NIF

Interesting thoughts for today:

2008-10-02T06:52:00.006-04:00

1) Church is the alpha ... wow! Dunno what I am talking about?
2) Is it just me, or can you not create (Google) Blogger posts using (Google's) Chrome?
Your browser's cookie functionality is disabled. Please enable JavaScript and cookies in order to use Blogger.

IPv6 meeting Wed & Thur

2008-09-30T10:02:00.001-04:00

There is a relatively important meeting happening Wed & Thursday, and I would encourage all who are interested - listen in! The quick description:
“An interim meeting will be organized on October 1-2, 2008, in Montreal, Canada to continue discussions about the IPv4 and IPv6 co-existence, NAT-PT replacement, and new tunneling or translation solutions to address needs in this space. This is a meeting that affects work happening in a number of WGs (SOFTWIRE, V6OPS, BEHAVE, INTAREA).”

The “right thing to do” if you will be listening in – go here, create an account and add yourself to the remote list (it’s a Wiki).
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/area/int/trac/wiki/RegistrationForv4v6interim

FWIW, The list of drafts to be discussed:
draft-arkko-townsley-coexistence-00
draft-wing-nat-pt-replacement-comparison-02
draft-nishitani-cgn-00
draft-despres-sam-00
draft-despres-sam-scenarios-00
draft-durand-softwire-dual-stack-lite-00.txt
draft-baker-behave-ivi-01
draft-xli-behave-ivi-00
draft-jennings-behave-nat6-00
draft-bagnulo-behave-nat64-01
draft-miyata-v6ops-snatpt-02
draft-endo-v6ops-dnsproxy-00

Thanks!
/TJ

Obama Hates the First and Second Amendment

2008-09-28T04:35:00.002-04:00

Because of Obama's hatred towards freedom of speech, Dan Riehl suggested hosting the NRA ads Obama's lawyers are trying to silence on our blogs. Obliged.

Cross posted from Stop the ACLU

Word of the Day : Hypocrite

2008-09-16T08:00:00.001-04:00

" WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview. " ... read the NYP article for more ...

... or how about this, from Drudge:
The nation's financials may be in a spiral, but cash is flowing into the Obama campaign faster than Marvin Hamlisch can play "Niagara"!

Yesterday, Obama declared how we are in "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression."

Today he will host a dinner in Beverly Hills --- costing attendees $28,500 dollars each!

IPv6, an anology

2008-09-04T13:01:00.001-04:00

A great quote from the ARIN-PPML mailing list (not written by me):

"IP address space is allocated under homesteading rules: you must prove you need it before you can get it. The amount of unclaimed IPv4 space is running out, which means soon we'll need to buy it from someone else, though the homesteading rules will still apply. However, there's a new continent out there called IPv6, which has all the land we need for cheap, but it's on the other side of the ocean so we'd need ships called 'NAT-PT devices' for our customers to get back and forth until everyone else has migrated over too. Or, we can build taller buildings, using NAT construction, here on the IPv4 mainland to house more customers on less land, but those buildings are more expensive to buy and maintain, fall down frequently, and one day we'll need those same NAT-PT ships to get to all the folks over on the IPv6 continent."
... and the author continues, to note that "Yes, it has holes like any metaphor does, but it's good enough to explain to a non-techie the various problems and options available -- and their costs." ... INDEED!

Now we are losing our Holidays?

2008-08-04T12:37:00.002-04:00

File this under WTF ... from here:
Workers at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day but will instead be granted the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.

According to a news release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a new five-year contract at the plant included the change to accommodate Muslim workers at the plant.

Tyson's director of media relations Gary Mickelson said the contract includes eight paid holidays -- the same number as the old contract.

