The fact that two letter TLDs exist, and have existed for a while, seems to imply that most of the really stupid potential coding practices (chopping off the last three characters to get the TLD, for instance) have been avoided. And the DNS spec itself doesn't mandate shorter names: Intranets and private networks have used naming schemes with more than three characters at the top level.
The various proposals for new TLDs include ".shop" and ".firm" as potential choices, so I don't think we'd have much trouble there.
For a new TLD to work it has to be present in root servers. While AlterNic has been trying this for a while (including TLDs such as.NIC and.PORN), they haven't been able to achieve broad acceptance. I don't see anybody else doing much better.
I agree. I was dragooned into teaching a high school Pascal course a few years ago, and while there isn't much market for Pascal programmers, it did have the advantage of insulating the students from some of the implementation details, memory management, pointers disruptions and so forth. That's why it was the instructional language of choice for many years (although I hear that the high school AP curriculum has switched to C - I don't think this is a great idea, as AP computer science does not an engineer make).
Java goes a few steps beyond: it's actually useful (so the kids can get a cool summer job later on), and it allows them to start out with OO programming. OO isn't that hard, unless you're locked into a procedural mindset--you can always learn procedural programming techniques later if you actually need them.
Yes, you can accomplish the same thing with C++, but C++ is a lot more imposing for beginners, and more implementation details get in the way of the (IMHO more interesting) abstract concepts.
Actually, that's exactly why they do it. Remember that lack of good personal copies helps radio stations too. I've probably cut my radio listening in half since I figured out how to plug my Rio in the car stereo.
The concern is as much about user friendliness as quality. Taping something off the radio is lower quality, yes, but more importantly from the record company POV is that it's a pain in the neck. Even so, there is a charge attached to every single blank tape sold in the US that feeds back to the RIAA.
As long as the users has access to a digital feed, some clever person will come up with some software to make it easy to capture that stream, edit it, and add it to your MP3 collection. That's the major concern, and that's why secure music formats like Sony's are user-interface nightmares.
Of course, it goes without saying that the recording industry is pretty scared of the net right now, and is certainly going to seize any opportunity to use it to increase revenues.
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The fact that two letter TLDs exist, and have existed for a while, seems to imply that most of the really stupid potential coding practices (chopping off the last three characters to get the TLD, for instance) have been avoided. And the DNS spec itself doesn't mandate shorter names: Intranets and private networks have used naming schemes with more than three characters at the top level.
.NIC and .PORN), they haven't been able to achieve broad acceptance. I don't see anybody else doing much better.
The various proposals for new TLDs include ".shop" and ".firm" as potential choices, so I don't think we'd have much trouble there.
For a new TLD to work it has to be present in root servers. While AlterNic has been trying this for a while (including TLDs such as
I agree. I was dragooned into teaching a high school Pascal course a few years ago, and while there isn't much market for Pascal programmers, it did have the advantage of insulating the students from some of the implementation details, memory management, pointers disruptions and so forth. That's why it was the instructional language of choice for many years (although I hear that the high school AP curriculum has switched to C - I don't think this is a great idea, as AP computer science does not an engineer make).
Java goes a few steps beyond: it's actually useful (so the kids can get a cool summer job later on), and it allows them to start out with OO programming. OO isn't that hard, unless you're locked into a procedural mindset--you can always learn procedural programming techniques later if you actually need them.
Yes, you can accomplish the same thing with C++, but C++ is a lot more imposing for beginners, and more implementation details get in the way of the (IMHO more interesting) abstract concepts.
Actually, that's exactly why they do it. Remember that lack of good personal copies helps radio stations too. I've probably cut my radio listening in half since I figured out how to plug my Rio in the car stereo.
As long as the users has access to a digital feed, some clever person will come up with some software to make it easy to capture that stream, edit it, and add it to your MP3 collection. That's the major concern, and that's why secure music formats like Sony's are user-interface nightmares.
Of course, it goes without saying that the recording industry is pretty scared of the net right now, and is certainly going to seize any opportunity to use it to increase revenues.