200+ comments and not even one mention of someone running their own postfix servers.. What has become of Slashdot?

But all these lookups would be going to root servers anyway. If I type boogyboogyboogy.com into a browser I'm going to hit the root servers with a lookup query regardless of if the domain actually exists. The "cost" to the root server is basically the same as it's just going to refer me to the VeriSign DNS. Theoretically you could actually make the argument that squatted domains actually easy the burden on the root servers to a small degree because if you're in a large ISP environment and someone else successfully did a previous query for that same squatted domain, then the response would be cached at the ISP DNS level, whereas if the domain wasn't registered it would do a full recursive query to the root servers each time.

I agree with this statement, but this applies to "squatting" more than "tasting", which is the what the article is whining about. In a "tasting" scenario your domain will be freed up within 5 days.. unless of course it has good type in traffic, in which case the taster will keep it and it become a squatting issue. Overall, I agree that tasting is not a "good thing", but I think the "strained DNS" argument is bunk.