Heh, Obama

2008-07-25T09:20:00.004-04:00

Just a quick blurb -
"Barack Obama today canceled a trip to meet wounded American soldiers recovering at Landstuhl, Germany in favor of a shopping trip in Berlin"
... hat-tip to the fine folks over @ RedState
(Update : there was some debate on the underlying validity of the statement)

(Oh, and if you need a good laugh at Pelosi's expense, check this)

Ever-so-slight DNS vulnerability

2008-07-24T10:33:00.003-04:00

In case you didn't catch it, Title = sarcasm. I won't re-hash the details, you can Google it. Let me share one relevant quote from a well-known guy who knows his stuff WRT DNS:

11 seconds.
And AT&T refuses to patch.
And all iPhones use those name servers.
Your move.

Nice.
PS - Seriously, patch.

Citizendium

2008-07-24T01:52:00.002-04:00

Ever heard of, or used, Citizendium? From their "Why Us" Page:
What is the point of the Citizendium," you might ask, "when Wikipedia is so huge and of reasonably good quality? Is there really a need for it?"
There is a better way for humanity to come together to make an encyclopedia.

To put it forcefully: there is a better way for humanity to come together to make an encyclopedia. So we make this appeal to you. If we can do better than Wikipedia—or more positively, if we can pioneer a truly effective way to gather knowledge—then shouldn't we?

Sounds interesting, and you can find me there as well :).

NYT vs McCain

2008-07-22T09:10:00.003-04:00

Gratuitously copied from Beth's place ...
The NYT refused to run it saying it needed to agree, not disagree, with Obama. In the spirit of spreading the word, I’m going to do a copycat. So with a hat tip to LC Brendan over at the Rott, here is McCain’s rejected editorial he sent to the NYT:

The DRUDGE REPORT presents the McCain editorial in its submitted form:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Bite us, Times. You’re just a dinosaur waiting for extinction.
Good to see the New York Times isn't biased or anything.

Good article @ Wired, IPv6 Security

2008-07-19T12:03:00.003-04:00

Over at Blog.wired, a great article has been posted - The Ghost in Your Machine: IPv6 Gateway to Hackers - featuring Command Information's Joe Klein talking about IPv6, security and the impact of unintended consequences ... short version, vendors - get your products' up to speed WRT IPv6

Some thoughts for fellow Virginians ...

2008-07-05T09:01:00.006-04:00

A quick note from the National Taxpayer's Union, about some ongoings in Virginia:
(Sadly, I won't be able to make it ...))

In late February, the Virginia Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a $300 million tax grab on the part of two unelected bureaucratic bodies was unconstitutional. But Governor Tim Kaine refuses to take "no" for an answer ... he now wants to replace the ill-gotten revenue being refunded after the Court decision, by backing new tax hikes that will hit Northern Virginians hard.

The Governor's plan for boosting transportation funds includes raising the motor vehicle tax from 3 percent to 4 percent, raising the annual vehicle registration fee from $39.50 to $49.50, raising the grantor's tax by $0.25 per $100 of value, and raising the retail sales tax in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads by 1 percent on everything except food and drugs.

One of the organizations on the losing end of the Supreme Court ruling, the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA), is counting on an infusion of tax dollars from the Governor's scheme to bankroll its ambitious projects. Rather than prioritizing government spending and eliminating unnecessary programs elsewhere in the budget to come up with the money, some public officials would allow the NVTA to prey on your wallet!

On Thursday, July 10 at 7:00 pm the NVTA is holding a public hearing at George Mason High School. Join the National Taxpayers Union in voicing your opposition to more tax hikes to fund an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy.

The details of the meeting are as follows:
Public Hearing: Northern Virginia's Transportation Needs
Northern Virginia Transportation Authority
Date: Thursday, July 10
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: George Mason High School, 7124 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22043

More details are available here, and a map is available here.

Please mark your calendar for next Thursday and plan on attending. With your help, NTU can win the fight to keep more of your hard-earned money where it belongs ... in your pocket.
Sincerely,
Your NTU Grassroots Action Team

Also, more Virginia-relevant items of interest here
... and checkout their ratings of the 2008 candidates (hint : Obama=F)
... and note that they also (rightfully!) support the Fair Tax!

/TJ ... still on vacation!

Happy 4th of July

2008-07-04T08:23:00.002-04:00

Get out there, and enjoy Independence Day ... and I don't mean the movie!

