I would find these useful for displays on otherwise headless computers. If you have a rack full of servers, it's kind of nice to be able to walk up to the rack and see how they're all doing without having to pull up a console on each one or find a monitoring agent that's recording that information over the network. *shrug*
When she died, you missed her. The act of missing someone means that you tend to dwell on what memories you have of them. This tends to promote long-term storage of those memories.
It's kind of sweet, actually...
If she hadn't died, it's unlikely that you'd have held on to that memory.
I disagree with a number of things this poster came up with.
I've played Everquest off and on for about 2 years. I don't make a habit of jumping on between 9 and 11pm every night nor do I consider my online persona to be an extension of my real life one. I play it like a game, whenever I'm in the mood to go gaming.
I've talked (online) with a number of other players that I group with, and I haven't really found anyone that shares this author's attitude that Sony is evil and the game is just there to rip them off. They play because they enjoy it.
Sure, you are rewarded for the time you spend playing. I enjoy increasing my skill at crafts or hitting a new level and gaining strength and nifty new spells. People start to need you in the game, and it feels good to help others reach your level.
Whining that the game is sucking your life away is retarded. Don't play the damn thing if you can't control yourself. Cancel your account! For those reading this and thinking of avoiding EverQuest (or any MMRPG), please take all of this with a grain of salt. It's a game like any other, except that it never ends. There's plenty of things to do, places to explore and quests to perform, and if your character gets stronger and you get wiser along the way, so much the better.
Why do they need to provision one pair of copper when the DSL signal is carried over a different pair?
Maybe I misunderstood your original problem. A phone line consists of a single pair of copper. DSL re-uses that existing pair (the upper range of frequencies supported on this pair) to put data on an existing (presumably voice) line. But it almost sounds like you have one pair dedicated to voice and a second pair that you want to put DSL on, and you're objecting to the fact that they had to put a dial tone on this pair as well? Why couldn't they re-use the existing phone line? I'm a little confused, sorry.
First, I will save money, in both the long and short terms.
I guess it all boils down to the cost difference between a line of copper with dialtone and one without. Either you get local phone service (copper + dial tone + DSL), or you get additional charges to your DSL service to cover the cost and maintenance of the copper (copper + DSL).
I can see how a telco might try to make the case that the actual cost of a dial tone is trivial in comparison with the actual line, in which case you're probably going to be SOL, but it's certainly possible that you will get a slightly better deal out of it. It's also possible that the cost of a dialtone is 0 when you're already going to be connecting a line with DSL, in which case it's probably simpler (and cheaper) to bill it as local phone service. I don't know, though. I'd write them and see what they say.
If the Baby Bells hadn't had piss poor (or no) service since 1982
Which, coincidentally, is right when the government decided to start regulating the telcos, with the break up of the Bells and the first requirements for telcos to make their infrastructure available to competitors.
So more regulation is the solution?
my business had to buy a $12/month (okay, it was actually $20, since it's a 'business' line) line just to get DSL
What do you think DSL is carried over? Keep in mind there are multiple layers to a network here:
Physical layer - Copper wire Link layer - DSL/ATM (carried over copper) IP layer - Your ISP (carried over DSL/ATM)
Which of these do you think you should have to pay for? Just #3? Just #2 and #3?
The cost of the physical line to your home, including maintenance and support, comes out of standard, typical telephone service. Even if the telco were to dedicate a single copper connection to your DSL line without telephone service, somehow there's got to be a charge to cover their maintenance costs over that line. DSL service just covers the additional work to provide you with DSL and ATM connectivity, not the physical line.
So either suck it up and pay for local phone service (which you can get metered, without touch-tone, for fairly cheap), or petition and write letters so that they can give you your DSL line without telephone service, but with an inflated cost to cover maintenance over the physical line. Personally, I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for, but I wouldn't expect you'll save much money in the long run.
