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'I'm a Teapot' Error Code Saved From Extinction By Public Outcry (gizmodo.com.au)
An anonymous reader quotes Gizmodo:
It started back in 1998 as an April Fool's Day gag. Written up by Larry Masinter of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), error code 418 -- "I'm a teapot" -- was nothing more than a poke at the "many bad HTTP extensions that had been proposed". Despite its existence as a joke, a number of major software projects, including Node.js, ASP.NET and Google's Go language, implemented it as an Easter egg. A recent attempt to excise the fictitious code from these projects ended up doing the opposite, cementing it as a "reserved" error by the IETF...
Mark Nottingham, IETF chair for the HTTP and QUIC working groups, flagged the code's removal as an "issue" for Google's Go language, the Node.js Javascript runtime and Microsoft's ASP.NET... Nottingham's argument was that 418 was "polluting [the] core protocol" of these projects... It didn't take long for a "Save 418" website to go live and through the efforts of interested internet historians (and jokers), all three of the aforementioned projects have decided to keep the code as it is, though Google will "revisit" the situation with the next major version of Go.
The Save 418 site argued that "the application of such an status code is boundless. Its utility, quite simply, is astonishingly unparalleled. It's a reminder that the underlying processes of computers are still made by humans. It'd be a real shame to see 418 go."
Mark Nottingham, IETF chair for the HTTP and QUIC working groups, flagged the code's removal as an "issue" for Google's Go language, the Node.js Javascript runtime and Microsoft's ASP.NET... Nottingham's argument was that 418 was "polluting [the] core protocol" of these projects... It didn't take long for a "Save 418" website to go live and through the efforts of interested internet historians (and jokers), all three of the aforementioned projects have decided to keep the code as it is, though Google will "revisit" the situation with the next major version of Go.
The Save 418 site argued that "the application of such an status code is boundless. Its utility, quite simply, is astonishingly unparalleled. It's a reminder that the underlying processes of computers are still made by humans. It'd be a real shame to see 418 go."
This was just very forward thinking in preparation for IoT. Now, when your teapot can't connect to cloud it can tell you what the problem is ... "I am trying to connect to the internet and E418"
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
We're posting about it instead of doing something useful...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Starving kids in Africa could be eating these error codes.
Maybe we should rename it:
418 - Software written by millenial as part of an agile team in a startup made entirely of UX designers has operated as expected.
Yes, a classy response to the issue, unlike the humourless maintainer who removed the ddate (Discordian Date) tool from util-linux: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/sh...
Eh? (checks.....)
WTF man?, no ddate? ok, so the last time I used it in anger was in a server added header on the MTAs I used to look after many, many years ago...
them: we got spam from your servers..
me: No worries, got an example in front of you?, good, tell me the contents of the X-MTA-FNORD header...
them:(typie typity type....)Errr, what X-MTA-FNORD header?
me: there's your problem, not my circus, monkeys etc. etc..
Really, again, WTF?, you know I'm now in the crazy position that the only machines that have ddate on them here in my house are the windows boxes and not one of my Linux boxes has it now by default?
Time to dig out the sources...fucking Greyfaces...GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE!