Tuesday, Debtember 07, 2010
The Bureaucratic Sinkhole known as the DMV
I find it odd that Florida law requires you to update your driver's license within ten (10) days of moving, yet to get a new driver's license you must provide two (2) proofs of residential address which can include bills, but it's doubtful anyone can get a bill to a new address in less than ten (10) days since moving in. Hmmmm …
It's silliness like this that make me avoid bureaucratic institutions as much as possible (well, that, and the tedious long waits and my own tendencies towards procrastination). But seeing how my driver's license is set to expire in January of 2011, and an inability to extend it online left me little choice but to head on down to the local DMV office.
![[Mom always said I looked like a Cuban refugee in this shot]](/2010/12/07/driverslicense.jpg "Mom always said I looked like a Cuban refugee in this shot")
Last month, I set up an appointment for today at 10:50 am (the earliest datewise in all of Lower Sheol, and the only timeslot for today), so at a most ungodly hour Bunny and I headed out to the Pompano Beach office. To ensure I appeased the bureaucratic gods I brought along my Social Security card (original), birth certificate (old enough to be an original notiarized copy of), car insurance bill (with the current address), bank statement (with the current address), voter's registration card (with the current address) and current car registration (with the current address on it). I almost went to the bank to pull out some cash, but given the ungodly hour, decided against it (and frankly, I forgot to to so yesterday).
We arrived about fifteen minutes before the appointment to a packed DMV office. Ten minutes in line, we were given a number (A1051/b) and told to wait.
Thank God I set the appointment, because it only took fifty minutes (and two blue screens of death on the Windows-run “now serving ticket #X” display) to get called to the back for my picture.
Five minutes later, I have my picture taken (only thing changed from the previous picture—a thicker beard) and pull out my debit card only to have the clerk tsk-tsk-tsk at me.
“We don't accept Visa,” said the clerk, “but we do accept MasterCard, Discover and American Express.”
Sigh. I knew I should have gone to the bank.
Update on Monday, November 10th, 2014
It has come to my attention that some of the links provided above do not go to the “Official Florida DMV” which may cause some confusion. I am sorry about that, but the “Official Site” does not appear to have the same information that is easily locatable.
You have been warned.
Some musings on decentralized DNS
Less than twenty-four hours since I released my DNS resolver library and I'm getting requests for Ruby bindings.
Heh.
While I suspect I can write Ruby bindings, it might help if I actually, you know, knew the language first. It might be something to do over this holiday season.
Also, as a joke, I was asked if I could work on that distributed DNS replacement thing, but I think I'll pass on that.
It's not as if DNS isn't already distributed—it is, but there is a central authority overseeing domain names that also help manage the servers that run the top level of DNS—the so called root servers. So it's probably more accurate to say the project is a “decentralized DNS replacement thing” and therein lies the problem—how are naming conflicts resolved?
With the current system, it's “first come, first served” when it comes to names (way back in 1998, I tried registring spc.com, but found out that Time Magazine got there first—and they still own it; I then tried conner.com, but there was a hard drive manufactorer that owned that name; now it looks like bookseller owns that domain) and if there are conflicts, ICANN will step in to mediate the issue.
But in a decentralized DNS
system, how is this handled? I want the .area51 TLD, but (hypothetically speaking here)
so does Bob Lazar. Who wins? How
is this resolved? The government?
That's the cause of this attempt to decentalize DNS. The courts? Golden rule there (“he who has the gold, makes the rules” although it could be said that's the case now).
It's more of a political (or maybe social) issue than a technical issue, and thus, I don't see it going anywhere any time soon.
