• nyan@lemmy.cafe
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    2 months ago

    That series of RFCs (1149, 2549, 6214) keeps getting rediscovered by new generations of technical folk. Among other issues that have never been completely addressed are accidental encapsulation of packets in hawks, and whether the Internet is doomed to be slow in locations where the only avian carriers available are flightless.

    There has been one successful implementation of the protocol to date. 55% of ping attempts went through.

    (As April Fools RFCs go, the only one that’s arguably more popular than IPoAC is the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol, the source of 418 I am a teapot).

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 months ago

      and whether the Internet is doomed to be slow in locations where the only avian carriers available are flightless.

      Where would that be? Even inland Antarctica has skuas.

      • nyan@lemmy.cafe
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        2 months ago

        I think it was supposedly New Zealand or something. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the full texts.

    • Frezik
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      2 months ago

      The coffee pot protocol is such an interesting anachronism. Nobody would make a hardware control protocol by extending HTTP like that anymore.

      For good reasons, really. It’s unnecessary to do it that way.

      • Two9A@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        That was kind of the author’s point: that HTTP is so broadly specified, and at that point had so many unnecessary RFCs extending it, that you could halfway-sensibly write a hardware control protocol by HTTP alone even if that was a terrible idea.

        Source: I wrote the tea-brewing extension to HTCPCP, which takes it another notch into the ridiculous.

      • socsa@piefed.social
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        2 months ago

        The part I hate is how many overconfident internet technicians will be like “well ackshually the metaphor isn’t that far off” completely missing the very important difference between an information channel and a power channel and what the capacity limits are for each.

        For example, free space is a pretty great information channel, but it absolutely sucks for reliably transmitting fluids.

        • Frezik
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          2 months ago

          Also, the fact that in context, it was coming from an ignorant old man ranting on the floor of Congress while trying to pass an anti-net nutrality bill. The fact that the analogy even kinda works is an accident and missing the bigger problem.

  • Soapbox@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    I suppose this is one way to keep the CIA spy drones from becoming E-waste when they introduce the new models.

  • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    What is the bandwidth of a cargo plane? You fill the hold with data storage disks, fly them to the destination and then read them in.

  • disco@lemdro.id
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    2 months ago

    Should I upload a dead cat or dog? Make a funny about that? Don’t post this shit.