Slashdot Mirror
Phone Numbers Instead of URLs?
December writes "This story says Australian company Nascomms claims to be the first in the world to go online with numeric addressing [CT:TCP/IP uses numbers too, just not ones with area code ;)], in which telephone numbers are used in replace of the ubiquitous dot-com address.
Interesting idea, but in the business case, I could much more easily guess www.toyota.com then figuring out their phone number."
bango.net has been around for a while now. That said, it's based in Cambridge, UK and the only way I've heard it advertised so far is on the local radio...
I saw that and though - that just ain't right.
Perhaps now movies will have to make sure they don't show a real IP address or hostname, like the 555 numbers on all the tv shows.
(hangs head in shame of being the same species as Nascomms' executives)
I think I'm going to go kill myself now.
No, wait. I'll kill their VCs, then kill the patent office folks, *then* kill myself. If I'm going out, I might as well smite some evil along the way.
Uh-huh. I hope to god Nascomms doesn't try to patent this.
Check your damn links.
"Some analysts have questioned the value of a mass-market encryption product, suggesting that the odds of an email message being intercepted are infinitely smaller than the danger of compromising sensitive data stored on a lost computer or on a hacked Web server."
Big Brother locates evil citizen's SMTP & Server server. Big Brother points gun to server admins. Server admins give Big Brother evil citizen's e-mails.
Here Also another interesting hit I came up with was a article about a proposed .geo domain based on gridding the world and using those as domains...
I sneer at Nascomms, and fart in their general direction. Most of the reasons have been outlined already, so I'll make this comment more general in its scope.
The problem with this, as with myriad other 'solutions', is that it assumes that anything is better than IP4 and DNS. 'Bollocks' I say. If people wanted numeric addresses IP4/6 is perfectly suitable; it's as easy to remember and IP address as it is a phone number. However, people don't want numbers; they want something they can remember.
And if this is aimed at eliminating cybersquatting, what's going to happen when someone gets the phone number 7-11-7-11? How big a fight over 69-69-69 are we going to see among porn sites?
To sum up: half-arsed doesn't even begin to describe this idea.
That's no real good idea, because one server with one IP address can host many, many virtual webservers.
Names can be used to differentiate between (vrtual) webservers, while IP numbers can't.
That's just a way to display it easily for those puny humans. An ip is a number between 0 and 4294967296 (inclusive)
Doh! Thinko. Thnx.
"We expect that figure to grow incredulously over the next few months," Nacomms general manager Siobhan Dooley told ZDNet.
Silly Aussie. It's really too bad somebody with a great name like "Siobhan" said something so bizarre and stupid.
Incredulous:
Skeptical; disbelieving: incredulous of stories about flying saucers.
Expressive of disbelief: an incredulous stare.
So the figure is going to grow in such a manner that it can't believe itself. Wow. English is fun.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Except that with cell phones that functionality changes a bit. Figure out how to power on this model of phone. Oh, type is some security code. Dial the phone number. Is it calling? No. OK now what button do I push on this phone to make it dial. OK, Send, Talk, Pound?
It's not hard to use a cell phone, even someone else's, but it is hardly standard.
I agree that the proposition is completely backwards: we should be replacing phone numbers with urls, and not the ohter way around...
how aboutl "
"phone://voice.company.com/department/person.te
ok. har har.
Apparently they were thinking about portable phones and w@p services. Their point was that it is easier to tap numbers on a phone than words. which is true. but i think phones will evolve a bit in the next few microseconds to make such an idea unnecessary.
IMHO, if you have screen realestate big enough to comfortably browse for information, there is a way to fit some kind of intelligent input system that would make it easy to type, at least an URL.
T9 software is already pretty neat, and things will get better.
if you are interested in typing efficiently in small spaces:
T9
FITALY
BAT
FAQ
so, i don't think alternative URL systems are necessary. rethinking cellphone input is, however.
adrien cater
boring.ch
Point and Grunt
This idea of using an E.164 address instead of a cryptic and easy to forget name like slashdot.org has some merit. There is a patent in there somewhere, I know it.
Don't you think that all this hype around DNS nowadays show that DNS maybe isn't the best solution? Or at least not the way we use it today, with the few top-level domains...
There are some standard answers to this that
we've heard a lot recently:
1) Get rid of top-level domains altogether
Sure... But this won't make the battle for domains
go away, right? Rather make it tougher.
2) Make use of higher-level domains more extensively
Great idea, but we'll never convince corporations. If they come up with a great product/service/whatever they will want the domain-name for that as well as for their company, and a dozen more...
3) Make the top-level domains completely free
Like alternative number one, right? Only shift the fight one step to the rigth.
4) And so on...
What I would like to know is if someone is thinking of alternative ways to resolve names to addresses. No, I don't mean the alternative ("rouge") DNS:es, but completely new ways! Decentralized preferrably. Built around mechanisms similar to Freenet perhaps?
Anyone?
So when I relocate and get a new number, or when the telco changes it for me (3 times in the last 5 years I think for some parts of the UK), what then?
The whole idea is so ludicrously crap it's actually quite funny! It's really just another dereference on top of DNS, so where we now have DNS->IP, one of these addresses is NUMBER->DNS->IP. Now how pointless is that?
There were a few cases of late where people were actually "typosquatting" on phone numbers like 1-800-FL0WERS (note the zero) and 1-800-MATRESS. You'd think that people could learn to spell seven-letter words correctly, but I guess you can never underestimate the stupidity of the American consumer base...
For more information, click here.
While many companies may have similar names, but dissimilar URL's, finding them online can be hard. If you have a brochure or manual with a service phone number (or any number, really), you just punch that in on the address line and viola!
OK, and if you had the brochure/manual handy, what is stopping you from punching in the web address from it?
