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Worst Bug or Shortcomings in a Standard?

Posted by Cliff on from the needed-more-time-on-the-drawing-board dept.

Alastair asks: "Just curious what the Slashdot crowd thinks are the worst bugs ever to creep into a standard? For mine, the various security vulnerabilities in WEP would make the grade. Also perhaps the lack of a protocol field in HDLC, and which most implementations added in a non-compatible way. I'm thinking here about bugs which result in partial or total irrelevance of the standard itself, as opposed to just a lack of interest in adopting it."

3 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. SMTP has no sender authentication. by OneDeeTenTee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    'Nuff said.

    --
    Stop the world; I need to get off.
  2. "Referer" by typhoonius · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is stupid, but it bugs me that we're stuck with "Referer" in HTTP.

  3. XML. For existing at all. by baadfood · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sure a well defined markup language is nice but really, people seem to loose all rational sense when it comes to XML - It cannot be used in a project without the project becomming "XML"? Scripting languages have been capable of processing all manner of free form text files in the past but somehow XML is necessary for interoperation? Why do people somehow think that XML encapsulated data will be small and quick to parse and are then suprised when it isn't? Why are they so fucking proud when their server can generate some trivial number of XML packets per second? What nutjob actually thought XML is easy to read? And what is the difference between a node an an attribute? Really?