
GNU Terry Pratchett - BerislavLopac
http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/
======
qwertyuiop924
Somebody (I think it was ESR) called this pointless, wasteful, and stupid. It
would be, were it for the benefit of the dead.

But it's not. It's very much for the benefit of the living. It's a way of
remembering a man who was so very important to us, but for me, it goes beyond
that.

Somewhere out there, there's a kid who's examining some net traffic. Maybe out
of curiosity, maybe to debug some kind of problem. And he'll see an
undocumented header, repeated across protocols.

Legends don't come from nowhere: Pratchett fans, of all people, should know
this.

And a man whose name the network whispers to itself is a pretty good legend,
don't you think?

~~~
jerf
"Pointless, wasteful, and stupid" strikes me as a rather uncharitable way of
characterizing
[http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6703](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6703) .

~~~
zeveb
I'd argue that it's outright misrepresentation.

------
Jaruzel
As a long time Pratchett fan, I inserted this in my Web Server headers when it
first became a thing after he died. I mostly forget it's there until I'm
debugging something and look at a response header and go... 'oh yeah'

It's mostly pointless, but us Pratchett fans are a loyal bunch.

~~~
orly_bookz
It's pointless until we're able to reverse entropy on a massive scale. Then
everything throughout history that made it long enough to be recorded will
have mattered.

"There is only one god, and its name is entropy. And there is only one thing
we say entropy:

 _Not today._ "

------
tjohns
I've had the Chrome extension for this running in my browser for a while now.

The most interesting discovery I've found is that virginamerica.com is sending
the "X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett" meta tag on all of their pages.

~~~
mobiuscog
It'd be interesting to know how many (of us) have snuck such a tag into a
product ;)

~~~
ShaneOG
I know I have :)

------
pdjstone
Shodan finds about 8,000 servers with the X-Clacks-Overhead HTTP header:
[https://www.shodan.io/search?query=X-Clacks-
Overhead](https://www.shodan.io/search?query=X-Clacks-Overhead)

Edit: I ran a query on HTTP Archive (which scans the top 1M sites) using
Google BigQuery and got these results:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TYWRQWlWPuIWIj3dCHAk...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TYWRQWlWPuIWIj3dCHAktGvBCs7UtX8xtY5LcS3i6TQ/edit?usp=sharing)

------
nagvx
I wonder how people feel about adding other names to the Clacks header? It
feels a tad lonely for his name to be the only one passed around in this
manner. It seems quite like a virtual graveyard, but with only one gravestone.
As much as I respect Pratchett, many others are already commemorating his
name, and I would feel compelled to add another. If people put their own loved
ones into the Clacks header, perhaps this idea could grow, and become a more
permanent part of the internet.

~~~
NoGravitas
What do you recommend as the format? Comma-delimited? My personal website has
been serving this since he died, but I'd like to also add Iain M. Banks, as
someone else here suggested.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Yeah, the interents needs a Banks memorial meme. Maybe not a clacks overhead
though, it wouldn't make terrible sense.

I'm trying to think of something fitting from the books- perhaps there's
something civs leave behind when they sublime? Something reminding those crazy
conversations between ships in Excession that could be added to IRC channels?

~~~
arethuza
"I Sublime, I Sublime, I Sublime"

NB I have tried it, didn't appear to work :-(

------
dzdt
I once accidently did this on a university computer system. Something was
misconfigured with sendmail routing; when I telneted to an unexpected computer
in the lab and sent an email from there it started bouncing in an infinite
loop between that and another department server. About two days later the
system operator noticed when log files filled the drive. My email had been
making trips up and down the building a few hundred times a second. I guess I
missed the N tag though!

~~~
ohthehugemanate
I wonder if it's possible to craft a mail to be infinite-bounced like this.
There have to be servers that are appropriately (mis-)configured of course.
But that would let you have a lot more than just one name, and a lot more
information about each person. An epitaph of sorts.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
The trick is to make it so the mail isn't replicated as it's infinite bounced,
so we don't get infinite copies (don't clog the tubes!). It's something I've
been struggling with in a piece of software I've been writing, actually. My
solution is to simply not allow for loops: There is only one canonical path
between any two server (netsplits, yay!)

------
Freak_NL
I would rather not add any additional identifying information to my browser,
but I am definitely configuring Thunderbird to do this. It's harmless, quirky,
geeky, and it might someday make some kindred spirit smile.

I wonder if this header shows up in the statistics of the big email providers.

------
linschn
A proper implementation of this would require a packet with an infinite TTL
and no destination. I tried to figure out a way to do that, but did not
succeed.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Because of the way email works, if you got it working, but screwed up (which
is what would probably happen), you'd end up with a recreation of The Great
Worm (Well, to be more accurate, you'd actually get a recreation of Bedlam-
DL3:
[https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2004/04/08/me-t...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2004/04/08/me-
too/). But it would have the same effect). Do you want to see what happens
when millions of poorly configured email servers round the net scream out in
agony?

~~~
sperglord
Absolutely.

~~~
noir_lord
> Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put
> a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-
> World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to
> dry. - Terry Pratchett

------
cheiVia0

      $ HEAD debian.org | tail -n2
      X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

~~~
adito

        $ curl -sLI debian.org | grep 'X-Clacks-Overhead'
        X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

------
pilif
What a wonderful idea. I have just updated out frontend server config to
include the header.

On thing though: According to RFC6648, we should not be using the X- prefix
any more for custom headers
([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6648](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6648)),
but I guess it's too late to change this now.

~~~
poizan42
It says:

> 1\. Deprecates the "X-" convention for newly defined parameters in
> application protocols, including new parameters for established protocols.
> This change applies even where the "X-" convention was only implicit, and
> not explicitly provided, such as was done for email in [RFC822].

It says for application protocols. I would argue in this case that it's not
any part of an application protocol as the header is never used for anything.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
>1\. Deprecates the "X-" convention for _newly_ defined parameters in
application protocols, including new parameters for established protocols.

This has already been defined, so we're in the clear, I think.

~~~
pilif
RFC6648 is from 2012 though, but Sir Terry Pratchett died in 2015, which is
when this initiative started. As such it's violating RFC6648 because it
continues to use the X- prefix.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Crap. Oh well. We're violating an RFC. What's the IETF going to do about it?

Nothing.

------
Roritharr
Just installed this on our company website. fastbill.com is now paying its
tribute.

Lots of Pratchett Fans in our company, if we would have known about this
earlier, we would have done it earlier.

~~~
noir_lord
Apropo of nothing but you have a bug on your landing page

    
    
        <!-- End Google Tag Manager —> isn't closing the comment.

~~~
Roritharr
Good Catch, thanks!

------
kraftman
Wouldn't a better tribute to Terry be to use this for other people that might
actually be forgotten?

------
jonathanmh
I'm building a directory at
[http://clacks.jonathanmh.com](http://clacks.jonathanmh.com) btw

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Cheers to the op, prompted me to finally pull the old thumb out and go and do
it :)

