DNS (was Re: [sword-devel] God's Word translation; domain names)

[Paul Gear]

Michael Paul Johnson wrote:

> At 05:24 2/11/2000 +1000, you wrote:
> >Michael Paul Johnson wrote:
> >
> > > ...
> > > Troy, do you think it would be nice to have a domain name for the Sword
> > > Project like "http://sword.cx" (.cx is for Christmas Island)? If so, surf
> > > on over to http://register.com and make it so.
> > > ...
> >
> >Great idea - how to wreck the world-wide DNS in one easy step: allow
> >commercialization of all the root level domains so that Turkmenistan, Norfolk
> >Island, and the Federal States of Micronesia can all bid for the honour of
> >hosting your domain so that a newcomer who has never seen the Internet has no
> >chance of working out where your site is inside a week, and _never_ has any
> >chance of understanding how the DNS is structured.
> >
> >Sorry, but i work with DNS all day and i just hate seeing the Internet wrecked
> >like this.
>
> I'm not making the rules or changing them. I'm just reporting reality. The
> fact of the matter is that the country extensions don't mean much,

They mean quite a bit if they have .kr or .su on the end.  Try reading one of
those pages!

> and that
> the demand for "good" domain names exceeds the supply in the US TLDs.

Call me a whiner, but US should != TLD.  There was a proposal a few years back to
add .com.us, .net.us, .gov.us, etc. to make the US fall into line with everyone
else.  That would leave the TLDs open for only truly international organisations.
It never happened, but it sure would have solved a lot of problems.

> People usually don't find sites by guessing names (although that works in
> many cases), but by using a search engine or seeing it in an ad, email,
> news posting, or link from another site. Easy to memorize names have an
> advantage. If you want to find the World English Bible, I bet you can guess
> a URL to get to within 3 or four clicks of it within 3 tries (probably
> better than that). If you want to find "The Sword Project" by guessing
> URLs, you will probably give up and use a search engine before you find it.

Didn't you just say that that's the main way people find sites?  :-)  (BTW,
crosswire.org came up as the top hit when i typed "The Sword Project" at
google.com.)

> Registering sword.cx probably won't help that, but it may be easier to
> remember once seen. Hey, if you don't like it, let someone else have the name.

I fully intend to...  :-)

Paul
---------
"He must become greater; i must become less." - John 3:30
http://www.bigfoot.com/~paulgear