Due to ongoing poor service and a sudden speed to 384/128K for no apparent reason
Out of curiosity, did you call them and ask them what was up? What did they say? I'm surprised that someone with your immense clout wasn't able to get this resolved.
Since we're sharing anecdotes, I figured I'd pipe up and mention that I've had DSL service through SBC (in the Southwestern Bell region) for about 3 years now and have had 3 detectable outages, two just after midnight (implying they were doing maintenance and rebooted some equipment) and the third during the day while I was out. I have consistent 1.2 - 1.5Mbit service. So service and reliability is stellar for me.
Support is another matter, though. It's impossible to get through first tier support without connecting a Windows PC to your DSL connection, running through all of your IP and DNS settings, and try pulling up a web page. This makes support worthless to me, but as I said above, I've only needed it a couple of times.
Mainly I want to warn people that even though it's all technically SBC, each region is still being served by what is basically their old pre-SBC telephone company. Service in the Ameritech region can't reasonably compare with service from the Pacific Bell or Southwestern Bell region. Keep that in mind when people are rating their DSL service. I also recommend DSL Reports for a good sense of broadband service in your immediate areas.
This is absolutely a *horrible* solution to this perceived problem. The real problem is that site authors do not know how to build their site such that it "degrades gracefully" for other browsers. PLEASE take these types of issues up against the site owners and don't advocate changing things like the User Agent string in browsers. Some sites may need to rely on this information to work around bugs or deficiencies *legitimately*, and you're only breaking their ability to do that.
I understand it may be necessary for the short term, until site authors come to their senses, but a lot of people will change this based on this type of advice and will just never change it back. Then they'll wonder why they're seeing some dynamically-generated content using some proprietary IE features: it's because they've announced themselves as running IE!
But sometimes users *prefer* to call over the phone. Give them the choice. Otherwise users are going to end up getting extremely frustrated and will send an annoyed e-mail about some problem that they need addressed NOW, not whenever someone gets around to handling their e-mail.
Phone calls are real-time modes of communication. E-mails are not, and this makes all the difference for some types of issues.
Exactly.. like if you're building a search system that goes through pages of results at a time, the 'next' link should take you to a URL for the next set of results. The 'previous' link should NOT be a history.go(-1) thing, it should be a URL for the previous set of results. If you're worried that the browser isn't caching each page of results, then you need to set your pages up so they can be cached (for a short time) by the browser. Not every piece of dynamically-generated content needs to be generated every time it's requested.
and they require a Back button on the page itself.
I still don't understand why. Why does a page need to have a concept of "the previous page the user visited"? Just link to other pieces of content as you feel necessary.
Use <link> tags to set up relationships between your pages that you can't set up through standard links.
Why do you need 'Back' button functionality in your content?
When you disable functionality built in to HTTP, this is what you get.
So now, instead of relying on features built into the HTTP protocol, your paranoia has instead required you to adopt the use of a scripting language built into the content, making more assumptions and more incompatibility than before.
If the user has modified their browser to prevent it from sending certain HTTP headers, they can probably find their browser's Back button.
Personally, I think it's inappropriate to build 'back' functionality into your browser like this (either with referrer headers or through JavaScript), mainly because you run the risk of providing a link off-site. The user could have entered this page by typing a URL also, which would be legitimately without an HTTP referrer header.
Just stop trying to play tricks/shortcuts and build a *real* link to a known page on your site. Let the browser maintain history and forward/backward movement (maybe with hints from your own <link> tags).
Ignoring the way it's unreasonable search and seisure (it's a simple purchase of commercial goods, not a felony), it deprives me of my right to live in privacy, which falls under the two categories "life" and "liberty."
Again, how is it any different from any other identifying information in your possession? You are routinely asked for your name whenever you sign up for just about everything. You are routinely asked for your address. Sometimes you are forbidden service unless you provide it, as part of the implied contract involves sending you junk mail. Sometimes you are required to provide your phone number.
