[e2e] 0% NAT - checkmating the disconnectors

[Lynne Jolitz]

Vadim,
You are so correct here. The social issues of the Internet and developers make them terribly insecure about refining a concept or package of software with the technique of minimalism. And so they tend to jump to reductionism as a means to avoiding ridicule and social pressure.

And as the Internet becomes more and more the metaphor through which we all appear, this
fear of ridicule will result in less and less challenging work and more and more variations on the same theme - kind of like the way Hollywood mimics a success so that everything becomes a "reality TV" show or a "Desparate Housewives" sequel for a season.

You might find this article on CNET of interest entitled "Misplaced Software Priorities": http://news.com.com/Misplaced+software+priorities/2010-1007_3-5745970.html

It speaks to your concerns. Lynne Jolitz

PS - NAT is an economic issue. As long as a v4 static address has a market value of $20-$40 per month retail on top of basic connectivity for small business / home, nobody will want to pay for more than one (if even they get one), much less one per server. The exception is Japan with IPv6 cellphones with throwaway IP addresses. In this case, there was no economic incentive for NAT. It all comes down to money out of pocket. The security and other issues can be dealt with in many different ways. -lgj

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: end2end-interest-bounces at postel.org
> [mailto:end2end-interest-bounces at postel.org]On Behalf Of Vadim Antonov
> Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 1:53 PM
> To: David P. Reed
> Cc: end2end-interest at postel.org
> Subject: Re: [e2e] 0% NAT - checkmating the disconnectors
> 
> 
> On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, David P. Reed wrote:
> 
> > Does anyone have any good thoughts on how to collectively create the 
> > next generation *Inter* Net - one that actually provides the 
> > interoperability that all of us old codgers dreamed was possible when 
> > Licklider, Taylor, Englebart, etc. first imagined it and Vint Cerf and 
> > Bob Kahn made it happen?
> 
> I do, but it involves some rather drastic changes in the way software is 
> designed.  And, no, I didn't figure out how to make an economic case or a 
> viable business plan out of that.
> 
> The problem, by far, is not in the Internet itself, but in the fact that 
> the end-systems are, frankly, a pile of badly designed and hastily 
> slapped-together manure.
> 
> The proprietary software development, dependent on the intellectual
> "property" (which is not property, but, rather, government granted
> monopoly privilege) protection, is in many aspects driven by the need to
> preserve the loot brought to the privilege holder by the protection.  It
> is totally unrealistic to expect any such development to be concerned with
> interoperability with competitors and such, or with competing on 
> quality - 
> after all, once the privelege rights are obtained by locking-in the 
> customers, there's no further reason to improve.
> 
> The "bazaar" model is somewhat better but, being mostly ego-driven and
> dependent on final-product contributions from obviously inexperienced
> professionals-in-training (show me a real professional working in the
> industry on the product-delivery track who actually has time to do free
> software) and amateurs, seems to be very good at producing mountains of
> garbage conisting of countless variations on similar simple themes.
> 
> We have abandoned any pretense of software production being scientific,
> and reverted to artisan attitudes, and thus made it impossible to
> accumulate experience and knowledge in a way immediately accessible and
> useful to other practitioners (we even sunk to the point of being
> incapable of replicating older achievements -- watch the FAA systems
> upgrade saga). It is painful to see generation after generation of bright
> young software jockeys doing exactly the same old mistakes.  Of course,
> the evolution will take care of improving things, but it is bound to be
> very slow.
> 
> There weren't any truly groundbreaking ideas in the software industry for
> a decade, at least.  What we have instead are 30-year-old technologies
> being embellished and bloated by featuritis.  By and large, the
> state-of-the-art approached the state-of-a-garbage-dump - which,
> undoubtly, contains a lot of useful and valuable pieces, but which is so
> full of junk that it makes is easier to make a new piece than to find an
> old one fitting the purpose - thus adding to the ever-growing mountain of
> irrelevant, partially working, and incomplete (and, yes, insecure).
> 
> And taking a potentially interesting idea and making it into a useful
> product involves years of hard mind-numbing labour; every time repeating
> the steps of building from the ground up. I wish I didn't have to write a
> doubly-linked list (just to give an example) hundred times over the last
> twenty years just to work around intellectual "property" protections,
> language ideosyncracies, library compatibility issues, different languages
> and simply because it is faster to do so than to use baroque templates.
> Thus, many good ideas are simply abandoned: very few people would be
> prepared to put in the years of their life (and have the ability to
> survive these years with no income) into a pursuit of an idea.
> 
> So... how about a culture shift? An ascetic religion, perhaps, which
> dictates that the high virtue is quality improvement, simplification and
> generalization rather than hacking away?  Something which makes improving
> productivity of software design a worthier goal than delivery of the
> end-product? A culture which measures worth of a professional not by the
> amount of new stuff he built but by the amount of trivial coding and
> trivia learning he eliminated? Valuing coherent general explanations and
> designs over data and code? Discipline and precision over creative energy
> and unfettered fantasy? Science, not art.
> 
> I do have some ideas on specific steps in that direction (so, apparently,
> do many other people... and some corporations even flirted with trying to
> get there, although these projects were quickly perverted and destroyed by
> the corporate politics and short-termism).  I'm also keenly aware that any
> efforts in this direction will not be able to pay for themselves for many
> many years (if ever), are uncertain, and can be susustained only by faith
> and belief into the transcendent value of beauty and truth themselves.
> 
> Anyone wishes to donate to the establishment of the new software
> religion?
> 
> --vadim
> 
>