Quote:
Originally Posted by n5bb
most of Dyson's comments are related to the economies of this change.
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Two points: 1. "most of...", but not all. 2. Economic arguments are still valid. So the question is whether something with an economic cost is "worth it". Reasonable people can disagree on whether the benefits outweigh the costs (or whether significant benefits even exist).
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrStrabismus
You made remarks about large numbers that can apply to practically any noun and you made a spurious comparison with hosts.txt.
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In an analogy, there's some part that's relevant, and some part that's not. That's why it's called an analogy. If you attack the part that's not relevant, it doesn't mean that the relevant part is "spurious". You didn't say why that particular analogy is spurious in its entirety.
The hosts.txt analogy provides relevance in that it helps us to visualize (in a general way) a scenario where arbitrary registrations are allowed at the top level... that's all. Nobody said any future scenario would exactly match that situation in every detail.
Regarding the following two comments:
Quote:
Originally Posted by n5bb
Personally, I don't think it's reasonable to pay such a high amount for a TLD unless you have a well reasoned plan to attract users to that TLD.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DrStrabismus
Someone has to apply to run a TLD, and pay a lot of money before it exists - the number is never going to be absurd in that sense... The only scaling limitation is in the root servers, and presumably the number of TLDS is not going to be expanded faster than the capacity of the root servers to deal them.
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I can agree it's possible that cost barriers and scaling limitations will prevent us from ever reaching a "point of absurdity" in TLD-expansion. If that's your position, then I don't see that we disagree on whether there's a "point of absurdity" in theory, just whether it could ever be reached. If you're saying we can't ever reach it, I can only say I'm not certain about that, and I hope you're right.
I should point out that we currently have the technology for a database to manage a fan-out of millions (as the DNS currently does under ".com"), even at the root of a hierarchy. The YahooID namespace is in the many millions, and they give them out for free. Doing the same thing to the DNS root is not prevented by cost or scalability limitations (or if it were, those limitations would be overcome before too long), only policy limitations.
Dyson concedes that her opinions are just that (wording such as "I do think", "if I am right", "there could well be"). Nobody can predict the future with certainty. My opinion is that her arguments are still stronger than the counterarguments presented. I can appreciate that others have a different opinion. Only time will tell.
Cheers.