Talk:April Fools' Day RFC

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[edit] Funny Ha-ha or Funny Strange?

"RFC 852 - ARPANET short blocking feature" - "I don't get it."

(More humorous RFCs collected at zvon.org, although they're not all 1 April.)

JTN 19:46, 2004 Oct 3 (UTC)


yeah, i'm pretty sure 852 is a real rfc

Yup, it's real. Those of us who had to work with IMPs and the 1822 family of connection protocols had to cope with all sorts of stuff like message blocking and Distant Hosts. RossPatterson 16:51, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

"RFC 4042 - UTF-9 and UTF-18 Efficient Transformation Formats of Unicode" - "I don't get it."

Mark Crispin is inscrutable. UTF-9 and UTF-18 have been proposed on several occasions, and 36-bit words are a traditional DEC system configuration - the "native" characterset of the PDP-10 was called "sixbit" and was packed six characters to the word. Crispin is one of a small group of TOPS-20 enthusiasts, and has famously run it at home for many years. I strongly suspect he arranged for this RFC to be published on 1 April 2005 as a meta-joke - he was, after all, the author of the first April 1st RFC! RossPatterson 17:42, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
RFCs are always dated by month and year, they never include the day. If you look at RFC 4040 you'll see it's dated "April 2005" - without the day. Likewise, RFC 4043 is dated "May 2005" with no day. There's one exception: if it's an April 1st joke, it'll be dated "1 April (year)". So RFC 4042 is indeed an April 1st joke, and RFC 852 is not (as it's dated "April 1983" and not "1 April 1983"). — Xenoveritas 18:50, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Ah, would that that were true. Yes, the intentionally humorous RFCs are dated "1 April yyyy" on purpose, but if you go back far enough, all RFCs had actual dates. Once the net got large enough that RFC publication became a "process", the dates became months because authors couldn't predict the publication date. After that, the Internet Standard Practice of "anything we do more than twice is a tradition" kicked in, and now RFCs don't have dates, even though today's RFC Editor does more than just stick the file unchanged onto a file server.
Short of dropping Crispin a line, we'll never know, and he's been known to carry a joke on for years with a straight face, so even that might fail. "Relaxen und vatch das blinkenlites."
RossPatterson 01:10, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Examples of April 1st non-humourous RFCs include 0112 (1971), 449 (1973), 777 (ICMP!) and 779 (1981), 852 (1983), 893-895, 898 and 905 (ISO TP - if only it had been a joke!) (1984), 940-941, and 943 (1985), 982-983 (1986), 999 and 1004 (1987), 1050, and 1052-1053 (1988), 1095, and 1100-1101 (1989), 1147 and 1151-1154 (1990), 1200, 1214, 1218, 1219, and 1221 (1991). After that, they all seem to be jokes. RossPatterson 06:38, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link suggestions

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None of them look interesting. RossPatterson 06:40, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


All the April Fools RFCs, plus the non-April funny RFCs, plus commentary, was published in 2007 by Peer-To-Peer. As the co-editor it would be egotistical of me to add a link to the book, but if others feel it is noteworthy I'd appreciate someone linking to it. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Complete-April-Fools-Day-RFCs/dp/1573980420/tomontime-20">Here it is on Amazon so you can snarf the ISBN</a>. My co-editor is the historian Peter Salus. Thanks! -Tom Limoncelli —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.45.26.49 (talk) 02:26, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] william shakespere

anyone know the real author of the rfc attributed to him? Plugwash 22:43, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Anon! The vile knave could not foreswear his attribution, albeit well-hid:
  Author's Address
  William Shakespeare
  Globe Communications
  London, United Kingdom
  
  Any suggestions that this, or any other work by this author, might
  be the work of a third party such as C. Marlow, R. Bacon, or
  C. Partridge or based on a previously developed theme by
  P.V. Mockapetris are completely spurious.
"Craig, Craig, wherefore art thou Craig Partridge? Deny thy father and refuse thy name" But at least he gave Paul Mockapetris some credit! RossPatterson 00:29, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 2006?

Where there any joke RFCs posted for 2006? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.150.149.226 (talk • contribs) 00:33, 2 April 2006

Apparently not. RossPatterson 06:39, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2007?

Anything for 2007? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.211.195.204 (talk) 01:42, 2 April 2007 (UTC).

Nope. RossPatterson 02:58, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
...RFC 4824 being entirely realistic and serious, obviously. ;) JTN 11:03, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Not my fault if the RFC editor missed the deadline!  :-) RossPatterson 12:01, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is This?

A layman such as myself could read this page from start to finish and still not know what this is all about. Could somebody perhaps provide a more descriptive opening paragraph? Cheers. Swindon LS12 (talk) 10:29, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 2008?

No one for 2008 yet? --83.177.111.37 (talk) 16:12, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Hm isn't the 2008 joke one http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5242.txt ? or are there two? --83.177.111.37 (talk) 20:05, 1 April 2008 (UTC)