---- Original Message -----
From: "Owen DeLong" <owen@delong.com>
OTOH, I can easily see $COMPANY deciding that $RFC is not in their best interests and find the http://microsoft construct not at all unlikely.
I realize that no responsible software vendor would ever deliberately do something insecure or contrary to a security-oriented RFC, but, history has shown that not all software vendors are responsible.
Now imagine the number of corporate IT departments that can't even spell RFC, but, they run web servers and DNS servers...
Yeah, under the coming circumstances, the expectation that said 3-digit RFC will remain anything more than a novel collection of bits on an FTP server somewhere is, well, optimistic at best.
And here is where it all comes off the rails. Done anyone here know *why* Interstate-grade highways are designed to the standards they are? Those standards have evolved markedly over the last 50 years or so, to the point were at today. And those things cost a megabuck a mile, or more. Why? Let's not always see the same hands. Of course: it's because if those engineers get things wrong: people die. Well, guess what, folks? That's true for us, now, too. I don't think it's even melodramatic to say that we have a pretty good handle on exactly what things are bad to do when furthering the design of the Internet at large, and that if we *do those things*... Really Bad Things will happen. I have said for nearly 30 years now that The Internet Is An Engineering Construct, and that should and must restrain us from doing stupid things to and with it, regardless of how much money they'll make someone. When you combine that with someone's famous observation that the Internet is man's only technological achievement where a single character typographical error in a server on the other side of the world that you don't even know exists can take your entire network down (which, these days, may mean "put your company out of business"), well, then... we would seem to be hooved not merely to roll our eyes and say "well, the suits will play, and they write the checks". That doesn't happen in the paved road business because (are you ready for this?) *the Government sets the standards*. I don't think I'm the first person to say -- even on NANOG -- that we'd better get our shit together before they start doing it for us... but we'd better get our shit together, before they start doing it for us. We now return you to Silly Sunday. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274