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Hostnames may be simple names consisting of a single word or phrase, or they may have appended a domain name, which is a name in a Domain Name System (DNS), separated from the host specific label by a period (dot). In the latter form, the hostname is also called a domain name. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname

Note that only in the case of an "example.com" hostname can it also be called a domain name (which should be taken to mean "a hostname within a domain," as opposed to a simple unqualified hostname). Try to connect to http://com/ or http://gov/ or http://edu/ or http://net/ and see where it gets you.

Hey I never knew that... http://com http://net http://org

(com redirects to me to cnet, net goes to net.com, and org goes to org.com)

that's how DNS works anyway

if nothing knows where bar.foo.com is, you have to ask a dns server, and it may propagate, asking stupid questions up the tree until it's asking the .com TLD where it should be

the only drawback to the /-only scheme is that you don't know what's a node and what's a file (or directory, which is just a file anyway) so you have to pass the whole remaining portion to the server

e.g., to resolve http://net/foo/bar/bazz/bletch

you ask your local DNS if it knows where net/foo/bar/bazz/bletch is, and it has to pass that whole string, instead of just the fqdn string bar.foo.net

but that would have put some of the onus for efficiency on URL designers, and we wouldn't have the enormously ugly abuse of URLs that we have now (gigantic database tag fields, passing of what are essentially control programs as URLs, etc), and we might have a better sessioning architecture because of it

Time to go register http://com/! Now half of the sites on the internet are subdomains of mine!

If you're nice to me, I might let you have http://net/.

On a side note (I assume the above is disallowed), would com.com, net.com, etc be the only places exempt from the sniping everyone's pointing out?

I appreciate that the DARPA teams are working in a different ballpark from your average garden shed RW team. But the same basic economic rules apply and looking at the web site the sense of deja vu is increased. If they've got these sponsors then power to them but yet again the www site is a little sparse on the subject. You need more than just a shared sense of rejection to make a business model.

Posted by michael on Wednesday January 01, @11:31AM
from the no-sense-of-humor dept.
tres3 writes "I stumbled across this

I went after the bold stuff. A simple enough mistake. Still, I'd suggest changing the format ... what's more important -- that michael posted this, or tres3 actually wrote it?

My reading comprehension is fine, when I apply it properly. A better resolution would be to remember to double (and triple) check everything before I make silly mistakes in public. I've made a few so far, and the year is only a few hours old :)