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Who says engineers can't write? This is from the official IETF Internet-Draft entitled Interplanetary Internet (IPN): Architectural Definition
(via /.)Desiderata of Interplanetary Internetworking
Go thoughtfully in the knowledge that all interplanetary communication derives from the modulation of radiated energy, and sometimes a planet will be between the source and the destination. Therefore rely not on end-to-end connectivity at any time, for the universe does not work that way.
Neither rely on ample bandwidth, for power is scarce out there and the bit error rates are high. Know too that signal strength drops off by the square of the distance, and there is a lot of distance.
Consider the preciousness of interplanetary communication links, and restrict access to them with all your heart. Protect also the confidentiality of application data or risk losing your customers.
Remember always that launch mass costs money. Think not, then, that you may require all the universe to adopt at once the newest technologies. Be backward compatible.
Never confuse patience with inaction. By waiting for acknowledgement to one message before sending the next, you squander tracking pass time that will never come to you again in this life. Send as much as you can, as early as you can, and meanwhile confidently await responses for as long as they may take to find their way to you.
Therefore be at peace with physics, and expect not to manage the network in closed control loops -- neither in the limiting of congestion nor in the negotiation of connection parameters nor even in on-demand access to transmission bands. Each node must make its own operating choices in its own understanding, for all the others are too far away to ask. Truly the solar system is a large place and each one of us is on his or her own. Deal with it.
S. Burleigh
Stating the Obvious gets an interesting new re-architecting. There's a really nice idea in there.
Hyperspace structures. Small (< 500K) mpeg's of a rotating hypercube and hypertorus.
Looks like booknotes is back from (short) hiatus. I found this link to punk rock and the two-way web. Nothing earth shattering, but interesting since I always think about the web in terms of deadheads.
Introduction to the Kaycee hoax. The metafilter thread where the debunking took place. Strange stuff. Metafilter itself was taken down yesterday (although maybe before, I hadn't looked in a few days) with a note that included references to this whole thing. Now it is back up. Not sure what any of this means, but it is the blog topic du jour.
Months ahead of schedule (well, ahead of the pushed back schedule) Apple begins shipping OSX preinstalled on all computers as of today.
Lots of good stuff here, like this explanation of why Godel's Theorem doesn't "prove" that AI is impossible.
Singularity links.
I'm developing a Sunday night dinner and Soprano's routine. I saw the first six episodes of this show on video, and starting last week I am now watching the show weekly. The violence can be a little shocking (to me at least) but apart from those scattered scenes the characters are very likable. This feels almost manipulative, but I think they (writers? actors?) pull it off.
Anyway, for me, the routine is the really great part. Maybe it's some phase I'm going through, but it seems like the weeks (months, years) can really slip by quickly. I feel a certain amount of pressure towards scheduling lest I get so busy that I forget to do anything (cue Pink Floyd DSotM...) I guess these routines are like self perpetuating schedules: once you set them up they just sort of run, filling in the time.
In a dream last night the Wheel and I were staying in some big house (with a big group of people and a powerful matriarch) in Amsterdam and I knew I had to get back to the States, but MB wasn't there, and the Wheel was staying on, and I just couldn't deal with getting the tickets and making my way to the airport by myself. The whole process of making the arrangements was just too complex. Everything was strange and foreign. Do you ever get that feeling in dreams where you are trying to move, but it's like somebody cranked up the gravity, or the air has been changed into a thick viscous goo? You try, but nothing gets done. You can't make any headway. Luckily, in the end, I just had to wake up in order to be home.
I guess it's pretty much the best thing in the world to wake up next to someone you love. That's the best routine in my life. The loop that drives everything else. The constancy. Like a heartbeat. On a slightly different level, my regular thursday night outings have become very important for me as well. Marking the weeks, since the weekdays and weekends all blend together. And now Sundays (at least two in a row, we'll see how that develops) are added in. Another beat driving the score. I know over the long term these arrangements come and go, or at least re-arrange, but right now everything has drifted into a nice tight formation. Lots of repetition, but with the beats falling on the things I like the most. That's some kind of blessing.
You're not waiting for a point, are you? I don't have one. Except tonight I'm going to a friends house for dinner and the Soprano's, I'm not stuck in Amsterdam somewhere on the way to the airport, and even though my life is busy these days, I guess it's the absolute best kind of busy. The kind that keeps bringing you and your friends back together.
Time for some work now. Putting a new machine on the network in the office and starting in on the DSL. This kind of stuff is the other routine, and really it's not too bad either. Until something goes wrong and there's a driver conflict, or the network goes haywire, or the dog gods of Sirius decide that packets are going to mysteriously disappear at the firewall today. And even then it's not so bad. Only a few more hours until the Soprano's.
Ended up in Brooklyn last night at Pete's Candy Store, a nice little bar with a beautiful performance space in the back. Saw a one act play, and a reading of another longer play - both by Nora Breen. Great stuff. Ignoring the potential dangers of classing up the place too much, Tom and I are on the mission of bringing her to the site.
Lots of familiar faces in the crowd. Practically a class reunion from the old Nation coffee shop on avenue A. If it wasn't for that damn monkey man I'd probably venture across the river more often.