Subject: Re: patch for common networking error messages

From: Jamal Hadi <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 10:27:16 -0400 (EDT)

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003, Alan Cox wrote:

> On Llu, 2003-06-16 at 23:55, David S. Miller wrote:
> > Let me know when you're back on planet earth ok?
> >
> > Standardizing strings is an absolutely FRUITLESS exercise.
>
> Standardising strings is a real help for end users, but its not the way
> to approach logging issues I agree.

now that xml is the holy grail ive seen people actually
preach xml strings as encoding for protocols ;-> The arguement
i have seen put forward is that strings are easier to read
for users than binary encoding ;-> Therefore they can debug problems.
There maybe cases where this may be valid[1] - the only problem is
a lot of loonies will think this is the next sliced bread.

what about all that bandwidth stoopid xml consumes?
"bandwidth? Who has a problem with bandwidth?;->
what about all that involved processiong of stoopid xml?
"cpu? who has CPU problems?"
Intel has a 10Gige NIC, a 2Mhz cpu, adn 4G DDR Ram for your hungry
applications.
Its a conspiracy i tell ya ;->

cheers,
jamal

[1] For people who use expect for example to send string commands
to a remote system to configure things, when expect (simple req-resp)
becomes too simple you may need something more sophisticated.
They are already sending strings across tcp probably.
Infact a IETF working group has been formed to standardixe this.
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/netconf-charter.html
theres a draft at :
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-enns-xmlconf-spec-00.txt

The only unfortunate side effect to this is you will see a lot
idjots putting XML in protocols from now on just because.