[ppml] 2007-12: IPv4 Countdown

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> As one of the four who signed the petition to advance the IPv4 policy,
> I thought I had made it very clear that I did not support the policy.
> I believe that the AC kicked it for the wrong reasons,

The main reason that I oppose this policy is that it is very poorly
written. This fact makes it difficult to make sense of the policy
because when you read something and think, "Did they really mean that?",
the answer may well be, "No, but they didn't know how to express it in
English". 

Just on the language grounds alone, I would reject this policy proposal
entirely.

And, noting that the authors are all Japanese, I would suggest that they
redraft their proposal IN JAPANESE, and then find a native English
speaker who knows Japanese well enough to translate it. The rationale is
written well enough to understand, but in the policy text, we have to be
careful which words are chosen. 

Remember, it is impossible to translate a single word from one language
into another. A single English word will have several possible Japanese
translations depending on the context. And each of those Japanese words
will also have several possible English translations. Back in 1966 a US
government project tried to develop a machine translator to translate
Russian scientific papers into English. As part of the test, they fed in
the phrase "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak". The Russian
translation came out saying "The vodka is good but the meat is rotten".

Of course, there are other reasons why I oppose 2007-12, but I will
write about them another time.

--Michael Dillon