Stupid Standard Protocols

You'd think that the people involved in defining the protocols for various data interchanges would be pretty smart people, wouldn't you?

Then why does every protocol I've had to develop for have:

• redundant messages - a message telling you how many items are in a list, and an entirely different message with the list, which has a length count in it?
• horrible bit-slicing sections where they take 3 bits to define a counter, then 1 bit for a flag, and then 4 bites for another counter?
• messages whose size is not carried in the message at all, but instead in a wholly different message?

I guess that either the poeple going to standards meetings are dense, too busy sightseeing, or too enamored of their pet project to compromise well.

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