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<title>CaveBear Blog</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</link>
<description><![CDATA[Thoughts and Commentary by Karl Auerbach
Locus ab auctoritate est infirmissimus&nbsp; ("The argument from authority is the weakest.") -- Thomas Aquinas]]></description>
<dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
<dc:creator>karl@cavebear.com</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2008-06-01T17:33:53-08:00</dc:date>
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<item>
<title>Second Annual National Institute: CyberLaw: Expanding the Horizons</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000336.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[This looks like an interesting conference program.&nbsp; Last year's conference was quite good.&nbsp; I'd be there this year except that I'll be on my way to the ICANN meeting in Paris. The panel on "The Future of ICANN and Control of the Web" looks rather intriguing and, given the panelists, might cause a few sparks to fly....]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">336@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Law, Society, and Policy</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2008-06-01T17:33:53-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>Serendipitous Data Collection</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000335.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[In 1969 the Firesign Theatre recorded "How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All" People who diagnose and repair networks have long experienced the truth of that title - no matter where you happen to be, the test data you need to know can only be acquired by being somewhere else. In my own experience at Wells Fargo in the 1980's I more than once had to run back and forth through the streets of the San Francisco financial district, often at 3am, to check circuits and devices on a malfunctioning network path. Telco people long ago learned to incorporate "remote loopback" and remote testing capabilities into their devices.&nbsp; Internet people have not been as smart. Today's state of the art of network troubleshooting is a individual practitioner, a person who has deep knowledge and experience with the net from the bottom to...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">335@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2008-05-27T01:00:45-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>Bea Yormark</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000334.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I think it was Athol Fugard who wrote that the saddest words are "too late". I saw in the newspaper that Bea Yormark has died.&nbsp; Too soon. I first met Bea back in 1981 at Interactive Systems in Santa Monica.&nbsp; I remember her Mercedes - dark blue paint and light blue smoke.&nbsp; And I remember one evening at softball when she was pitching; I hit a hard line drive that barely missed her - it brushed her ear ring. I remained in contact with Bea after she moved to Washington DC with my Gaithersburg based co-worker at Interactive, Justin Walker, Curmudgeon at Large. Not long afterwords I had my own romantic adventure; I became involved with a woman who lived in DC.&nbsp; It was a very complicated and very stressful time.&nbsp; But it was a time made much easier with the caring friendship offered by Bea and Justin. I later...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">334@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Life</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2008-05-27T00:58:42-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>Comcast - Euphemism City</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000333.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I am tired of Comcast continuing to claim that is merely slowing network traffic. When Comcast sends a TCP Reset packet the TCP connection instantly dies.&nbsp; TCP Resets are internet ricin. The BitTorrent application uses several TCP connections, so it is somewhat robust against Comcast's TCP-murderous rampages.&nbsp; But most other applications are not - a TCP Reset stops those applications dead in their tracks. The sending of forged TCP Reset packets has as much to do with "network management" as shooting a bullet into the head of a hyper-active child has to do with "day care". Is Comcast simply being too cheap to install in-band equipment that would do the the right thing, the thing consistent with the internet architecture: dropping packets while congestion is occurring and thus allowing the TCP connection to remain alive, albeit with reduced data flow?&nbsp; One such right way is called Random Early Detection -...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">333@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2008-04-21T16:03:47-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>My comments to NTIA&apos;s &quot;mid-term review&quot; of its ICANN &quot;JPA&quot; agreement.</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000332.html</link>
<description>My comments to NTIA on &quot;The Continued Transition of the Technical Coordination and Management of the Internet&apos;s Domain Name and Addressing System: Midterm Review of the Joint Project Agreement&quot; are now online at http://www.cavebear.com/archive/public/ntia-jpa-2008.html...</description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">332@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2008-02-06T17:43:08-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>What would the internet be like had there been no ICANN?</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000331.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Suppose that back in 1997 the US Department of Commerce, via its National Telecommunications and Administration Administration (NTIA) had not adopted, without any demonstrable source of legal authority, that hangnail from the Reagan-Thatcher school of government - the idea that governmental powers are best exercised by private actors without the nuisances of public constraint and public oversight. There is a branch of fiction known as "Alternative History". These are stories of what might have been.