Odd problems trying to make use of libbind as a replacement resolver...

[Brad Knowles]

At 10:47 PM +1000 2005-10-18, A Humble Bind User wrote:

>>  	With regards to BIND itself, there is a very large amount of very
>>  high quality documentation available, most of it from Paul Albitz and
>>  Cricket Liu, in their various books on the subject.
>
>  Yeah, everyone starts there, I guess... but it's backwards... it's a manual
>  written to code, rather than a document upon which to base future
>  implementations or designs.  Unfortunately, this sort of software 
>evolutionary
>  process often leads to "frozen flaws", wherein future implementations often
>  resist fixing certain flaws in order to maintain "bug-for-bug compatibility."
>   I'm speaking generally here.

	In which case, you obviously have never read any technical 
documentation in your life.  It's always written after-the-fact (or 
at least mostly after-the-fact), and it documents the way the system 
works.

	If you want specifications and design documentation from the 
original creators, that's a totally different thing.  Moreover, 
that's pretty much totally useless to anyone who can't speak to the 
original creators (or their inheritors) on the same level.  In which 
case, we get back to the issue of being useful only to systems 
programmers working at the vendors who are responsible for 
incorporating and maintaining the library code within their OS.

	Moreover, the original specifications and design documents from 
twenty years ago would not be particularly useful today.  Far too 
much has changed in that period of time.  Even the original 
specifications and design documents for BIND-8 would not be very 
useful today, because many things changed during the time between 
when it was first created and now.

>>  they had damn well better be reading the code itself and know
>>  backwards and forwards what it is really doing inside, as compared to
>>  whatever the documentation claims.
>
>  Um, formal specifications and code correctness aren't mutually exclusive.

	No, but they are frequently at odds with each other, especially 
in anything outside of a CMM level 5 organization.  And how many CMM 
level 5 organizations are there in this world?

	The systems programmer who is going to be responsible for 
incorporating or maintaining library code from another project within 
a given OS is going to need to know what is really going on inside of 
the code.

>>  	That's not the impression I was getting.
>
>  Then you're not reading; you're mapping your own baggage into my own words
>  which stand on their own.  My initial email was almost completely
>  interrogatory to seek clarification.

	I don't think I saw your initial e-mail on this subject, but if 
you were asking these questions on this mailing list, all that proves 
is that you are unwilling or unable to make even the most trivial use 
of Google or other search engines, read the FAQs, etc....

>  After about the third email, I'd pretty much given up but had continued the
>  discussion from a theoretical perspective rather than a rant castigating the
>  ISC for not solving the world's problems.

	If you had really given up, then you shouldn't have sent any more 
e-mails on this topic.  The fact that you continued to send e-mails 
on this topic proves that you haven't really given up.

	You've latched onto a particular concept and you're continuing to 
hammer it to death, regardless of whatever facts you are presented 
with by anyone else.


	If you really want to prove that you've given up on this topic, 
then you won't continue to send any further e-mails on it.

>  I have no complaint against any of the ISC members or its products.  Those
>  whose "impressions" lead them to conclude the contrary aren't native readers
>  of English.

	I am both a native reader and speaker of English, and I've 
personally known some people who are not native readers and speakers 
who have better understanding and usage than even most native 
speakers.  You tend to find people like this in various Dutch, 
Flemish, and Danish groups that I have met.

	Being a "native reader" or speaker is irrelevant.  Having full 
idiomatic command of the language is.  Having long experience with 
the subject also helps.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.