Doesn't this idea sound like something a Dilbert PHB would say? "Hey, I have an idea! Let's refer to web pages by number instead of by name!", to which the only response is "Must control...raging...fist...of death!".
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Why would we revert and use IP numbers. The current system in place was made so that we DON'T have to use numbers when we want to connect to a computer on the net. Hrmmm wonder what they were thinking.
First we picked up the earpiece and said, "Operator, connect me with Hilltop 6-2472." Then we had dials, so we could dial HI6-2472 ourselves. Then someone realized that letters were no easier to remember than numbers, so we went to seven digits. Somewhere around that time is when people thought of sticking the name of their business in the 800 numbers. As for the Internet, there were names early on, back in .arpa days. First there was a manually updated hosts file on every machine (!), then someone gave birth to DNS. The WWW had nothing to do with it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
A good phone service would be a voice recognition which lets me say in effect that I want to talk to Joe Blow in Detroit.
Some mobile phones allow you to do this with numbers in their internal phonebook.
I had a friend who's office's voicemail system worked this way too. You would say "Victor Thompson" and it would figure out whose mailbox to use. He told me that some of his coworkers (with strangely spelled names) you had to guess a few times before you pronounced it the way it through. One guy nobody ever figured out how to say it right. (You could always fall back on some kind of numeric addressing scheme (like spell the name using the keypad, I'd guess))
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Easy. It's 1-800-TOYOTA-1
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Preaching to the choir here, but using an analogy: ;-) - it's because symbolic names are a lot easier to remember! Heck, it's the reason we use higher level languages ... it's much easier to say angle = dot( vec_a, vec_b ) then some long stream of bin/hex digits.
:= One long ip address.
There is a reason assembly language programmers prefer to use mnemonics instead of memorizing hex values (while memorizing the 6502 or 80386 opcodes is the hallmark of a true comp sci geek
One will notice the phone numbers are broken down into small numbers that we can "chunk" quite nicely: 3 digits, 3 digits, 4 digits
Most sane people don't memorize the first X digits of pi, we compress it down into one symbol. Same for any other "constant."
Notice how we use url's to do the same thing. One domain name
Even better, write a whole service for it, call it "Damned Numbers Service", or DNS for short, and...wait, nevermind. I see someone has done it. Sorry!
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Considering future replacement of the phone system by Voice over IP, it would be better to replace phone numbers by IP addresses instead (and then use IP addresses instead of domain names and just abolish DNS). Maybe I should patent that idea.
Seriously, using numbers instead of names is backwards and has been made outdated when DNS was invented long ago.
And how many companies try to get a phone number that spells out their name using the letters on each button?
I personally find this a pain, as it is easier for me to dial a number than the letters.
I submitted this story as well, yet it got rejected. I'm not trying to bitch or moan or whine here, but for purposes future reference, what sets submissions apart? Possibly he submitted it before me (my assumption), but I dunno. Anyone got any tips here?
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
First of all, fix that link. I know it's a sign of intelligence to make sure only the smart ones can read the article but some people on /. aren't that bright.
.com's don't exist. Now I have to find the phone number for Qwestdex, but how do I find it on the internet if I don't know where to look in the first place?
:-)
From the aricle: Web users just need to plug in the ISD and regional code, followed by the phone number of a company with a registered numeric address, and its Web page will be brought up. Oh, is that all? So I just have to figure out where the server is located that I'm connecting too, then I just have to find the phone number. Go to Qwestdex.com. Oh wait a sec,
It was said before, but it needs to be restated. There are these numerical thingies called IP addresses. They're 32 bits long and every server on the internet has a unique one. Hmm... sounds like what they're proposing has already been done. It's a lot easier to find www.google.com than to try and remember 64.208.32.100. I think they're trying to re-invent the wheel, but it's looking more like a Firestone
"You'll die up there son, just like I did!" - Abe Simpson
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Why would I want everyone who visits my homepage to know my phone number?
I'd much rather have a small keyboard on my phone and type in a url or IP to ring someone rather than have to remember their area code (ha!) and phone number - phone numbers are obsolete. You type them into the config once and forget em :-)
Does anyone still call friends anymore? Or just ICQ?
First we had phone numbers. Then we invented Vanity numbers because 1800-NUMBERS is just better to remember than 1800-686-2377. Then the WWW allowed us to use convienient names such as www.company.com, and to make it even easier things like internet keywords came up because some URLs still were hard to remember. So for what reason should we ever step back to using numbers again? Any rational explanation?
Hmm well, I'll surely enjoy people trying to remember my IPv6 address in a couple of years - come visit me at 12FB:8A6F:73E4:55E4:DEAD:C0DE ... maybe I'll make it sooo much easier to remember my site address by giving them www.1234761234124612346.com ... sounds good...
M
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
It seems to me that this company completely missed the point of how to integrate phones and the web -- which IMHO is to map the telephone number to the web site using the phone as a browser. Emerging standards such as VoiceXML (and MS's own WTE "standard"), platforms such as WebSphere's Voice SDK, and service providers like Voxeo all make it easy to map a phone number to a URL using the telephone as the browser. At the risk of being self-serving, my article on this went up today on oreillynet.com http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/11/28 /voxeo.html
Bottom Line: Phone numbers are for dialing; web addresses are for surfing.
I would hope the patent offices would refuse this patent, based on the prior work of many online phone books where you can enter a phone number and get info on businesses, including their web page.
This is far from a new idea.
Ether that or the company could just publish thier server's IP address.
The lack of semantic information in phone numbers has very real implications. For example, it's easy to distinguish between http://www.sexshoppe.com and http://www.holyangelschurch.org because of the semantic information in each URL, but if the Sex Shoppe's phone number is 555-1234 and the phone number of Holy Angels Church is 555-1235, there's nothing in the phone number to tell you that the number you are about to dial to book your wedding, will, because of a single-digit transcription error, result in a rather interesting conversation with somebody whose expertise is likely to be far more useful during the honeymoon than during the ceremony.
Works for me! It would put a quick stop to this "new area code" nonsense, too, given 26^10 possible "numbers" in the identifier space. /. just had a review of his Stranger In a Strange Land, it seems valid to bring it up here.)
(Since
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
Yes, simplistic web for simple people!
"Hey it told me to insert $1.25 for the next minute, next thing I know my floppy drive wont work..."
This is perhaps the worst idea I've ever heard in my life, not only would I have to memorize phone numbers, I'd have to goto my phone to see which letter is which if I wanted to visit 976 BOOTY CALL
Considering the number of points of contact to the internet, any numerical system would likely need 12 digits or more anyways. So why not just use ip addresses?
So now I can look up one giant string of numbers and get another giant string of numbers. Joy. Oh wait, I'm being a cynic... nope, wait, still seems silly.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
This could be useful in that it would compliment the current domain system. If say you only had the phone number.. or a telephone book listing that didn't have url, it would make it easier to get more information about a company or product. As well.. you wouldn't ever really run out of numbers because they are all unique area coded numbers.. could be cool but most likely will fizzle into nothing.. what if you got a girls number at the bar? you could use that to go look up her webpage or something.. hehe
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
um.. no. They aren't going to be putting www.somenumber.com - that would be a standard domain. it will likely be http://1.555.555.5555 or posibly in reverse.. like current domains.. http://suffix.prefix.areacode.countrycode When it comes to directories.. we have a tonne of them for numbers.. it makes sense to have these same directories cross over the web with no effort. Anyone who fails to see the usefulness of this is not looking hard enough or thinking straight. This would be cool.
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
Think about the usefulness of this with handheld devices.. most are easier to enter number then letters, especially in the case of a web enabled cell phone.. you could just dial someone and have the option to go to their webpage, or voice.. or have voice enable website that are hosted on the net.. and no long distance charges because your actually dialling an address on the net.. there are a million possibilities here.. numbers are the universal language.. no more language/domain name problems as a result.. i'm i the only one seeing how cool this could be?
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
There are so many things this would be good for... 1. Hand held devices Think of how easy this would be on your web enabled cell phone - it's much easier to dial a number than type in a web address. This little change in the way we refer to sites could really kick off the mobile web device trend. 2. Language barriers. Numbers are the 'universal language' no more language hassles and no more regulation hassles cross border. The phone numbering system is already out there.. it's already laid out. 3. Long distance? nope. Your dialing a number in hamburg, from new york - long distance charges incurred? nottta... because your actually on your web enabled handheld device and it's all going over the internet. 4. Little to no effort to migrate. Literaly 100's of thousands of telephone directories exits - does it not make sense to continue making use of these huge volumes of information? The good old phone number would easily adapt to double duty.. and more. 5. Think of all those future sci-fi movies.. Come on now.. in the future are we all going to type in www.something.com? not likely.. that system is subject to all sorts of problem that will grow exponentially as the global community comes together.. you know all your friends numbers.. now you will know more. 6. The combining of all communications. Analogue communications are basicly gone. I work the for the second largest telecommunications company in Canada, 80% of our netowork is data, not voice, simply because voice is now carried over data lines in many situations. Extending the use of phone numbers to data systems is only logical. In the future, calling a buddy may mean reaching their/a computer. and then from their you could have the option to message them, email them, fax them, talk to them voice, or access other information.. no more email, voice mail, fax.. it could all be in the same place. True nerds will instantly see the merit of this system over the current one..
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
oh.. of course it would also put paid to my practice of looking up the phone number of a company on the website...
- real no : +44 20 7555 1234
- reversed : 4.3.2.1.5.5.5.7.0.2.4.4.tpc.int
- direct fial : 442075551234.idd.tpc.int
mechanisms exist to allow the last format to be automatically translated by the dns server that is authoritative for idd.tpc.int to the second format, which has the property of containing routing information heirarchically in a way that the DNS already supports, allowing me to have a UK server (authoratative for 4.4.tpc.int) or a london server (0.2.4.4.tpc.int) handle them.this could be resolved into web addresses by just having an A record that points from a www. companies reversed phone number
all this needs is more people to look at existing RFCs (e.g. 1530 - operation, principles and practice - and have a look at the phone company's web site to find out more.
anyone got any good ideas how else to use this domain?
-- andrew international ? consonants : http://grkvlt.blogspot.com/
Now, if they want to invent something useful, then please give us domain names in Unicode instead, so that I won't have to mutilate my letters to fit the DNS.
Bzz. Thanks for playing.
PS, if I use anonymizer, its WAY off.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It ASKS you for your zip code.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I don't think that I could remember my favorite five websites if they were numerically addressable. I understand the point that trying to memorize a bunch of web addresses can be difficult, but it seems like making them from phone numbers is taking a step backwards.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
there's nothing stopping people from registering things like 555-1212.com for example.. right now!
Well, I don't know about Austrailia, but that wouldn't work for America (USA, Canada, or Mexico) I know in USA we use the format of ###.###.#### which would be 3 octets +1. Also, no numbers could start with 0, 1, 2, 911, 411, etc.. so, of course this is a bad idea! I didn't even get into the privacy issues!
witty sig goes here
Couldn't there also be a Name System where typging a more easily remembered word sequence would look up the number for you. Then those with porrer memories could use that but the "phone number" would be constant for that site as well.
Before ICANN or ICANT rules on it, I am going to have my lawyer copyright my PHONE NUMBER. Be damned if I am going to let some schmuck get it!
ESI addressing uses the telephone number coupled with operator and authority codes to create a unique address - its pretty widely used - I think X25 uses it, and ATM and ipv6 can both use it. As its simple to overlay onto the telephone network it makes sence that this will be key in the use of ipv6 in the future.
--
Lauren Child, lauren@laurenchild.net
The one way I can see this actually working, is by implementing this as a new retrieval protocol. For example, in our browsers, we can use HTTP:, FILE:, FTP:, etc, as methods of accessing a resource.
Where a phone numbering scheme becomes useful, is when wanting a direct connection to another machine for specific purposes, such as having an app which can communicate using the VOIP: protocol (as an example), and connecting to a user or company.
For example, again, we could have VOIP:1900AURORA as a URI to get to a company's switchboard, or VOIP:1900AURORA/259 for extension 259 or VOIP:1900AURORA/Connections for new customer connections.
This could be implemented using a plug-in into your browser, or a completely separate app which knows about the VOIP: access method.
Admittedly, phone number addressing schemes is a step backwards, but once we see the integration of netpliances on our fridges, tv's, etc, this may actually be useful, where a software handler will be able to communicate with any type of service it knows about.
IPv6 already has a similar scheme to area codes; the address space is divided in a hierarchial fashion and delegated to regional authorities. RFC 1881 has more information on the address space for IPv6.
Would IPv6 also qualify as prior art for the patents they have pending?
dtach - A tiny program that emulates the detach feat
The whole purpose of URL's IMHO is to make sites easier to find. I mean, just because this can be done what is a practical use for it when the system that we and everyone else uses is in fine shape. Maybe the Aussies' have a better idea of what is good for the net but maybe they just want to say "Hey. look at we learned how to do."
www.droppingdimes.com
Most companies have what they call vanity phone numbers (1-800-444-4000). In other words very simple numbers that are easy to remember. ARIN distributes only blocks of IPs to the ISPs. In which case businesses only vanity IP phone #s would be limited to their ISP.
The link seems to be: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20001128/tc/will_p hone_numbers_replace_urls__1.html
I can't see how this is a good thing for corporations which typically would have many many numbers, across the various geographical areas in which they do business. But for home users?
There might be something there... think of how many phone numbers you have stored in your head for friends and family... or even the local video rental place. It's POSSIBLE that there may be some benefit to having numeric addressing for those types of addressing interactions - it's certainly easier for me to remember the phone number for a family member than some convoluted URL string.
Then again, the fact that I keep all my important URLs bookmarked means I barely remember how to get to slashdot manually anymore, let alone some second-cousin's "mexico trip photos" web page.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
Heyyyyy... that wasn't offtopic, that quote is from the article. =P
so the phone number for my lease line is.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
1) Local businesses that just want to use their website to advertise a storefront rather than be an e-business. Assuming some sort of directory was set up to list websites starting with (555)555- or something, you'd know what was local. Or if you searched for a certain type of store you'd know by the URL where the store was located.
2) Personal homepages would certainly be a plus, although you'd run into lots of privacy issues--you don't necessarily want everyone who knows your URL to know your home phone number.
Companies that are named with their phone number, like 1-800-CONTACTS certainly wouldn't have a problem anyways... not that CONTACTS is a number... crap
I am interested in the implications of this for web surfing, I know that I will load up a page, see some links of it and follow them off the site, but if you were directly connected to this company's web site I would suspect that they wouldn't act as a ISP so could you actually follow links of their site? Travis
Leg Godt!
"We expect that figure to grow incredulously over the next few months," Nacomms general manager Siobhan Dooley told ZDNet.
I just don't believe it either.
Better the pride that resides in a Citizen of the world, than the pride that divides when a colourful rag is unfurled
Does that mean that I will have to pay to see sites across the country? Toll free websites?
Great I bet local long distance will be more expensive!
I can see it now...."Hello Mr. Smith, would you like to change your long distance internet carrier? Its now only 10 cents a hit!"
In order for this to somehow work, we would all have to be issued a "Internet Yellow Pages" book that mapped every website to its numerical equivalent, updates to this book would be so frequent, we'd probably run out of trees in a few years. What a pain it would be to have to grab the 50 pound "Internet Pages" that I'd have to keep next to my computer just to get to a specific sites numerical equivalent. Even if a complete "Internet Pages" directory was kept online, it would still be a pain to have to look up the numbers everytime I wanted to go to some site I didn't know the number for.
Certainly, the current DNS isn't perfect, but it is functional and preferable in my mind to this alternative. What I think does make pretty good sense, is the type of system that RealNames has implemented. Similar in concept to the AOL keyword (bear with me here), this actually works fairly well. For instance, in a recent version of Internet Explorer, type Madonna in the URL field. This will bring you directy to www.madonnamusic.com (nicely designed site BTW). If this type of system were to be implemented in an "open" fashion, it may actually work quite well.
It's pimp-o-rific The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
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or maybe you are from outside the US and just didn't get the reference...
I think that careful URL assignement in conjuction with the new
Let's imagine something like :
http://anton.deauville.normandie.france.name
Does it link to Jenny?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Did you try dslreports.com yet? Check to see if it gets your zip code right. However, when I visit the site at the college computer lab, it doesn't have a clue (the IP of every machine is users.nat.wit.edu).
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Why say "double-u, double-u, double-u" when "world wide web" is faster (9 vs 3 syllables)?
.com for them.
Ah, well, with people I know to be computer-literate, I leave off the http://www. part. They know it's there. With computer-illiterate people, they'd probably type in worldwideweb.foo.net. It's quite handy for them that NS (and IE?) can put in http://www. and
Does my bum look big in this?
using a phone number instead of a dot com name would be more difficult for the average surfer to figure out but in a few applications this would make sense.
For instance, with dot com names getting as criptic as they are now, on a business card or any other advertising media, it would attract attention as well as practically eliminating one thing to memorize.