&nbsp; What might have been had the British intervened on the side of the South in 1863? What might have happened had Khrushchev not backed down in Cuba in 1963? What might have happened had the Supreme Court not stepped into (onto?) the Florida presidential vote count in 2000? In that vein I am about to engage in a bit of alternative history. I am going to speculate about how the last ten years of internet...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">331@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2008-01-28T00:29:10-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>Bad Day</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000330.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Yesterday I was in LA at the ICANN meeting.&nbsp; It was Halloween; a day in which symbols of death are everywhere and considered amusing. Normally I would have stayed, participated, and written about what happened. But, instead, last night I had to race home.&nbsp; This morning my wife and I had to make an excruciating choice.&nbsp; And, as a result, this afternoon a friend died. My friend is cat, Moliere.&nbsp; He was almost 11 years old and came down suddenly with renal failure.&nbsp; We had to decide whether he would live (a short while) or die. I held and comforted him as the injection was administered. I felt him die. He is dead; I am in shock. At least it was fast - only a few seconds - and it seemed to be painless, rather in contrast to the reported effects of the method used on humans. Yes, he is...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">330@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Life</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2007-11-01T21:25:31-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>ICANN - New TLD Policy - The Anti-Innovation Act of 2007</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000329.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I'm sitting in ICANN's new TLD policy session - the restraint of trade is enough to gag a Rockefeller. ICANN continues to espouse an internet that exists only in its own image.&nbsp; An internet in which innovation and enterprise are forced to conform to ICANN standards of goodness. In other words ICANN is attempting to impose onto the internet a set of constraints that would deny to new innovators the creative rights - in Jonathan Zittrain's words, the generative rights - that gave rise to the internet in the first place. For example, ICANN's outgoing chairman made it quite clear that he believes that top level domain used for political purposes would be highly suspect. ICANN continues to require that an applicant's finances and business plans must undergo ICANN investigation and approval. ICANN continues to require that names be sold through ICANN accredited registrars - a requirement that makes utterly...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">329@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2007-10-29T15:40:12-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>On my way to the ICANN Meeting in LA.</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000328.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The prodigal son of California Corporations, ICANN, is having its first meeting in its home jurisdiction since November 2001. It's good that ICANN recognizes its ties to California. I left Santa Cruz around noon.&nbsp; The weather was nice so I headed down the Big Sur coast. Near Hearst Castle I came across something I had never seen before - several hundred elephant seals were on the beach next to the road.&nbsp; Apparently they have taken up residence there. So, I arrived in LA - wow, I am so glad that I moved away - I don't have the stomach for the congestion, noise, and (perhaps from the fires) the pollution. Tomorrow (Sunday) I'll head over to the ICANN meeting itself. Let's see what's on the agenda... Wow, somewhere between one quarter and one third of all of the meetings are closed to the public!&nbsp; Well, we have long known that...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">328@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2007-10-27T23:27:48-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>DeBushification of the judiciary - The early retirement bonus plan</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000327.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[One of the big tasks after the 2008 elections will be DeBushification of the Federal government. One of the toughest areas will be to reestablish the judiciary as a non-political branch of government. That will be hard because most Federal judges are appointed for life, until impeached - or until they chose to retire. Impeachment of judges, particularly when their offense is that of political leanings rather than truly overt acts, would be far more inflammatory than constructive. But there is another way: Early retirement bonuses. Private industry has long used the incentive of early retirement bonuses as a way to avoid layoffs.&nbsp; The employer usually offers employees a substantial bonus - sometimes several years of normal salary - if they voluntarily terminate their employment. The new Congress could use that same approach to encourage Federal judges to give up their seats and create openings for new judges. Suppose Congress...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">327@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Politcs</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2007-10-04T01:27:44-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>In Today&apos;s News</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000326.