[e2e] Open the floodgate

[Cannara]

Right Theo.  Engineering is not possible, when run as a religion or
bureaucracy.  It needs input from ever-expanding reality, and ability for
response.  That's exactly the reason these points have come up here, as they
have for a few years at least.  Decades are passing by and the Land of the
Internet, State of protocols, Duchy of TCP/IP remain ruled by sluggishness.

Alex

Theo Pagtzis wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> after seeing with interest responses from jon, alex, bob, david et al, I
> feel obliged to voice aloud a thought.
> 
> For all intents and purposes, engineering (and its output) follows the
> behaviour of an evolutionary process. To stick around control systems, I
> would like to take the example of a predictor-corrector process since
> IMHO that represents to me what I see as "evolutionary reality".
> 
> Starting from 'nothing' we predict that we want and eventually achieve
> 'something' (which was a lot better than that 'nothing'). As we go along
>   our usage, investigation, imagination and advertising provides a
> 'corrector' sample to align this 'something' to the next available state
> which is 'something better'. By this time our specification or the
> original expectations and targets have _already_ changed! It would be
> thus a mistake to judge an initial solution as incomplete/bad/whatever
> since it achieved what it was _originally_ designed for (say, TCP:
> purpose --> congestion collapse).
> 
> Thus, one can see that there exists _no_ all-encompasing solution in
> engineering that can be achieved in one go! The reason for it is that
> since solution is tracked by specifications and specifications is
> tracked by our current state of knowledge on what we consider as
> 'manifestation of the problem'. The solution, thus, reflects the best
> effort (another one) to the best of our knowledge towards THAT
> manifestation of the term semantics of the word 'problem' .
> 
> IMHO discipline is required in achieving an 'optimal' solution that fits
> realistic assumptions and adhere to specs. The problem is that the
> realism of the assumption is bound by the state of the current
> manifestation (known info about it) of the 'problem', irrespective how
> 'complete' (this is definetely NP-complete) this state is; in other
> words welcome to he famous Godel theorem of incompleteness.
> 
> Now there is a distinction between discipline in solving a problem to
> spec (fixed) and solving the problem for a constantly evolving spec
> (desired). A nice example is the one that the constituency of the list
> brought up..limitations of TCP..
> 
>  From the above a corrolary comes in mind: "Irrespective of how
> disciplined is the solution of the problem, the solution by itself will
> generate new input that will augment the information space about the
> problem (i.e. new aspects of the problem). Hence one will never - in
> absolute terms - solve the problem BUT evolve it!"
> 
> In other words "solutions point to the evolution of 'problem' as a
> necessary and sufficient condition". From that perspective I welcome
> every new ray of light that shows me the evolutionary path (in whatever
> direction  solution --> problem  \/  problem --> solution).
> 
> my 2p
> t.
> 
> will always influence
> 
> Sam Manthorpe wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Cannara wrote:
> >
> >
> >>David,
> >>
> >>Interesting that referrals to the poor security or performance designed into
> >>the Internet by choice or omission leads to raising Il Duce (Mussolini) from
> >>the dead.  So we just ignore the fantastic volume of undesired traffic on the
> >>Internet because we're afraid of Mussolini-like discipline?  Being of Italian
> >>descent, I recall relatives wanting to hang him, because he was a cheap
> >>crackpot with a mistress, not quite the capable fellow you raise.  When we
> >>talk personal discipline, let's think more on folks like Michelangelo,
> >>Puccini, Da Vinci, etc.,
> >
> >
> > I thought that Da Vinci was a total hacker?  I'm not sure that his
> > helicopter plans would pass as a disciplined engineering approach
> > to design, even at the IETF :-).
> >
> > time-to-market (or deployment) wins.  Seems to me that discipline comes
> > later, after the innovation and deployment.  We are still to this day
> > driving vehicles that burn fossil fuels, which is a bad design choice
> > IMO, but there are a lot of very disciplined engineers focused on
> > implementing that design choice today.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > -- Sam
> >
> 
> --
> theo
> Nets & Mobile Systems Group
> UCL-CS