Subject: Jon's Blue Dot (or Black Dot)

From: "Jim Fleming" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 09:58:58 -0500

Fred,

As Vint pointed out, it might be difficult to derive all 55 years
of data to compute Jon Postel's Blue Dot. (see below)

As an alternative, the IETF may want to support an approach
where the data points are the person's place of birth, any of
the IETF meetings they attend, and their location at death. Given
that the IETF uses "Blue Dots" for Working Group people, it
might be more appropriate to use the color Black for dots
located as memorials in Cyberspace.

Does anyone have an accurate record of all of the people that
attended the various IETFs ? Would it be possible to determine
the Latitude and Longitude (and Altitude) of the various locations ?
Once we compute someone's Black or Blue Dot, could the .DOT
Top Level Domain be used to register that location in the DNS ?
(i.e. Jon.Postel.Black.Dot would return the Latitude and Longitude
records of the "Dot") [Fred.Baker.Blue.Dot would currently return
your Dot location.]

In the spirit of the Internet and the notion of EQUALITY as peers
in an end-to-end network, it seems to me that some system of
honoring ALL people that participate in the Internet development
is needed. While I am sure people would like to weight memorials
in favor of years invested or RFCs written, it seems more in tune
with the Internet to recognize that God creates ALL people as
equals and allows them to visit planet Earth as equals for a very
short period of time. Everyone deserves a Black or Blue Dot in
my opinion.

[email-masked]
http://www.unir.com

@@@@@ http://www.ietf.org/tao.html

Seeing Spots Before Your Eyes 
Some of the people at the IETF will have a little colored dot on
their name tag. A few people have more than one. These dots
identify people who are silly enough to volunteer to do a lot of
extra work. The colors have the following meanings: 

blue - working group/BOF chair 
green - local Host 
red - IAB member 
yellow - IESG member

Local hosts are the people who can answer questions about
the terminal room, restaurants and points of interest in the area. 
Some people have gold stars on their name tags. The stars
indicate that those people chaired working groups or BOFs in
the IETF area which submitted all of its working group/BOF
minutes and area report from the previous meeting first. The
stars are the Secretariat's way of saying "thank you" for
providing the necessary information quickly. 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Fleming <[email-masked]>
To: vinton g. cerf <[email-masked]>
...
Date: Monday, October 19, 1998 9:18 PM
Subject: Jon's Blue Dot

>Vint,
>
>When people move from real life into the worlds beyond
>it is sometimes hard for people on the Internet to come
>up with an appropriate place to erect memorials. One
>suggestion is that people's "Blue Dot" be computed and
>used as a place on a virtual Earth to erect a memorial. A
>Blue Dot is a virtual location on Earth computed by a
>weighted average of all of the places a person has lived
>during their life.
>
>http://buzzard.ups.edu/bluedot.html
>
>With many people now living substantial parts of their
>lives in Active Worlds (http://www.activeworlds.com) and
>other such places, it is not hard to imagine computing a
>person's Blue Dot and using that to erect appropriate
>memorials that people can visit, via virtual reality technology.
>
>For people interested in constructing a lasting memorial
>to Jon Postel's legacy, I suggest that you consider computing
>Jon's Blue Dot. In order to do that, one would have to have
>55 years of data on the place(s) where Jon has lived. If anyone
>has such data (or parts of it) I am willing to help do the
>computations and to locate a memorial in one of the virtual
>worlds that best fits Jon's Blue Dot location.
>
>Even though this may sound "geeky", it seems like the least
>we can do to help locate a place for Jon in Cyberspace which
>is where I have a feeling that he might prefer to be at this
>point in time.
>
>If anyone has any questions, I spend most of my time in Alpha
>World at 1445N 17W in the .COM Trustee Park. When Jon's
>Blue Dot is computed, maybe we can locate the 0:0 .ARPA
>Trustee Park there as a memorial to the years of service that
>Jon provided for the IPv4 address space users.
>
>
>[email-masked]
>Unir Corporation - http://www.unir.com
>0:201 .COM
>
>