4 ms·

Um... curious to hear what the alternative is. Fully democratized decentralized naming simply lets the powerful squat on all the good names. It's the tyranny

Um... curious to hear what the alternative is. Fully democratized decentralized naming simply lets the powerful squat on all the good names. It's the tyranny of structurelessness.

thingification 7y ago
Maybe this has been done already and has been ineffective for some reason, but I guess the alternative is an organisation - maybe a different quasi-public institution - whose charter explicitly includes and emphasizes looking after the interests of institutions other than profit-making corporations? That is a thing that happens, and it has a real effect. Those organisational charters inevitably reflect some underlying ethical system, and I think the role of those ethics in influencing organisations and their members is still under-appreciated in some contexts (I'm certainly not saying that free market economics or libertarianism - for example - don't have any ethical system, by the way - more the contrary). For example, over here, picking maybe the most visible examples, the NHS, Channel 4, and the BBC - and many of the people who work for them are heavily influenced by the ethical ideas behind them.
ken 7y ago
What's a "good name"? Would "amazon.com" be considered one, if Bezos hadn't picked it? The current hierarchy is pretty weird. US GOVernment gets one, and US MILitary gets a separate one, and all US COMmercial entities get one, and most of the rest are non-specified ORGanizations, and the rest of the world gets to build under their 2-letter country codes. Except when company in San Francisco thinks it's cool to use one of those country codes to spell the end of a word, of course. Ask any person to draw a diagram which includes all groups (and potential groups) in the world, and nobody will ever come up with what we've got now. I don't see an obvious solution. It's a bad idea to let companies create their own top level domains (especially when it's taken from a region of indigenous peoples whose land is threatened!), but maintaining the old status quo doesn't seem like such a great idea, either. Have there been any serious proposals to overhaul the structure of DNS names?
- smitop 7y ago
  > all US COMmercial entities .com isn't US-specific.
- BrandoElFollito 7y ago
  > It's a bad idea to let companies create their own top level domains Why? I would love to have an open DNS system not controlled by some registrars, and by a body which dictates that .paris is fine, but .hdjdhduh is not (except for a huge cost)

Um... curious to hear what the alternative is. Fully democratized decentralized naming simply lets the powerful squat on all the good names. It's the tyranny of structurelessness.

thingification 7y ago

Maybe this has been done already and has been ineffective for some reason, but I guess the alternative is an organisation - maybe a different quasi-public institution - whose charter explicitly includes and emphasizes looking after the interests of institutions other than profit-making corporations? That is a thing that happens, and it has a real effect. Those organisational charters inevitably reflect some underlying ethical system, and I think the role of those ethics in influencing organisations and their members is still under-appreciated in some contexts (I'm certainly not saying that free market economics or libertarianism - for example - don't have any ethical system, by the way - more the contrary). For example, over here, picking maybe the most visible examples, the NHS, Channel 4, and the BBC - and many of the people who work for them are heavily influenced by the ethical ideas behind them.

ken 7y ago

What's a "good name"? Would "amazon.com" be considered one, if Bezos hadn't picked it? The current hierarchy is pretty weird. US GOVernment gets one, and US MILitary gets a separate one, and all US COMmercial entities get one, and most of the rest are non-specified ORGanizations, and the rest of the world gets to build under their 2-letter country codes. Except when company in San Francisco thinks it's cool to use one of those country codes to spell the end of a word, of course. Ask any person to draw a diagram which includes all groups (and potential groups) in the world, and nobody will ever come up with what we've got now. I don't see an obvious solution. It's a bad idea to let companies create their own top level domains (especially when it's taken from a region of indigenous peoples whose land is threatened!), but maintaining the old status quo doesn't seem like such a great idea, either. Have there been any serious proposals to overhaul the structure of DNS names?

smitop 7y ago
> all US COMmercial entities .com isn't US-specific.
BrandoElFollito 7y ago
> It's a bad idea to let companies create their own top level domains Why? I would love to have an open DNS system not controlled by some registrars, and by a body which dictates that .paris is fine, but .hdjdhduh is not (except for a huge cost)