The FCC currently outsources a lot of activities including frequency coordination, license examinations, and so on.
They can put rules in place in the agreement requiring free access. I had to remind one of their outsourced organizations of that when I wanted access to their database, it was granted.
There is NO technical difference between using an iPhone as a USB or Bluetooth DUN gateway, and using an AT&T sponsored USB cellular WAN device.
They allow the latter so they should allow the former.
Their concern should be the all-you-can-eat data plans that they offer for handheld computing vs notebook computing. They should simply charge a FAIR and competitive rate to what they charge for the USB WAN devices.
If they think, which may be true, that smartphone users will consume even more bandwith than the laptop users would, then simply price the data plan appropriately to allow it while constraining usage as to not negatively affect their network.
I could and did tether my old motorola phones using Bluetooth DUN on the tmobile network, and although slow by today's standards it was nice when I needed it.
Actually, the developers at Microsoft, at least during the early '90s, had two pcs each, one for development and one for office stuff like MS Office, Email, and so on. This is what we saw as contractors there then.
This way developers could do anything to their 'development' machine without messing up the other. I was not aware that the 'other' also had administrative rights. I do agree that they should not, just as most in corporate settings also do not.
Apple really should not "require" tie to.Mac for certain applications such as backup, iweb, sync. These applications should also work with industry and apple standards. For example two macs should be able to sync calendar and contacts using bonjour without.Mac. For example iweb should also support WEBDAV.
Apple "should require" tie to.Mac for possible enhanced/bonus functionality of these applications.
I would like the break discussed above for basic functionality of the above mentioned applications. I would also like.Mac to be two tiered:
1) for basic/current.Mac customers as it is now
2) for power users requiring DNS hosing, server side email enhancement such as spamassassin and procmail, and so on. I would hate having to have both a.Mac and a regular web hosting account, where the latter fills in these missing pieces.
Pay more for the second tier but then dont have to have two "internet hosting" providers.
> But managing this transition -- which will render about 70 million TV > sets obsolete -- will be not be easy. Nothing is, when the federal > government gets involved. Indeed, Congress will soon have to revisit > this issue, to clean up this mess it has created.
Continued use of analog TV will require a set top box. Some 90% of TV viewers already use a set tob box for pay TV.
> But for consumers with one of those 70 million sets -- many of whom are > likely to be poor, elderly or uneducated, being forcibly switched from > one technology to another will be a nightmare.
I dont know about 70 million. I do remember seeing statistics that said 10% of TV viewers only receive over the air broadcasts.
> Once TV stations switch to digital transmission, they will return to the > government a big chunk of the radio spectrum they currently use to > transmit their analog channels.
Not exactly. The transition will "free up" a portion of the current spectrum allocated to broadcast TV. This is possible because Digitial TV channels in an area can be on adjacent channels unlike Analog TV. This allows more efficient use of spectrum. (Even more interesting is that depending on what kind of digital encoding is being used a given channel allocation can have multiple subchannels broadcast at the same time.)
Broadcasters are allocated a new channel for digital TV that is the same bandwidth as their old analog channel, and they eventually have to release their analog TV channel when the transition is complete. The freed up spectrum will be used for other wireless applications.
> The difficulty, of course, is that the analog broadcast system will then > be shut down -- which will leave most of today's TV sets unable to > receive a signal over the air.
Continued use of an analog TV will require a set top box.
> To avoid a consumer revolt, Congress has set aside about $1.5 billion to > smooth the transition. Owners of outmoded TV sets will be eligible for > two vouchers, worth $40 each, to help buy converter boxes that will > enable today's analog TV sets to receive digital signals.
This is stupid as noted in many other comments posted.
> The nightmare scenario is that people who depend on free, over-the-air > TV for news and entertainment will lose their access, or have to pay > more for it, so that the rest of us can get faster service on our > Blackberries and ESPN on our cell phones.
If you depend on TV for news and entertainment you have a much bigger problem.
The.int domain exists for some non country specific purposes. See un.int, redcross.int, tpc.int,.... If you can adhere to their rules register there.
Why dont we have phone numbers that dont exist in any country? Why shouldnt the GNU foundation have a phone number that is not tied to any single country?
Domains being registered in a delegated space is like choosing where you are doing business and by whose rules you might want to do that business. If you are a business in the US you have a +1... phone number, does not mean that you are not necessarily an international organization.
