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Technological tizzies

2014-10-23 11:54:25
The IETF I see using an increasing variety of technology
without, AFAICT, offering enough guidance for me to be able to use it.
So I go to the main IETF website and search on:

jabber - yes, this takes me to a useful web page, that one is fine

github - yields a lengthy list of e-mails which I do not understand.
The github website is accessible but is also over my head.  If the work
of WGs is going to rely on this, which I see signs of on several lists,
then it would be good to see an equivalent of RFC2629, or perhaps
RFC4677, on this.  (But I note that the github website says that there
is no support for IE8 so that is academic, for me, pro tem).

meetecho - ditto, but I think irrelevant to most participants in the
work of the IETF so it does not matter that the website is inaccessible
using IE from any  IT facilities I have regular access to!  The URLs
that appear in the IETF mailing lists relating to this are also
inaccessible.  I wonder if there is a particular TLS requirement
underlying this.

etherpad  - ditto, but I think irrelevant to a participant in the work
of the IETF via a mailing list

webex -ditto but perhaps relevant.  Here the website is inaccessible
using IE - http 403 - but there is a Cisco branded website which is
accessible, with more information.  It does say that Windows XP and IE7
are supported - as they should be! - but also talks of a download being
required which begs the question, what is the download, what system
requirements does it have? Does it require Windows Administrator
privileges?.  The website also says things like the person setting up
the meeting decides, e.g., whether or not VoIP will or will not be
supported, not not the sort of thing I see mentioned within the IETF.

IRC popped up this week "IRC is fine, and should be used as a tool to
create the meeting minutes".  Here a search leads to the RFC -
naturally, which is sort of good but not much use to an end user if it
is a tool with which we are meant to participate.

'webex' reminds me of my last attempt to participate remotely, when
the IT facilities that I could customise were limited to 56kbps dial-up
and the minimum that the IETF would support was 64kbps, while the IT
support for the IT facilities that I could use with a higher speed were
clear that they did not support the technology of the IETF (which
probably meant that they had never heard of it).  But on that
occasion I had the information with which to progress the issue, whereas
for the ones I detail above, I lack that basic information.

It is one thing to help make the Internet work better - it is something
else to have to use the results:-(

Tom Petch