Gosh no. Just think about the probability of this happening twice to that same house. Although statistically, it isn't any smaller than the probability of a meteorite hitting it the first time, one mustn't spoil the obligatory Garp reference:
"Honey, the chances of another plane hitting this house are astronomical. See? It's been pre-disastered. We're going to be safe here."
I guess that the Achilles Heel of computers is that you have to know how to use them. Cars and power tools clearly have this same weakness -- but oddly, no one ever complains about needing to know how to drive, or to use a radial arm saw.
I can't think of a single good reason NOT to merge the domain and URL structures.
Pick a URL on this site, say/about_us. Use the new inverted-node notation.
meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/about_us/ix any
See how the URL blends into the heiarchy? That's *GOOD*. A given server somewhere should have control over a certain region of the heirarchy (I might serve from "antistatic" down in this example. I might even delegate some of it!)
In addition, a redirect would make meta/web/design/com/ synonymous with meta/web/design/companies/ as an abbreviation. My email would be smtp://meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/ixany. My web page would be at http://meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/ixany. My resume would be at http://meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/ixany/ resume/. so if you typed: telnet://meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/obli que into your browser, you'd know where you're headed. I'd serve DNS for meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/ on down, and delegate everything for meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/oblique on down to oblique, so that you could mail an oblique.antistatic.com user at smtp://meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/obliqu e/username.
That is, I'd have control over a certain node of a big tree structure. I'd *give* control of sub-trees to actual branches and leaves that make sense in an information sort of way.
Our current URL scheme wants to specify a heirachy inside a heirarchy. But the problem is it must make obvious the fact that the outside heirarchy takes one kind of query to provide, and the inside heirarchy takes another. But it's no longer useful to separate these -- it's just a way to organize trees of information, after all, in which one tree is rooted in another. It seems more and more that should be transparent, and that brings to the table other issues, such as the current lack-of-information provided by current use of the domain name system.
This looks like a lot of typing -- but look how you can get to information directly! That's a huge win. Also, the heirarchy could be browsed from the top on down, getting closer to where you want to be in sequential steps, rather than the search engine paradigm where you're often getting a lot further away as you go.
As I see it, the only way to really make a planet full of data accessible to everyone sensibly is to take a step back, take a long deep breath, and take a closer look at our wobbling usability practices.
We've abandoned some of the most important elements of our user interface in our rush to splatter the world wide web with our content: The domain name, and the sensible URL
Domain names -- unlike heirachically organized things (Usenet is a good example) -- no longer really mean anything at all. They've been smashed flat into just a few heiarchies, largely so NSI could maintain fascist control of the few TLDs. It reminds me of the MS-DOS days, when everything wanted to install itself as C:\SOMETHING. Companies rush to register their word or words in several TLDs, fearful that their competitors may soon take away their opportunity to hold even a teeny slice of the narrow internet domain pie. Domains don't mean anything anymore. Not in terms of content anyway -- they simply don't help us find what we're looking for. Doesn't it seem obvious, or at least worthwhile, that our position, or "place" in the big information avalanche that is the internet should at least be related somehow to our content? Don't you wish people could find you directly that way?
URLs have a place in this big scheme, too -- as a continuation of this structure. That is, URLs should represent information structure on a site in a manner simple enough not only for a person who is browsing to know and understand where they are and what they're doing there, but also to actually use as a user interface. When did we forget this crucial and human factor?
The more we tailor our information to only be useful by machines, the more we ruin our ability as humans to traverse the internet in a way that's sensible and seems natural to us.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still annoyed that Internet Explorer can claim it's Mozilla.
Gosh no. Just think about the probability of this happening twice to that same house. Although statistically, it isn't any smaller than the probability of a meteorite hitting it the first time, one mustn't spoil the obligatory Garp reference:
"Honey, the chances of another plane hitting this house are astronomical. See? It's been pre-disastered. We're going to be safe here."
Great stuff, that.
> Any my grandma would know this how?
I guess that the Achilles Heel of computers is that you have to know how to use them. Cars and power tools clearly have this same weakness -- but oddly, no one ever complains about needing to know how to drive, or to use a radial arm saw.
In Soviet Russia, dead horse beats you!
In Soviet Russia, dead horse beats you.
I can't think of a single good reason NOT to merge the domain and URL structures.
Pick a URL on this site, say /about_us. Use the new inverted-node notation.
meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/about_us/ix any
See how the URL blends into the heiarchy? That's *GOOD*. A given server somewhere should have control over a certain region of the heirarchy (I might serve from "antistatic" down in this example. I might even delegate some of it!)
In addition, a redirect would make meta/web/design/com/ synonymous with meta/web/design/companies/ as an abbreviation. My email would be smtp://meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/ixany. My web page would be at http://meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/ixany. My resume would be at http://meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/ixany/ resume/. so if you typed: telnet://meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/obli que into your browser, you'd know where you're headed. I'd serve DNS for meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/ on down, and delegate everything for meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/oblique on down to oblique, so that you could mail an oblique.antistatic.com user at smtp://meta/web/design/companies/antistatic/obliqu e/username.
That is, I'd have control over a certain node of a big tree structure. I'd *give* control of sub-trees to actual branches and leaves that make sense in an information sort of way.
Our current URL scheme wants to specify a heirachy inside a heirarchy. But the problem is it must make obvious the fact that the outside heirarchy takes one kind of query to provide, and the inside heirarchy takes another. But it's no longer useful to separate these -- it's just a way to organize trees of information, after all, in which one tree is rooted in another. It seems more and more that should be transparent, and that brings to the table other issues, such as the current lack-of-information provided by current use of the domain name system.
This looks like a lot of typing -- but look how you can get to information directly! That's a huge win. Also, the heirarchy could be browsed from the top on down, getting closer to where you want to be in sequential steps, rather than the search engine paradigm where you're often getting a lot further away as you go.
As I see it, the only way to really make a planet full of data accessible to everyone sensibly is to take a step back, take a long deep breath, and take a closer look at our wobbling usability practices.
We've abandoned some of the most important elements of our user interface in our rush to splatter the world wide web with our content: The domain name, and the sensible URL
Domain names -- unlike heirachically organized things (Usenet is a good example) -- no longer really mean anything at all. They've been smashed flat into just a few heiarchies, largely so NSI could maintain fascist control of the few TLDs. It reminds me of the MS-DOS days, when everything wanted to install itself as C:\SOMETHING. Companies rush to register their word or words in several TLDs, fearful that their competitors may soon take away their opportunity to hold even a teeny slice of the narrow internet domain pie. Domains don't mean anything anymore. Not in terms of content anyway -- they simply don't help us find what we're looking for. Doesn't it seem obvious, or at least worthwhile, that our position, or "place" in the big information avalanche that is the internet should at least be related somehow to our content? Don't you wish people could find you directly that way?
URLs have a place in this big scheme, too -- as a continuation of this structure. That is, URLs should represent information structure on a site in a manner simple enough not only for a person who is browsing to know and understand where they are and what they're doing there, but also to actually use as a user interface. When did we forget this crucial and human factor?
The more we tailor our information to only be useful by machines, the more we ruin our ability as humans to traverse the internet in a way that's sensible and seems natural to us.