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The Internet

Happy Birthday, Dear DNS 158

Posted by timothy from the better-than-most-tlas dept.
Shloka writes with a snippet from Wired News: "Twenty years ago Monday, two computer scientists at the University of Southern California created a key component essential to the modern Internet. Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris ran the first successful test of the automated domain name system, or DNS..."
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Happy Birthday, Dear DNS More

Happy Birthday, Dear DNS

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  • Seems like just recently, it was the birthday of the "internet" among many other things, birthday season?

  • i never know what to post in celebration threads (Score:4, Funny)

    by Neophytus ( 642863 ) * on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:14PM (#6267733)
    So all I'm gonna say is happy birthday. Thats the point, no? ;-)

  • but....but...but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tha_mink ( 518151 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:15PM (#6267734)
    I thought Al Gore invented DNS. No?
    • Al Gore DID invent DNS. But he would've felt bad taking all the credit, so he let the USC guys do the testing for him. I mean, Al Gore wouldn't lie, would he?
    • Al Gore is often plagued with the unfortunate quote about him inventing the internet. According to an interview after that incident he did explain that while he didn't invent the internet and he regrets making that comment, in his own defense "I was jet lagged and tired because we were up late the night before inventing the camcorder"


      actual quote. look it up :)

  • [OT] idea for a 'new? domain naming concep (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This would be kind of like palm graffiti where each "shape", that you
    draw in the silkscreen, is registered as a character.

    You would have a little panel like a "silkscreen" in the navigation bar
    on your web browser.

    To get to a particular website you would only need a input device to
    draw symbol on the "silkscreen". If you wanted to go to the website for
    Target (http://www.target.com.au/) you just draw a picture of a circle
    with a solid dot in the middle. To get to the main website for the
    Debian project (http:

    • Re:[OT] idea for a 'new? domain naming concep (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:35PM (#6267832)
      This would be kind of like palm graffiti where each "shape", that you draw in the silkscreen, is registered as a character.

      In Asian languages, that "new" concept is called "ideograms".

      100.000 concepts, 100.000 ideograms. That may work for educated chinese or japanese people, but for internet websites, you're talking about gazillions of "URL graphitis", not just tens of thousands. Considering the difficulty standard computers still have translating handwritten latin alphabet, which is only 26 letters, I think this is a crackpot idea. And even if it worked, did you think about handicapped people, or blind people, who might just like to type URLs in plaintext ?
    • First, who'd use this? I think it would be quicker and easier to just type target.com than to draw (.) or whatever. I doubt many people would buy a touchpad for their PCs to use this anyway.

      Secondly, how many different shapes do you think it will recognize? Graffiti only has to deal with numbers, letters, some symbols. Maybe 50-100 different symbols? Any more than that and they would probably look too much alike for the computer to reliably tell them apart.

      Of couse this would be a boon to the porn/sp
    • It could conceivably be built around standard DNS. After all, it's just using a different substitute for the IP address. instead of typing in www.something.com to connect to the IP address you'd be sending a certain symbol. However, the mechanism to interpret it would have to be highly advanced, able to recognize all of the weird drawing styles humans have. Typing it in is still easier because there's only one way to spell target(in english at least). From an ease of use standpoint it's just not worth it. P
    • If you wanted to go to the website for Target (http://www.target.com.au/) you just draw a picture of a circle with a solid dot in the middle.

      But then what's there for goatse??
    • OK, so if you want Debian, you draw a swirl. If you want Dreamcast, then draw a swirl. But if I want to go to the Crusoe website, then I would draw a swirl, right?

      Just imagine all the problems with squatting then. "I wanted to go to the White House website, but when I forgot one of the columns when drawing the little house, I went to a porn site."

  • Security Patch (Score:5, Funny)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:20PM (#6267755) Journal
    And real soon now they are expected to have a DNS which is ready for use in the enterprise.
  • I was going to check to see if anyone had the domain happy.birthday.to.me (using DNS to check), but the TLD .me hasn't been handed out to anyone from what I can tell.

    Amazing, well fsck.me!

