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