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On Friday 25 January 2002 04:41 pm, Paul Prescod wrote:
> All I can say is that most of the people I've met who think
> they know HTTP do not.
This is probably true. I also think that a lot of people claiming
great things for HTTP are claiming more than it was intended for...
and fail to see that HTTP+a set of application/URI-space semantics
isn't the same as HTTP itself. HTTP is a very general protocol, but
again generality isn't the same as general applicability.
I find an ironic example of when I've been guilty of something
similar. Many moons ago, I tried to get rid of the URL-encoding
bogosity on GET submissions from forms, because from an I18N
perspective (and for other reasons), it is abhorrent at best. HTTP did
(and last time I looked still did, though I'm fuzzy on HTTP 1.1 now)
support an entity body. My thought was to use that instead... as you
could make it I18N safe etc.
I was told, in no uncertain terms that "HTTP doesn't do that",
"servers don't do that", "even though it's allowed, it's not correct
usage", etc. I think saying that HTTP can do broadcast is roughly akin
to this.
> How is it mediocre? Now that I'm coming to understand it, I think
> it's brilliant.
Don't confuse the original HTTP with what you see you can do with it.
> URIs are the defining characteristic for the web.
....
>How is "the Internet" different?
Len's point is that they're now equivalent. The web as a term now is
mostly meaningful to those that care to make a distinction
(technologists).
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