On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Nick Andrew wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 16, 2002 at 06:59:18PM +1100, Saliya Wimalaratne wrote:
> > You people *just don't get it*; do you ?
> > 
> > People don't *randomly guess at names*.
> 
> I randomly guess at names. And I know how the DNS works, so it's a safe
> bet that a lot of people who don't know how the DNS works also do it.

At first, I thought this was a troll :) Then, I thought you were
deliberately mis-interpreting what I said. Now, I'm not sure, so here goes
:)

What I was talking about was statistics from logfile analysis. Not my
personal habits; nor the habits of my staff, nor the habits of one 'Nick
Andrew' :).

*Most* internet users use a search engine to find what they are looking
for. Generally what happens is they find a search engine that they like
(i.e. that gives them the results that are most useful to them for a given
query), then use that. Percentage-wise, the DNS is this search engine in
about 0% of cases.

> If my guess is wrong I get somebody unexpected (or no such domain). No
> problem, I just guess again. It takes a few seconds of my time.

I expect that your time is worthless to you, from the above. Not so for
most people :)

> > That's akin to randomly stabbing
> > in the last 4 digits of a phone number, secure in the knowledge that your
> > Aunty Beryl lives in town 'foo' and you know the first four digits that
> > belong to 'foo'.
> 
> Randomly dialling a telephone number costs $$ if somebody answers, and
> then the dialler has to deal with the person who answers, if only
> briefly. Websites don't get annoyed if you go away suddenly and it
> doesn't cost $$ per GET request. So the analogy is really not valid.

Of course it does (cost per wasted request). In terms of time lost,
bandwidth used, whatever. The analogy *isn't perfect*, granted, but not
for the reasons that you quote :)

Regards,

Saliya