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Opinion Article RFCs

pudge on 2004-03-20T02:05:27

What's the deal with this? Is turning opinion articles into RFCs common?

RFC literally means "Request For Comment"

merlyn on 2004-03-20T02:12:28

So this is a proper use. See some of the early RFCs.

Re:RFC literally means "Request For Comment"

pudge on 2004-03-20T02:47:33

I am well aware of what the acronym stands for, but it doesn't answer the question.

Re:RFC literally means "Request For Comment"

hfb on 2004-03-20T09:26:26

No, it's not common. This has a bit more bias than average but, on the whole, no big whoop. If Ashcroft takes the FCC sanitation campaign to the internet, you might see a lot more of these.

Re:RFC literally means "Request For Comment"

pudge on 2004-03-20T21:03:49

Ashcroft has nothing to do with it, it's Michael Powell. And the primary basis for the purpose and justfication of censoring broadcasts specifically excludes the Internet (that is, that the airwaves are owned by the public, and are a limited resource, and in order to have a broadcast license you are required to serve the public good, etc.). So the FCC issue is a non-issue in regard to the Internet.

And it isn't just TV and AM/FM radio broadcasters. I recently got an FCC license for certain walkie-talkie frequencies (GMRS), and I am prohibited from using the frequencies for "Obscene, profane or indecent words, language or meaning," (§95.183.7) as well as other things. Public airwaves means limitations on your speech.

I am also prohibited from commercial or political advertisements on those frequencies, so at least it's better than the Internet in one big way. :-)

Early RFCs were sometimes Comments

n1vux on 2004-03-23T01:52:47

Yes, the early RFCs included some polemics, and there were more in the mid-period of The Standards Wars. My Friend Mike committed some of the classics. Don was around in the early days, on the other other Project Mac project ITS, although his earliest RFC is 1455. I consider him quite qualified to have an opinion on computer security, a distinction I give grudgingly to few -- he's been in the computer security and database field with the best for a very long time that I know of.

His point, by the way, is that .sex is both bad technical art and incompetent ineffectual censorship -- it's a bandaid on a broken leg, or a blindfold that won't stay in place. Some anarcho-libertarians may prefer an ineffectual censorship to an effectual one, but some of us prefer to stand on principal and reject even useless tokens. Without major overhauls to both SMTP and DNS (dnssec is one of Don's several areas of work), domain names can not be trusted.

Bill

Re:Early RFCs were sometimes Comments

pudge on 2004-03-23T02:27:52

It just seems like a ridiculous place to put it. I don't care what his opinions are and how qualified anyone thinks he is, that's beside the point.