Re: Disappointing ARIN - A great advertisement for the USA ?

[Randy Bush <randy () psg com>]

> > > One approach would be the use of an option flag on the query to obtain 
> > > the new hierarchical output  No flag = no output change.  Would that 
> > > suffice?
> > how to do something new is best discussed by folk who want or need
> > something new, the folk with skin in the game.  so, though i have an
> > opinion that your suggestion seems reasonable at first blush, it is
> > worth the pixels on which it is printed.
> Can you expand your response some?

yes i can inflate the syntax, but the semantics would be the same.

my opinion on how something new should be done is not highly relevant as
i am not invested in something new, have not looked deeply into what new
thing you want to do, ...  but if you insist on my stating an opinion,
then adding some optional and non-interfering syntactic sugar to the
whois query will likely not break people's fingers or scripts.

inflated enough for you?

> I'm not certain I understand whether an option would suffice

what i tried to say was neigher do i.  but i suspect it may.

> nor the pola reference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

i.e. it is what the users will bear :)

> I do get that we shouldn't be changing default output upon which
> scripts rely.

bingo!

randy