5 ms·

There's a book out there that points to my website. I wish they had just mirrored it. My website has been dead for a few months, and some O'Reilly book has a de

There's a book out there that points to my website. I wish they had just mirrored it. My website has been dead for a few months, and some O'Reilly book has a dead link.

gumby 7y ago
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).
- omeid2 7y ago
  It is a shame that OSI didn't happen though and instead we have an ad-hoc mess of layered cake without clear boundaries as demonstrated by OSI Model.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    If you want low performance, that’s one way to get it.
  - gumby 7y ago
    I don't agree: the OSI protocols were the classic camel-is-a-horse-designed-by-committee: heavyweight and looked like a pain to use. Looked like, as I never saw a working stack. The IETF/RFC/Working Code/Interop(RIP) approach has given V4 incredibly long legs. At least the OSI model itself kinda survived.
    - rjsw 7y ago
      ISODE [1] worked, and it was usable before there were commercial ISPs offering TCP/IP services. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_Development_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_Development_Environment
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Pfff, TCP/IP will never succeed. It doesn't have enough layers! /s https://archive.org/details/elementsofnetwor00padl 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 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 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."
- scoot 7y ago
  Your timeline’s all wrong. TCP/IP the Internet built on it were already well established by the time the web was born. There was nothing particularly special about HTTP or HTML, or even the concept of the web. What made it a success was the availability of a server reference architecture, and, more importantly, a browser. It was easy to try it out, see the value, and get up and running with your own server if you had something to publish. Discoverability was a problem in the early days. There were printed catalogs of wesites! Backlinks might have helped, but clearly were not a fundamental requirement for the web’s success.
  - gumby 7y ago
    The fact the tcp (and it’s own institutional infrastructure) were already established is what made the whole OSI network effort even more enjoyably absurd. It was the last gasp of Big IT trying to take over the crazies. Most amusingly to me, it seemed only to be discussed in enterprise contexts and Very Important IT Journals. Such people were officially committed to deployment, while their own people were busy getting stuff done. IIRC the first nail in the coffin was the US military ignoring the naked emperor and officially deciding to stick with TCP. But by that time most people with real work to be done had ignore the whole OSI effort. > Discoverability was a problem in the early days. Yeah, I remember being at a conference in which a smart person (actually a smart person, no snark) said that discoverability would be over, as indexing the web would require keeping a copy of everything which, of course, is completely impossible. And we all nodded, because indeed, that did make sense. And about six months later, when altavista launched, it seemed only to confirm this belief.
    - no_identd 7y ago
      You both get so much of this story so utterly… /not even/ __quite__ wrong, but more importantly, leave so much detail out that, if I didn't presume better(which I do! Would seem rather paranoid if I didn't.), I'd suspect lying by omission. All of this, which includes the story to follow, makes me—and I don't say this for exaggeration purposes, it really does have an emotional impact—very sad, although it doesn't surprise me, barely anyone realizes the true technological horror lurking deep in the history of the 'Internet'. Please, consider looking A BIT more at the history of TCP/IP: http://rina.tssg.org/docs/DublinLostLayer140109.pdf http://rina.tssg.org/docs/DublinLostLayer140109.pdf (Slides!) http://rina.tssg.org/docs/How_in_the_Heck_do_you_lose_a_layer.pdf http://rina.tssg.org/docs/How_in_the_Heck_do_you_lose_a_laye... Day, John - How in the Heck Do You Lose a