Geoff Clare <geoff_at_clare.See-My-Signature.invalid> writes:

[...]

> I kept one of his posts to this group that tickled me.

> Here it is for those who weren't around back then (1999) or

> who don't remember it:

>

> | From: Dennis Ritchie <dmr_at_.........>

> | Newsgroups: comp.std.c

> | Subject: Re: Integer Sizes?

> | Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 03:19:41 +0000

[...]

> | Maybe by the time of the C0X standard, things will be pinned

> | down well enough that it will become possible actually to

> | write a TCP/IP stack, or conceivably an entire operating

> | system in C. One might even imagine that it runs on several

> | different machine architectures.  A hope for the new milennium.

Ironically, in direct opposition to this 'hope for the new millenium',

with C99, it has become illegal to use already written 'TCP/IP'

stacks in C programs because the design of the BSD socket interface

runs afoul of the aliasing restrictions, eg, it is no longer allowed

to cast a struct sockaddr * to a struct sockaddr_in *, based on the

knowledge that the pointer really points to a sockaddr_in structure.

Given enough time, any sensible idea will be uninvented by some

beancounter incapable of (and unwilling to) accept that theories are

supposed to model the real world and not the other way round.