Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Friday 10 August 2001, 6:27 PM
Rupert Goodwins' Diary
Monday 6/8/2001
ICANN announces another chance to register for another top-level domain suffix -- .name. But do I want to be rupertgoodwins.name? If I ever get around to doing a proper website to promote Rupert Goodwins, Inc., that's now an option -- although, oddly, nobody's got around to squatting the .com, .net, .org or .co.uk versions of my web presence. My choice remains open.
But I'm hard pushed to see who'd want to be anything dot name. And I speak English. What happens to those who'd prefer .nom, .nome and so on? As for the other options -- .aero and .coop wouldn't be high on my list of essential Net homelands, but someone at ICANN thought them essential.
Perhaps someone could explain why there has to be a restriction on what top level domain suffixes are allowed? If I wanted to register .goodwins and distribute it around the family, it would make no less sense than goodwins.com, .net, .fishhead or whatever. With search engines being the way that most things are found, the lack of some all-encompassing hierarchy wouldn't matter that much, even if the affairs of men fell into need categories. Which they don't.
And if that's not any good, then I suggest ICANN follow the way I do things in my filing cabinet -- one huge catchall called .misc, and leave us to it.
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