Bonobashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Not on your Nellie!! The other bloke said "Howdjee do?" and you said > "Howdjee do?" right back.
That might be true. I don't live in a culture where people need to be formally introduced so I don't know the details of such customs. Regardless, the entire "how are you doing?" "have you eaten?" "are you healthy?" (that is the literal translation of the Japanese "Genki-desu?") etc. communications process appears to be a pure protocol handshake -- it seems to be solely a way of transmitting "I am executing normally and processing communications packets, please feel free to commence transmitting at any time". Perhaps in the distant future, our man/machine hybrid descendants will greet each other with short friendly strings in binary, rarely pausing to complain "Wait, wait, what does a SYN this have to do with synchronizing anything? If I actually synchronized to the counterparty they'd just thing I was rude!" Perry -- Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED]
