what is in your url? bragging about terminology... and *semantic*? web

(... today is the day of writings without capital letters)

you know, smtp and pop3 are for e-mail, nntp is a protocol for news, http is for *everything*, ftp is the one that everybody expect to be dead by now, but it still crawling around... :)

my big question for today is, why in urls http: and ftp:, but mailto: and news:?
does it seem more reasonable to have smtp: and nntp: instead, just because it have to be a protocol name? if so i'm still confused (or just pretending to play dumb) what is the news: protocol nntp or rss/rdf/echo?
or maybe better to have something opposite, - like xippertext: and bloodyblah: in addition to mailto: and newsgroup:
then we will have something like that - "you have to install bloodyblah client in order to view this stuff..."

you'd ask what's the point? the point is simple:
the main rule is, - all rules have exceptions...

if you build so-called program or created so called standard and expect it's prefect test it by applying the rule #1. if your creation is able to handle any exceptions - be proud you've build a really elegant thing...

PS: so even i know all the history of url standard development, - i'm still curious... what's up with thaaat?