>And what if I want one 'rc.conf' for a laptop at home, and one for the
>laptop while "mobile", and one for it when it is at work?  

Then perhaps you lose.  Your /etc/resolv.conf may not point to the
right addresses, or you may need to update nsswitch.conf.  Or your
sendmail.cf may need changing, to reflect different routing (either
for outgoing mail or as the return-path) when you're at home rather
than at work.

>I would personally like to lose the extra little files that aren't
>very intuitive.

Yes, that'd help with your situation. but one size doesn't fit all
here.


>Well I always wondered about these names.  Where is 'yourname', or
>'yourgate', etc?  What's with the 'my' on the front?  And why doesn't
>'domainname' have a 'my' then?

The names are not good, agreed.  The functionality is still useful.


>> It's _not_ an rc for ``the network'', since it doesn't include
>> services; just connectivity.

>As far as _I_ am concerned the _network_ is up.  My ftp/telnet/web/whatever
>client will work.  Perhaps I don't even start "services" on my machine?

Umm, then perhaps that means you're not qualified to offer an opinion
on when ``the network is up'' for machines which *do* start services?

>services != network. 


Depends on whether you're a server. If you are, then from the client's
perspective, you havent' ``started the network'' until you've started
the services. Heck, your own example of conneccting to an FTP server
shows  that:

	ifconfig ex0 inet blah blah blah
	ifconfig lo0 127.0.0.1
	ftp x.x.x.x
	ftp: connect: Connection refused

now, you tell me: is ``the network up'' on machine x.x.x.x, or not? :-/.