>
> 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.
Yes, they are manual. And yes, that solution stinks. But it is a
start because it approaches what is NEEDED by local businesses and their
local customers.
> 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,
You don't seem to understand what I am saying.
There is more LOCAL business than international or even
interstate business. More money changes hands locally, than across state
lines. A business may buy goods from out of state, but they
overwhelmingly sell to local customers. While inter-state and global
businesses ARE being served by the Internet, LOCAL businesses are not!
It is NOT efficient, in terms of user or system resources, to
traverse the entire internet to get to Wendys.com headquarters and click a
bunch more pages to get back down to a local level, when the
infrastructure could just connect me to a local Wendys. Same for fire,
police, etc.
Most businesses don't want to get customers from outside their
business area. They don't want to ship, answer questions, or deal with
people who are out of state, much less in Japan or Argentina. I have
talked to some of these people, very successful local retailers. They
fear that if they put anything on the web, they will have to answer a lot
of e-mail, spin off a mail order division, and then compete with other
mail order businesses. They believe this split in their focus will be to
the detriment of their local customer base. They want local people to see
them on the web, see what they have, see when their local seminars and
sales are, then come in or maybe, just maybe, have a taxi cab driver or
local shopper pick up a list of named goods for them. That's It!
Local businesses don't care if other businesses in other states, or
even other towns, have the same name. And if they have a registered
domain name, they are irritated by traffic and e-mail intended for the
other businesses. Some will exchange URL's, others won't. I've seen them
on the web. By providing local names, you also remove a lot of the name
space congestion.
It is not economical to ship fresh baked pizza fresh baked pizzas
more than 50 miles, and they don't even want most of the 15 mile business.
Even the used auto dealers I spoke to have zero interest in selling
outside their market area, though some of them do span a wider distance.
(We were talking about what it would take to sell used California cars to
other parts of the country, where cars don't last that long, and don't
need the stringent California pollution standards.) They don't want the
hassle! And when they saw how many cars are on the net from all over the
globe, how you had no idea where any URL was coming from, they said that
for other than collector cars, it was FAR too complicated for their
potential customers (and them!) to attempt limit responding cars to their
area, Fremont California and a few towns up and down their side of the San
Francisco Bay. Same for two other auto dealers I spoke with last year.
(Now some are being forced into the web, but they have no idea how to
limit traffic to their trading zone.)
The same applies to nearly every local business, from accupuncturists
to wrecker services. They all have LOCAL businesses, and Don't Want out
of area business, much less global business.
> 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).
Most people have NO IDEA what latitude or longitude they are at, and
are not willing to spend the time nor money to find out! For the Average
Consumer, GPS data, unless the city starts writing it on all the curbs, is
worthless. (Yes, I looked into that for another business. The minute I
spoke of GPS, Latitude Longitude, I lost them.)
Transport businesses, now that is a different market, and they are
willing to pay a lot of information to get that, including renting
satellite transponders and special electronics packages with GPS
receivers. They want to know exactly where the truck is, and make sure
that it is on route to a destination, or being chased by police if it
isn't. I spoke with a company in that business earlier this year.
> > 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.
What is the purpose of the internet? Is it not to serve people?
Are local retailers served by being forced to deal with non-local
people on the internet?
How much do local businesses spend in advertising? How does that
compare with the cost of all the lower level DNS servers on the internet?
The purpose of DNS is to convert names to relevant addresses. For
some businesses, non-local addresses are just NOT relevant!
> 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
How many normal, non-techno-savvy people would be willing to spend $50
to $100 for an extra gadget they had to carry with them just to know where
they are? Not Many! For them, this is like saying the entire telephone
system must be operational, including the one in Washington DC, for a
person in Washington State to call a neighbor across the street.
> 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.
You are far more knowledgeable about how the existing caching name
server system works than I am. Can you understand what I am talking
about?
First, DNS is the system which provides name/address translation
information, so it is almost by definition, the system to modify. Local
HOST files are just a lousy substitution, but if done on a national scale,
this idea of putting words into HOST files could be sold on a national
level. (I am not a good sales person... Any sales type or advertising
agency want to join me on this venture?)
DNS forms an effective map that routes things, even if that map is
only of its own location. Fine, that is more or less what we want. It
migrates data up and down a network, and we want to be able to maintain
and serve that kind of data, but only in one direction. If you regulate
the number of hops, or the hierarchical level to which data rises, DNS or
something like DNS can then serve exactly this kind of purpose with very
minimal changes.
As to cost, there are businesses willing to pay money, enough money
to more than fund the changes that would give them the services they need
in order to join the internet age in a way that is meaningful to them and
their customers. It is called advertising... And advertising is sold on a
daily basis. This is just another way of putting a shingle out on a cyber
street.
Can you see how a simple change in the DNS system could give the
business world the localization that in desperately NEEDS to do their
LOCAL business? And do it in a way that does not upset those who need a
far broader exposure? There is far more local money waiting for local
electronic commerce than national money. There may be one Sun.com, but
there are tens of thousands of burger.loc's (or just plain burger,) and
cars.loc's waiting to almost literally shove money down anyone's throat who
would give them localized word/name service. (Though they may not quite
realize it yet.) If the web is here to serve these humans, they are
clearly not being served.
Am I getting through to you at all??? If it isn't DNS, then what is
it that can map and serve these people in a generic automated manner?
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