Web inventor: Regrets the “//”

Yeap after a year long search for the answer for the quest put forth by sir in the IT class (2008) here is the answer… The question was, what is the purpose of “//” present in url’s. And the answer is nothing.

Tim Berners-Lee pretty much created the World Wide Web as we know it. And looking back, he says that while the “http” part of a URL makes sense, there’s no particularly good reason for typing the double-slashes.

The double slash, though a programming convention at the time, turned out to not be really necessary, Mr. Berners-Lee explained at a symposium. Look at all the paper and trees, he said, that could have been saved if people had not had to write or type out those slashes on paper over the years — not to mention the human labor and time spent typing those two keystrokes countless millions of times in browser address boxes. (Today’s browsers, of course, automatically fill in the “http://” preamble when a user types a Web address.)

I’m guessing that nobody was really all that hurt by their presence. But I guess it does show that in hindsight, pretty much anything could be done better. Read the full story  Here by Steve Lohr at NYTimes.com

Wish you all a Happy and Safe Diwali, First light up your hearts and then light up your streets…

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

ICANN seperates itself from US Government

Image via Wikipedia

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (otherwise known as ICANN) has, since its inception in 1998, enjoyed been strongly ties with the US Government’s Department of Commerce – something that’s irritated international governments who’ve wanted the body responsible for domain names and the entire Doman Name System to be more internationally-balanced. In particular, ICANN has been criticised for long-delaying the arrival of international domain names.

Yesterday ICANN has signed a new ‘Affirmation of Commitments’ that allows it to break free from the US Government and be that long-sought-after international body. The organisation has confirmed it will at least stay based in the United States.

There’s been plenty of positive quotes about this change of status from the US Government, big Internet businesses such as Google as well as the likes of Vint Cerf – one of the co-inventors of the Internet – and ICANN is responding to its complaints about lacking internationalisation by supporting Chinese and Russian characters in Top Level Domain names next year.