The reason.COM/.ORG/.NET/.EDU/.MIL/... are bad is that they are too flat and have a lot of duplicated registrations among them. Since they are treated pseudo-internationally, organizations like ICANN are necessary. Unfortunately organizations like ICANN are undesirable. Multiple nations' laws intersect when dealing with problems with name registrations in space like.COM.
The problems with ICANN, these proposals, and so on is that
portions of the internet domain space are "shared" among
different countries with different laws and desires.
.COM,.ORG,.NET,.MIL, and so on should all be scheduled
for elimination in say 2 years. After termination all domains
must be under a country domain, such as.uk or.us.
Then let each country do what ever they want within their own
space. Their laws and desires can be executed in their own
space of the dns. If someone wants to pollute their namespace
with lots of disorganized domains like usenet has, they are doing
so in their delegated space and not affecting everyone else.
In the above the root servers would be greatly simplified
as they only contain top level country codes like.uk and a
few others such as.arpa,.int, and so on.
Believe it or not the dns was origionally intended to be
hierarchical, not a messed up parallel flat system like.COM/.NET/.ORG have become. Deligated space can be managed in
different ways without upsetting someone else's deligated space.
The addition of top level domains has been a dismal failure, it just does not work. When.org and.net rules were changed to open them up, people registered their name in.com,.net, and.org. When we add additional top level domains the same thing happens.
They are useless. The international complexity only makes it worse.
The only reasonable solution to the problem is to create a policy where non country based TLDs will be abolished in the future and force all to migrate under a country domain. For example, ibm.com would have to become ibm.com.us or similar.
This way each country manages their own domain space much like each country manages their part of the telephone numbering space.
Since generic TLDs are abolished and international interrelationships are removed, their should be no need to ICANN or UN or anyone else to worry about root servers management. I suppose one could argue that ITU might manage root servers but only idiots would allow ICANN or UN to do so. One might reasonably argue that the root serves should be run by proven reliable entities that are not entirely in a single country, but dont let bogus organizations like UN or ICANN become involved.
Slashdot Mirror
The FCC currently outsources a lot of activities including frequency coordination, license examinations, and so on.
They can put rules in place in the agreement requiring free access. I had to remind one of their outsourced organizations of that when I wanted access to their database, it was granted.
AT&T is simply being arrogant.
There is NO technical difference between using an iPhone as a USB or Bluetooth DUN gateway, and using an AT&T sponsored USB cellular WAN device.
They allow the latter so they should allow the former.
Their concern should be the all-you-can-eat data plans that they offer for handheld computing vs notebook computing. They should simply charge a FAIR and competitive rate to what they charge for the USB WAN devices.
If they think, which may be true, that smartphone users will consume even more bandwith than the laptop users would, then simply price the data plan appropriately to allow it while constraining usage as to not negatively affect their network.
I could and did tether my old motorola phones using Bluetooth DUN on the tmobile network, and although slow by today's standards it was nice when I needed it.
I am not an expert on the problem.
Is it possible that configuring cache timeout on the DNS server to be significantly less than the non trivial attack time might avoid the problem?
I assume once cache is poisoned that that poison does eventually timeout in the cache unless the attack is continuous?
Actually, the developers at Microsoft, at least during the early '90s, had two pcs each, one for development and one for office stuff like MS Office, Email, and so on. This is what we saw as contractors there then.
This way developers could do anything to their 'development' machine without messing up the other. I was not aware that the 'other' also had administrative rights. I do agree that they should not, just as most in corporate settings also do not.
Apple really should not "require" tie to .Mac for certain applications such as backup, iweb, sync. These applications should also work with industry and apple standards. For example two macs should be able to sync calendar and contacts using bonjour without .Mac. For example iweb should also support WEBDAV.
.Mac for possible enhanced/bonus functionality of these applications.
.Mac to be two tiered:
.Mac customers as it is now
.Mac and a regular web hosting account, where the latter fills in these missing pieces.
Apple "should require" tie to
I would like the break discussed above for basic functionality of the above mentioned applications. I would also like
1) for basic/current
2) for power users requiring DNS hosing, server side email enhancement such as spamassassin and procmail, and so on. I would hate having to have both a
Pay more for the second tier but then dont have to have two "internet hosting" providers.
> But managing this transition -- which will render about 70 million TV
> sets obsolete -- will be not be easy. Nothing is, when the federal
> government gets involved. Indeed, Congress will soon have to revisit
> this issue, to clean up this mess it has created.
