I am sorry I did not make my point a bit clearer. I'll have another go. 

Both the white pages and the yellow pages allow people (although I am
mainly refering to businesses) to put as many entries in , under the names
they choose. They do this precisely because they are the ways that they
anticiipate others (customers) will look them up to find them.

That is why I don't even think it is a good starting point. 

Warm regards
Gary

At 04:26 25/02/98 +1100, you wrote:
>    Date:        Tue, 24 Feb 1998 08:47:24 +1100
>    From:        Gary R Oliver <gary.oliver&#167;ooo.com.au>
>    Message-ID:  <3.0.3.32.19980224084724.00a05d50&#167;mail01.syd.aone.net.au>
>
>  | So far as the DNS is concerned I don't like people using the analogy of
>  | white pages and yellow pages.
>
>Not if carried too far, I agree, but it is a useful starting point.
>The DNS is a white pages type directory - you have to know exactly what
>you're looking for (and I mean the organisations domain name, not their
>company or trading name) in order for the DNS to be useful.   It is not
>the kind of directory that will help you find the domain name if you
>don't already know it by some other means.   That is just like the white
>pages, if you met someone selling shoebrushes, and want to find their
>phoen number, the white pages is totally useless, you have to know their
>name, usually initials, and often have an idea of their address for it
>to produce a result.  For the DNS you have to *know* the domain name.
>Ideally it would never be used by human entered strings, only by programs
>acting on information derived from other programs.
>
>On the other hand, the yellow pages is the kind of directory that allows
>you to find information based upon a description of the information
>wanted.  Being printed on paper, it necessarily has limitations on what
>kinds of searches are possible (I think the on-line vesion is more flexible)
>but it is at least structured so that searching for information is possible.
>The Internet has no real directory of that form yet, and it needs one.
>
>  | I notice MelbIT has also proposed the phone book as a guide.
>
>As I understand it, that's for a totally different purpose.
>
>  | Why can't people just consider the DNS in its own right.
>
>We do.
>
>  | The implementation of the
>  | policies so far, as other have commented before this, has meant that even
>  | if you know the name (exactly) you won't necessarily find the
>  | other information needed to make contact since there are many public and
>  | private companies with trading names and use either one or the other.
>
>No, that isn't the policies, that is the nature of the DNS.   It simply
>is not designed to allow that kind of translation, never was, and never
>will be.  To use the DNS you must know the domain name some other way.
>Its purpose is purely and simply to translate known domain names into
>other information (mail delivery points, IP addresses, etc).   Anything
>more than that is purely taking wild stabs (occasionally not so wild)
>and then looking to see if you happened to hit the right place by going
>there and seeing it it looks to be where you wanted to get, and if not,
>trying again.   That's a pretty stupid way to operate really, when you
>think about it.
>
>kre
>
>