[ppml] Too many words...

[Owen DeLong]

>> That would be true if there weren't a subsequent statement
>> that OTHER MEDIA can be made available at ARIN's discretion.
>> However, such a statement is present in the proposed policy, thus
> trumping
>> any such implication.
>
> Then why say things twice when one statement will do.
>
> "Recordable media can be made available at ARIN's discretion".
>
Because the way it was originally worded provides a minimum standard
and allows flexibility beyond that.

For that matter, the word "Recordable" serves little purpose in your
statement.  "Other media" is, I think, a better choice.


>> The policy as written makes it very clear that ARIN will publish
>> the data on CDROM and MAY publish it on other media upon request if ARIN
>> feels such request is not overly burdensome.
>
> And when we discover that publishing it on CD-ROM *IS* burdensome,
> then what do we do. ARIN has never published the whois directory
> on CD-ROM in the past and no investigation has been done into
> the feasability of ARIN supplying recordable media. Therefore
> it is highly inappriate for the policy makers to choose CD-ROM
> to be embedded in the policy. There is no need for this, no
> demonstrated demand, and it is not in line with the purpose
> and scope of the whois directory because we haven't even decided
> what that is yet.
>
I don't know that your statement is necessarily true.  I suspect that Leo
probably did talk to the staff and did put some effort into determining
the feasibility of what he proposes.  Admittedly, we are both making
assumptions here.  I know that there have been requests in the past for
the data to be available on CD-ROM, so, the statement that there is no
demonstrated demand is not true, although I cannot quantify the demonstrated
demand, there is some.

Finally as to being out of the purpose and scope, if the purpose and scope
are not yet defined, you cannot say that it is in or out.  An undefined area
is an undefined area.  A point cannot be determined to be inside or outside
of said area until the area becomes defined.


>> The policy as written
>> is better than your proposal, no matter how  many times you repeat your
>> proposal.
>
> I haven't made any proposal other than to shorten, simplify
> and get rid of unneccessary details that should be decided
> by ARIN staff or the BoT, not by ARIN policy.
>
And my opinion is that your attempt to shorten and simplify does not
produce as good a result and that the details you are attempting to get
rid of are not unnecessary.  As usual, I suspect we should agree to
disagree on this.

> In my world, hard drives are the most common form of mass-storage
> media. They are widely available with standard interfaces such as
> USB 2.0 and Firewire that make them very portable. The second
> most common form of mass-storage media in my world, is the DVD.
> Arguably, DVDs are more portable than CD-ROM so if the policy is
> going to mention a specific media, then DVD is it.
>
As tempting as it is, I will refrain from a comparison between your world
and the world in which the rest of us live.  I'd really like to know how
you can argue that a DVD is more portable than a CD.  DVD and CD are
eactly the same size and weight.  Any DVD drive will read a CD.  Not every
CD drive will read a DVD.  So, CDs are readable in more drives (hardware
portability) and have the same size and weight (physical portability) vs.
DVDs.  I would argue, thus, that CDs are slightly more portable.

>> I believe the average whois record is approximately 512 bytes, so, we
>> have 875,000 records at 512 bytes is 448,000,000 bytes which is
>> roughly 428 Megabytes.  A CDROM is 700 Megabytes.  You can fit almost
>> two copies of the worst case database on a CDROM.
>
> Earlier someone pointed out that the ideal way to distribute
> the whois data was to provide 5 copies in various formats.
> Clearly, this will not fit on a CD-ROM, therefore it is
> questionable whether CD-ROM is suitable for ARIN to use
> in a simple manner.
>
Unless, of course, the CD came with the data in one portable format and
scripts were made available to convert to any of the 5 aforementioned
formats.  (The scripts could even fit on the CD if this was considered
useful).  I can see a need for multiple formats for online distribution,
but, I'm less convinced of a need for more than one format on a media
distribution.

>> The argument of what happens when the database exceeds a CDROM is
> specious.
>
> No, you have proved that the data already exceeds the capacity of a
> CD-ROM unless ARIN only provides it in one raw file format that
> doesn't have a lot of overhead.
>
Or in more than one format using any form of reasonably good compression.
It's not like you need to produce an uncondensed index for optimal insertion
on a read-only media distribution.

Owen

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