IPv6 "D-Day"

2008-06-30T07:50:00.003-04:00

It has been a busy week or so!

A full week ago, DNS turned 25! Conveniently, later in the week, ICANN's board approved opening up the DNS space to arbitrary TLDs (adding to the traditional .com .net .edu .edu .info ... etc.). Luckily, with a fairly high bar for entry, to limit ability of phishers to abuse this new space - although this also raises questions about where all that money will be going ...

Also last week, Cisco Live was happening in Orlando - and had a record # of IPv6 related sessions! These sessions included talks on security, routing protocols, real world deployment experiences ... and, of course, Cisco answers to most of the mentioned concerns :). (I was there, and saw a couple of familiar faces (former students, clients and coworkers) as well as meeting some great people from Cisco who I have exchanged emails with in the past but had not yet met) ((Oh, and seeing the Bare Naked Ladies (natch, the band), the Blue Man Group and Ben Stein were a great bonus!))

Back to that IPv6 D-Day thing ... so, today is June 30th, 2008. And with little fanfare, the OMB522 deadline has arrived. Did this change the world?

Of course not - but it *is* a step in the right direction, representing the US government making something of a dedicated effort (with varying levels of real world applicability) in having their ginormous IT infrastructure being future-ready. That is a Good Thing!!

In fact, increasingly more people agree it is an absolutely critical thing - factoring in stats from The IPv4 Address Report:
Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 05-Jan-2011
Projected RIR Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 18-Nov-2011
(See previous comments on the meanings of these numbers, no need to re-hash that here :)!)

SO - with OMB522 (cough) completed, what's next?
Fantastic question ... the short answer is (sadly?) nothing.
The longer answer is that it is up to the representatives appointed to the OMB by the next administration.

While IPv6 admittedly doesn't have the same political pull as war, terrorism, economics, "global warming", social security, tax reform, the future of (medicare | entitlement spending | the decline of the US Dollar | campaign finance reform | energy independence | national broadband deployment) it would be nice to have some hints from either candidate on their opinions on the further advancement of IPv6 (not just in being able to route packets, but to actually use it ... and then the real benefit - when services that take advantage of something IPv6 offers become available / in use).

Just a few thoughts from someone who is mid-vacation.
/TJ (crosspost)

Google Shuts Down Anti-Obama Sites on its Blogger Platform

2008-06-29T17:33:00.005-04:00

-By Warner Todd Huston... edited by TJ (just formatting)

It looks like Google has officially joined the Barack Obama campaign and decided that its contribution would be to shut down any blog on the Google owned Blogspot.com blogging system that has an anti-Obama message. Yes, it sure seems that Google has begun to go through its many thousands of blogs to lock out the owners of anti-Obama blogs so that the noObama message is effectively squelched. Thus far, Google has terminated the access by blog owners to 7 such sites and the list may be growing. Boy, it must be nice for Barack Obama to have an ally powerful enough to silence his opponents like that!

It isn't just conservative sites that Google's Blogger platform is eliminating. For instance, www.comealongway.blogspot.com has been frozen and this one is a Hillary supporting site. The operator of Come a Long Way has a mirror site off the Blogspot platform and has today posted this notice:

I used to have a happy internet home on Blogger: www.comealongway.blogspot.com. Then on Wednesday night, June 25, I received the following e-mail:

Dear Blogger user,

This is a message from the Blogger team. Your blog, at http://comealongway.blogspot.com/, has been identified as a potential spam blog. You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

It turns out that there is an interesting pattern where it concerns the blogs that Google's Blogspot team have summarily locked down on their service. They all belong to the Just Say No Deal coalition, a group of blogs that are standing against the Obama campaign. It seems the largest portion of these blogs are Hillary supporting blogs, too.

All I can say is, WOW! If Google is willing to abuse its power like this even against fellow leftists, what does it plan against conservatives, the folks Google hates even more!?

