[discuss] VGNIC-speak (was: rootservers)

Tue Feb 25 06:46:47 UTC 2014

I agree there's no shortage of jargon in the IG and internet technology world, and to someone outside of a particular part of that world, it can be impenetrable.  At the same time, this jargon can facilitate communication either within a sector (e.g., ICANN) or within a subtype (e.g., technologists).  Most technical terms seem to be readily understood by most technologists in these parts, though everyone has something to learn around here (as demonstrated by the recent turn the main portion of the rootservers thread has taken), and most people here seem happy to unpack what they know for the benefit of others.  However, a lot of the terms that inspired me to write my email seem to befuddle a broad cross-section of people here, other than the few here that you term the "Francophones" (I thought of Pouzinists,  but decided against it...).  (I'm sure there are other francophones here who are not related to this merry band.)  It seems that this particular vocabulary goes along with a particular worldview and vision, which I find fascinating from a socio-cultural point of view.

I didn't intend to "go after" anyone and don't feel I did -- but I do feel that this group is peculiarly invested in using this vocabulary and to hear "Hebe" (where I come from that has a totally different meaning, but whatever...) say that she is not interested in what things are called, coupled with calls from others to dial back the jargon, seemed to demand a response.  If anyone felt "gone after" in a personal way,  I apologize for that, but not for trying to take a closer look at this particular vocabulary, where its coming from, whether using it is indicative of a particular worldview, and whether using it outside VGNIC-world is helping communication or impeding communication (perhaps even purposefully).

As to your other points....

I'll plead guilty to not only knowing what the GNSO CCWG is, but being a card-carrying member of it.  Not sure that "CCWG" and "catenet" are comparable, unless ICANN and VGNIC/IUCG are comparable....

As for Phillip Hallam-Baker's email -- first, I assume that the other tech types here understood that and that the acronyms used are part of a universal terminology (I would be curious to know if I'm wrong about that).  Second, even I recognized parts of that just from hanging around the internet (such as SSL = Secure Socket Layer and POP = an email protocol (I still have a POP3 account @pipeline.com from the old days...), IMAP = another email protocol and RSA = a key-based encryption method used in security), and found that the rest was readily discernible from a variety of explanatory sites (including Wikipedia FWIW).  Interestingly, searches for the meaning of VGNIC-related terminology led back primarily to VGNIC-related sites.  I'm skeptical of evidence of "echo chambers" (subgroups that mostly listen to each other), but I'm more than willing to understand where this all fits into the ecology of the Internet.

As for bill's sig -- I'll give pretty  free rein to people's sigs, since they are personal expressions.  My Latin is essentially non-existent (other than what I picked up singing in choruses and practicing law), but a quick internet search using Google reveals about 137,000 hits, some quite fascinating, including the following (from Wikipedia FWIW), so I don't think it's really all that obscure:

Béziers was a Languedoc stronghold of Catharism, which the Catholic Church condemned as heretical and which Catholic forces extirpated in the Albigensian Crusade. Béziers was the first city to be sacked, on July 22, 1209. Béziers’ Catholics were given the opportunity to leave before the Crusaders besieged the city. However, they refused and fought with the Cathars. In a sortie outside the walls, their combined force was defeated, and pursued back into town. In the bloody massacre which followed, no one was spared, not even those who took refuge in the churches. The commander of the crusade was the Papal Legate Arnaud-Amaury (or Arnald Amalaricus, Abbot of Citeaux). When asked by a Crusader how to tell Catholics from Cathars once they’d taken the city, the abbot famously replied, “Kill them all, God will know His own” – “Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet“. (This phrase can only be found in one source, Caesarius of Heisterbach; along with a story of some Cathars who desecrated a copy of the Old Testament and threw it from the town’s walls.)

Or as more pithily rendered during the Vietnam War -- "Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out"....  I'd be curious to know why bill chose this as his sig!

In any event, I think VGNIC-speak is a special case, and can be distinguished from those you cite, and worthy of note (and perhaps skepticism) as such.

I've never been one to have a cool sig, but I may reconsider....

Greg Shatan

דער מענטש טראַכט און גאָט לאַכט | Der mensch trakht un Got lakht.

-----Original Message-----
From: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 12:10 AM
To: Shatan, Gregory S.
Cc: discuss at 1net.org
Subject: RE: [discuss] VGNIC-speak (was: rootservers)

-----Original Message-----
>For someone who is not interested in the "way servers [etc.] call
>themselves," you are throwing around a lot of terms and acronyms most
>(if not all) of which seem to be used only within a narrow group and
>are not used (or no longer used) or understood by many (and in some
>cases most) on this list, such as (but not limited to):

We are all guilty of that.

I'll see your VGNIC Catenet and raise you a GNSO CCWG (part of the IG ecosystem, or as Mike Roberts would put it, "IG governance").

But Philip Hallam Baker said it best in a recent post: "Use SSL with RSA2048+ and AES128/SHA256 to secure SUBMIT, IMAP and POP" Yeah! Right on, bro!

You let that pass and went after the Francophones?

How about bill's sig, "Neca eos omnes, Deus suos agnoscet"?  Those are not acronyms...
How's your Latin?

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