On May 12, 2006 at 14:51 tv@pobox.com (Todd Vierling) wrote:
The complexity added by TLDs has one extremely critical good side effect: distribution of load by explicitly avoiding a flat entity namespace. The DNS has a hierarchical namespace for a reason, and arguments to the contrary will convince on the order of sqrt(-1) people.
As if you couldn't just hash on whatever the last component is and pick a server on that basis? Query(server[Sum(bytes) mod Nservers])? There are probably good answers to people's suggestions for change but working backwards from "that's the way we've always done it" with trailing remarks intended to stifle a response isn't, to my mind, an answer. The best answer I can think of off-hand is that dropping .com etc wouldn't add much, if anything. Any savings in typing would be off-set by having to generate non-colliding names which would've been .com and .org, etc. It would just be creating a new TLD, the null TLD moving collision avoidance left by one. As to .XXX: To my mind the real camel's nose in the tent is that to create it would seem to urge or at least validate its enforcement and coercive means would necessarily arise (civil lawsuits, criminal charges, regulatory apparatus.) Otherwise of what use would it be, in terms of the conceptions of its champions as opposed to unintended consequences? The deeper problem is the conception by many (unwashed) that someone must be in charge, we used to get calls asking for contact info for the Internet complaint dept, and they didn't mean us. People were often shocked to hear that we had no answer. And widespread conceptions like that have a way of materializing, sans some force of resistance. I suppose some may say it's 10 years too late for that comment. -- -Barry Shein The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Login: Nationwide Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*