On Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 10:53:42AM -0700, Bret Fausett wrote:
> Esther Dyson wrote:
> > .....We are not turning away particular groups
> > of people; our system is simply rejecting attempts randomly.
> > This is more like a traffic jam with too-small roads, not
> > any kind of selection process or discrimination.
>
> BUT:
>
> To the extent that the late registrations are coming predominately from
> China (as I have seen reported) or non-English speaking and/or emerging
> nations -- where information about ICANN may have been slow to reach
> potential members -- these "random rejections" have a disproportionate
> impact on these groups.
People who get news late will not be as well served as people who get
news early. There is nothing, even in principle, that can be done about
that -- the problem exists completely independent of the performance of
the server. People who find out about the election after the election
occurs won't be able to vote.
All indications are that the news is continuing to spread, and at a
growing rate. The number of registrations has been building
continuously, with no particular end in sight; it appears that if we
waited a year or so there would be millions of registrations. More
important: it appears that people are going into overdrive to try to get
registrations before the cutoff date -- I got "dear activist" spam from
Lowenhaupt to an address that has nothing to at all do with dns matters,
urging me to register. The inevitable consequence of this is server
meltdown, sometime before the cutoff -- it doesn't matter what steps are
taken to improve the server. It won't help to push back the deadline,
either -- it will just delay the meltdown.
Markle put up a couple hundred thousand to cover this; current
registrations are well over 100000; most of the Markle money will be
used up in the mailing costs for the PIN letters alone.
There is absolutely no way that the 100000 applicants are knowledgable
in the matters that ICANN is supposed to be concerned with; the result
is that the election will be campaigned on the basis of pure populist
politics.
According to the last figures posted, China has 28732 applications, and
Japan has 33227. There appears to be a heavy-duty nationalistic race
underway. Taiwan has 10780. Korea has 6247, well placed to broker
swing votes. The election for the asia-pacific board seat is a pure
regional power struggle. Similar things are happening in europe. This
is not good.
[The US has 18012.]
--
Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be
[EMAIL PROTECTED] lonesome." -- Mark Twain
