easy question

[Alan J Rosenthal]

Kevin Darcy <kcd at daimlerchrysler.com> writes:
>flaps at dgp.toronto.edu wrote:
[if your search list says example.com]
>> You can certainly type http://www into your web browser if you're looking
>> for www.example.com.
>
>Do you know anyone with Internet mail and web access who only needs to
>surf/mail 6 domains or less?

I'm saying you type the short names for your local hosts, and the fqdns for
remote hosts.  Don't you know anyone who connects to more than one or two
local hosts by name frequently?  I'm not proposing a search list of length
six, I'm proposing a search list of length one or two (e.g. for DGP, we have
both dgp.toronto.edu and toronto.edu in the search list; but most of the time
it would be length one I imagine).

>At the very least, let's not *recommend* searchlists to
>folks who are just getting their feet wet with DNS administration.

I can certainly buy that, ok.

>> But a deliberate search list has its uses, just like the ability to omit an
>> area code from local telephone calls.
>
>Yeah, I used to do that too. But then Southeastern Michigan popped out 3
>new area codes in the last 10 years or so, so I stopped relying on it --
>a number which didn't require an area code one week suddenly needed one the
>next week; it was too much of a hassle to be constantly reprogramming dialers,

But if *your* area code changes, then it will be the numbers *without* area
codes listed which won't have to change.  In some cases.

>Global addressing schemes are generally a Good Thing. No ambiguities. Even
>telephone dialers are automated these days, so what's the big deal in
>programming the area code (analogous to bookmarking an FQDN) *once* and
>then never having to worry about it again?

You seem to be saying that if the machine on my desk is xyzzy.dept.example.org
and I want to log in to plugh.dept.example.org, I should say "ssh
plugh.dept.example.org" instead of "ssh plugh".  I really can't understand why.

Here at DGP at the University of Toronto, there are a couple dozen hosts I
can usefully refer to by their short name, as in "ssh plugh", and there are
*many* dozen subdomains of toronto.edu to which I can send e-mail by mailing
to user at subdomain (e.g. flaps at dgp).  My mail aliases all use fqdns but when
typing an e-mail address for a single message, or when typing "ssh host",
I really don't see the utility in requiring the specification of fqdns for
local hosts.

For that matter, netscape gets a lot of mileage out of having a default
news server of "news".  A lot of lusers don't have to configure this as
a consequence.