Re: The whole alternate-root ${STATE}horse (was Re: Enable BIND cache server to resolve chinese domain name?)

["Jay R. Ashworth" <jra () baylink com>]

On Tue, Jul 05, 2005 at 10:08:35AM +0200, Brad Knowles wrote:
> At 10:32 PM -0400 2005-07-04, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> >  But the whole "there's a non-ICANN root: the sky is falling" thing is
> >  an argument cooked up to scare the unwashed; us old wallas don't buy
> >  it.
>
>       That's because you understand the underlying technology, and you 
> understand how to deal with the problem (including understanding that 
> you may just have to live with it).

Yep.

>       Most people don't understand the underlying technology or the 
> true nature of the problem, nor are they capable of doing so.  All 
> they know is that their e-mail doesn't work, or they can't get to the 
> web pages they want.  And for them, this is a very real problem.

Yep.

>       Since there's a lot more of them than there are of us, and we're 
> the ones who are likely to be operating the systems and networks 
> where these people are our customers, when they have a problem, that 
> creates a problem for us.  Moreover, most of them are unlikely to be 
> willing to just live with the problem, if no other suitable technical 
> solution can be found.  Instead, they'll believe the sales pitch of 
> someone else who says that they can fix the problem, even if that's 
> not technically possible.

Well they might.  Well, actually, poorly they might.

But that argument seems to play right *to* the alt-root operators,
since the "fix" is to switch your customer resolvers to point to one of
them.  (Assuming, of course, they stay supersets of ICANN, and don't
get at cross-purposes with one another.)  In fact, merging them at your
resolvers might be the best solution.

>       Okay, the sky may not be falling.  Maybe it's just the Cyclorama, 
> or the fly grid.  But when the actors are on stage and one of these 
> things falls, there's not much practical difference.  And us techies 
> are the ones that have to pick up the pieces and try to put them back 
> together again.

Isn't it the truth.

But Steve's approach doesn't seem to *me* to play in that direction.
Am I wrong?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra () baylink com
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