💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~solderpunk › phlog › printing-rfcs.txt captured on 2022-03-01 at 15:25:41.
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Printing RFCs ------------- Tomasino recently wrote[1] about the joy of reading old RFCs, which brought back happy memories for me. When I was a student, we were allocated a particular printing quota each semester. You could print up to however many hundred pages for free, and if you wanted to do any more than that, you had to pay for more credit. The quota was renewed each semester, and any unused surplus was simply lost rather than being rolled over or paid out. My course work actually required very little printing, so I always had a hefty surplus, so twice a year I would take the opportunity to print off whatever very large but interesting nerdy things I could find on the internet. This sometimes included RFCs. I know for a fact that I printed the SMTP and IMAP RFCs, and had them cheaply spiral bound with clear plastic covers at the university print shop. I would read them on the almost hour long train ride I took into the city and back each day. Possibly I printed some others as well, but the email ones are the ones I'm sure about. Many RFCs are surprisingly readable, and if you've been mucking around with programming and networking for a few years you will probably be able to learn a thing or two about how some of the services you use every day work under the hood, without too much trouble. I like them because they make it clear how simple, at the end of the day, a lot of the internet is. Obviously the devil is in the details, but for many purposes, the internet is just computers sending ASCII text to one another, one line at a time, in very stilted, formal conversations. They often literally say HELO and BYE to each other. The scripts for these conversations were written, at least in the early days, by small groups of people just trying to figure out something that seemed like it would work well at the time, often without any grand plans or visions. There's a very humble, human feel to a lot of this early net stuff. Check it out sometime. [1] gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/tomasino/phlog/20180301-1436