Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!percival!parsely!sopwith!snoopy
From: snoopy@sopwith.UUCP (Snoopy)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: mail headers
Message-ID: <174@sopwith.UUCP>
Date: 12 May 89 05:33:36 GMT
References: <248.244422A4@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us> <636@dtscp1.UUCP> <1628@ccnysci.UUCP> <641@dtscp1.UUCP> <WEENING.89Apr19185059@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU> <1989Apr24.203137.5835@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: snoopy@sopwith.UUCP (Snoopy)
Organization: The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm
Lines: 55

In article <1989Apr24.203137.5835@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
|In article <WEENING.89Apr19185059@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU> weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening) writes:
|>One has to recognize that the Internet and its protocols have become
|>dominant, and are supplanting any "standards" that ever existed in the
|>UUCP world...

And one has to wonder why yet another case of inferior "standards" are being
allowed to become dominant.  UUCP is clearly superior.

Those who are tempted to argue for the ARPA Internet conventions should read
and understand "The Hideous Name", by Rob Pike and P.J. Weinberger, in the
Summer 1985 Usenix Conference Proceedings.  A few short quotes to whet your
interest:

  research!ucbvax!@cmu-cs-pt.arpa:@CMU-ITC-LINUS:dave%CMU-ITC-LINUS@CMU-CS-PT
	-Carnegie-Mellon University mailer

  I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.
	-Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, II. ii, 20.

  "specification of a fully qualified address can become inconvenient."
	- RFC 822

  Second, there are at least two special characters, '@' and '.', although
  the @ serves no purpose.

  Finally, the standard  requires 'registered' domain names: all the names
  that occur as domains in valid names must be registered before use, thus
  arrogating to ARPA Internet administration the authority to legislate
  naming.  As a result, the whole thing is encompassed in a closed society
  and there are very few registered names.  So much for internetworking.

	-R.P. & P.J.W.

  Some standards are sound and indispensable; some simply celebrate
  bureaucratic littleness of mind.

	-Doug McIlroy

  They [RFC 822 & 882] represent the unilateral imposition of a deficient
  standard that is poluting those communities that have comprehensible
  naming schemes.

	-R.P. & P.J.W.

To those who argue which network is larger, consider (a) the large and growing
population of 'personal', 'home', and 'small business' machines using UUCP
protocols; and (b) whether technical issues should be decided by the method
of might-makes-right.

    _____     
   /_____\    Snoopy	"My dot-matrix does Postscript."
  /_______\   
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    |___|     sun!nosun!illian!sopwith!snoopy		parsely!sopwith!snoopy