Please explain to me how your SSN is less like those bits of personally identifiable information and more like something akin to your race, or your sexual orientation, both of which enjoy extensive "hate crime" protections and are the topic of anti-discrimination laws. Why should your SSN be treated like these and not like your phone number?
It's illegal to force you to answer to conduct the transaction.
Oh? In which jurisdiction? Please provide a link or a quote.
But still, why should your SSN be held in the same light?
Do I need to start picketing my Blockbuster Video because they require my phone number and a valid credit card number on file in order to allow me to rent videos? How dare they! That's just like racial discrimination!
And keep in mind here that I'm not trying to take this side of the argument. I don't think that any vendor necessarily needs to know my SSN. I think that in most cases, they can get along perfectly fine without it, but I can empathize with why they might want to use it: to establish an ID number that they don't have to manage or worry about. All I'm trying to do is provide a factual context to a biased and uneducated Slashdot mass.
Did you even read that URL I gave you, by the way?
Agreed, and more states passing similar laws would be nice as well. I was annoyed as hell when my local supermarket needed my SSN before they'd let me rent movies there. Totally retarded. But they wouldn't budge, so I go to Blockbuster now.
In the US, it's illegal for the government to ask you for this information without a law stating they can, and they have to explain to you why they need it and quote the law authorizing it.
None of this applies to the private world. A company is perfectly within their rights to ask you for your SSN as part of a transaction.
But you're also perfectly within your rights to refuse. In many cases, it just means escellating to a manager to see why they'd need something like your SSN, and whether they could use something else instead. In other cases, it means walking out and taking your business elsewhere.
Sometimes they just want a unique ID number and aren't smart enough to come up with something better than your SSN, and the clerks just don't know any better.
After all, the store owner purchased the music without intent to distribute and is using it for private purposes.
Huh? If he felt the need to post a sign and an apology to let people know why there was no music, I think the case can be made that his intent was for public exhibition, not private.
Now if he had a boom box, but the volume was turned down and the device situated that realistically only he could really enjoy the music, that'd be another thing entirely. It's the intent that matters here.
I'm not saying I like it, but them's the facts.
Content labels belong with the content
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I neglected to add this to my earlier post, but as an extension to what I was saying earlier, DNS should not be used as a content label. One organization (e.g. a publishing company) could host several different types of content, including some children's media and maybe a porn site. To say that that one logical entity needs to represent itself with 2 or 4 or 10 different DNS domains is absurd. They should only need one.
If you need to label content, that label needs to belong with the content. This is what we have PICS and RSACi for.
Perhaps search engines need a way to relay PICS-based ratings directly in the results, doing the "filtering" right up front based on your criteria.
Opening up the TLD's for anyone, or adopting a "keywords" system (first come, first serve) only exacerbates the.com problem: who gets "apple"? There are hundreds of organizations that have a legitimate claim.
What we really need is another naming layer that maps these logical entity names to DNS domains. Put DNS back to what it was doing when it was originally designed (which wasn't a bad design for its requirements) and move all of the trademark and intellectual property crap to a separate database where it belongs.
(Well, if you count https, but anybody using that for an entire site will have an unencrypted redirect page if they have the first clue what they're doing.)
In a perfect world, a web browser would not assume 'http', but try every protocol it knows about in turn. I think it's perfectly reasonable that an organization might want its entire site accessible only by SSL, and I think it's annoying that we have to set up a non-SSL site solely to issue redirects for those people that just type "www.example.com"...
DNS is meant to follow organizational boundaries
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Let's say you have a business entity called "Example". As a business entity, a DNS domain for them should logically be allocated under "com". So they are assigned "example.com". If this entity divides themselves into two departments, say Human Resources and IT, you do not create "example-human-resources.com" and "example-it.com", as that would be creating two DNS peers to "example.com". Instead, you create sub-domains and delegate those to each business unit. So now you have "hr.example.com" and "it.example.com". IT can spawn off some sub-groups (maybe Research & Development), so they might get "research.it.example.com".
The point is, sub-divisions of one logical real-world entity should result in sub-divisions at the DNS level, and we should never have second-level domains for products or service-marks of all things. It's horrible enough to use DNS to locate companies or as a content identifier, but it's even worse to use it as a database for locating trademarks and service-marks.
We need a better *logical* name - domain name map
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I totally agree with you here. DNS was never intended to have anything whatsoever to do with the nature of content served up by one host under the domain on one protocol (HTTP).
DNS is intended to provide an administrator-friendly name to an IP address, not to serve as a mechanism to locate a logical entity.
What we really need is a mechanism to reliably link a real-world, logical name to a DNS domain. RealNames tried to be this, but going about this from a "keyword" or "pay-to-play" perspective is totally wrong and only sparks litigation. Only one company is going to get "apple", for instance, even though there are hundreds of them that surely have a claim to it.
We really need a mechanism, backed by LDAP or X.500 or something, where I can go in and type "Apple Computer" and instantly get a record pointing to "apple.com". Nothing else. (Nothing yet even suggests "web".) If I do a search for "Apple", I'd presumably get back a lot of records, which I can filter so as to ignore stuff that's outside of my locality and isn't nationally or internationally recognized. I can choose which one I want, and I'd ultimately end up at a single domain name representing that entity.
Now, when I want to pull up the web site for "Apple Computer", I have a mapping to "apple.com". A SRV record lookup would then be performed over DNS to determine the web server for this domain, and ultimately connect to "www.apple.com:80" (or:443). An SSL certificate could then be used to authenticate not only the DNS domain name, but all the way back to the original "official" entity name I selected to begin with.
At no time was the user ever exposed to IP addresses, DNS hostnames or port numbers. All of that was handled entirely behind the scenes. They just asked to be connected to the web site of Apple Computers.
This is the way things Should Be (in my opinion). The trick is getting an infrastructure in place, solving any legal or jurisdictional battles up front, to provide this "logical name" to DNS domain name mapping. At this point, who the hell cares about new TLD's or whether a company is represented with a 2nd-level GTLD or some company-name.saint-louis.mo.us domain? It shouldn't matter. DNS returns then to being something managed by engineers and administrators, not marketroids and politicians.
On top of this, many entities are (ab)using DNS domains for products (trademarks and service marks), not organizations. So however this is built, another engine along-side this should probably be built along with it to associate users with logical company names based on a trademark/service mark search. This should probably be handled by each individual country, maybe with a "meta-engine" to aggregate everything into one infrastructure.
I am guaranteed anonymity at the HTTP layer only if I know that I am anonymous at all the lower level protocols.
Have you never heard of anonymizing HTTP proxies? What about a web kiosk somewhere? If the application layer does not adequately protect your privacy, you should try to effect change.
as long as identity isn't intended to be guaranteed at the IP level, nobody relies on it.
We're not talking about guaranteeing authentication at the IP layer, we're talking about guaranteeing anonymity at the IP layer. Whether or not we need to implement mechanisms to authenticate every IP user is totally outside of the scope of this article and is certainly not something I'm prepared to advocate.
I don't know what's scarier, the fact that there are nuts out there armed and intent on carrying out random acts of violence, or the fact that any 18 year old can walk into WalMart and buy a shotgun with no questions asked and no form of training whatsoever.
One of the coolest things about my high school (well, my school district) is that they had an active gun safety program. You could elect to take a gun course where you would learn safety, how guns operate, and hone your sharpshooting skills in the process.
People look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them this, but are you really going to just hope that everyone that owns a gun really knows how to use one (safely)?
Slashdot Mirror
I would find these useful for displays on otherwise headless computers. If you have a rack full of servers, it's kind of nice to be able to walk up to the rack and see how they're all doing without having to pull up a console on each one or find a monitoring agent that's recording that information over the network. *shrug*
When she died, you missed her. The act of missing someone means that you tend to dwell on what memories you have of them. This tends to promote long-term storage of those memories.
It's kind of sweet, actually...
If she hadn't died, it's unlikely that you'd have held on to that memory.
I disagree with a number of things this poster came up with.
I've played Everquest off and on for about 2 years. I don't make a habit of jumping on between 9 and 11pm every night nor do I consider my online persona to be an extension of my real life one. I play it like a game, whenever I'm in the mood to go gaming.
I've talked (online) with a number of other players that I group with, and I haven't really found anyone that shares this author's attitude that Sony is evil and the game is just there to rip them off. They play because they enjoy it.
Sure, you are rewarded for the time you spend playing. I enjoy increasing my skill at crafts or hitting a new level and gaining strength and nifty new spells. People start to need you in the game, and it feels good to help others reach your level.
Whining that the game is sucking your life away is retarded. Don't play the damn thing if you can't control yourself. Cancel your account! For those reading this and thinking of avoiding EverQuest (or any MMRPG), please take all of this with a grain of salt. It's a game like any other, except that it never ends. There's plenty of things to do, places to explore and quests to perform, and if your character gets stronger and you get wiser along the way, so much the better.
Why do they need to provision one pair of copper when the DSL signal is carried over a different pair?
Maybe I misunderstood your original problem. A phone line consists of a single pair of copper. DSL re-uses that existing pair (the upper range of frequencies supported on this pair) to put data on an existing (presumably voice) line. But it almost sounds like you have one pair dedicated to voice and a second pair that you want to put DSL on, and you're objecting to the fact that they had to put a dial tone on this pair as well? Why couldn't they re-use the existing phone line? I'm a little confused, sorry.
First, I will save money, in both the long and short terms.
I guess it all boils down to the cost difference between a line of copper with dialtone and one without. Either you get local phone service (copper + dial tone + DSL), or you get additional charges to your DSL service to cover the cost and maintenance of the copper (copper + DSL).
I can see how a telco might try to make the case that the actual cost of a dial tone is trivial in comparison with the actual line, in which case you're probably going to be SOL, but it's certainly possible that you will get a slightly better deal out of it. It's also possible that the cost of a dialtone is 0 when you're already going to be connecting a line with DSL, in which case it's probably simpler (and cheaper) to bill it as local phone service. I don't know, though. I'd write them and see what they say.
The rest of your points are accurate and good.
If the Baby Bells hadn't had piss poor (or no) service since 1982
Which, coincidentally, is right when the government decided to start regulating the telcos, with the break up of the Bells and the first requirements for telcos to make their infrastructure available to competitors.
So more regulation is the solution?
my business had to buy a $12/month (okay, it was actually $20, since it's a 'business' line) line just to get DSL
What do you think DSL is carried over? Keep in mind there are multiple layers to a network here:
Physical layer - Copper wire
Link layer - DSL/ATM (carried over copper)
IP layer - Your ISP (carried over DSL/ATM)
Which of these do you think you should have to pay for? Just #3? Just #2 and #3?
The cost of the physical line to your home, including maintenance and support, comes out of standard, typical telephone service. Even if the telco were to dedicate a single copper connection to your DSL line without telephone service, somehow there's got to be a charge to cover their maintenance costs over that line. DSL service just covers the additional work to provide you with DSL and ATM connectivity, not the physical line.
So either suck it up and pay for local phone service (which you can get metered, without touch-tone, for fairly cheap), or petition and write letters so that they can give you your DSL line without telephone service, but with an inflated cost to cover maintenance over the physical line. Personally, I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for, but I wouldn't expect you'll save much money in the long run.
Due to ongoing poor service and a sudden speed to 384/128K for no apparent reason
Out of curiosity, did you call them and ask them what was up? What did they say? I'm surprised that someone with your immense clout wasn't able to get this resolved.
