Not that it matters, especially in a just for fun context, but X- prefixes in http headers are currently depreciated (but will probably last forever). https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6648
Ehh. IMO there's still a place for them in extensions that it would make no sense to standardize - this is one example (I hope nobody attaches any behavior to this); a more common one is application-specific headers that aren't generic enough to ever have meaning outside of interop with that one application.
I agree; this is what I thought too, when I learned that "X-" is deprecated, I still thought, that "X-" should still be used (in HTTP, email, Usenet, some file formats, etc) if it has no reason to be standardized. (I have seen other made-up headers in HTTP and Usenet and email, in many cases where there is no reason to be standardized, but a few cases where standardization may be useful, maybe)
I guess we should all be glad that the Internet was not designed by Pratchett.
If it was possible to send infinitely repeating messages like he describes, the whole Internet would soon be completely bogged down with useless overhead packages filled with spam and ads.
At least the fanboys who implement this nonsense header on their servers are only wasting the bandwidth of themselves and their visitors.
Yeah, and imagine if libraries really twisted the universe enough to create routes between different places and times. So unrealistic. The man just had no idea about shelf architecture and gravitational physics.
Ahem.
You are aware he was writing fantasy with a referring-to-real-life comedy bent, not specifications & instruction manuals, aren't you?
The point of the "GNU" flags is that they're an unforeseen exploit of the system. The technology in Discworld is intentionally convoluted and whimsical because it is a fantasy setting with humerous overtones (while also using that setting to deliver biting commentary on real-world issues at times, I suppose "a little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down"). The fact the flags spell out GNU is also an obvious tribute to the free software movement (as is arguably the hacker subculture of clacks operators that builds around the clacks in the novel).
Yes, if the Internet worked on the clacks protocol, it wouldn't work in real life. But neither would cameras if they relied on small creatures living in them and painting the photographs very quickly. It's not even that Discworld is horribly naive, it's more that it served as a whitewashed canvas to allow him to create narratives by introducing elements of the real world individually and give the reader the opportunity to draw parallels from that.
The clacks "GNU" hack is a perfect example of the kind of things you'd see in the early Internet days before commercial websites were really a thing. Remember that for a long time there was a dream of the "semantic web" which turned out to be similarly exploitable and fell apart when commercial interests became relevant (giving birth to what we now call SEO).
The X-Clacks-Overhead header is clearly not intended to behave like the clacks in the story. Nobody is naive enough to believe that this protocol would work (just as the semantic web didn't). It's entirely a tribute, a form for fans to (at least temporarily) "immortalize" someone who had a great influence on them. And unlike the twenty different analytics and ad scripts you now find on many websites it not only wastes hardly any space but also doesn't meaningfully inconveniece users (not any more than forgetting to turn of the server and x-powered-by headers at least).
This sentiment is what is removing - day by day - the soul of the world wide web.
Not everything is about efficiancy gains - it's ok to just have fun. The internet never has been serious business, nor will I (or many others) ever treat it as such.
I always insert it (with permission from the owner, of course) in the sites that I manage, just as a little gesture. It's bit like that ASCII duck saying "meow!" on Amazon.
I understand that the “GNU” is a series of commands and not an acronym, but is there any sort of connection with FSF GNU? Or is it just an interesting coincidence?
He obviously meant it, all his books are full of references like this.
The Annotated Pratchett File is a longrunning effort to document these references, though I'm not sure if it is really being maintained any more -- the Going Postal page is empty.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Terry Pratchett, is in fact, GNU Terry Pratchett, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Terry Pratchett.
I think it's too specific an acronym to be a coincidence, and if you read "Going Postal", it's a pretty clear love letter to the hacker culture, so in my mind officially recognized or not, the connection with FSF is there
I use this on several of my sites as well. None of them get any significant amount of traffic, so I figured it would be okay to add more names to the list, as a small token of keeping their memory alive.
I was a little baffled by the (legally void, and thus pointless) cookie notice on the site -- a site that clearly does not need cookies in order to "operate correctly". It clearly states that they use Google and other 3rd parties who set cookies, and that these are "necessary for the site to operate correctly" which appears to me to be a nonsense, since it's just a static text page. Tracking cookies are certainly not "necessary".
Totally pointless garbage that further train "Click OK" behaviour (after decades of Microsoft's existing conditioning) and enable malicious parties to take advantage of that behaviour.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened to the Roman empire if they had invented clacks towers. Did any ancient civilizations invent them, or is it just an ancient technology invented by Terry Pratchett?
43 comments
[ 301 ms ] story [ 4595 ms ] threadCulturally, he's still very much alive.
But that gets into philosphically discussions about what "he" even is.
If it was possible to send infinitely repeating messages like he describes, the whole Internet would soon be completely bogged down with useless overhead packages filled with spam and ads.
At least the fanboys who implement this nonsense header on their servers are only wasting the bandwidth of themselves and their visitors.
If you want to pick a fight about bandwidth waste, start with spam, not this.
I’d love to be on your internet where this isn’t already a reality
Ahem.
You are aware he was writing fantasy with a referring-to-real-life comedy bent, not specifications & instruction manuals, aren't you?
Yes, if the Internet worked on the clacks protocol, it wouldn't work in real life. But neither would cameras if they relied on small creatures living in them and painting the photographs very quickly. It's not even that Discworld is horribly naive, it's more that it served as a whitewashed canvas to allow him to create narratives by introducing elements of the real world individually and give the reader the opportunity to draw parallels from that.
The clacks "GNU" hack is a perfect example of the kind of things you'd see in the early Internet days before commercial websites were really a thing. Remember that for a long time there was a dream of the "semantic web" which turned out to be similarly exploitable and fell apart when commercial interests became relevant (giving birth to what we now call SEO).
The X-Clacks-Overhead header is clearly not intended to behave like the clacks in the story. Nobody is naive enough to believe that this protocol would work (just as the semantic web didn't). It's entirely a tribute, a form for fans to (at least temporarily) "immortalize" someone who had a great influence on them. And unlike the twenty different analytics and ad scripts you now find on many websites it not only wastes hardly any space but also doesn't meaningfully inconveniece users (not any more than forgetting to turn of the server and x-powered-by headers at least).
Not everything is about efficiancy gains - it's ok to just have fun. The internet never has been serious business, nor will I (or many others) ever treat it as such.
GNU Terry Pratchett.
The Annotated Pratchett File is a longrunning effort to document these references, though I'm not sure if it is really being maintained any more -- the Going Postal page is empty.
https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/
Browsing the web with the Clacks Overhead extension for Chrome (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clacks-overhead-gn...), I'm always surprised by which sites enable this extension. My latest find is arXiv.org! If you go to any abstract page, such as https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0310077v2 (picked that one at random for its humour), the header will be sent.
Totally pointless garbage that further train "Click OK" behaviour (after decades of Microsoft's existing conditioning) and enable malicious parties to take advantage of that behaviour.
...What for?
There is absolutely nothing in the GDPR that prevents web sites from not using tracking (or other) cookies.
In addition snarky wording which I can't work out if I hate more than the faux caring "oh you don't mind if we use cookies do you?" language.
FWIW You can use uBlock origin to remove ##.alert-dismissible.alert-info.alert from the page to avoid having to deal with it.
> The most widely used system was invented in 1792 in France by Claude Chappe, and was popular in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph