[8189] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: your mail
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glenn Vanderburg)
Tue May 9 12:53:10 1995
Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 12:28:03 +0500
Errors-To: procmaster@www19.w3.org
Reply-To: glv@utdallas.edu
From: Glenn Vanderburg <glv@utdallas.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www10.w3.org>
Rick Troth writes:
>
> I don't understand why we're so hung up on
>
> http://X.mythical.host.com/
> http://Y.mythical.host.com/
>
> Why can't we go directly to "non home" or sub-pages?
> Why can't we do things like this:
>
> http://service.provider.net/home_page_X
> http://service.provider.net/home_page_Y
One reason is that the first form can often be guessed. I suspect that most
of us have had an experience like this: "Gee, I sure would like to know what
company X is up to these days. I wonder if they have a Web page? I suppose
'http://www.X.com/' is worth a try ..." It's surprising how often this works.
And, to a degree, this is a good thing. Those of us who want to discourage
broadcast-style advertising on the net see the advantage: if it's easy for
people to find information on a company when they want to, then the passive
style of advertising is more effective.
The key problem here is that we have locators which are being used as names.
People or organizations who are establishing Web presences are justified in
thinking of the URL of their home pages as their Web "names".
---glv