Since we're sharing anecdotes, I figured I'd pipe up and mention that I've had DSL service through SBC (in the Southwestern Bell region) for about 3 years now and have had 3 detectable outages, two just after midnight (implying they were doing maintenance and rebooted some equipment) and the third during the day while I was out. I have consistent 1.2 - 1.5Mbit service. So service and reliability is stellar for me.
Support is another matter, though. It's impossible to get through first tier support without connecting a Windows PC to your DSL connection, running through all of your IP and DNS settings, and try pulling up a web page. This makes support worthless to me, but as I said above, I've only needed it a couple of times.
Mainly I want to warn people that even though it's all technically SBC, each region is still being served by what is basically their old pre-SBC telephone company. Service in the Ameritech region can't reasonably compare with service from the Pacific Bell or Southwestern Bell region. Keep that in mind when people are rating their DSL service. I also recommend DSL Reports for a good sense of broadband service in your immediate areas.
This is absolutely a *horrible* solution to this perceived problem. The real problem is that site authors do not know how to build their site such that it "degrades gracefully" for other browsers. PLEASE take these types of issues up against the site owners and don't advocate changing things like the User Agent string in browsers. Some sites may need to rely on this information to work around bugs or deficiencies *legitimately*, and you're only breaking their ability to do that.
I understand it may be necessary for the short term, until site authors come to their senses, but a lot of people will change this based on this type of advice and will just never change it back. Then they'll wonder why they're seeing some dynamically-generated content using some proprietary IE features: it's because they've announced themselves as running IE!
But sometimes users *prefer* to call over the phone. Give them the choice. Otherwise users are going to end up getting extremely frustrated and will send an annoyed e-mail about some problem that they need addressed NOW, not whenever someone gets around to handling their e-mail.
Phone calls are real-time modes of communication. E-mails are not, and this makes all the difference for some types of issues.
Exactly.. like if you're building a search system that goes through pages of results at a time, the 'next' link should take you to a URL for the next set of results. The 'previous' link should NOT be a history.go(-1) thing, it should be a URL for the previous set of results. If you're worried that the browser isn't caching each page of results, then you need to set your pages up so they can be cached (for a short time) by the browser. Not every piece of dynamically-generated content needs to be generated every time it's requested.
and they require a Back button on the page itself.
I still don't understand why. Why does a page need to have a concept of "the previous page the user visited"? Just link to other pieces of content as you feel necessary.
Use <link> tags to set up relationships between your pages that you can't set up through standard links.
Why do you need 'Back' button functionality in your content?
When you disable functionality built in to HTTP, this is what you get.
So now, instead of relying on features built into the HTTP protocol, your paranoia has instead required you to adopt the use of a scripting language built into the content, making more assumptions and more incompatibility than before.
If the user has modified their browser to prevent it from sending certain HTTP headers, they can probably find their browser's Back button.
Personally, I think it's inappropriate to build 'back' functionality into your browser like this (either with referrer headers or through JavaScript), mainly because you run the risk of providing a link off-site. The user could have entered this page by typing a URL also, which would be legitimately without an HTTP referrer header.
Just stop trying to play tricks/shortcuts and build a *real* link to a known page on your site. Let the browser maintain history and forward/backward movement (maybe with hints from your own <link> tags).
Ignoring the way it's unreasonable search and seisure (it's a simple purchase of commercial goods, not a felony), it deprives me of my right to live in privacy, which falls under the two categories "life" and "liberty."
Again, how is it any different from any other identifying information in your possession? You are routinely asked for your name whenever you sign up for just about everything. You are routinely asked for your address. Sometimes you are forbidden service unless you provide it, as part of the implied contract involves sending you junk mail. Sometimes you are required to provide your phone number.
Please explain to me how your SSN is less like those bits of personally identifiable information and more like something akin to your race, or your sexual orientation, both of which enjoy extensive "hate crime" protections and are the topic of anti-discrimination laws. Why should your SSN be treated like these and not like your phone number?
