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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>
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<dc:creator>karl@cavebear.com</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2012-11-26T13:45:03-08:00</dc:date>
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<item>
<title>The History of the Internet Project</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000355.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I've started a new project: The History of the Internet Project. We are trying to build a series of short videos containing primary source content about the internet in the years 1965 through 1995 (when the world wide web began to grow.) Our focus is more on the people and ideas - and their interactions - than on how the technology works. We plan roughly 200 episodes!&nbsp; They will be published as we do them. All of this will be under a Creative Commons license, including the raw takes....]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">355@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2012-11-26T13:45:03-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>What is the real cost of changing to internet based telephone?</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000354.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[It appears that the relic of Ma Bell wants to drive a final nail into the coffin of traditional Plain Old Telephone Service. There is no doubt that packet-switched voice (mainly in the form of VoIP) is less expensive, or seems to be less expensive, then the old circuit switched calls of yesterday. It is, however, worthwhile to consider what we have lost. Why is packet-based voice seemingly less expensive? There are three primary reasons: Packet switching systems, such as the internet, are giant statistical multiplexers.&nbsp; As such the silences of some data (or voice) flows can be utilized to carry the traffic of other flows.&nbsp; And because the internet is both voice and data the set of flows that go into the statistical mix is large and, on average, things work out.&nbsp; However at times of heavy load, system stress, or simply whenever the gods of statistics and probability...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">354@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2012-11-09T13:49:38-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>Removing IDN Test TLDs</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000353.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[There are 11 "test" top level domains (TLDs) in the ICANN/NTIA/Verisign domain name system (DNS) root.&nbsp; (See Root Zone Database and click on the "IDNs" tab.) Those TLDs were put there to perform testing of the internationalized domain name (IDN) concept. Time has advanced; IDNs are not longer a test concept, yet the "test" TLDs remain. Why? It seems to me that unless they can enunciate some compelling reasons why to retain them that ICANN and/or IANA ought to remove those "test" TLDs....]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">353@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2011-07-24T23:34:00-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>GrassRoots2 Update</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000352.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I've been writing a new version of the "grassroots" system that was on the net around 1998 but which has since disappeared. The GrassRoots2 system is a tool that allows anyone to create their own domain name system (DNS) root and populate it with whatever top level domains (TLDs) that they chose to include - not merely ones approved by ICANN (and one could, if one desired, elide some approved by ICANN, such as .xxx.) Some people think that this is a form of internet anathema.&nbsp; But it's really nothing new, and is, in fact a return to the idea of innovation by users at the edges of the net - it reifies the IETF's slogan that it "rejects kings". Since the start of the domain name system it has always been possible for anyone to establish their own DNS root - but to do so required some technical expertise.&nbsp;...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">352@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2011-07-18T11:26:23-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>My Latest Video</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000351.html</link>
<description>I&apos;m doing videos now - over at Page Fault Productions. Here&apos;s my latest:...</description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">351@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Apropos of Nothing</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2011-04-03T01:50:44-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>My comment to NTIA regarding IANA</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000350.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[In response to: Request for Comments on the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions My name is Karl Auerbach.&nbsp; I reside in Santa Cruz, California. I was the first, and only, publicly elected North American director on ICANN's Board of Directors. I have been affiliated with the internet since the early 1970's. I have created Internet Standard RFC's for the IETF and have made use of IANA protocol number assignments. I have never understood the force of the argument made by ICANN that ICANN and the IANA function are best bound together into a single entity. Indeed, I have always considered the more appropriate path to be that of separation. There is essentially no cross-pollination of work or knowledge between ICANN and IANA except in one area: DNSSEC keys for the ICANN-NTIA-Verisign root zone of the domain name system. Apart from that I perceive no particular technical value that ICANN...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">350@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2011-03-29T20:29:38-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>The Royal ICANN</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000349.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I just walked around the ICANN big-top - that's the tent that is now occupying most of San Francisco's Union Square (with a rather phallic pillar - the Dewey Memorial column - occupying the center of the arena, punching a hole through the roof, and extending towards the stars).&nbsp; This will be used for ICANN's "gala" social event tomorrow night. I wonder how much that thing is costing? Of course I've been told "Verisign paid $500,000". But would you think it a fair exchange if you gave someone $15 and they said, here I'm replaying you with this nice shiny one cent piece?"&nbsp; Well, that's roughly the same ratio of the benefit that ICANN confers unto Verisign every year and the amount of Verisign's "sponsorship" amount, i.e. about 1500:1. Basically, the munificence of this event reminds me less of words like "dignified" and more of words like "ostentatious".&nbsp; Perhaps "corrupt";...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">349@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2011-03-15T13:02:52-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>New Video</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000348.html</link>