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Today's newspaper brought an interesting reflection on the troubled state of our national government. The headline is "Copy of Magna Carta to Be Sold". The Magna Carta was born in year 1215 and it guaranteed many fundamental rights. Those same rights are among those that our president has trampled into the mire. This copy of the Magna Carta used to reside in the US National Archives. Now it is being auctioned to the highest bidder. It seems an appropriate, but sad, mirroring of reality that with the death of the rights guaranteed by the Magna Carta that the US copy should be relinquished by and sold. (By-the-way, the text of the Magna Carta has long been available on my DNS server, not my website, and available via simple DNS query.&nbsp; And some people still think that DNS is only for addresses.&nbsp;)...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">326@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Law, Society, and Policy</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2007-09-26T14:35:16-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>Have ICANN&apos;s directors placed their personal assets on the IRS chopping block?</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000325.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[At the August 14 meeting of ICANN's board ICANN's board agreed to cover the expenses of the soon-to-be former Chairman of the Board to attend the IGF meeting in Rio de Janeiro. That former Chairman will have no legal relationship to ICANN; neither a director nor an officer nor an employee.&nbsp; Yet ICANN's voted to give this former chairman the power "to speak on behalf of ICANN".&nbsp; Absent a legally cognizable relationship this power is a non sequitur, an oxymoron. And it could prove to be an expensive oxymoron for those directors who voted for it. I note, in passing, that according to the minutes the vote of the board was unanimous, 12:0, and that the person who is soon to be that former Chairman was in attendance.&nbsp; Thus it appears that he did not excuse himself from this self-interested vote and did, in fact, vote to grant himself this...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">325@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2007-09-22T02:56:07-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>ICANN Begins To Add Yet Another Layer of Complexity</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000324.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Today ICANN put out a request for a contractor to add yet another layer of complexity, expense, delay, and unnecessary bureaucracy to the ICANN's "new Top Level Domain" process. One can only wonder how the statement of work for this contactor was generated in advance of ICANN completing its new TLD criteria project.&nbsp; Is this yet another instance of ICANN's "staff" simply doing what it wants to do and ignoring ICANN's board and the community of internet users?&nbsp; There is definitely more than a hint of that smell. In either case, ICANN's new TLD policy has grown beyond all rational bounds.&nbsp; All that ICANN should be asking is whether applicants will abide by well established technical standards and practices regarding their name servers.&nbsp; In order to speed things along, I have taken the liberty of putting together the first draft of a form that ICANN could use to for TLD...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">324@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2007-09-07T00:57:57-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title><![CDATA[ICANN -  Pygmalion?&nbsp; Procrusteas?]]></title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000323.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[ICANN has recently collected comments for yet another study of when, if ever, it will charter any new top level domains (TLDs) for the internet. It is bad enough that ICANN has stalled and stalled and stalled - for nearly a decade - on what ought to be a relatively easy task. (As I have written before, ICANN should merely validate that an applicant for a TLD will adhere to broadly accepted written technical standards and practices relating to the operation of domain name servers.&nbsp; Anything beyond that is social and economic engineering, an area that should be prohibited to ICANN.) Of course, when it comes to ICANN, those who pull the puppet strings - most particularly the incumbent TLD registries, who do not want any competition from newcomers and the intellectual property protection industry - have an interest in permanently maintaining the status quo.&nbsp; Consequently when it comes to...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">323@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2007-09-02T16:15:30-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>SUNW to JAVA, Oy Vey</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000322.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I see that Sun Microsystems is changing its ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA. The marketing dweebs must have taken over the asylum. Java is a decent language. But Java as a software production environment on Linux is a creeping, clunking disaster. It's bad enough that someone who wants to download Java has to hack through Sun's jungle of Java acronyms. For years it was made worse because on each Java version the file pathnames to the executables changed.&nbsp; And there seemed to be an undeclared war going on between Sun's Java and the GNU java tools. And their Mozilla/Firefox plugin has always been a mystery wrapped in layers of incorrect documentation.&nbsp; And it seems not to run at all on 64-bit Linux. Sun turned what should have been gold into schmutz. Sun's fumbling of Java is one of the great unheralded, self inflicted, marketing disasters.&nbsp; Stupidity abounding.&nbsp; It reminds...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">322@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Apropos of Nothing</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2007-08-23T16:58:33-08:00</dc:date>
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