It's illegal to force you to answer to conduct the transaction.
Oh? In which jurisdiction? Please provide a link or a quote.
But still, why should your SSN be held in the same light?
Do I need to start picketing my Blockbuster Video because they require my phone number and a valid credit card number on file in order to allow me to rent videos? How dare they! That's just like racial discrimination!
And keep in mind here that I'm not trying to take this side of the argument. I don't think that any vendor necessarily needs to know my SSN. I think that in most cases, they can get along perfectly fine without it, but I can empathize with why they might want to use it: to establish an ID number that they don't have to manage or worry about. All I'm trying to do is provide a factual context to a biased and uneducated Slashdot mass.
Did you even read that URL I gave you, by the way?
Agreed, and more states passing similar laws would be nice as well. I was annoyed as hell when my local supermarket needed my SSN before they'd let me rent movies there. Totally retarded. But they wouldn't budge, so I go to Blockbuster now.
I don't see anything in there specifying that this rule only applies to what the government can do to you.
# IsItIllegalToAsk
How is your SSN any of these things? How about your photograph? Your name?
Just like it's within their rights as a private company to ask me my race as part of a transaction? It's exactly the same logic...
I don't believe it's illegal for them to ask. It's just illegal to discriminate.
More information about SSN's is available here: http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/privacy/ssn/ssn.faq.html
http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/privacy/ssn/ssn.faq.html# IsItIllegalToAsk
This is incorrect.
In the US, it's illegal for the government to ask you for this information without a law stating they can, and they have to explain to you why they need it and quote the law authorizing it.
None of this applies to the private world. A company is perfectly within their rights to ask you for your SSN as part of a transaction.
But you're also perfectly within your rights to refuse. In many cases, it just means escellating to a manager to see why they'd need something like your SSN, and whether they could use something else instead. In other cases, it means walking out and taking your business elsewhere.
Sometimes they just want a unique ID number and aren't smart enough to come up with something better than your SSN, and the clerks just don't know any better.
After all, the store owner purchased the music without intent to distribute and is using it for private purposes.
Huh? If he felt the need to post a sign and an apology to let people know why there was no music, I think the case can be made that his intent was for public exhibition, not private.
Now if he had a boom box, but the volume was turned down and the device situated that realistically only he could really enjoy the music, that'd be another thing entirely. It's the intent that matters here.
I'm not saying I like it, but them's the facts.
I neglected to add this to my earlier post, but as an extension to what I was saying earlier, DNS should not be used as a content label. One organization (e.g. a publishing company) could host several different types of content, including some children's media and maybe a porn site. To say that that one logical entity needs to represent itself with 2 or 4 or 10 different DNS domains is absurd. They should only need one.
If you need to label content, that label needs to belong with the content. This is what we have PICS and RSACi for.
Perhaps search engines need a way to relay PICS-based ratings directly in the results, doing the "filtering" right up front based on your criteria.
Opening up the TLD's for anyone, or adopting a "keywords" system (first come, first serve) only exacerbates the .com problem: who gets "apple"? There are hundreds of organizations that have a legitimate claim.
What we really need is another naming layer that maps these logical entity names to DNS domains. Put DNS back to what it was doing when it was originally designed (which wasn't a bad design for its requirements) and move all of the trademark and intellectual property crap to a separate database where it belongs.
(Well, if you count https, but anybody using that for an entire site will have an unencrypted redirect page if they have the first clue what they're doing.)
In a perfect world, a web browser would not assume 'http', but try every protocol it knows about in turn. I think it's perfectly reasonable that an organization might want its entire site accessible only by SSL, and I think it's annoying that we have to set up a non-SSL site solely to issue redirects for those people that just type "www.example.com"...
