> So what you're saying is that since incompetent firewall admins have blocked all applications except the web and no amount of reason can convince them to do otherwise, all applications of the future should be tunnelled through HTTP.

The product I work with has some protocols that is non-http. Some of our customers are complaining to us because _their_ users can't get through their own firewall (i.e the users own firewall, not our customers firewall). These users are often on corporate networks, and to get the users to convince their employer to fix their firewall is likely a waste of energy. In fact our customers may consider to switch to another vendor if we don't change to a HTTP based protocol.

Of cause the same firewall administrators may introduce deep packet inspection to only allow real web traffic later, creating more problems, but as someone delivering third party solutions now, you are forced to use HTTP or HTTPS.

> you don't create something as long-lasting as internet-scale architecture based on hacks around incompetence

On the contrary, the only reason the internet works is because it's robust enough to survive incompetent network admins.

I did not say that. What I am saying is that applications of the future that tunnel over HTTP will be much, much wider adopted than those that don't. Regardless of how suitable it is for the purpose. I'm not saying this imposes any constraint on the HTTP designers.

Tunnelling will probably have to be HTTPS everywhere too as a countermeasure against both surveillance and DPI.

Arguably the internet is a hack around incompetence and power-hoarding; the phone companies potentially had the technology to deliver many of the things we see as internet services as early as the 1980s, but were too bureaucratic to deliver innovation and especially cost reductions. (Compare MINITEL, for example)

That the internet makes service-based billing hard is also a feature.

> you don't create something as long-lasting as internet-scale architecture based on hacks around incompetence

The right half of your brain is wired to the left half of your body (and vice versa). That's just the standard, go-to, basically harmless example of stupidity in the design of long-lasting systems.

From http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Unintelligent_Design :

> Unintelligent Design is the theory that the world was designed by some higher power, but this higher power did a piss poor job at it. There are many theories as to how the universe could have been so stupidly and half-heartedly spilt into existence.

Or from the slightly more serious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintelligent_design :

Your optic nerve originates at the front of your retina and pierces through it, instead of more sensibly originating at the back:

> The retina sends electrical signals to the brain through the optic nerve and people see images. The optic nerve, however, is connected to the retina on the side that receives light, essentially blocking a portion of the eye and giving humans a blind spot. A better structure for the eye would be to have the optic nerve connected to the side of the retina that does not receive the light, such as in cephalopods.

You stupidly breathe through the same tube you eat and drink with, causing a staggering number of unnecessary deaths:

> If the [pharynx and larynx] were not connected and did not share a portion of their travel paths, choking would not be an issue, as it isn’t for most other animals in the world.

I think people are missing your point: Human beings seem to be built based on hacks around incompetence, yet we've made it for quite some time, it's not a great point but nevertheless makes sense.

That's one of two points. Indeed, humans are a much, much longer-lasting system than the internet. But you can also think about why these kinks in the design of living things arose in the first place; as wikipedia nicely points out, a lot of glaring mistakes in one animal work the way you'd expect in other animals. The "mistakes" arise because they're the fastest way to produce a desirable result, and they persist for great periods because making changes to a working system is very hard. In a certain sense, history does show that adding hacks on to the "outside" of a working system, so that it stays working at all times, can be a superior strategy to trying to revamp the whole thing in an elegant manner.

If we're going to pull on evolutionary biology metaphors, I think the "Red Queen Hypothesis" is the more apt one for this situation...

HTTP is an arms race? Between what and what?