RFC 514 (rfc514) - Page 1 of 4
Network make-work
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group W. Kantrowitz
Request for Comments: 514 LL TX-2
NIC: 16445 5 June 1973
Updates: RFC 459
NETWORK MAKE-WORK
The ARPA Network seems to have developed the proclivity of dragging
compulsive collectors and organizers out of the woodwork and placing
them in the forefront to annoy everybody.
Recent occurrences have been:
1. A set of charts on characteristics of the hosts. The orientation
seems to have been: If you can come up with names for the
horizontal and vertical nodes and if it has to do with the hosts,
make a chart out of it. This collection of charts goes under the
euphemism "ARPA Network handbook". Information on a host is
scattered over all the pages which is a questionable organizing
scheme. Additionally, since the charts contain much of what is
already in the Resource Notebook, we now have the delightful task
of maintaining two documents when changes are necessary.
2. A telephone call asking for hourly loads on the TX-2 computer for
every hour of the months April and May. One can easily imagine
all this information being keypunched in some computer (on the
network, of course) and then lovely bar graphs, curves, plots,
etc., being generated. Probably in triplicate.
3. A mailbox message about a "central software repository" and a
personnel file. (Copy of the message is attached). This was just
too much and is the immediate precursor of this RFC.
My first reaction to the "central software repository" was that this
has got to be some kind of prank. But when the second message
(identical to the first) arrived an hour later and when I learned
that others had also received it, I reluctantly accepted its
legitimacy. Actually, sending the message in duplicate fits in very
nicely with the general bureaucratic syndrome evidenced by the
contents of the message.
This RFC addresses itself merely to the idea of listings of every
program. That does not mean that I think that the rest of the
request is better, just that I don't have the time to write a
treatise on the general subject. It should be noted (if not obvious)
that what follows is being written with almost unbearable restraint.
Kantrowitz