[ih] FTP RIP

[Bill Ricker]

On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 5:57 PM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> And the impetus for one of the great Padlipskyisms!
>
> When the discussion in an FTP meeting turned to the BYTE command. (The
> BYTE command essentially set the ‘word size’ for the file.)  Someone asked
> a question along the lines of “So what happens if I STORe a file with a
> BYTE size of 23 and RETRieve it with a BYTE size of 17.
>
> Padlipsky sitting in the far corner of the room, piped up, “Sometimes when
> changing apples into oranges, you get lemons!”
>
> Everyone agreed that was the right answer.  ;-)


The Literary Estate of Mike Padlipsky approves this message. :-D
I trust the riposte had to do with Making Lemonade ...

(I've used bytes sized 5, 6, and 7 - and remember being annoyed the bit
left over in the 36 bit word was not the easily accessible Sign bit, which
would have been useful for an OOB EOS/EOF marker; back then, FORTRAN bit
twiddling wasn't strong - but not 23 nor 17 !  *shudder* )

// Bill Ricker