Subject: Question of applicability, please express an opinion if you have one on this

From: [email-masked] (Dan Kolis)
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 12:46:03 -0500

I've been watching the horror of this barcode URL field evolve for some
time. I have intellectual property in this field and do have a stake in it.
But, also, it is interesting. If you are not in North America perhaps you
haven't heard of this giveaway item called a cuecat. Its a barcode reader
for internet access.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cuecat

Will give you hours of background material, none of which you need to
express an opinion.

Suffice it to say there are many attempts, both profit and non-profit to
make all sorts of printed matter bear machine readable symbols and do things
on Internet. Avoiding typing in URL's from magazines is the tip of this big
iceberg.

Question: Is this too far afield of ietf to consider RFC tracks as a medium? 

Cuecat is a perfect, bad example of trying to evade creating a real standard
and kludging together functionality any old way.

I'd suggest the machine readable form have the following properties:

1) Not require (yet permit) redirection, that is, a symbol can point to
anything and create "action at a distance" without a 3rd party.

2) Be completely extensible via ASN.1

3) Be human lauguage aware, yet language neutral.

I'm considering creating a suite of proposed standards in some detail.
Specifically, there is a UDP functionality for redirection much like DNS. It
is different enough from DNS it should stand alone.

Seems like that *part* is a potential, logical RFC. Other standards might be
EIA, ECMA, eventually ANSI blessed, for the interface between the readers
and the personal computer(s). 

On the other hand, an integrated RFC; (more likely three or so of them),
might be a single stop shopping experience for the implementor.

You can answer via the reflector, or one to one, as you prefer.

This kept me up last night for hours tossing and turning. Then I dreamed of
alien abduction. Maybe the cuecat company, Digital Convergence, will spend
there last 30 Million on a plan to suck me into the mother ship for
assimiliation? 

Thanks for your time; (They aren't making any extra of that, so I appreciate
the allocation).

Dan Kolis