I'm surprised that I do not see a link to the RISKS article about how a motorist was trapped in a traffic circle for 14 hours yet.

The technology in the RISKS entry was a bit more advanced (lane occupation detection) than what seems to be described in this article.

(And if someone cannot it figure out from the date, the RISKS entry was an April fool's joke; but a lot of people took it seriously at the time.)

I don't think many people are getting the point of this article, although I admit it is a bit confusing. While it is true that the article talks about alternative DNS systems and WHOIS; what Paul really seems concerned about is the part of the WHOIS system used to look up who is currently allowed to use a given IP address range, and is responsible for activity originating from it.

The current authorities which run this part of the WHOIS system have rules and restrictions about how and why IP address blocks on the Internet can be assigned from one party to another. Among the things cited by the article which currently are not permitted are obtaining IP address for perceived future needs when you have not already exhausted what you have, or simply buying IP addresses for no use at all speculating they can be sold for more money later.

Some parties do not like these rules, and want to establish their own system for buying and selling IP addresses which is not subject to the rules currently in place. They could kind-of do this right now, but the transfer of ownership would not be recorded in the old system.

This is potentially a bad thing, as suppose someone attacks you from IP address 1.2.3.4. And for some reason, reverse DNS on that IP address fails to work. If there is more than one system tracking ownership of who currently has the right to use this IP address, how do you find the right administrator to contact? And what if someone updated their contact information or the fact the IP block had been sold in one system, but forgot to do so in another?

If you have any student loans, universities in the United States are required to report your last date of attendance, if you are attending at least half time or not, and other information to the National Student Loan Data System. This may be an automated way that they are trying to get information for this.

While I imagine universities are not going to rush to using the last date you showed up in class versus the current date for refund and grading (withdrawal with no grade versus withdrawal-failing/withdrawal-pass, etc.), I could easily see universities using this data in the event of a grade dispute or similar issue.

A slightly clarification here:

UMA service with T-mobile is basically a way to use 802.11 access points as an alternative "cell phone tower" with T-mobile. Nothing stops you from using a UMA-capable phone with standard GSM cell phone towers (unless you tell the phone not to).

In general, T-mobile bills UMA calls *the same* as calls started on the cell phone network. So if you have a post-paid plan, UMA usage typically comes out of your normal minute bucket(s); if you are using a $0.10/minute pre-paid plan, you pay $0.10/minute (as the previous poster mentioned).

There are NO additional fees required for UMA calling versus GSM calling. Turning on 802.11 support might reduce your phone's battery life between charges though.

That said, there used to be some add-on plans which allowed unlimited UMA-initiated calls for a flat rate. But these no longer seem to be offered. In general, the future of T-Mobile's UMA service is unknown, as it is primarily Blackberry phones that tend to support it.

While they may sound different, the Cloud Computing security problem seems to be almost identical to any other Digital Rights Management problem. Both are concerned with only exposing what the information owner wants exposed to the underlying hardware/provider/user/etc.

It's just a question of whose "Cloud" you are trying to secure information on, and who the "user" of said information is supposed to be.