On Fri, 26 May 2006 11:36:32 -0400, "Greg A. Woods" <woods@weird.com>
wrote:

>
> At the core of this issue seems to be the dichotomy between storage
> media devices and most other types of devices.  There's even a small
> split between devices that host removable storage media and those that
> are fixed.
> 
I do not agree.  4.2bsd had network problems because the default source
address assigned to outgoing connections was that of the "first" interface
found.  (I believe the change to the current scheme -- use the interface
associated with the route being used -- came with 4.3bsd.)  

Serial ports don't spontaneously appear; however, hardware does get added
and removed.  This applies to disks, too.  It should be possible to do
this without breaking existing applications and configuration files.
(Aside: the first thing I do, whenever I get a new Windows machine, is to
change the letter of the optical drive from 'D' to 'Q' or some such.  I
*know* that I'll be adding a new disk or three at some point -- or rather,
I know that I've done so for virtually every machine I've ever owned.  But
when I do, it *will* make that the D drive, thereby breaking any
applications I installed that want to read CDs.  This isn't as bad, but
it's not great.

You're quite right that we still need to be able to address drives that
don't have volume labels.

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb