One of the most fun parts of having your own online service is choosing the domain name (the internet address).
In the old days you had to use addresses that ended in .com or .net or .org, but nowadays there are hundreds of options to choose from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains
Also, they are now available in different languages and alphabets.
Some are restricted in who can use them, but most are available to anyone.
@homegrown
I'd like to say, in a non antagonistic way, that I do not find domain registration fun at all.
The external dependency, the economic cost, the general ethos of that industry of renting virtual real estate and holding people to ransom is a big problem and a threat to growing and hosting your own services.
@homegrown
Of course using IP numbers is not an alternative. I mean, imagine IPv6.
This is not a new question, it's been around for years!
There have been various different proposals, on all kinds of levels.
One way of looking at it is that the DNS + SSL Cert + URL is fundamentally broken and everything we have is shitty patches to this brokenness.
Or.. the DNS + SSL Cert is EXTREMELY lucrative (Mark Shuttleworth for example) so why change it?
@homegrown
Ultimately, I don't believe that the creative minds that design everything we have right now in digital networks could not fix the "problem" of DNS.
There is just no will, because most people don't perceive it as a problem. And it's not as long as you have resources aka $$€€.
But it's not "fun".
@keith
The domain system is definitely not ideal, but seems to currently be the least worst option?
I guess we could use IP numbers like we do telephone numbers?
Numbers make it much harder to tell if a site is genuine though, spoofing websites would become incredibly easy.