Re: Statements against new.net?

[Geoff Huston <gih () telstra net>]

At 3/14/01 07:56 AM, Vadim Antonov wrote:


> That is based on the assumption that consistency is necessary
> or desireable :)  Of course, it is dear to an engineer's mind,
> but the case from the sociological point of view is far from
> clear-cut.  In fact, way too many woes of human societies can
> be (at least indirectly) attributed to the misguided attempts
> to enforce consistency.

This assumption is explicitly addressed in the RFC - I quote:

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1.1. Maintenance of a Common Symbol Set

Effective communications between two parties requires two essential 
preconditions:

  - The existence of a common symbol set, and

  - The existence of a common semantic interpretation of these symbols.
Failure to meet the first condition implies a failure to communicate at 
all, while failure to meet the second implies that the meaning of the 
communication is lost.

In the case of a public communications system this condition of a common 
symbol set with a common semantic interpretation must be further 
strengthened to that of a unique symbol set with a unique semantic 
interpretation. This condition of uniqueness allows any party to initiate a 
communication that can be received and understood by any other party. Such 
a condition rules out the ability to define a symbol within some bounded 
context. In such a case, once the communication moves out of the context of 
interpretation in which it was defined, the meaning of the symbol becomes 
lost.
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