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| A New Salus Book: "The Complete April Fools' Day RFCs" |
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Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 09:47 AM EDT
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Peter Salus has co-authored a new book, " The Complete April Fools' Day RFCs ", and I was positive you'd want to know about it. The RFCs themselves are all hyperlinked, and the Table of Contents is there, so you'll be able to decide if you want to buy the book when it's available (soon) so you can read the rest. The press release explains: For over 35 years, the Requests for Comment have
been the guidelines and standards of the Internet.
But squirreled away within the over-4000 RFCs are
a number of mock items, generally issued on
April First -- April Fools' Day.
Now, for the first time, you can buy all the
April Fools RFCs -- together with commentaries
by Tom Limoncelli and Peter Salus -- and find
out how to distinguish good stuff from malware;
how to use pigeons as packet carriers; how the
Roman addressing system works; and many other
good ideas as well.
As a bonus, Tom and Peter have added the verse
RFCs and ... well, find out for yourself.
I know I will. This is a great idea for a book. The Avian Carriers protocol was amended, "IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service". Just so you know how to do it. Here's one I liked, "Omniscience Protocol Requirements", written by a guy at Harvard, S. Bradner, which I'm afraid may have confused Microsoft. When I read about Vista and things like WGA, I discern it seems to be doing its level best to actually implement this protocol. Could someone please inform them that it was an April Fool's joke?
It was inspired by Orrin Hatch's remarks about teaching copyright law by destroying evildoers' computers if they file share: Abstract
There have been a number of legislative initiatives in the U.S. and
elsewhere over the past few years to use the Internet to actively
interfere with allegedly illegal activities of Internet users. This
memo proposes a number of requirements for a new protocol, the
Omniscience Protocol, that could be used to enable such efforts.
1. Introduction
In a June 17, 2003 U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, entitled
"The Dark Side of a Bright Idea: Could Personal and National Security
Risks Compromise the Potential of Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing
Networks?," U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the chair of the
committee, said he was interested in the ability to destroy the
computers of people who illegally download copyrighted material. He
said this "may be the only way you can teach somebody about
copyrights." "If we can find some way to do this without destroying
their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Mr Hatch
was quoted as saying during a Senate hearing. He went on to say "If
that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines."
[Guardian]... This memo proposes a set of requirements for a new protocol to be
used by prosecutors to determine a person's intent, thus reducing the
need to dilute the historical legal requirement to show intent and by
groups such as the MPAA and RIAA to be sure they are dealing with
lawbreakers and not 60 year old non computer users.
Speaking of security considerations, there is this note at the bottom of the page where the book is offered: "If you can't laugh at these, you may wish to examine your
own insecurities." Certainly the RIAA needs this protocol so they can stop suing grandmas who have never used a computer. And that all reminds me: here's the latest from Ray Beckerman, the lawyer you guys helped by explaining some technical issues to. If you scroll down that page, you can read about the latest litigation filed against, believe it or not, a stroke victim: Although the defendant John Paladuk, an employee of C&N Railroad for 36 years, was living in Florida at the time of the alleged copyright infringement, and had notified the RIAA that he had not engaged in any copyright infringement, and despite that the fact that Mr. Paladuk suffered a stroke last year which resulted in complete paralysis of his entire left side and severely impaired speech, rendering him disabled, and despite the fact that his disability check is his sole source of income, the RIAA commenced suit against him on February 27, 2007. Perfect. A retired stroke victim. Does the music industry have an unerring instinct for PR or what? Or is their problem they don't get the tech and are finding out in embarrassing ways that tracing an IP address the way they've reportedly been doing it isn't so reliable a method? You think?
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| Authored by: entre on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 09:52 AM EDT |
| Time for a new book, waiting for the Judge to decide....... [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Griffin3 on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 10:08 AM EDT |
Make sure your comments are all at least 1.2 sigmas off-topic, as determined by
the International Scale of Relevance.
Glenn[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: awildenberg on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 10:10 AM EDT |
| "and the the Table of Contents is there" has a double the in it. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 10:11 AM EDT |
| The rfc cited above is an example of sneakernet protocol. Although latency is
often significant, the actual bandwidth can be quite acceptable according to
Tanenbaum.
Sneakernet wiki
article
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: red floyd on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 10:23 AM EDT |
| I'd like to point out that RFC 1149 (IP over Avian Carriers) was actually implemented by the Bergen Linux Users
Group ---
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a
*CITIZEN* of the United States of America.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: IRJustman on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 10:40 AM EDT |
Thanks, Peter, for collating all the REAL gems of the IETF into one spot!
And the truly sad thing is that RFC 1925, for all its humor, holds a lot of
truths I run into, not just in networking but in life in general. But then
again, it's one of my all-time favorites.
That along with RFC 3514 always bringa smile to my face. ;)
--Ian.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Toon Moene on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 10:59 AM EDT |
I'm sorry, but this is still the very best to me. It is so chockful of
Internet/Ethernet jargon, yet applicable, it's just
amazing:
Avian carriers can provide high delay, low throughput,
and low
altitude service. The connection topology is limited to a single
point-to-point path for each carrier, used with standard carriers,
but many
carriers can be used without significant interference with
each other,
outside of early spring [....]
The carriers have an intrinsic collision
avoidance
system, which increases availability. Unlike some network
technologies, such as packet radio, communication is not limited to
line-of-sight distance. Connection oriented service is available in
some
cities, usually based upon a central hub
topology.
Besides, there's the oblique, but very obvious,
reference to Monty Python's coconut carriers.
---
Toon Moene (A GNU
Fortran maintainer and physicist at large) [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Yossarian on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 12:53 PM EDT |
It seems like the RIAA found the perfect way to success in
hunting - shoot rabbits that can't run away. (And if any
rabbit manages to run away, whine to the press that the
rabbits don't play fair.)[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 01:04 PM EDT |
The starting and ending delimiter is 'like' as in "like I went to the store
like." It was going around in the early 80's.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 01:58 PM EDT |
I am sure that you will have gathered enough material during these years, like
the dirty things of Alexis de Toqueville institute. Will we ever have a book
about that?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: filker0 on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 05:57 PM EDT |
Well, not so much obsolete as out of date. The recommendations in that RFC are
that the cost of staples be charged via First Virtual transactions. First
Virtual Holdings went away a while ago.
(I used to work for them, so it's a bit nostalgic for me to come across that
reference.)
---
--
The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my current
or previous employers. IaNaL.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: vruz on Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 08:49 PM EDT |
This may be handy for Roman Unix/Linux
users:
tail -n XXIV /var/log/messages
tracer
oute LXIV.CCXXXIII.CLXVII.IC
telnet CLII.II.CCX.CXXII
MMCCMXCV
Also, Utah/Yarro law will allow us to use more than
_______
XXXXXXV Unix ports for television.
---
--- the vruz [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: iraskygazer on Friday, March 16 2007 @ 12:46 AM EDT |
PJ,
Remember the statement from one of the lawyers who wanted to pick Groklaw's
brain? The lawyer was concerned that the media industry was attempting to
establish case law in their favor and they didn't care who they attacked. It is
a shame that the government doesn't intervene in cases like this and stop the
bully in its tracks.[ Reply to This | # ]
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