Recursive RFCs

The specs for the highly esoteric Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS), RFCs 3401 to 3405 all contain the following curious phrase:

The entire series of documents is specified in "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Part One: The Comprehensive DDDS" (RFC 3401) [1]. It is very important to note that it is impossible to read and understand a single document in that series without reading the related documents.

Since each document stating this is itself a part of the series, recursion kicks in and it becomes “impossible to read and understand” any of the RFCs.
This does not bode well for the rest of the standard.

Thu, 03 Feb 2005
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