Let's say you have a business entity called "Example". As a business entity, a DNS domain for them should logically be allocated under "com". So they are assigned "example.com". If this entity divides themselves into two departments, say Human Resources and IT, you do not create "example-human-resources.com" and "example-it.com", as that would be creating two DNS peers to "example.com". Instead, you create sub-domains and delegate those to each business unit. So now you have "hr.example.com" and "it.example.com". IT can spawn off some sub-groups (maybe Research & Development), so they might get "research.it.example.com".
The point is, sub-divisions of one logical real-world entity should result in sub-divisions at the DNS level, and we should never have second-level domains for products or service-marks of all things. It's horrible enough to use DNS to locate companies or as a content identifier, but it's even worse to use it as a database for locating trademarks and service-marks.
I totally agree with you here. DNS was never intended to have anything whatsoever to do with the nature of content served up by one host under the domain on one protocol (HTTP).
DNS is intended to provide an administrator-friendly name to an IP address, not to serve as a mechanism to locate a logical entity.
What we really need is a mechanism to reliably link a real-world, logical name to a DNS domain. RealNames tried to be this, but going about this from a "keyword" or "pay-to-play" perspective is totally wrong and only sparks litigation. Only one company is going to get "apple", for instance, even though there are hundreds of them that surely have a claim to it.
We really need a mechanism, backed by LDAP or X.500 or something, where I can go in and type "Apple Computer" and instantly get a record pointing to "apple.com". Nothing else. (Nothing yet even suggests "web".) If I do a search for "Apple", I'd presumably get back a lot of records, which I can filter so as to ignore stuff that's outside of my locality and isn't nationally or internationally recognized. I can choose which one I want, and I'd ultimately end up at a single domain name representing that entity.
Now, when I want to pull up the web site for "Apple Computer", I have a mapping to "apple.com". A SRV record lookup would then be performed over DNS to determine the web server for this domain, and ultimately connect to "www.apple.com:80" (or :443). An SSL certificate could then be used to authenticate not only the DNS domain name, but all the way back to the original "official" entity name I selected to begin with.
At no time was the user ever exposed to IP addresses, DNS hostnames or port numbers. All of that was handled entirely behind the scenes. They just asked to be connected to the web site of Apple Computers.
This is the way things Should Be (in my opinion). The trick is getting an infrastructure in place, solving any legal or jurisdictional battles up front, to provide this "logical name" to DNS domain name mapping. At this point, who the hell cares about new TLD's or whether a company is represented with a 2nd-level GTLD or some company-name.saint-louis.mo.us domain? It shouldn't matter. DNS returns then to being something managed by engineers and administrators, not marketroids and politicians.
On top of this, many entities are (ab)using DNS domains for products (trademarks and service marks), not organizations. So however this is built, another engine along-side this should probably be built along with it to associate users with logical company names based on a trademark/service mark search. This should probably be handled by each individual country, maybe with a "meta-engine" to aggregate everything into one infrastructure.
My US$0.02.
I am guaranteed anonymity at the HTTP layer only if I know that I am anonymous at all the lower level protocols.
Have you never heard of anonymizing HTTP proxies? What about a web kiosk somewhere? If the application layer does not adequately protect your privacy, you should try to effect change.
as long as identity isn't intended to be guaranteed at the IP level, nobody relies on it.
We're not talking about guaranteeing authentication at the IP layer, we're talking about guaranteeing anonymity at the IP layer. Whether or not we need to implement mechanisms to authenticate every IP user is totally outside of the scope of this article and is certainly not something I'm prepared to advocate.
Yep, I noticed that also. My bad.
Maybe we need more training or something
This would be my vote.
I don't know what's scarier, the fact that there are nuts out there armed and intent on carrying out random acts of violence, or the fact that any 18 year old can walk into WalMart and buy a shotgun with no questions asked and no form of training whatsoever.
One of the coolest things about my high school (well, my school district) is that they had an active gun safety program. You could elect to take a gun course where you would learn safety, how guns operate, and hone your sharpshooting skills in the process.
People look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them this, but are you really going to just hope that everyone that owns a gun really knows how to use one (safely)?