Oh, there totally were. I started my career at the CNET, France Télécom R&D. At one point they had proudly produced a glossy brochure extolling their “Web proto

Oh, there totally were. I started my career at the CNET, France Télécom R&D. At one point they had proudly produced a glossy brochure extolling their “Web protocol without IP networking” project, essentially running HTTP over ATM switched virtual circuits, because TCP/IP had cooties or something. That was so many layers of wrong I can’t even begin to unpack it.