Why should I have to type "canon.local" for my printer name, just in order to avoid an advert to buy a new printer? This destroys any sense of user preference in favor of large corporations pushing their shit further into your face even when you explicitly don't want it.
I've worked at many places where http://search/ was the Intranet search facility. Not now though, nope. Now your IT department will be under pressure to accept Big Search's latest site-integrated intranet search which they conveniently started marketing around the time they broke all your local URLs.
The good thing about DNS is that the user controls it. You can set it to whatever you want. Enough people set it one way and it becomes a standard that no board can decide against.
The problem is the concept of hijacking DNS in order to show ads or beg for money on a wireless network. It's like saying that you don't want hands because when you hit them with a hammer, they start bleeding all over the place. The solution is to not hit your hand with a hammer, not to not have hands. Because they're pretty useful except for the whole bleeding thing.
Exactly. What's needed is more public education. DNS is a basic thing all users should know about. You can stop someone on the street and they will know what "RAM" is. They might not be able to explain how it works or what it stands for, but they know what it is and they know they need it for applications to run smoothly. Same should be true of DNS. Mozilla, not to mention Adobe, can coordinate millions of people to all download the same program (Firefox, Flash plugin). People can be taught how to control their own DNS, e.g. how to choose a DNS server. But ICANN likes users to remain ignorant. They want everyone to use their root server without ever thinking about it. Well, that server is about to become overrun with needless tld's.
You can stop someone on the street and they will know what "RAM" is.
People in NY were asked what their browser was and the most common reply was "Google" - and this was before Chrome had any kind of share. People are completely ignorant when it comes to technology.
They won't break your local URLs. Locally defined domains take priority over remote ones, you don't rely on them return NXDOMAIN for yours to work. It's a complete non-issue.
