On Tue, Dec 29, 1998 at 03:07:31PM -0800, Javilk wrote:
> This, and the .us TLD are nomenclature based attempts at localization
> placed on top of a system that already does some localization based
> caching. They are, in my opinion, inappropriate manual means of doing
> what has to be done automatically by the network.
No, they are a manual means of doing what should not be done *AT ALL*
by the DNS system.
It seems to me to be a giant leap backwards to attempt to constrain
the Internet by antiquated notions of geography. The 'net has already
shown that it is exempt from political boundaries, attempts at censorship,
and the legal climate of any one city/state/province/country. To attempt
to shackle the 'net's domain name system to these sorts of entities at
a time when the 'net is freeing us from them seems to me to be pointless,
on a philosophical level. (More about the technical level below.)
Not that geographic information isn't occasionally useful: but if it is
to be incorporated into ordinary users' interactions, then it should be
done out-of-band via a protocol which deals in lat-long-alt coordinates
(such as those given by a GPS).
> You should be able to type "wendys" into the URL slot of your browser,
> and have the local Wendy's home page or order page just pop up.
No, you should not. This is a very, VERY bad idea. It represents an
attempt to undermine the purpose of the DNS, which is to name things, NOT
to locate them in physical space. In fact, a lot of the raison d'etre
of DNS is to *dissociate* things from their physical, topological and
logical locations.
If you want to argue that you should be able to have a device in your
poessession report your current GPS coordinates on cue to an application
which then uses those coordinates to locate resources which are spatially
nearby and then produces URLs for those resources, fine: I would agree
that this is desirable and even easily achievable with current resources
*without* having to invent a protocol for it -- though that would make
certain things easier.
But trying to do it via DNS is flat-out wrong.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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