i'd like to know your opinions on the com/net wildcard issue

Mon Oct 13 21:37:31 UTC 2003

I don't know if Paul's system lets you log in twice,
so I can't check the survey questions, 
but they asked approximately whether you were
	- a registrar
	- an ISP (or something like that)
	- a WEB end-user.
The problem is that most Internet users aren't WEB end-users,
they're Internet end-users, including email, web, IM, time,
and maybe other protocols, and one of the big problems with
Verisign's web-grabbing wildcard games is that they're only helpful for
web users, but harmful or at best mostly harmless for
users of other protocols, particularly email.

Microsoft IE browser has a Sitefinder-like feature which
really only affects the web, so it's theoretically capable of
being helpful to web users without being harmful to other internet users,
though in practice I never found it all that helpful either.

		Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com