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From: ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: SCO's HDB and "long" site name
Message-ID: <25743@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 24 Jun 89 22:14:07 GMT
References: <10034@dasys1.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <10034@dasys1.UUCP> jpr@jpradley.UUCP (Jean-Pierre Radley) writes:
>

>But this version of uucp truncates my nodename to seven bytes.

If this bothers you, just think, someone was probably paid real money
for such a bit of fecal-headed programming. And, you, and many others
will pay real money and spend real time to work around this.  In many
of the world's languages, seven bytes is barely enough to get you past
the first syllable.  Even in English you have to have a really generic
wasp name (jones, smith) to be fully identified by seven bytes!

Senator Bill Proxmire from Wisconsin used to give out a "Golden Fleece"
award for the silliest projects to win federal funding. Computing in
general, not just SCO, could use an "Itchy Hemorrhoid" award, targeted
at programming decisions of the "no one could ever want a _____ of more
than _____ characters" variety.

(For those concerned about the choice of metaphors here, the logic
is that there are a (too) large number of programming decisions that
seem to be made by people who have their cranium up their fundament.
Such contortions deserve recognition.)

(If you want a less loaded justification for criticism, here it is.
At various times, the godfathers of UNIX have indicated that unless
there are compelling hardware limitations, strings should be either
zero, one, or infinite in length!  Too bad they can't follow their
own precepts!)