Miscellaneous Thoughts
It's good that ICANN's GNSO has adopted a definition of the purpose of Whois
that construes the purpose of the database as being merely for the limited
purpose of making technical adjustments to the net. This may redound onto
NTIA (part of the US Dep't of Commerce) with regard to NTIA's obligations under
the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 USC 552a) with regard to NTIA's privacy-busting
regulations over the .us ccTLD. You see, now that NTIA dictates
policy for .us it's going to be rather hard for NTIA to continue to
pretend that the Whois information of .us is not a system of records
under the Act. And the act does require the agency (NTIA) to conform the
use of the information to the purposes for which the information is needed to
fulfill an agency mission.
Way, way, way back in another era I was offered a position as an attorney in
the office of the counsel to NTIA. During that time NTIA was a strong
proponent of computer and network privacy. It is amazing how completely
NTIA has flipped over the intervening years from an advocate of privacy
protection into an agency that now works with considerable zeal to destroy
privacy on the internet.
Changing the subject - I just drove back from Phoenix to Santa Cruz and we
took the detour to see the wildflowers (especially California poppies) between
Lancaster and Gorman (California highway 138, Lancaster Road). It's a late
wildflower season but it looks like its going to be a spectacular one.
Right now the patches range from a few acres to several hundred acres. But
I expect that between now and the end of April that the flowers will overshadow
the scenes from Wizard of Oz. If you are in the vicinity of LA you
should consider taking a look. I'm probably going to detour back through
the area on my way to Las Vegas for Interop at the end of April.
Interop - yes, once again (as I've done nearly every year since 1987) I'll be
working behind the scenes. This year I'll be at the iLabs running network
impairment systems (my Maxwell product) to evaluate and demonstrate the susceptibility
of VOIP systems to various kinds of network conditions ranging from simple
packet loss and jitter to actively hostile conditions. Even with good
network conditions I don't think VOIP call quality would have been acceptable
unless cell phones had so badly reduced our expectations regarding voice quality
and transmission delay. And with predatory providers operating under the
euphemism of "network neutrality" and with increasing levels of
internet congestion at exchange points (driven by net services such as
entertainment grade video), we may have VOIP users longing for the "toll
grade" quality of Ma Bell's network of 1990.
That is, I hope to be in Las Vegas. A note to myself: Next time I
decide to paint a bathroom to surprise my wife I'll get somebody else to pick up
and reseat the toilet. The amount of pain that can come from a scrunched
back, and the time it takes to heal, are amazing. It's really put a crimp
on my activities, particularly things like air travel. I'm forced to walk
like Quasimodo in slow motion. Even relatively simple tasks - like
standing in the kitchen while preparing a dinner for a dozen people (something I
really enjoy doing) have become excursions through a world of pain that I never
knew existed.
(Since other people are doing it: Music played on the box as I write this:
The Duhks, Four Blue Walls; Suzanne Vega, Harbor Song.)