Caltrops - Biohazard: Code Veronica





	[quote name="Senor Barborito MetaFilter Post"]Because the US government isn't going to simply let it go (as three blind mice pointed out), and it works as is. I hold the UN in fairly high regard as far as things like inspecting for weapons in a fairly neutral manner goes, but for actual solid implementation of a core, critical piece of technology like the root servers what we have works and I'm more than a bit shaky on transitioning from that. Now, if other countries - or the UN as a body (outside of the US) elected to, they could simply create their own root servers for their own seperate domain name system (anybody can). Assuming it was implemented competently, there'd still be three major problems: a) they'd have to convince everybody to use it starting with either Microsoft and Apple (or merely every major ISP on the planet), b) contradictions between the two systems would immediately emerge making it impossible to support both systems simultaneously, c) how would you decide who owned what preexisting domains (from the current system) in the new system? Squatting would start all over again, and cloning the existing database is a no go because people wouldn't appreciate having to suddenly pay twice as much for the same domains, etc. In short, even if the UN did manage to create a working DNS system, there would still be massive hurdles for them to overcome, and even if Microsoft and Apple signed on with them the transition would be chaotic to say the least. Put simply: either the US is going to hand over control or it isn't, and it's really their call. This may not be 'democratic' from a respecting the soverign rights of other governments perspective, but at least what we have now seems reasonably fair for most of the world's actual individual people and it works. The only gains to be made by changing the current situation are, frankly, superficial in nature. posted by Ryvar at 4:37 AM PST on August 17 [/quote]