Another application would be for customers using a web site for online ordering and checking to status of their order. They already have used to phone number to do this previously, why not use the same number for the web address?
I think in some unique circumstances it makes sense.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
...because it might get rid of all this stupid copywriting of domains nonsense, as well as associating a specific media venue with a specific word. I mean, could you imagine Nike suing somebody over a series of digits?
The closest I could find to a problem would be if William Shatner couldn't get "911", but that's it.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Maybe you should have tried it in nemerical format ;)
These guys seem to sound very much like those "Culture guys" who would make people keep doing ancient tedious and irrelevant stuff in the name of keeping our cultures alive.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Remember that stupid movie from 95 with Sandra Buttock where at a given moment the following IP address is used : 24.75.345.200 ?
Thank you. But your range contains one too many integers to be represented by a 32 bit number. I think you meant "between 0 and 4294967295 (inclusive).
Some ideut moderator has overrated-ised the original post anyway.
--
The web is anything on the internet sent over HTTP, ideut.
--
This is a big step backwards! My machine already has a number to get to the web, and so does every other one. Mine is 64.188.195.210, but it has a name too, because that number is bloody hard to remember! I'm bad with numbers, and have a terrible time remembering phone numbers. I look forward to a time when I can use people's names to contact them (e-mail, instant messages, irc, etc.), instead of these daft numbers. I suspect this company will do rather badly
JoshuaTerradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
My god, the pron sites would just *love* that.
But at least it would be step in the direction of building upon the DNS system. And it would be a step in the direction of taking phone numbers to a higher level -- off the top of my head, instead of calling and leaving a message you use a phone number the same way you use email.
---------- You are not the contents of your sig.:-p
I guess every one loves SPAM. Even to a URL.
Meddle not in the afffairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with catsup.
Ok, anyone know that phone number? It's some company's phone system menu where option 7 is a duck sound then hangs up...can't remember the number though; isn't that what DNS was all about, associating names with numbers, not the other way around? Though I still think the email-fax gateway is neat, that's about all it should be for; that's what it was designed for. (Bad grammer, I know)
Yes, you're missing something -- it's that little blurb after the first-to-use-numeric-blah-blah-blah. They claim to be the first to go onling with numeric addressing using phone numbers. Of course, IPv6 has already done this, before them, in addition to tpc.int. Maybe the first in Aussie-land, but not in the world.
For example, a phone of 1-630-555-1234 would have been at the IP 4.3.2.1.5.5.5.0.3.6.phone
This has been done for many years at the tpc.int domain, which is used for free internet faxing.
P.S. Points to anyone who knows who TPC rep "Mr. Arlington Hewes" is.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
So there you are wanting to spam the NSA, and Gosh Darn It! you find they are Ex-Directory? Now how do you get a few minutes fun?
I already do this! For my semi-private website, Since I have not registered a domain name yet, I simply give out the IP. Now, here's the kicker, WHen people look at me funny, all I have to do is invoke the 'phone number' analogy. "Just think of it as my internet, or international phone number" Reasons why this works 1. It looks like it could be an international phone number 2. It is already grouped in a memonic format (small groups of memorizable sets) 3. It is unique 4. 'Phone numbers' are not scary or intimidating to the uninitiated (My Mother n Law figured it out) Future expansion When IPv6 comes around, if a letter gets added to the phone number, well, people already understand that you can 'dial' a letter. The only new concept is that the 'letter' won't be equal to a number I'm not saying that DNS is bad, go ahead and register names, but the underlaying system is still very appropriate. All that is required is the proper 'spin' on what they are. I fully expect to someday have a domain name registered which will lead one to my public site and contact channels, however I also fully expect to keep an unlisted 'number only' contact channel that is for semiprivate use. In this case, I will be simply handing out my 'internet phone number' in the form of the IP of my direct communications server. Thanks for reading Backpack
I think that it is totally ridiculous that a company would think to assign phone numbers and area codes to replace URLs. Seeing for many the web is a research tool, giving sites phone numbers is like listing encyclopedia entries by an arbitrary numerical system.
Ahem, http://www.slashdot.org resolves to 64.28.67.48 or in other words 0x401C4330 in hex
And this turns into a long IP address such as 1075594032 in decimal...
Ph34r the person who has the phone number (107) 559-4032 because YOU my friend get to have slashdot as your website...
Try it... (or maybe thats Rob's phone number, but I doubt it) http://1075594032/
Frankly, I'm staggered by just how many of you miss the point. All too busy laughing at the idea and making erroneous analogies with IP numbers I suppose. I'm not saying it is an amazing idea, and I agree in some ways it is a backward step, but it has at least one very important feature. Say I want to locate the web site for a company. Not a large company like Amazon, or IBM, but a relatively small company. The kind likely to have some crappy Geocities site, or at the very least one not likely to have a guessable name. I can easily look up the phone number for the company using directory assistance if I like. I can then simply plug this in and be forwarded to their website. There's no repository of IP numbers I can phone up and ask for the IP number for Company X. So I think the idea does have some merit - assuming you get lots of people using it, and using it soon. Ultimately web search engines/domain names would make such a system redundant.
It's really very unhealthy to be concerned about how people think of an IPv4 address. You should prefer to smack yourself in the head with a bat.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Here's the link (no, it's not goatsex :). This seems kind of going backward - I mean the whole idea re fqdn is for us humans to not have to deal w/ numbers, yes?
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I have a theory that even phone numbers will go to the wayside in the 5-10 year range. Seriously, why should I have to remember Joe Blow's phone number? A good phone service would be a voice recognition which lets me say in effect that I want to talk to Joe Blow in Detroit. The system then would do the dirty work of resolving this into a phone number. Just as we think it is antiquated how our grandparents had to ask an operator to connect the wires to make a call, or use a party line, I believe remembering phone numbers will a thing of the past in the near future.
