Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!A.ISI.EDU!PADLIPSKY
From: PADLIPSKY@A.ISI.EDU (Michael Padlipsky)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Does TCP/IP "comform" to ISO/OSI?
Message-ID: <12427425203.27.PADLIPSKY@A.ISI.EDU>
Date: 2 Sep 88 20:45:31 GMT
References: <13887.589071350@twg.com>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 41

Marshall--

So impressed am I by your philosophical breakthrough that I can't
bring myself to wait to find Phil Karn's offending msg (which doesn't seem
to have shown up on the "bulletin board" through which I read TCP-IP yet)
before congratulating you on it.  By dismissing any objections about what's
wrong and assuring the objectors that they don't understand what's right,
you've hit upon an extremely powerful concept:

       The Whole Has Nothing To Do With The Sum Of Its Parts

Profound.

I now understand that if you gild the ricebowl heavily enough, it doesn't
matter at all that the top few coils of clay were intertwined rather than
slavishly stacked one on the other according to the pious precepts of
Pottery.  TWHNTDWTSOIP, after all.  And what a relief:  No more worries
about the Session functionality that ought to be performed AFTER the
Presentation functionality on the way into the Host but BEFORE it on
the way out--in, say, multi-cast teleconference settings--for me.  No
more nagging doubts over whether the Common Application Service Element
isn't just a way of evading the n-entities/n-1 entitites prescription
when certain Presentation functionality needs to be performed DURING
Application functionality rather than before or after (depending on
whether you're going into or out of the Host), nor over whether the
Association Control Service Element isn't just a euphemism for doing
Session functionality IN the Applications layer, either.  Those weren't
Epicycles, they were just irrelevancies, and I'll never have to say
"It should be Layer [sic] 5-7" again.

Silly me, ever to have thought that what's obviously a hammer was a
Swiss Army knife, or that if you have to drive screws with a hammer it's
at least better than attempting to drive screws with a kinky Slinky.
Yup.  I've seen the light.  No more vain exercises in technoaesthetic
criticism or fruitless demands for philosophical consistency instead of
political compromise for me.  Why, since you've assured me that The Whole
Has Nothing To Do With The Sum Of Its Parts, I've even come to realize
that as many as five of the seven apples in your little barrel can be
rotten and you can still have ... applesauce!

     dazzled cheers, map
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