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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."

2 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Let us have our fun. by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    2000 wasted bytes in every Rust executable disagree with you, millennial.

    His Slashdot UID indicates he joined this site significantly earlier than me - and I was here in 2003. Are you suggesting he signed up in utero?

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  2. Re:Perfect for the latest IoT by shanen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "It appears that you are trying to get mod points. Would you like help in writing a funny or insightful comment?"

    Thank gawd Clippy is dead, eh?

    Seriously, your basic premise was good, but you got it backwards. Your IOT teapot is supposed to have a built in webserver for configuration and comments. The 418 error is for cases when you try to send it commands that are not appropriate for an IOT teapot. Easy to understand how the 418 mistake will occur, because the commodity chips that include the webserver will be used in all kinds of things, not just teapots.

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    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.