RE: The Fortune 10,000 .COM Cluster

[Jim Fleming <JimFleming at doorstep.unety.net>]

On Thursday, March 19, 1998 10:52 AM, Karl Auerbach[SMTP:karl at CaveBear.com] wrote:
@
@> Another place that .COM Clusters can be useful
@> is when "censorship" is desired. One can imagine
@> deploying a .COM Cluster that only had the Fortune
@> 10,000 COMpany names in the data base.
@
@Ummm, subsets are a really bad idea.  That will cause asymetrical
@connectivity (or rather, assymetrical resolvability of names.)
@
@We should chose not to follow that path.  As someone once said -- that way
@lies madness. 
@

Yes...but some CEOs of companies make very strange
decisions when confronted with Affirmative Action and EEO issues.
If they do not, then they find themselves in court being asked if
they considered taking steps to prevent all of the awful things
from happening in the workplace and they want to make sure
their answer is..."yes, we took (and paid for) all known steps..".

BTW...public libraries now have a similar situation. Some people
would like to see a .COM server that only has .COM names in
it that could be viewed in printed publications in the library. In
other words, a service bureau would start with an empty server
and add .COM names based on scanning printed publications
each month. If the .COM name appears in print, then it is added.
Once added, it becomes part of the library's "approved list".

This again gets driven by the need for library administrators to
have a clear and precise way to define how a .COM name was
made available. As it turns out, librarians have had a WWW-like
network for years where they share reference entries. As they
run across things, they enter them into a special format and
libraries share the entries. This could be extended to share the
lists of "approved" .COM names.

Again, if libraries are willing to pay for this "service" there might
be companies willing to provide the service. That is what free
markets are all about.


-
Jim Fleming
Unir Corporation
IBC, Tortola, BVI