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Happy 40th Birthday, Internet RFCs

Posted by timothy on from the more-pigeons-what-say-ye dept.

WayHomer was one of several readers to point out the 40th birthday of an important tool in the formation of the Internet, and a look back at it by the author of the first of many. "Stephen Crocker in the New York Times writes, 'Today is an important date in the history of the Internet: the 40th anniversary of what is known as the Request for Comments (RFC).' 'RFC1 — Host Software' was published 40 years ago today, establishing a framework for documenting how networking technologies and the Internet itself work. Distribution of this memo is unlimited."

6 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. RFC 3514 saved the Internet by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's great how we no longer have to fear malicious Internet traffic, now that the evil bit has been set on every such packet.

  2. RFC0? HELO computer, NE1 127.0.0.1? by jimbudncl · · Score: 4, Funny

    What?? They started at 1? Sheesh, and they claim to be computer scientists.....

  3. RFC0 by TypoNAM · · Score: 5, Funny

    RFC0 had only NULL content, therefore wasn't retrievable due to pointer dereferencing causing segfaults, oh the headaches...

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    1. Re:RFC0 by dwye · · Score: 2, Funny

      > RFC0 had only NULL content, therefore wasn't retrievable
      > due to pointer dereferencing causing segfaults

      Nonsense. That would point to register zero on the DEC-10 that they would have used, at the time.

      Segfaulting due to zero being an illegal pointer value is a recent innovation not supported by all implementations (HP-UX 8 or 9 on PA-RISC would let you do that to your heart's content, frex) nor required of any.

  4. 1438 by hwyhobo · · Score: 5, Funny

    My favorite RFC of all time: 1438. The rule "once everyone has approved the document by falling asleep over it, the process ends and the document is discarded" has been a guiding light for corporate management nationwide.

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  5. Re:Saw my dad go through withdrawls by VWJedi · · Score: 2, Funny

    Withdrawals from RFCs? I don't think I could make it through the day without them!