Hey, Fred-- The "Definitions of Managed Objects for Drip-Type Heated Beverage Hardware Devices using SMIv2" ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-04-21.htm#10 ) is part of an annual tradition in the Internet Engineering Task Force, the April 1st RFCs (Request for Comment). RFCs, despite their seemingly innocuous names, are actually the standards that the Internet runs on; the April 1 RFCs are the "tongue-in-cheek" branch of these critical documents.
The first was written in 1978 and there has been at least one published annually since 1989. The one you cited came from the most prolific year, 1998, in which there were actually five RFCs published on April 1. One of the better known April 1 RFCs is the 1990 "RFC 1149 Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers" further modified by 1999's "RFC 2549 IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service" which establish a protocol for transmission of IP packets by carrier pigeon; this protocol has actually been implemented but the data rate was unacceptably slow, and there was a problem with dropped packets becoming re-encapsulated in hawks.
Another noteworthy April 1 RFC was "The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)" which "describes a protocol suite which supports an infinite number of monkeys that sit at an infinite number of typewriters in order to determine when they have either produced the entire works of William Shakespeare or a good television show."
All of the April1 RFCs can be accessed at a site run by Kevin Sullivan, Coordinator for Special Projects at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center http://klubkev.org/~ksulliva/rfc-april1/ ; another fairly complete list (doesn't have 2003 yet) is at http://livinginternet.com/?i/ia_rfc_fun.htm . The second list also has the classic "ARPAwocky" and Vinton Cerf's " 'Twas the Night Before Start-up" which were issued on dates other than April 1. It is interesting to note that at least three of these RFCs were written by Vinton Cerf, a man who has sometimes been called "the father of the Internet".
The 2003 entry was "RFC 3514 The Security Flag in the IPv4 Header," which proposes utilizing an unused bit in the IP header to define whether a given packet is "evil" or "benign." and was apparently actually taken seriously by many folks in the IT Security community ( http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,990618,00.asp ). --Ray Trygstad
Wonderful! Thanks, Ray.