In a 2007 article published in ACM Queue, I described the Internet Domain Name System and tried to explain why it was more complicated than it seemed. [...more]

Raising four kids in a semi-rural area means buying food in bulk. Whether that bulk food is in component or finished form, there's a lot of it. It takes a truck and a lot of diesel #2 to get the bacon back to the pantry. When the sustained average cost of family pizza night went over USD 75, I did an engineering analysis on the components and processing, and quickly determined that "build" was better than "buy" for our little business unit. [...more]

I was invited to address the Business and Leadership Forum of the California Commonwealth Club on May 10, 2006. I spoke of serfs and lords and explored the changing nature of property and property rights in the digital era. [...more]

In the waning days of calendar year 2004, I watched some friends as they happily killed off some "botnets", and then pondered the usefulness of this (if any). A "botnet" is a collection of stolen computers, whose owners are still using them. Botnets are useful for sending spam and receiving stolen credit card numbers and all kinds of other things a bad guy wouldn't want to get caught using his or her own computers for. So, why isn't killing "botnets" an unrestricted good idea? Here's what I said about it on 30-December-2004: [...more]

As humanity begins to suck out the [last half of the oil] in Terra's crust, and our world becomes a greenhouse due to all of the carbon dioxide added by both man and nature to our upper atmosphere in recent centuries, I'm starting to think that the climate and weather patterns of my youth will not be the same as those my children will know. [...more]

When Stuart Cheshire and O'Reilly asked me to write a foreword to Zero Configuration Networking: The Definitive Guide (December 2005, ISBN 0-596-10100-7 / 978-0-59-610100-8), I happily complied. Here it is. [...more]

As a long time supporter of the universal namespace operated by IANA, it may come as a surprise that I have joined the Open Root Server Network project. I'll try to explain what's going on and what it all means. [...more]

UN (United Nations) and ITU (International Telecommunications Union) commissioned a WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) which in turn commissioned a Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG). Their reports published in July 2005 will be cause for controversy... [...more]

For some years now, UPS has been sending me unsolicited bulk e-mail and ignoring my complaints. Today (May 31 2005) I've finally hit the wall and so I'm going to put this where some search engines can find it. If someone from UPS would like to discuss this, I am available. [...more]