I'm rambling just a little, but the point is that the future involves letting machines do what they do well... dealing with number. Let us humans do what we do well, interconnnecting concepts. Names have better hinges to concepts than numbers for most of us.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
the phone is the ideal standard for usability
The book "The design of everyday things" talks a bit against this.
Do you know how to transfer a call to another phone? Do you know how to do it if you are not in your company system?
What are # and * for?
The basic stuff can seem easy but it may get very hard.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
like 1-900-ENCOEUR for example.
If you want to find good "name" for your telephone number, try http://www.phonespell.org/ it's pretty funny and works well.
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
First of all, by the time I'd loaded the page, I'd already mentally composed the obligatory joke about how maybe this could be supplemented by a global directory system that would associate names with the numbers, so you wouldn't have to remember them; it could even be built into the applications, so you would just type the name and have it automatically look up the number... but I see it's been done too many times already.
Your first point (Local businesses that just want to use their website to advertise a storefront rather than be an e-business) is interesting, though, in that this problem has been one of my biggest gripes all along. Most of us seem to agree that DNS is suffering under the "pollution" of the "com" TLD, which is even spilling over into "org" and "net". I think a large part of the problem is the fact that these global domains flatten everything into a single namespace, which is ironic since DNS' original solution to the namespace problem was to make it hierarchical.
If a local business just wants to advertise in its area, why should it have to have a unique name in a flat global namespace? It then has to hope that its name has not been "taken" by a big company, a more-ambitious startup, another local business somewhere else, a porn site, etc. This leads to the crowdedness which has given us the "aridiculousnumberofwordsconcatenatedtogether.com
Even among the startups, there are lots that are geographic-region-specific -- they even specifically advertise the fact that they concentrate their service in that area (supposedly making it better than the others whose efforts are spread so much thinner). And yet, they use the same global namespace, making their names even messier by mushing the region in. I've lived here all my life, but I'm not arrogant enough to think that the San Francisco Bay Area is the only area in the world near a bay who residents call it "the Bay Area", and yet we have "bayarea.com".
I've always thought we should use the existing country and region domains for things that are region-specific. Then, "bayarea.com" could be "bayarea.ca.us", "bajobs.com" could be "jobs.sfba.ca.us", and a little mom-and-pop store in Berkeley could be "mom-and-pop.sfba.ca.us" or "mom-and-pop.berkeley.ca.us" without having to worry about collisions with "mom-and-pop.nyc.ny.us", etc. The argument is, of course, that people have been conditioned to think that "website" is synonymous with "something dot com", and would be afraid of anything with more than one dot. I don't know that that's true, though: people can understand phone numbers with area codes, postal addresses with ZIP codes, etc., and I think most would automatically recognize their region code as being analogous, so if local sites advertised with it, it would begin to seem natural. For some reason, though, they are not popular. What makes this phone-number thing interesting is that it puts a novel spin on the idea, which could poularize it, even though it's not really any better.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Your IP address would change because of an area code split?
Joseph W. Breu
There's a Cambridge (UK) company called bango.net thats been doing this for a while. Its the silliest idea I've ever heard of. Have a system for translating names to numbers and then layer a system for translating numbers to names on top of it. Doh.
This way we could look up the numbers online or in a great big book that would have all the phone numbers in the world.
Who thought this up? Was he pithed?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
But phone numbers ARE a bad system. Here in Dallas, TX, we've got a stack of area codes. These area codes have changed at least twice in the last 20 years. Looking at a telephone number with the 817 area code (mostly Ft. Worth and the mid-cities, including Arlington where I go to school) it's impossible to tell ahead of time whether or not I'm supposed to dial a 1 at the beginning. (Note that if I dial a 1, it costs more to complete the call across town than to California, but that's a different rant...)
Yes, this is do-able, but it's not elegant, and it's not simple. I, for one, HATE that horrible tri-tone thing that you get when you misdial a number, particularly because I'm usually using a headset on my phones.
If phone numbers were such a great system, why do we need a phone book? A computer provides a much richer user interface that a 12-key telephone. Why not use it? And people who are uncomfortable with computers aren't suddenly going to warm up to them because they can type in a telephone number.
URLs aren't perfect, but they're a damn sight better than phone numbers. Any user who can't operate Yahoo or Google is unlikely to want to use the computer for much of anything anyhow.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
ringmysite.com was earlier and is free.
Maybe I could write a program to associate a name with the number..
It makes sense. No more close approximations of the company name, no more .com/.org/.net confusion, no more wondering if it's hyphenated or not. And since the phone number had to be unique by nature, you get the right place every time.
Hell, even if it were only a re-direct to the regular URL, that would be something.
However, IMO the phone is the ideal standard for usability. Anyone with the least bit of technical savvy can buy a $20 phone (they even have them in supermarkets, of all places) plug it in, pick up the receiver, and dial people's phone numbers. Remembering the numbers is not the hardest part of the ordeal: even inexpensive phones have speed dial nowadays, and I don't go anywhere without my organizer and its phone numbers.
Compare this to using a computer. We all hate being disconnected on the phone, but that almost never happens when you compare it to using a computer. I can talk on the phone, walk around, and do all sorts of other tasks at the same time without the phone's performance being affected. (My attention span, on the other hand...) The look and feel of phones may differ stylistically, but the procedure is always the same: pick up phone, dial numbers. Compare that with the ever-changing UI standards of computer OS's, and the navigation controls on web pages that often puzzle newbies. "Press 1 for function x, 2 for function y,..." may sound annoying, but (i) we all know how to do this and (ii) frequent users don't even need to listen to the prompts any more.
