X-Clacks-Overhead

Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?
Sir Terry Pratchett, in Going Postal

In Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (more about the world), "The Clacks" is network infrastructure of Semaphore Towers, that operate in a similar fashion to telegraph - named 'Clacks' because of the clicking sound the system makes as signals send."

In Going Postal, Robert Dearhear's son, John Dearheart, dies in a suspicious workplace accident while working on one of the towers, and to keep his son's memory alive, he transmits his son's name through the clacks using the message: GNU John Dearheart
G: Send the message onto the next Clacks Tower.
N: Do not log the message.
U: At the end of the line, return the message. As long as the Clacks network existed, that message would always stay getting transmitted.

The idea for the x-clacks-overhead header comes from the Reddit-hosted discworld forum dedicaetd to Terry Pratchett's books, especially the Discworld series. On the Apache HTTPD, assuming the headers module is enabled, the header may be set with:

header set X-Clacks-Overhead "GNU Terry Pratchett"

This setup works for the Internet through headers. NEXT's web and e-mail servers include X-Clacks-Overhead headers, keeping names and memory of those who have died still alive.

Requescat in pace.

Anton McClure / asm@next.gen.oh.us