> fwiw, this has been a source of minor irritation for me.  I habitually
> do stuff like "telnet 0 80"  to check out a web-server or whatever..

I guess it all depends on what one's fingers are used to doing.

Would aliasing 'l' ("ell") to localhost in /etc/hosts or dns make your
fingers happier? 

I personally hate the fact that there is are so many
variable-interpretations in IP number parsing and would be very happy
to see all that old baggage ripped out.

It was a too much of a liability as far as security was concerned.
One could never fully trust text-based IP-address filters to catch all
the nasty aliases for an IP address.  Look at all the amusing ways
folks found to abuse those aliases in the spam.

-wolfgang
-- 
       Wolfgang Rupprecht <wolfgang+gnus@dailyplanet.wsrcc.com>
		    http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/
DGPS signals via the Internet  http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/gps/dgps-ip.html