[ih] Funny how things work out

Tue Feb 2 19:13:20 PST 2021

> On Feb 1, 2021, at 18:12, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff at iconia.com <mailto:geoff at iconia.com>> wrote:
> 
> just curious john, 
> vis-a-vis Cardullos.com <http://cardullos.com/>: "Why weren’t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>?"
> 
> uhm, am curious to know just WHO would have done said asking?
> 
> furthermore vis-a-vis being asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>: 
> 
> that actually would have been Cardullos.boston.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ma.us/> -- as when JonP setup the .us domain (for which my system fernwood.mpk.ca.us <http://fernwood.mpk.ca.us/> was the first host/domain registered in it) he mandated/decreed that registrations in the .us domain take the form of name.city.state.us <http://name.city.state.us/>.

Well, actually no.  As I said Cardullos is in Cambridge. I wouldn’t rule out them opening a branch in Waltham or Canton or other Boston burb, but I doubt they would open one in Oak Park   ;-)

I realize it is impractical for a lot of reasons but it would be nice.

John
> 
> and the kicker was that the city part of the us domain was taken from the TWX city code list of answer back codes...
> 
> how does yours truly know this, one might ask?
> 
> confession: it was yours truly who provided JonP with said TWX city code list of answer back code list. 
> 
> geoff
> 
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 12:49 PM John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my pet peeve, not limiting a domain request to something reasonable. For example, there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They have Cardullos.com <http://cardullos.com/>. They are small, they will never be nationwide, let alone worldwide. Why weren’t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>?  Now who knows how many other businesses the greater Cardullo family has spread around the world. ;-) But there might be other more common names where taking a more localized domain name would be better and save all of the hassle and legal fees when world-wide Smith Co. finds out that that Smith.com <http://smith.com/> is owned by a plumber in North Dakota. (I have no idea who has Smith.com <http://smith.com/>, but you get my point.) ;-)  Look at MacIntosh:  computers, amplifiers, raincoats, an actual kind of apple, and who knows what all else!
> 
> John
> 
> > On Feb 1, 2021, at 15:55, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Dave,
> > 
> > I agree that the DNS was never intended as a searching mechanism.  It
> > has always done "lookup", converting strings into IP addresses.  
> > 
> > That's a view from the Technology side.  I was thinking as an end User,
> > where the History of the Internet looks somewhat different.
> > 
> > From the User side, DNS also, at first, provided two other mechanisms
> > useful for Users - Delegation and Organization.  Delegation solved Jon's
> > problem, spreading out the work for managing the namespace to multiple
> > people and organizations.  Organization provided a means of structuring
> > the namespace so that it made some sense to Users.
> > 
> > As a User, I knew that a school site likely ended in .edu, a company
> > site in .com, a US government site in .gov, etc.  So instead of
> > "searching", a User knowing that old simple DNS organization of the name
> > space could guess that MIT was mit.edu <http://mit.edu/>, UCLA was ucla.edu <http://ucla.edu/>, yahoo was
> > yahoo.com <http://yahoo.com/>, Social Security was ssa.gov <http://ssa.gov/>, etc.   Names were predictable,
> > guessing was reliable enough.
> > 
> > That organizational structure broke as the Internet grew, and name
> > collisions became common (like my examples).  The growth worldwide made
> > the US-centric domain choices less palatable, and the explosion of TLDs
> > has made it almost impossible to understand or remember the structure of
> > the namespace or the "name" of a particular site.   Guessing and
> > predicting has become much less successful for the Users, and
> > remembering, even short-term, almost impossible.
> > 
> > So, IMHO, DNS still does an admirable job of maintaining and operating a
> > distributed database translating between "names" and "addresses", and
> > provides the mechanisms needed for delegation.  But its utility to Users
> > has decayed over time as the Internet grew.  It's now a mechanism for
> > translating between two obscure (to Users) character strings, one of
> > which (IP addresses) they rarely see.   DNS mechanisms are still an
> > important part of the internal machinery of the 'net, but DNS names seem
> > no longer very relevant as part of the "Internet UI".   Names are just
> > an arbitrary stringofcharacters that you have little need to remember or
> > type.
> > 
> > Since Marketing cares mostly about Customers (Users), that's what leads
> > me to wonder when the marketing forces will recognize that paying lots
> > of money to "protect the brand" in the DNS namespace is still worthwhile
> > -- except to the companies charging for the naming rights.
> > 
> > /Jack
> > 
> > 
> > On 2/1/21 10:58 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> >> On 2/1/2021 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >>> Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
> >>> find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
> >>> names isn't helping.
> >>> 
> >>> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
> >>> simply become unusable and irrelevant.
> >> 
> >> The model you describe is for searching.  The DNS doesn't do that.  It
> >> does lookup. As already noted, there's a basic difference between
> >> being able to guess a string versus being able to remember a string. 
> >> There's also a difference between longer-term vs. shorter-term
> >> remembering.
> >> 
> >> The mnemoics of domain names is useful for shorter-term remembering
> >> and sometimes useful for longer-term remembering.  Since it isn't
> >> intended for searching, there shouldn't be any surprise that it's
> >> terrible for that function.  Always has been.
> >> 
> >> 
> >>> So, as a user, I don't really care any more what the DNS "web address"
> >>> is, whether asiangarden.gv or 19876.weirdname.whatever.something.   I
> >>> never remember those, and never type them in anymore.
> >>> 
> >>> That's why I'm wondering if DNS and TLDs and all the name structure is
> >>> worth all the trouble anymore.  It's still useful as a level of
> >>> indirection to separate "names" from IP addresses that may change.   But
> >>> as a mnemonic for Users, it's devolved over time to become useless.  At
> >>> least for me...maybe other Users too?
> >>> 
> >>> I wonder when the "brand defenders" will realize this...funny how things
> >>> work out.
> >> 
> >> What you describe has always been true.  The problem has been the
> >> re-application of long-standin (pre-digital) brand protection models
> >> to this very different world.
> >> 
> >> d/
> >> 
> > 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com <mailto:Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com>
> living as The Truth is True
> 
> 
> 