Many Internet sites are realizing the ubiquity and relative reliability of the phone system. I can get my Yahoo! Mail by calling 1-800-MY-YAHOO. I can get weather forecasts from MIT by calling 1-888-573-TALK. Weather forecasts and a lot of other functions are available through TellMe (1-800-555-TELL). They're realizing that while the telephone isn't perfect, there is still a lot of functionality that it can carry out.
For more information, click here.
... at INET this summer, in Yokohama. Completely mad. Thinks numbers are more memorable than names, and his numbers are more memorable than IP numbers. So he wants to put a new addressing indirection layer on the Internet, to translate hopelessly unmemorable numbers into other hoelessly unmemorable numbers, so that people won't have to remember names. I expect his children are called 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Totally mad. Quite a pleasant guy to share a beer with, but...
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
First, they were 1-800-Flowers.
Then, they were (and are) 1800Flowers.com.
Would they be 1-800-Flowers again?
And would my numpad get phone-like letters applied to the keys? And would it be switched? But I digress.
Does this mean that http://911 will get me the police? This will bring trolling to a whole new level.
Ugh.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
I don't know, 1-800-DRUIDIA is pretty easy to remember. :)
-Michael
They use weird names for their nameservers that are like the ones you mentioned:
Numbers are great for routing, but when it comes to user interfaces, Names are the way to go. Making phone numbers as pointers to websites is as advancing as not using IP for 2nd Generation wireless.
...and so on... For many, a phone is becoming outdated technology. For us to remember an email address or a website no problem... for us to find a website or an email address... well there's google, 411 and maqpuest so that about covers finding almost any company or private informaton necessary.
The goal is to advance technology... not to regress to a bad system.
Unfortunately, this is the goal of the Geek, not the goal of business. The goal of business is to make money. This is commonly forgotten by geeks, and hence people point and laugh at the non-bisiness business model most web companies use.
Lets consider the technological make-up of the world today:
1. We have the 3rd world. Yes, these people are untapped "web" resources, but the reality is that a TRS-80 is considered high-tech for some of them. Whole towns don't have power, running water, and/or phones. Do you think that these people really care about reverse lookup DNS tables? These people are off of the eBusiness radar.
2. On the other extreme We have the Uber-geeks. These people are all about making everybodies lives easier - as long as they hold the secret knowledge as to how everything works. Why pay for a phone call, when you can email them? Why email them when you can ICQ them? why ICQ them when you can use voice over ip for free?
3. Then there are people like my inlaws... Who have internet access and a slough of questions, but don't care to listen. They waited patiently for 3 months until I was around over thanksgiving to remove a stuck CD becuase they didn't feel comfortable with a paperclip. Anyway, they can enter in a URL from the TV screen, but when toyota doesn't say www.toyota.com on their advertisement - they don't think to type it in. Some day they may figure it out - but I figure I'll have a few more trips out there before then...
4. People who aren't don't know anything about computers at all. There are actually a few people in business that still don't use a computer - and not all of them are auto mechanics. A lot of them are older, and very set in their ways. A phone number is a familiar item. They can punch it in and they know what they can expect to hear - someone from that company on the other end of the line. They can type it in on a computer, and amazingly it would take them to the website. Not only have you adapted current technology now to a familiar frame, but you have actively encouraged someone else to see your business model. This are the largest untapped but available customer base for online companies PTFMA.
In addition, a telephone crossreference fixes many problems with domain squatters, two companies with similar names/different prodcuts, and provides most of america with an existing directory structure to find the company they are looking for (the Yellow Pages).
Lastly, I personally prefer to shop locally when I can't get a better deal elsewhere. I could run through (617) business lines for the product I wanted. This would allow me to shop online - and have the convenience of doing so - but put the company close enough that if it broke, I could easily return it or exchange it.
anyways... phone numbers aren't a bad system - just one you wouldn't think to use given the current direction of technology. I however, see where this could be useful - and hence, profitable.
-
You say you want a revolution?
This reminds me of Realnames who tried to map "real names" to DNS names. They still exist but does anyone use it? In fact companies seem to prefer changing there real names to match their domains! Here in the UK a frozen food superstore changed it's name to iceland.co.uk.
This sounds very similar to Bango, which is aimed primarily at WAP users, where numbers make a bit more sense.
Works for me! You could start your browser and type "0" to bring up the directory. Then type in a business or person's name and get a list of possibilities, each with a number that can be clicked on.
Standard trademark laws would be in place. Coca-Cola probably has rights to be the only Coca-Cola, but Smith Consulting would need city information to help you whittle it down.
Then, like a memory-dial phone, you would bookmark your most commonly visited sites and forget the number.
It doesn't have to be a phone number. It just has to be a unique number, like, oh say, your IP address.
The naming system sounds good until you try to pick a unique name and let your business rely on people spelling it right, or working out your messy attempt at a unique name. If you were Smith Consulting what would you use? smith-cons.com? What did you get the first time you tried to find Via, id, or Diamond? These are national companies. Now try to find a local carpentry service.
Also, it can be embarrasing to make a messy URL when they are suppose to be so obvious.
I don't know how many people here pay attention to infomercials, but there is a large trend for them to register a domain so that their URL is http://www.800-123-4567.com with the phone number being the same that you dial or order over the phone. I don't see how they can claim they are the first to the patent office.
-no broken link
Indeed, and the related idea of embedding telephone numbers in extended addresses has long been used in the OSI world. See, for example, RFC1888.
The correct link is here.
On the other hand, for those using Altavista, or Lycos, or what have you, or who don't know how to properly refine a query, could have more difficulty. This could be a real boon for those people, as now you can simply look them up in the yellow pages.
Now whether or not we WANT those people to be able to use the Internet more easily is a question that goes beyond the scope of this post...
