Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!columbia!heathcliff.columbia.edu!metzger From: metzger@heathcliff.columbia.edu (Perry Metzger) Newsgroups: net.mail Subject: Re: Domains: Multiple names OK? (Really, are domains good) Message-ID: <3044@columbia.UUCP> Date: Fri, 5-Sep-86 11:21:07 EDT Article-I.D.: columbia.3044 Posted: Fri Sep 5 11:21:07 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Sep-86 21:42:39 EDT References: <566@mecc.UUCP> <2502@cbosgd.UUCP> <3920@ut-ngp.UUCP> Sender: nobody@columbia.UUCP Reply-To: metzger@heathcliff.columbia.edu.UUCP (Perry Metzger) Organization: Columbia University CS Department Lines: 98 Keywords: Domains Mailers Idiots The following message is a flame against people who think that domains put too much strain on their minds. Anyone offended by it is asked not to read further. In article <3920@ut-ngp.UUCP> werner@ut-ngp.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) writes: >Recently, the aliases SEISMO and MCC were dropped from the HOSTS-table >distributed by NIC, which made me quite unhappy as now I have remember to >type SEISMO.CSS.GOV and MCC.COM everytime ... Poor guy. He had to use his mind a bit. And of course asking him to make his own aliases for commonly used addresses in his .mailrc would be too much of a strain on him. >now this may seem an insignifi- >cant effort, but you just wait until you have to type those darn stupid >domains on every single address .... It does seem like an insignificant effort, and I do type it on every single address, whether an alternate still exists or not. >And I thought that the computer was >there to make life easier ??? Thanks to domains, computers can now handle the task that your system manager used to fret over. In fact, around here our '20s ran out of host table space and then we had to choose which sites to drop from our name space, which meant that obscure bitnet sites, some of which I conversed with regularly, had to go first. Thanks to domains, this sort of thing will never happen again, and once the switchover is complete, service will be better than ever before. No more need to recompile to get a larger and larger host table, no need for weekly updates from the NIC. Everything will run smoothly and automatically. >Of course, there was no notification of this >change anywhere that you might expect the average user to read, The NIC has been telling us for some time that sites may have their old style names dropped at any time, and that we should switch over ASAP. The fact that you chose to ignore it is not anyone else's problem. As soon as a site gets a domain style name, I use it, even if the old one still exists. >and figuring >out what was expected as an address instead of MCC or SEISMO wasn't of just >seconds for anyone, not even minutes. You never heard of GREP, have you. And the thought of trying grep seismo /etc/hosts never crossed your mind. This is not suprising. At any rate, I just tried it, and it worked fine. It took 3 seconds. >If this is kept up by NIC, I can just >see a lot of unhappy people having messages delayed, bounced back, and having >to waste time to figure out what domain is needed, every time another site >has their good-old basic name removed from the table. How did you figure out what "Plain-Old Basic Name" was needed in the first place? Is it THAT MUCH more difficult for you? Does a change of the time your favorite show was on lead you to panic for weeks since you won't make the effort to check your TV Guide? Besides, Now I KNOW where a machine was. Before, you had no idea what organization FooVax belonged to, but now you know since it is Foo.Bar.COM that it belongs to Bar Corp. >It's ok for mailers >of 2 different machines talking to each other to express addresses with all >the domain-glory, but what did users have to be bothered with this ???!!! Because otherwise the system is useless, since you have to store around all the tables anyway if the user isn't to be bothered with it. Next I suppose you want to eliminate host names and just address things to a unique user name so you don't have to be bothered with remembering where your associate is. Never mind the number of "Bill"s and "Chris"s on the net. And having to remember the host name is an exact analogy of having to remember the domain name. >Of course, there is the problem when 2 or more sites choose the same nick-name, >but that should have been solved by resulting in a warning with the different >sites getting listed in a menu to choose from. That is a user interface problem. If you want a system like that, write one. No one is stopping you. >It would also help if the mailer >on this and other machines would be able to handle a personal alias-list >for sites, as well as for users. But then again, I'm not sure it can be >called progress if NIC's removal of the nick-name SEISMO would result in >every user adding SEISMO = SEISMO.CSS.GOV to the personal alias-list. 1. Write a modification to your mailer, if you like. No one is stopping you. 2. Why do the extra 6 characters in the name bother you so much? Do you rebel against using zipcodes, too? 3. I call it progress when a time will come (soon) when a site can add as many machines as it likes without worrying about it. Perry Metzger ...!seismo(.CSS.GOV! Ha! I can remember it!)!columbia!heathcliff!metzger