💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~solderpunk › phlog › hostname-pedantry-gnu-circuml… captured on 2023-04-26 at 14:12:13.
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-03-20)
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Hostname pedantry, or "GNU/Circumlunar" --------------------------------------- This server, the one your gopher client grabbed this file from, with IP address 167.88.113.156, is, and always has been, officially named the Mare Tranquilitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu. That's, of course, quite a mouthful. The "correct" short way to refer to it is as "the Zaibatsu" - that's how the characters in Schismatrix refer to the space colony this place is named after. As of yesterday, the canonical hostname for this server is zaibatsu.circumlunar.space. Many people, including myself, also casually refer to this particular server as "circumlunar space" or "CS". This is perfectly understandable, as until quite recently it was the only machine on the internet with the circumlunar.space domain name, and when we post links to gopher content here, they begin with gopher://circumlunar.space/.... But this alternative name is no longer technically accurate, and will get less so as time goes on. Very soon, a new public access unix server and gopherhost provider will be brought online, administered by slugmax. It's official name will be the Mare Serenitatis Corporate Circumlunar Republic. This is yet another mouthful, and the "correct" short name will be "the Republic". It's canonical hostname will be, you guessed it, republic.circumlunar.space. Referring to either of these individual servers as "circumlunar space" is technically wrong, in exactly the same way that referring to tilde.team as "the tildeverse" or to mastodon.social as "the fediverse" is technically wrong. "circumlunar space" (or "the circumlunar universe" if you prefer) is a many, not a one. If you say "circumlunar space is down", you're claiming that *all* the servers in the circumlunar.space domain are down simultaneously. Which hopefully won't ever happen, that's kind of the point, or one of the points, anyway. If you say "I have a phlog at circumlunar space", this is not wrong, but, IMHO, slightly weird English grammar since circumlunar space is a collective thing - I'd say "I have a phlog in circumlunar space". Either way, it would be a bit vague, as it wouldn't be clear which circumlunar server your phlog was at. "I have a phlog at the Zaibatsu" or "at the Republic" is precise. How important is any of this? Not very important at all, and I definitely don't plan to be a jerk about it. If you "get it wrong" in a phlog post, rest assured that I am *not* going to send you an RMS-style email, interjecting for a moment to explain that what you're referring to as "circumlunar space" is, in fact, just one individual circumlunar server. You can be as careful or as careless as you like. I just wanted to make it clear what the situation was and explain that if you keep talking the way you have until now, you may soon be making statements which are ambiguous, misleading, or just wrong. If you are sensitive to this kind of thing, you may wish to start working on breaking old habits now. If you don't care for pedantry, keep right on not caring. Two further things. One, the Zaibatsu and the Republic are *not* the only entities in circumlunar space! They are the only two "colonies", meaning they are supposed to offer several services (at least shell and gopher) to largeish userbases, to be around for a long time, and be stable/reliable. They're also supposed to be interconnected in various interesting ways that you'll learn more about in the near future. Colonies will be added slowly, one at a time, as the most recently added one begins to reach capacity. The Republic will be a larger server than the Zaibatsu and be able to handle more users, so don't expect a third colony any time soon. However, circumlunar space also contains "outposts" - standalone experimental/hobby projects run by individual members of colonies. They might be permanent or temporary, and I haven't yet put any hard limits on them in place yet. They are a way to encourage people to have fun and be creative and learn sysadmin skills. In case you missed them, there are two outposts so far, the Red Consensus (consensus.circumlunar.space, run by tfurrows) and Ryumin's Dome (dome.circumlunar.space, run by yargo). Both offer gopher hosting, but in unusual and interesting ways, different from the colonies. In general, outposts will probably make good testing grounds for new ideas which may later be adopted by colonies, but they don't always have to be that. Two, I mentioned that the canonical hostname of the Zaibatsu is now zaibatsu.circumlunar.space, instead of plain old circumlunar.space. This is to place the Zaibatsu on equal footing with the other servers, especially the Republic. However, the gopherverse is already full of links pointing to gopher://circumlunar.space:70/whatever, and I absolutely do not want to break those links. So, the naked domain circumlunar.space will continue to point to the Zaibatsu, forever. This also means that any SSH configs or scripts or anything else you have which rely on circumlunar.space being the Zaibatsu will also continue to work. I will *probably* update the Gophernicus configuration so that the automatically inserted hostname in gophermaps is zaibatsu.circumlunar.space, and in future you should link to your phlog using that name. I mean, it would make me happy if you did, but I can't force you and won't try, and everything will still work if you don't. As an exception, though (just to make things difficult), if you want to link to this page[1], which explains and links to the entire circumlunar universe, it would seem appropriate to drop the "zaibatsu." and just use circumlunar.space. [1] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/universe