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Not quite sure what they are trying to achieve really.. The only phone numbers that mean anything to most people are 999 (or 911) and their personal phone numbers. Oh well.. another company that will be hyped up just before a share issue and then fade away like an ice cube in an oven.
I hardly think it merits a patent, but it does offer advantages over "http://123.123.123" and looks cleaner than "http://www.555-1234.com".
My mom is not a Karma whore!
It's also wrong.
An IPv4 address is a sequence of 4 numbers (bytes), grouped into sets of one.
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
I'm still waiting for the first person to send me such a 'cool new domain name'. Most Dutch people who wanted a domain simply got a .org/.net instead or asked a friend at some company to register it for them.
I wonder if people on working to get it to work the other way arround. It would be great to have to dial a .com address instead of having to remember a phone number.
Monkey sense
A UK Company had a similar idea selling off Bango (!) [TM] numbers to people with the intention of making URLS easier to type into mobiles.
Bango.net
They were selling them off at some stupid rates for small numbers - and for some reason they've dished out really attractive numbers to local companies - e.g. 12345 is a regional newspaper.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
I can nominate them for a potential failure at FuckedCompany.com. Should earn me some points!
That's just an amazing waste of ~$30/year. If I wanted a numerical way to see a website, I'd do like others have said and use the IP address. Besides, what kind of mess would we have if we ran out of these addresses? I live in Southern California, and we seem to split area codes every few seconds. They just want money, I can forsee them profiled here in the near future.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
So remember this when you're browsing. The websites can calculate your physical position right down to a 2-mile radius. That's more than close enough for an ICBM!
Big Brother is watching you, and he doesn't like what he sees...
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
already in existance just with URLs, this should make a real stack of them about the time we get another area code split in say, 805, and all those wonderful tables have to be changed.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Does my bum look big in this?
Score: -1, Redundant.
Separating the two concerns would give you a system where you have a two step resolution: human readable to location independent numbers, followed by location independent numbers to IP addresses. Such a split gives you a lot more flexibility on mapping the human readable names because you can change the mapping without having all the web pages that point to the affected hosts go bad.
Of course, these location independent numbers should not be phone numbers, since phone numbers do, in fact, change.
Numbers are great for routing, but when it comes to user interfaces, Names are the way to go. Making phone numbers as pointers to websites is as advancing as not using IP for 2nd Generation wireless.
The goal is to advance technology... not to regress to a bad system.
Corrected link: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20001128/tc/will_p hone_numbers_replace_urls__1.html
I seem to recall an article involving the relative difficulty of getting to a web site as compared to dialing a telephone. At the time, "web tone" was a hot buzzword. Many companies were using it to describe what they saw as the ideal user experience for the web - it should work as easily as a telephone.
Except that when you think about it, telephones are pretty damn hard to work. Buy a cheap US$20 phone in a department store. Plug it in. To dial, you have to lift the receiver, wait for the dial tone, then punch in this obscure sequence of ten (in the US, anyway) digits. If you don't know what they are, you have to look them up in a book, or call another number to ask someone. If you misdial, you run the risk of bothering some shmuck in his living room. Etc. The point of the article being, phones aren't as easy to use as everyone seems to give them credit for. We've just been using them since we were kids. Come to think of it - no kid I know who's been using the web for any period of time thinks it needs to be that much easier to use.
And of course, this neglects an obvious question: what happens if you have to change your phone number?
Actually, so far as I know, the very first time this was done was in about 1993, when Marshall Rose and Carl Malamud introduced a really interesting free fax gateway network at Interop, back when it was the *only* Internet show. Their setup is documented in RFCs 1528, 1529, and 1530, which precede 2916 by a fair amount. :-)
.int registered) was designed to let the then-new MIME deliver a TIFF/F format file via e-mail to a fax machine accessible to a remote fax server.
The system, called tpc.int (which was only about the fifth or sixth
Shortly after it was launched using the awkward backwards phone number with every digit separated by a dot syntax, someone (and his name escapes me for the moment) hacked up a special DNS zone to eliminate the extraneous dots and reverse the number. This system is still in use today at tpc.int, where you can already address tpc.int servers by phone number the same way you have for over seven years.
If you've got some spare cycles and a lightly used phone line lying around, and unmetered local access, you should consider setting up a tpc.int server for your area. It's fun, and you'll learn a lot about MIME, mail processing, and neat DNS tricks in the process...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
"Your access is important to us. Please hold.", "We're sorry, the URL you are trying to reach is busy." and "We're sorry, the number you have typed is out of service. Please disconnect (from the Internet) and try your number again. This is a recording."
---
crap.
ahh crap this is a net number...
----
... And our phone numbers should be replaced with domain names/ip addresses. I think that's what the future will bring, seeing as email and chat rooms are becoming more and more popular... Not to mention that house phones will be replaced by wireless...
--
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Here is the article.
--
Wife: Hon? It's still busy...
Husband: *snicker* Keeeeep tryin'. Call again.
Wife: (dialing aloud) 1-2-7, 0, 0, 1... damn! Busy!
Husband: Dear, I gave you the number earlier. You're the one who wanted to eat at Chez Expensif. Why didn't you make reservations?
Wife: I've been dialing ALL DAY!!!
See RFC2916 This describes how to map E.164 numbers (telephone numbers) in the DNS. The primary purpose is so that you can email your phone (for example), but there is nothing to stop this system mapping a phone number to a WWW page. Unfortunately this RFC uses the existing reverse-DNS .arpa domain so the phone numbers are written BACKWARDS! Not very friendly.
Seriously, wouldn't the easiest way to accomplish this be to just turn off DNS
--Ty
"We expect that figure to grow incredulously over the next few months," Nacomms general manager Siobhan Dooley told ZDNet.
I, for one, am certainly incredulous about the growth prospects.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!