Here is a list of the Blogspot blogs that have been frozen by Google thus far:
Blue Lyon @ http://bluelyon.blogspot.com

Come A Long Way @ http://comealongway.blogspot.com

Hillary or Bust @ http://hillaryorbust.blogspot.com

McCain Democrats @ http://mccaindemocrats.blogspot.com

NObama Blog @ http://nobamablog.blogspot.com

politicallizard.blogspot.com @ http://thelizardannex.blogspot.com

Reflections in Tyme @ http://reflections-in-tyme.blogspot.com

Crossposted from Stop the ACLU

TJ has left the building ...

2008-06-18T17:14:00.004-04:00

TJ is out and about, specifically going to:

... On a totally unrelated note, you can download the Spore Creature Creator (free trial, 206MB) ... requires DIRECTx9.0c

Firefox3 Download Fest (Download Day 2008)

2008-06-17T13:00:00.003-04:00

(Originally posted 05/29/2008, Updated 06/17/2008)
TODAY IS THE DAY! 1300 ET (1000PT) is the time ... DOWNLOAD

Supporting evidence :)

New IPv6 Book

2008-05-30T11:53:00.008-04:00

"Global IPv6 Strategies: From Business Analysis to Operational Planning" from Cisco Press ... worth a look, just based on the authors! (Patrick Grossetete, Ciprian P. Ordovician, Fred Wettling)
*UPDATE: The book also has a website ... surprisingly, no nifty features :(. OH, and why isn't CommandInformation mentioned here?

Happy (belated) Memorial Day

2008-05-27T00:01:00.003-04:00

I hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend full of family, friends, flags, food and - of course - commemorations of our fallen.

Never forget the real reason for the holiday, amongst all of the celebrations.

Blogiversary

2008-05-07T06:00:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note of Happy 4th Birthday to this humble, semi-inactive blog .... yea!

ARIN / CAIDA IPv6 Survey Results Released

2008-04-15T20:58:00.002-04:00

Good Evening!

Taking a stroll by the ARIN IPv6 Wiki you can find (amongst a wealth of other IPv6 information) a link to the results of a recent IPv6 "deployment" survey(.PDF).

At the very least, there are some interesting takeaways from that - one of them being the #3 item listed as the "Biggest Hurdles to IPv6 Deployment" (p11 for those of you following along!) - Knowledge/Education. Hmmm, I wonder where I could find a good source of IPv6 training? I might be just a bit biased though ...

Also fairly interesting, from the same page, is the bottom of the list - Performance, Allocation Policy and Multihoming. I am glad these are finally near the bottom, as two of those in particular (Performance, Multihoming) have been persistent questions that we as an industry have had to answer repeatedly.

Page 12 has some notables as well, like the #1 "Hurdle to IPv6 Allocation" - Have not gotten around to it yet ... wow. Compare that to IPv4, and the hurdles facing organizations trying to get large-block allocations of addresses ...

#4 from that list is quite telling as well, and I would have put it higher on the list if it were up to me (in fact, I did rank it higher when taking the survey :)) - ISP does not support IPv6. I am glad this is moving lower in the rankings as far as problems, but it is still quite a challenge sometimes.

I think that is enough for now, I could go on and on ... but instead, I will simply recommend that you go read it - and feel free to fire any questions in our direction! (Also note that it is a wiki, us mere mortals can contribute!!)

/TJ
PS - did you catch my earlier note about Cisco Live in June? I'd love to see you there!

... originally posted by yours truly on the Command Information Blog ...

Cisco Live, Orlando, June

2008-04-01T16:08:00.006-04:00

Anyone else going?
If you aren't, and want to - check it out ... need a referral? :)

If you are going, and are also interested in IPv6 ... check out the IPv6 group (Yes, I started it)

You Are a Real Jeeper if...

2008-02-28T19:00:00.003-05:00

1. A new dent in the sheet metal actually fixed another dent, or it just added some character.
2. You know at least 3 800 numbers to aftermarket off-road business by heart.
3. You are on a first name basis with the guys at every local auto parts store in town.
4. You want to take things apart and rebuild them, even if they are not broken.
5. You have a monetary equivalent of a Mercedes Sedan invested into your jeep, but it still looks like crap.
6. You consider starting a vehicle five times in any given minute routine.
7. You own a vehicle, which now weighs 1000 pounds more than when it came off the showroom floor.
8. You look for jeeps in everything, and try to figure out the year and model.
9. You are the type of person who immediately goes postal if you sit in a highway traffic jam more than 5 minutes, yet you can spend six hours driving one and half miles and consider it to be a form of relaxation.
10. You'll stop and look at any old rust heap thinking parts vehicle.
11. Your Jeep has more (farm/boat/military/other) equipment on it than OEM parts.
12. The weatherman says "Stay in, it's dangerous" and you think "Time to go wheeling".
13. You are happy that you can't use 1st gear on the street.
14. A military convoy passes by and you only look at the axles, tires, and antennas.
15. You have enough straps, chains, rope, etc. in your Jeep to keep the Queen Mary docked during a hurricane.
16. You understand that JEEP is a way of life, not just for transportation.
17. You use a hose to clean the inside and the outside.
18. A low-rider Jeep pulls up next to you, and you get out and Bitch slap the driver.
19. You have a high-water mark on the Inside of the Jeep.
20. You use a ice scraper on the Inside of the windshield.
21. The AAA guy breaks down, you stop and fix his problem and get back on the road.
22. You'll drive 2 days at 600 miles a day so you can spend 2 more days driving 3 miles per day.
23. You have more pictures of your Jeep than of your kids.
24. You spend more time deciding which $3.00 bushing to use than you do on personal hygiene.
25. You take your date home early on a Saturday night so you can work on your Jeep.
26. You call a scratch or dent, a beauty mark.
27. You roll it over and don't get upset.
28. You puke when you see a RAV-4.
29. You pull into the Unplowed parking spots on snowy days.
30. You take your friends wheeling and they say, "Trail?; I don't see any trail!"
31. You've been forced to add CJ, YJ, and TJ to your spell checker.
32. It rains and you don't care if your top and doors are on or off.
33. You change your plugs in the parking lot at work while on break.
34. You get more heat through the holes in the floor than you do through the heat vent.
35. Every page of your repair manual has greasy finger prints on it.
36. Every car wash in town has banned you for life.
37. You feel sorry for someone in a $60,000 Toyota Land Cruiser.
38. You are the only one on the street that doesn't plow their driveway.
39. You carry along enough tools to supply a small garage.
40. You nickname your Jeep after i.e.. the noise it makes, the last screw up on the trail, etc.
41. You can air up your tires without stopping at a gas station.
42. You carry more extra fuel than what most of today's cars hold in their gas tanks.
43. You're constantly getting passed on the highway.
44. When rendezvousing with a lady for the first time, you tell her that you're the one that smells like a Jeep.
45. Winter comes and you can't remember where you put the top.
46. Your wallet is always empty.
47. You know how to reinforce the windshield frame near the wiper arm.
48. You carry along a replacement part for every driveline component on the Jeep.
49. You slam your door and pieces of mud or rust fall from your Jeep.
50. You have to let the air out of your tires to get the Jeep into a garage.
51. Your parts department is on blocks behind your house.
52. Passengers scream "Don't Roll It!" when you take them wheeling.
53. Your wife/girlfriend refuses to get in it.
54. You think any tire that isn't waist high looks like a bagel.
55. You can't take a girl in a dress on a date without carrying along some steps.
56. You can't sneak into church late because the engine is too loud.
57. You get custom pin striping from trail brush.
58. You are outlawed at every car wash in town.
59. You can see OVER a Suburban
60. You're sitting here reading this while your wife/husband is waiting for you in bed.
61. You build it not buy it :)

Got Jeep?

Someone set us up the Googlebomb

2008-01-12T10:31:00.000-05:00

Died in a blogging accident

IPv6 in the root ...

2008-01-04T12:19:00.000-05:00

So, I was going to post something here about the recent announcement from ICANN/IANA regarding the addition of AAAA records for Root Servers ... instead, I did it over here. Go read it. Now.