Layer!? (2012) Abstract: "Recently, Alex McKenzie published an anecdote in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing on the creation of INWG 96, a proposal by IFIP WG6.1 for an international transport protocol. McKenzie concentrates on the differences between the proposals that lead to INWG 96. However, it is the similarities that are much more interesting. This has lead to some rather surprising insights into not only the subsequent course of events, but also the origins of many current problems, and where the solutions must be found. The results are more than a little surprising." And here, a rather lengthy excerpt from later in the paper, as I suspect a lot of people might presume that the paper would go for some points it definitely DOESN'T go for: "[…] This does not mean that we should be doing OSI. Good grief, no. This only implies that the data OSI had to work with brought them to the same structure INWG had come to.[10] OSI would have brought along a different can of worms. OSI was the state of understanding in the early 80s. We have learned a lot more since.[11] There was much unnecessary complexity in OSI and recent insights allow considerable simplification over even current practice. OSI also split the addresses from the error and flow control protocol. This creates other problems. But the Internet’s course is definitely curious. Everyone else came up with an internet architecture for an internet, except them. These were the people who were continually stressing that they were building an Internet. Even more ironic is that the Internet ceased to be an Internet on the day most people would mark as the birth of the Internet, i.e. on the flag day January 1, 1983 when NCP was turned off and it became one large network. It was well understood at the time that two levels of addressing were required. This had been realized in the ARPANET when the first host with redundant network connections was deployed in 1972. The INWG structure provided the perfect solution. It is clear why the Internet kept the name, but less clear why they dropped the Network Layer. Or perhaps more precisely, why they renamed the Network Layer, the Internet Layer. Did they think, just calling it something different made it different? […] ———— […] [10] There was little or no overlap between SC6/WG2 and INWG. [11] And if the politics had not been so intense and research had continued to develop better understanding, we would have learned it a bit sooner. […] [22] Someone will ask, What about IPv6? It does nothing for these problems but make them worse and the problem it does solve is not a problem. […]" http://csr.bu.edu/rina/KoreaNamingFund100218.pdf http://csr.bu.edu/rina/KoreaNamingFund100218.pdf more slides! And much more, here: http://rina.tssg.org/ http://rina.tssg.org/ (I find it rather very strange the RINA folks and the GNUnet folks seem to each pull their own thing instead of working together, it very much seems like a—hopefully NOT inevitable—repeat of the very thing John Day describes in the slides & articles above…) —— Addendum #1: See also, for a network security perspective: http://www.toad.com/gnu/netcrypt.html http://www.toad.com/gnu/netcrypt.html http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/bbn/imp/BBN1822_Jan1976.pdf http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/bbn/imp/BBN... see also Appendix H here, starting on PDF page 180 ——— Addendum #2: Something in the back of my mind & the depths of my guts tells me I should link the following here, albeit I remain completely clueless as to why, or how it could seem relevant to—& topical for—any of the above, so, I'll just drop it here without explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_Trusted_Internet_Protocol_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_Trusted_Internet_Proto... (Interesting standards compliance section there, by the way.)
maaaats 7y ago
A book (on Libgdx) uses one of my repos as a starting point, telling the readers to clone my repo and do certain changes. I've left the repo alone, bugs and all, as I think it's cool that people uses my code. But the authors never reached out or anything, I only discovered it by chance. I could easily by accident have invalidated their whole chapter.

