On Mon, Dec 31, 2007 at 07:23:04AM -0800, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote: > It depends on what you consider the role of an engineer to be. I am > a Chartered Engineer. The job you describe sounds more like that of > a technician. > > Just as a chef knows evey part of the job of a sous-chef and cook an > engineer needs to know every part of the job of a technician. But an > engineer needs to know more. Like a chef the engineer has to accept > ultimate responsibility for creating a dish the customer likes. If an engineer knows every part of the job of a technician, and the technician can make IPv6 work on their laptop, then surely an Certified Engineer should have no problems making IPv6 work on his or her laptop! :-) One of the interesting things that sometimes shows up at some of the cooking competition shows (in particular the recent competition for a new Iron Chef on the Cooking Channel), is that sometimes by the time someone achieves the title of chef, they sometimes end up getting rusty or are otherwise unable to do the job of a sous-chef competently. I certainly agree with you that the true mark of a great chef or an engineer, is that they be able to do the job of a sous-chef or a technician better most sous-chefs or technicians. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. (They can claim they are simply have no interest in trying --- "I'm a *chef*, I'm too good to have to demonstrate that I can chop onions quickly", but I sometimes think that is covering the fact that they no longer have the ability.) - Ted > > Sent from my GoodLink Wireless Handheld (www.good.com) > > -----Original Message----- > From: Theodore Tso [mailto:tytso@xxxxxxx] > Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 06:36 AM Pacific Standard Time > To: Greg Skinner > Cc: Hallam-Baker, Phillip; IETF Discussion > Subject: Re: Change the subject! RE: [IAOC] Re: IPv4 Outage Planned forIETF71 Plenary > > On Mon, Dec 31, 2007 at 05:36:17AM +0000, Greg Skinner wrote: > > FWIW, I reread Russ Housley's comments on the outage, and understand > > it to be an experiment that is voluntary (but encouraged). Perhaps > > this needs to be stated differently (e.g. "IPv6 experiment planned for > > IETF71 Plenary"). > > I think the real issue here is the difference between what was > originally stated (I think first by Marshall Rose in the Open Book) as > the difference between the ISO, promulgating OSI, and the IETF, > promulgating TCP/IP --- which was that ISO was populated primarily by > professional standard organization "goers", where as the IETF was > populated primarily by engineers, or "doers". > > To the extent that you have developers who are actually helping to > write code and develop reference implementations for the protocol > specifications that one is helping to write, it is probably much more > likely that that population is willing to hack their laptop to run > IPv6 --- even if they have a locked-down laptop issued by the IT > department (which very few engineers I know are willing to > countenance, and will generally tend to work around one way or > another), they can probably use VMware to run a sandbox environment > which they *can* use to experiment. Note that this has *nothing* to > do with whether the engineer uses Linux or Windows or NetBSD or MacOS > as their primary laptop OS. > > On the other hand, if you have professional standards body attendees, > who are perhaps technical enough to talk about a standard, but not > enough to actually implement it, and whose primary expertise is in > politics and the policies and procedures of each particular standards > organization (so they know how to pack a working group or national > body with representatives that will vote they want) --- they will tend > to view their Windows laptop as a production environment as a sealed > box, not to be touched, and only useful for e-mail, powerpoint, and > microsoft word, it is much less likely they will be willing (or even > able) to participate in such an experiment. > > Over the years, I suspect the ratio of goers vs. doers has been > increasing; but I hope there are enough doers still attending the IETF > to justify the "Engineering" in the title of the organization. > > - Ted > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf