[12483] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: About the creation of new 3-letter domain(s)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Einar Stefferud)
Thu May 19 02:04:27 1994
To: com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: Stef=com@nma.com
From: Einar Stefferud <stef=com@nma.com>
Date: Wed, 18 May 1994 21:08:58 -0700
Hi Dave -- Per your suggestion of Mon, 16 May 1994 10:23:51.
[apt/ste.]number.street.city.region.postal-code.country
It is going to be a very very long time before I start to use:
nma.17301.drey.huntingtonbeach.ca.92647-5615.us
nma.17301.92647-5615.us is unique, so why all that other stuff.
And what if I move and someone else now owns my name because they now
live where I lived.
We are screwing around here with people's identities, and acting as
though there is no reason for anyone to become emotionally attached to
their identities.
To use my favorite quote from Marshall Rose:
"In general, naming is a problem!"
The main reason why this is true is that people very strongly bind
themselves to their identifiers, precisely because their name is how
they are known in the world. This is the root of a large body of law
in every country that deals with protection of people's names. And of
commercial names.
The current .us scheme for locality based addressing is also not going
to work, mostly because people balk at being forced to use names they
don't like, so they go off to .com where they are not so constrained.
For example: Hunting Beach will shorten to HB, but there is at least
one other HB (Hermosa Beach) that "needs to be distinguished"
according to the .us scheme. So what do I have to do for a locality
name in ca.us? Frankly, I see no need to distinguish one HB from the
other.
Who cares, if as Jon Postel so many times said: "A Name is just Name".
The offered alternatives non-intuitive and hard to explain or
remember. Like nma.hbch.ca.us, or nma.htbh.ca.us, or
nma.huntingtonbeach.ca.us. Arrrgghhhhh!
And I am not alone. Lots of others have problems.
Look at dbc.mtview.ca.us, just because there are two MT's in .ca.us.
Can you imagine or appreciate how long it takes to tell someone that
your address is "dbc.mtview.ca.us" over the phone?
This whole .us locality thing is an abomination and it is not going to
be used by sensible (some say sensitive) people. It has been around a
long time, and it is not working, so lets do something else with it.
What we need are to let people register under .ca.us if they wish, and
can claim unicity. Same rules as in .com. If I could have
nma.hb.ca.us I would seriously consider it, but not htbh or hbch.
Or how about deriving 2 character county codes? Most people would not
know what they mean, but who would care. It is just a 2 character
identifier at most.
Cheers...\Stef
