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