<description>I finished a my second video - it&apos;s about being annoyed at the poor performance of a geosynchronous link from a cruise ship and what can be done to ameliorate the problem. It&apos;s sort of an informercial for our company - InterWorking Labs - to promote our network emulation and protocol testing products Maxwell and Mini Maxwel. Other videos from IWL will appear on our company YouTube channel....</description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">348@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2011-03-05T12:10:50-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>No Early Birds Here</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000347.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[In business the early bird catches the worm.&nbsp; It seems, however, that in the domain name business that there are going to be a lot of uncaught worms. If you were starting a new business would you sit on your hands waiting for an approval that you do not need, pay fees that you do not need to pay, publish your customer list to the public, risk having hour business name given to someone else, and be required to sell your product through a distribution chain that you do not control? Of course you would not. But I see that there is conference this week of people who are doing exactly that - .nxt A Conference About New Internet Extensions. Don't these people realize that they can go into business today? That by so doing they can establish an early priority date for the start of use of their name...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">347@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Governance</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2011-02-07T15:55:28-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>A Fun Poster</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000346.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[This poster was laying around my office.&nbsp; Since it did not seem to be visible on the web I thought, why not?...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">346@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Law, Society, and Policy</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2010-10-19T20:29:35-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>In a world of net non-neutrality we will need something better than the sockets API</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000345.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I saw a thing on Slashdot this morning entitled Microsoft Sues Motorola Over Android-Related Patent Infringement What caught my eye is a Microsoft claim that it has a patent on "notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power". That reminded me of a long-standing complaint I have about the sockets interface used under nearly every networking application on Linux, Bsd, Windows, and MAC OS. The complaint is that in the sockets API there is very little advisory push-back that can tell applications to alter their behavior.&nbsp; (The sockets API exercises non-advisory control by blocking transmission for a while.) This means that most network applications are not well suited to interact constructively with any of the net non-neutrality mechanisms that are arising. At the most course layer we need to formalize the notion of a "bandwidth broker". The "bandwidth broker" idea arose in the mid 1990's.&nbsp; The basic idea...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">345@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2010-10-01T13:35:38-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>Making TV more like live theatre</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000344.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I haven't done a blog entry in far too long, so here goes... What follows is an idea I had more than a decade ago. There is an old line: Theatre is life Film is art Television is furniture. There is a lot of merit in that.&nbsp; Live theatre is immersive; it brings the audience and the actors together each reacting to the other; the degree of emotional involvement of the audience with the actors is beyond anything that exists in the world of film or television. So I wondered, way back in the last century, what would it take to make television more like live theatre. Back then I was working on network video - I had helped to start Precept Software back in 1995 where we invented IP/TV. Sometime before year 2000 I was working on fast cut insertion of commercials tailored to each individual viewer. I revisited...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">344@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2010-09-09T12:55:52-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>Hackin&apos; the SEC&apos;s Regulations</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000343.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I see in the news that the SEC has picked up an idea I proposed way, way, way back in the 1970's when I was in law school, which was to express legal constructs using something resembling a programming language. Now, back then I merely wanted the ability to write contracts using a structured language things like if-then-else clauses and subroutines with parameters - a kind of glorified templating language. The SEC apparently has gone further and is considering expressing the dynamics of financial matters using the Python language in regulations. That reminds me of something I came across a very long time ago:&nbsp; Early Unix had a blackjack program.&nbsp; It could be beaten 100% of the time by the simple technique of betting negative dollars and playing to lose. Which is to say that unless the SEC is willing to engage in the very dark and arcane voodoo of...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">343@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Law, Society, and Policy</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2010-04-20T01:02:17-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>What&apos;s Wrong With The FCC&apos;s Consumer Broadband Test?</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000342.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The FCC recently published some tools to let consumers measure some internet characteristics. The context is the FCC's "National Broadband Plan".&nbsp; I guess the FCC wants to gather data about the kind of internet users receive today so that the National Broadband Plan, whatever it may turn out to be, actually improves on the status quo. The motivation is nice but the FCC's methodology is technically weak. There are several goals to which the National Broadband Plan ought to aspire: That consumers have a subjective sense that their use of the internet is fast and without unacceptable delays.&nbsp; I picked a subjective standard here for reasons to be discussed later in this note. That reliability of consumer access is high and that the time for providers to detect, diagnose, and repair problems is low (and not expensive to providers.)&nbsp; It seems that these matters of reliability are routinely ignored, yet...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">342@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Internet Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2010-03-15T02:51:38-08:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item>
<title>Network Neutrality, UPS, and FedEx</title>
<link>http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000341.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I buy a lot of things that are delivered by UPS or FedEx.&nbsp; And I kinda like to watch the progress of the shipments. Now we all know that UPS and FedEx have different grades of service - Overnight, Two Day, Three Day, etc.&nbsp; And faster deliver costs more. Several years ago UPS and FedEx would frequently deliver a Two Day package the next day, i.e. they would effectively elevate the class of service.&nbsp; A lot of us took advantage of that by sending almost everything using the lesser grade (and price) and often winning a higher grade (and price) delivery. I am sure that that that did not please the bean counters at the shipping companies. Today, with better tracking systems UPS and FedEx almost never deliver a package in advance of the delivery time for the paid class of service.&nbsp; They will hold packages in their warehouses in...]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="false">341@http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/</guid>
<dc:subject>Law, Society, and Policy</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2009-12-24T02:07:17-08:00</dc:date>
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