Continued use of analog TV will require a set top box. Some
90% of TV viewers already use a set tob box for pay TV.
> But for consumers with one of those 70 million sets -- many of whom are
> likely to be poor, elderly or uneducated, being forcibly switched from
> one technology to another will be a nightmare.
I dont know about 70 million. I do remember seeing statistics
that said 10% of TV viewers only receive over the air broadcasts.
> Once TV stations switch to digital transmission, they will return to the
> government a big chunk of the radio spectrum they currently use to
> transmit their analog channels.
Not exactly. The transition will "free up" a portion of the
current spectrum allocated to broadcast TV. This is possible
because Digitial TV channels in an area can be on adjacent
channels unlike Analog TV. This allows more efficient use of
spectrum. (Even more interesting is that depending on what
kind of digital encoding is being used a given channel allocation
can have multiple subchannels broadcast at the same time.)
Broadcasters are allocated a new channel for digital TV that
is the same bandwidth as their old analog channel, and they
eventually have to release their analog TV channel when the
transition is complete. The freed up spectrum will be used
for other wireless applications.
> The difficulty, of course, is that the analog broadcast system will then
> be shut down -- which will leave most of today's TV sets unable to
> receive a signal over the air.
Continued use of an analog TV will require a set top box.
> To avoid a consumer revolt, Congress has set aside about $1.5 billion to
> smooth the transition. Owners of outmoded TV sets will be eligible for
> two vouchers, worth $40 each, to help buy converter boxes that will
> enable today's analog TV sets to receive digital signals.
This is stupid as noted in many other comments posted.
> The nightmare scenario is that people who depend on free, over-the-air
> TV for news and entertainment will lose their access, or have to pay
> more for it, so that the rest of us can get faster service on our
> Blackberries and ESPN on our cell phones.
If you depend on TV for news and entertainment you have
a much bigger problem.
The .int domain exists for some non country specific purposes. See un.int, redcross.int, tpc.int, .... If you can adhere to their rules register there.
Why dont we have phone numbers that dont exist in any country? Why shouldnt the GNU foundation have a phone number that is not tied to any single country?
Domains being registered in a delegated space is like choosing where you are doing business and by whose rules you might want to do that business. If you are a business in the US you have a +1 ... phone number, does not mean that you are not necessarily an international organization.
The reason .COM/.ORG/.NET/.EDU/.MIL/... are bad is that they are too flat and have a lot of duplicated registrations among them. Since they are treated pseudo-internationally, organizations like ICANN are necessary. Unfortunately organizations like ICANN are undesirable. Multiple nations' laws intersect when dealing with problems with name registrations in space like .COM.
That would also be similar to the delegated subspace in the international telephone numbering system, a precident.
The problems with ICANN, these proposals, and so on is that portions of the internet domain space are "shared" among different countries with different laws and desires.
.COM, .ORG, .NET, .MIL, and so on should all be scheduled
for elimination in say 2 years. After termination all domains
must be under a country domain, such as .uk or .us.
Then let each country do what ever they want within their own space. Their laws and desires can be executed in their own space of the dns. If someone wants to pollute their namespace with lots of disorganized domains like usenet has, they are doing so in their delegated space and not affecting everyone else.
In the above the root servers would be greatly simplified as they only contain top level country codes like .uk and a
few others such as .arpa, .int, and so on.
Believe it or not the dns was origionally intended to be hierarchical, not a messed up parallel flat system like .COM/ .NET/.ORG have become. Deligated space can be managed in
different ways without upsetting someone else's deligated space.
The addition of top level domains has been a dismal failure, it just does not work. When .org and .net rules were changed to open them up, people registered their name in .com, .net, and .org. When we add additional top level domains the same thing happens.
They are useless. The international complexity only makes it worse.
The only reasonable solution to the problem is to create a policy where non country based TLDs will be abolished in the future and force all to migrate under a country domain. For example, ibm.com would have to become ibm.com.us or similar.
This way each country manages their own domain space much like each country manages their part of the telephone numbering space.
Since generic TLDs are abolished and international interrelationships are removed, their should be no need to ICANN or UN or anyone else to worry about root servers management. I suppose one could argue that ITU might manage root servers but only idiots would allow ICANN or UN to do so. One might reasonably argue that the root serves should be run by proven reliable entities that are not entirely in a single country, but dont let bogus organizations like UN or ICANN become involved.
No!