-----Original Message----- From: Dean Anderson <dean@av8.com> To: Rodney Joffe <rjoffe@mailorder.com>; NANOG <nanog@merit.edu> Date: Monday, September 07, 1998 10:12 AM Subject: Re: Domain fees to rise...
Interestingly, the article continues to indicate that the additional fee is, in fact, a tax, and the NSF's *agent*, Network Solutions, will collect it on the Government's behalf.
Hmm. Well, if NSI is only an agent for NSF, then perhaps they are an agent for the DB as well. What exactly is NSI doing as an agent for the NSF? Administering its records?? Perhaps a point for Karl to bring out in the next letter... :-)
The NSF has been very lax in its management of the InterNIC. At one point in time, the Inspector General of the NSF, Linda Sundro was trying to figure out what was going on. If you read some of her reports to congress, you will see that she was not able to figure out what was really going on. She has now resigned and a temporary IG is in place. Recently, the Director of the NSF has been replaced. The former Director, Neal Lane has supposedly been moved to the White House to an office that sounds similar to the role that Ira Magaziner has. It is unclear why Neal Lane was moved, but letters from him about Linda Sundro's activities show that he was not cooperative with her attempts to figure out what was going on. The NSF has a $3.8 billion dollar per year (and growing) annual budget. Some of that goes to MERIT and helps to fund mailing lists like this. It is too bad that the people at the NSF are lost in a sea of information that they help to fund. Their solution seems to be to stir the waters and make sure that the people and story keep changing. The Congress apparently has little or no ability to figure out what is going on because they are kept in the dark in a boat floating on the murky waters. If they stick their hand in the water a shark might take it away. The Congress has not figured out that the solution might be to drain the swamp. With the NSF up to their ears in sharks, their solution is to keep throwing the sharks more food. Jim Fleming Unir Corporation - http://www.unir.com End-2-End: VPC(Java)---C+@---<IPv8>---C+@---(Java)VPC http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt http://www.ddj.com/index/author/idx10133.htm