Hostname pedantry, or "GNU/Circumlunar"
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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
