and against the international
> standardsmongers' "OSI" helped the Internet happen; currently, its
> principles of technoaesthetic criticism are still eminently applicable to
> the States of most (probably all) technical Arts-all this and Cover
> Cartoons, too but it's not for those who can't deal with real sentences.
> Standards: Threat or Menace, p. 193
>
> A final preliminary: Because ISORM is more widely touted than TCP/IP, and
> hence the clearer present danger, it seems only fair that it should be the
> target of the nastier of the questions. This is in the spirit of our title,
> for in my humble but dogmatic opinion even a good proposed Standard is a
> prima facie threat to further advance in the state of the art, but a
> sufficiently flawed standard is a menace even to maintaining the art in its
> present state, so if the ISORM school is wrong and isn't exposed the
> consequences could be extremely unfortunate. At least, the threat / menace
> paradigm applies, I submit in all seriousness, to protocol standards; that
> is, I wouldn't think of being gratuitously snotty to the developers of
> physical standards -- I like to be able to use the same cap to reclose
> sodapop bottles and beer bottles (though I suspect somebody as it were
> screwed up when it came to those damn "twist off" caps) -- but I find it
> difficult to be civil to advocates of "final," "ultimate" standards when
> they're dealing with logical constructs rather than physical ones. After
> all, as I understand it, a fundamental property of the stored program
> computer is its ability to be reprogrammed. Yes, I understand that to do so
> costs money and yes, I've heard of ROM, and no I'm not saying that I insist
> on some idealistic notion of optimality, but definitely I don't think it
> makes much sense to keep trudging to an outhouse if I can get
> indoor plumbing . . . even if the moon in the door is exactly like the one
> in my neighbor’s.
>
> Appendix 3, The Self-Framed Slogans Suitable for Mounting
>
> https://donhopkins.com/home/Layers.png
>
>     IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING,
>     THREE LAYERS IS ENOUGH;
>     IF YOU DON'T,
>     EVEN SEVENTEEN LEVELS WON'T HELP
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Padlipsky
>
> On the occasion of The Book's reissuance, Peter Salus wrote a review in
> Cisco's Internet Protocol Journal which included the following observations:
>
> Padlipsky brought together several strands that managed to result in the
> perfect chord for me over 15 years ago. I reread this slim volume (made up
> of a Foreword, 11 chapters (each a separate arrow from Padlipsky's quiver)
> and three appendixes (made up of half a dozen darts of various lengths and
> a sheaf of cartoons and slogans) several months ago, and have concluded
> that it is as acerbic and as important now as it was 15 years ago.
> [Emphasis added] The instruments Padlipsky employs are a sharp wit (and a
> deep admiration for François Marie Arouet), a sincere detestation for the
> ISO Reference Model, a deep knowledge of the Advanced Research Projects
> Agency Network (ARPANET)/Internet, and wide reading in classic science
> fiction.
>
> In a lighter vein, The Book has been called "... beyond doubt the funniest
> technical book ever written."
>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True