There's a book out there that points to my website. I wish they had just mirrored it. My website has been dead for a few months, and some O'Reilly book has a dead link.

gumby 7y ago

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).

omeid2 7y ago
It is a shame that OSI didn't happen though and instead we have an ad-hoc mess of layered cake without clear boundaries as demonstrated by OSI Model.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  If you want low performance, that’s one way to get it.
- gumby 7y ago
  I don't agree: the OSI protocols were the classic camel-is-a-horse-designed-by-committee: heavyweight and looked like a pain to use. Looked like, as I never saw a working stack. The IETF/RFC/Working Code/Interop(RIP) approach has given V4 incredibly long legs. At least the OSI model itself kinda survived.
  - rjsw 7y ago
    ISODE [1] worked, and it was usable before there were commercial ISPs offering TCP/IP services. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_Development_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_Development_Environment
DonHopkins 7y ago
Pfff, TCP/IP will never succeed. It doesn't have enough layers! /s https://archive.org/details/elementsofnetwor00padl 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 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 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."
scoot 7y ago
Your timeline’s all wrong. TCP/IP the Internet built on it were already well established by the time the web was born. There was nothing particularly special about HTTP or HTML, or even the concept of the web. What made it a success was the availability of a server reference architecture, and, more importantly, a browser. It was easy to try it out, see the value, and get up and running with your own server if you had something to publish. Discoverability was a problem in the early days. There were printed catalogs of wesites! Backlinks might have helped, but clearly were not a fundamental requirement for the web’s success.
- gumby 7y ago
  The fact the tcp (and it’s own institutional infrastructure) were already established is what made the whole OSI network effort even more enjoyably absurd. It was the last gasp of Big IT trying to take over the crazies. Most amusingly to me, it seemed only to be discussed in enterprise contexts and Very Important IT Journals. Such people were officially committed to deployment, while their own people were busy getting stuff done. IIRC the first nail in the coffin was the US military ignoring the naked emperor and officially deciding to stick with TCP. But by that time most people with real work to be done had ignore the whole OSI effort. > Discoverability was a problem in the early days. Yeah, I remember being at a conference in which a smart person (actually a smart person, no snark) said that discoverability would be over, as indexing the web would require keeping a copy of everything which, of course, is completely impossible. And we all nodded, because indeed, that did make sense. And about six months later, when altavista launched, it seemed only to confirm this belief.
  - no_identd 7y ago
    You both get so much of this story so utterly… /not even/ __quite__ wrong, but more importantly, leave so much detail out that, if I didn't presume better(which I do! Would seem rather paranoid if I didn't.), I'd suspect lying by omission. All of this, which includes the story to follow, makes me—and I don't say this for exaggeration purposes, it really does have an emotional impact—very sad, although it doesn't surprise me, barely anyone realizes the true technological horror lurking deep in the history of the 'Internet'. Please, consider looking A BIT more at the history of TCP/IP: http://rina.tssg.org/docs/DublinLostLayer140109.pdf http://rina.tssg.org/docs/DublinLostLayer140109.pdf (Slides!) http://rina.tssg.org/docs/How_in_the_Heck_do_you_lose_a_layer.pdf http://rina.tssg.org/docs/How_in_the_Heck_do_you_lose_a_laye... Day, John - How in the Heck Do You Lose a Layer!? (2012) Abstract: "Recently, Alex McKenzie published an anecdote in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing on the creation of INWG 96, a proposal by IFIP WG6.1 for an international transport protocol. McKenzie concentrates on the differences between the proposals that lead to INWG 96. However, it is the similarities that are much more interesting. This has lead to some rather surprising insights into not only the subsequent course of events, but also the origins of many current problems, and where the solutions must be found. The results are more than a little surprising." And here, a rather lengthy excerpt from later in the paper, as I suspect a lot of people might presume that the paper would go for some points it definitely DOESN'T go for: "[…] This does not mean that we should be doing OSI. Good grief, no. This only implies that the data OSI had to work with brought them to the same structure INWG had come to.[10] OSI would have brought along a different can of worms. OSI was the state of understanding in the early 80s. We have learned a lot more since.[11] There was much unnecessary complexity in OSI and recent insights allow considerable simplification over even current practice. OSI also split the addresses from the error and flow control protocol. This creates other problems. But the Internet’s course is definitely curious. Everyone else came up with an internet architecture for an internet, except them. These were the people who were continually stressing that they were building an Internet. Even more ironic is that the Internet ceased to be an Internet on the day most people would mark as the birth of the Internet, i.e. on the flag day January 1, 1983 when NCP was turned off and it became one large network. It was well understood at the time that two levels of addressing were required. This had been realized in the ARPANET when the first host with redundant network connections was deployed in 1972. The INWG structure provided the perfect solution. It is clear why the Internet kept the name, but less clear why they dropped the Network Layer. Or perhaps more precisely, why they renamed the Network Layer, the Internet Layer. Did they think, just calling it something different made it different? […] ———— […] [10] There was little or no overlap between SC6/WG2 and INWG. [11] And if the politics had not been so intense and research had continued to develop better understanding, we would have learned it a bit sooner. […] [22] Someone will ask, What about IPv6? It does nothing for these problems but make them worse and the problem it does solve is not a problem. […]" http://csr.bu.edu/rina/KoreaNamingFund100218.pdf http://csr.bu.edu/rina/KoreaNamingFund100218.pdf more slides! And much more, here: http://rina.tssg.org/ http://rina.tssg.org/ (I find it rather very strange the RINA folks and the GNUnet folks seem to each pull their own thing instead of working together, it very much seems like a—hopefully NOT inevitable—repeat of the very thing John Day describes in the slides & articles above…) —— Addendum #1: See also, for a network security perspective: http://www.toad.com/gnu/netcrypt.html http://www.toad.com/gnu/netcrypt.html http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/bbn/imp/BBN1822_Jan1976.pdf http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/bbn/imp/BBN... see also Appendix H here, starting on PDF page 180 ——— Addendum #2: Something in the back of my mind & the depths of my guts tells me I should link the following here, albeit I remain completely clueless as to why, or how it could seem relevant to—& topical for—any of the above, so, I'll just drop it here without explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_Trusted_Internet_Protocol_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_Trusted_Internet_Proto... (Interesting standards compliance section there, by the way.)

maaaats 7y ago

A book (on Libgdx) uses one of my repos as a starting point, telling the readers to clone my repo and do certain changes. I've left the repo alone, bugs and all, as I think it's cool that people uses my code. But the authors never reached out or anything, I only discovered it by chance. I could easily by accident have invalidated their whole chapter.