For convenience, you can now say

  $ nix-env -f channel:nixos-16.03 -iA hello

instead of

  $ nix-env -f https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-16.03/nixexprs.tar.xz -iA hello

Similarly,

  $ nix-shell -I channel:nixpkgs-unstable -p hello
  $ nix-build channel:nixos-15.09 -A hello

Abstracting over the NixOS/Nixpkgs channels location also allows us to
use a more efficient transport (e.g. Git) in the future.