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On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 09:20:13PM +0000, Philip Hudson wrote: > I see. It's the standard tech elitist can't-see-the-wood-for-the-trees > too-smart-to-do-it-right turf-grab. I understand Some Crap Tech, its > deficiencies don't cause harm or alarm to me or my peers -- hell, > maybe they even privilege us over other users, since we can implement > the fix and they can't, the fools! -- therefore It Works Just Fine, > because my interest in exploiting and sustaining my knowledge > advantage outweighs the common good, and nobody could possibly or > validly want to improve or replace Some Crap Tech, and I will do > everything in my power to discourage, denigrate, obstruct and delay > anyone who tries, because what would a world without a priesthood of > gatekeepers like me be? You know, perhaps I'm wrong, but I read Martin's post as merely pointing out that one nice feature of DNS is that the system is distributed, which means that if you have reason to distrust the reliability of responses from one group of name servers (such as those ran by ISPs in your country) that you can easily tell your device/router to use other servers, such as those ran by an evil US-based corporation. Yes, there may be reasons to distrust that corporation and the responses its DNS returns, although perhaps you'll find servers that you can trust. Yes, there are many other ways in which a government can block access to services it doesn't want its citizens to access. But forcing ISPs to block certain DNS responses is relatively easy to pull off and doesn't break the rest of the Internet, whereas many of these other methods do. Yes, most people don't know how to change name servers and ideally they shouldn't have to know and it isn't rocket science either. Most Twitter users will know someone who can help them change the relevant settings. Yes, there are many other problems with DNS, some more serious than others. But I wouldn't call it a "serious bug in the Internet". Definitely not until you suggest some "fixes for the systemic bug", rather than state that your views are obviously true and make unfounded accusations against someone who happens to have a different view. Martijn. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq