www.bunny.com defineatly ain't playboy nor is www.bunny.id.au
  
  And the globe works well for our comapny - what is your point ?
  
My point is that your objections to the flowers and animals is not
very meaningful in this context. The arguement runs like this:

	"I don't want to be an {emu,roo,wombat,banksia}.id.au 
	 I want to be user§geek.id.au"

At which point, geek.id.au has to become geek0..geek1000+ .id.au to
provide for enough geek domains to give every stephen stephen§somegeek.id.au

When that has been done, what value do you place on having your particular
geek101.id.au? If this is just an argument about emu vs geek10002 then really,
Its the same thing. Of course, if you wanted stephen§anyword.id.au we're
back in the nightmare of generics, pizza.id.au, value/worth/branding/fcfs
which nobody resolves cleanly. I'm certainly not keen to bankroll you
or anybody else to claiming high-profile vanity domainnames to sell on, or
define access rules and charges for. Oh, you wanted to be the ONLY stephen§geek
and because "you thought of it first" its natural and right. Sorry, thats
really not how it works. I'd rather find stephen hawking at stephen§geek.id.au
than you. I'd say he has a better claim.
   
  > Fine. Find a neutral non-value laden namepoint (actually a large set of
  > namepoints).
  
  I do not think it needs to be that. I do not see a problem with first come
  first served in namespaces. Works OK elsewhere [waiting for opinions on
  .com and .net which I am sure will follow !].

First come first served works very poorly for john.smith§smith.id.au and
for john.smith§geek.id.au. It works very well for john.smith§someword.id.au
as long as there are thousands of words in the space of someword, and as long
as the value-set of the words in someword don't make some words more desirable
than others. The only properties useful in this domain are uniqueness and
meaninglessness. you can't search it in DNS, and you can't tell from any name
deterministically "who" that john.smith is in DNS. Maybe in some other
resource, like the white pages. Maybe not.
    
  Lets not try and keep the status quo - we all fail ! 
  You do not see a problem, others do and want to try to come to a solution,
  your goal seems to be to halt talk on that solution before it really
  starts !

I've been over this discussion too many times to get enthusiastic that
somewhere in the solution-space the size of a haystack, there is a specific
pin labelled with the fix for this problem.
   
  > query functions required for this (C/F X.500)
  
  Is www.books.com the one they want, what about www.shop.com ?
  Damn - wrong shop !
  
  Are you saying that a person could not implement a search of DNS spaces
  via a web page or some other protocol ?

Then you're re-implementing WHOIS and searches of data like the WHOIS data
which reflect back into DNS: but you're not using DNS as a search space
you're using some other search method into DNS. The primary function of
DNS remains name:address maps and vice-versa. Unfortunately, maintaining
linkage between multiple search engines and multiple datasets is a well
known and somewhat intractable (in human terms) problem. I don't think
you'll get what you want from this anytime soon.
  
  So a protocol that has the built in ability to query a massive distributed
  database, to do bulk transfers of data could not be turned into a useful
  resource for finding people (if that space was populated with name
  references) who wanted to be found (maybe - knowing there will be false
  hits as there are now with all other namespaces).
  
Its unlikely. Believe me, I've been down this path before. You wind up
walking into white/yellow pages turf and the societal issues about who
owns and maintains that data is in a different domain to DNS. Why do you
think the worldwide X.500 effort failed so spectacularly?

  man - you sure have a problem with these ideas/requests for discussion.

Does nobody read the archives? We must have been over this ground 4-5
times in as many years.
  
    What I am trying to say is that they is no rocket science involved here,
  that other ventures have grapled successfully with these issues.
  
Uh.. no. id.au is amongst the best of the set in this area. Other solutions
are looking pretty awful to me right now.

  As for "Explain how it helps locate people who ARE NOT UNDER 
  smith.something.relevant, but are useful, online, and being sought in
  this supposedly global directory service." - no online directory service
  does. If you ever tried to find all businesses in Yahoo.com.au - they are
  not all there - they may be one or may not ....
  
Yahoo is not a globally managed resource in the way DNS is. The whole point
of DNS is that the behaviours of domains and names in domains are on the whole
remarkably self-consistent. People use DNS to do what DNS is good at, and 
people like me try to beat down on changes to how DNS is used, or changes
to expectations of what DNS can deliver.
  
  Yes - I do not want a domain name under emu.id.au - that is right and I
  would not and many others would not as well. I think that 
  blah.furry-animal.id.au sounds dumb and I believe that many others share
  my point. 

Fine. but don't just come up with 'one word' you want added. Come up with
a model for words which allows for much much much wider participation and
which doesn't use value-laden words which will distort equal access to
names in the domain-space.
  
  Have you surveyed the prospective userbase to see if that is exactly what
  they want ? If so please provide details and ensure they are statistically
  correct !

No, of course I haven't. But then nobody else has either. And its not much
use offering them a phantasm of 'searchable DNS names in meaningful domains'
either because (a) you can't do it yet and (b) the clue-factor is very low
out there.

It sounds to me like you really want baxter§pobox.com and not anything§id.au

cheers
	-George
--
George Michaelson         |  DSTC Pty Ltd
Email: ggm§dstc.edu.au    |  University of Qld 4072
Phone: +61 7 3365 4310    |  Australia
  Fax: +61 7 3365 4311    |  http://www.dstc.edu.au