{"id":6331,"date":"2014-10-05T18:42:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T22:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6331"},"modified":"2014-10-06T18:49:30","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T22:49:30","slug":"in-which-i-have-reason-to-sound-like-master-po","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6331","title":{"rendered":"In which I have reason to sound like Master Po"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This landed in my mailbox yesterday. I reproduce it verbatim except for the sender&#8217;s name.<\/p>\n<p>> Dear authors of the RFC 3092,<br \/>\n><br \/>\n> I am writing this email on behalf of your Request For Comment &#8220;Etymology of<br \/>\n> &#8216;Foo&#8217;.&#8221; We are currently learning about the internet organizations that set<br \/>\n> the standards of the internet and our teacher tasked us with finding an RFC<br \/>\n> that was humorous. Me and my two friends have found the &#8220;Etymology of<br \/>\n> &#8216;Foo'&#8221; and have found it to be almost as ridiculous as the RFC about<br \/>\n> infinite monkeys; however, we then became quite curious as to why you wrote<br \/>\n> this. Obviously, it is wrote for humor as not everything in life can be<br \/>\n> serious, but did your manager task you to write this? Are you a part of an<br \/>\n> organization in charge of writing humorous RFC&#8217;s? Are you getting paid to<br \/>\n> write those? If so, where do you work, and how may we apply? Any comments<br \/>\n> on these inquiries would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance.<br \/>\n><br \/>\n> Sincerely,<br \/>\n><br \/>\n> XXXXXXXXXXXXXX, confused Networking student<\/p>\n<p>I felt as though this seriously demanded a ha-ha-only-serious answer &#8211; and next thing you know I was channeling Master Po from the old <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kung_Fu_%28TV_series%29\"><cite>Kung Fu<\/cite> TV series<\/a>.  Reply follows&#8230; <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><tt><br \/>\nDon may have his own answer, but I have one you may find helpful.<\/p>\n<p>There is a long tradition of writing parody RFCs on April 1st.  No<br \/>\nmanager tasks us to write these; they arise as a form of folk art<br \/>\namong Internet hackers. I think my personal favorite is still RFC1149<br \/>\n\"A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers\"<br \/>\nfrom 1 April 1990, universally considered a classic of the joke-RFC<br \/>\nform.<\/p>\n<p>As to why we write these...ah, grasshopper, that is not for us to<br \/>\nexplain but for you to experience. If and when you achieve the<br \/>\nhacker-nature, you will understand.<br \/>\n<\/tt><\/p>\n<p>Sadly, odds are Confused Networking Student is too young to get the &#8220;grasshopper&#8221; reference. (Unless <cite>Kung Fu<\/cite> is still in reruns out there, which I wouldn&#8217;t know because I basically gave up on TV decades ago.) One hopes the Zen-master schtick will be recognizable anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Update: There is relevant <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0_J4TRYxpmU\">compilation from the show<\/a> on YouTube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This landed in my mailbox yesterday. I reproduce it verbatim except for the sender&#8217;s name. > Dear authors of the RFC 3092, > > I am writing this email on behalf of your Request For Comment &#8220;Etymology of > &#8216;Foo&#8217;.&#8221; We are currently learning about the internet organizations that set > the standards of the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6331\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">In which I have reason to sound like Master Po<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hacker-culture","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6331"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6336,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6331\/revisions\/6336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}