  • You know... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:21PM (#6267758) Homepage
    "The system was built to expand but not necessarily to be secure,"

    Holy tapdancing Christ, really?

  • Finally (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:21PM (#6267762)
    Back when these guys were creating early Internet technologies, they were called geeks. Now, they're recognized as pioneers of the Internet. Too bad there're getting to old for the girls to notice.

  • Celebrate... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hogwash McFly ( 678207 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:24PM (#6267776)
    but don't sing Happy Birthday or you'll get screwed for copyright infringement.

  • Time to celebrate, everyone! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Saint Aardvark ( 159009 ) * on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:27PM (#6267792) Homepage Journal
    #!/usr/local/bin/bash

    for i in a b c d e f g h i j k m
    do
    dig @${i}.root-servers.net *.com axfr
    done

    • eh? I don't speak .sh, what's dig do?

      • Re:Time to celebrate, everyone! (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Parent is advocating a Rude thing to do, namely to query each of the root servers for all of the names they know about.

        dig ("domain internet gropre") is a tool for interrogating DNS servers about the various named objects they can identify - hosts, networks, mailservers, etc.

  • Awh, so cute! (Score:5, Informative)

    by rosewood ( 99925 ) <<ur.tahc> <ta> <doowesor>> on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:27PM (#6267793) Homepage Journal
    Its funny because I just setup my first authoritive DNS server ever this week. It was fun stuff.

    I used safari.oreilly.com to get me the DNS and BIND book + other helpful things all for (well free for 2 weeks) $15. Thats just friggen awesome.

    Ill just add this little tidbit: SBC has its in-addr.arpa. shiz setup as IN-ADDR.ARPA. Aparently this makes a big fucking difference. So, if tomorrow you decide to celebrate 20 years of DNS by setting up a new authoritive server with SBC, make sure you setup your zone file to be authoritive for IN-ADDR.ARPA. not in-addr.arpa. like the books say :)

    • I'm sorry (Score:1, Troll)

      by Gothmolly ( 148874 )
      that you're using BIND. When you get r00ted next week when the LATEST hole is dicovered, maybe you'll switch to a real [cr.yp.to] DNS server.
      Yes, Nehril, this is a troll.

      • Error!

        License Not Compatible With Linux Religion.

        REBOOT

  • Modern world (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:28PM (#6267800)
    Isn't it weird that people take automated name resolving for granted in the internet world, and yet don't find it odd to have to look up other people up themselves manually in another, older, even bigger world wide network called the "telephone system", using an regionalized locally-cached database called the "phone directory" that's updated only once a year ? In the 21st century, I find it really surprising that phones still feature a 10 key touchpad and cheapo dialtones to talk to you.
    • But there is only one slashdot.org and there are many, many John Smiths in New York...
      • And, you can always memorize all the phone numbers you need.
      • But there is only one slashdot.org and there are many, many John Smiths in New York...

        Well then, how come you manage to find the right John Smith in New York using the phone book ? because you also look up the street address, city and state. Did I say people should be looked up by name only in my previous post ?

        I don't know what's trollish about wanting telephones with a keyboard and screen to look up people directly from the phone line, instead of using the phone book. The French nearly got that right :
        • The only thing I'm saying is this : printing phone directories and requiring people to dial numbers is turn of the previous century technology, and I think there should be a better, cheaper, more elegant way of doing this by now, but there isn't, which is odd.

          You know, phones were invented in the 19th century, in a way, they are outdated. I don't remember when I last used a phone directory to find another person's number - most of those I know have mobiles (and almost all of the rest have no phone at all.

        • There are phones like that. However, at a cost of about $1000 a pop, people prefer to use the phone book (and perhaps buy a PC with a web browser and have money left over).

        • better, cheaper, more elegant way of doing this by now

          I wish.

          I do notice that the directory services will dial the number for you, which is convenient.

          But the still charge the better part of US$1 for the service, so cheap is not a feature.

          I keep thinking that there should be directory service through the fancier cell phone displays, which could use alphabetical listings, sending and receiving text to update the display the same way that personal directory listings are on my Motorola v60i.

          As you key i

    • Re:Modern world (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cperciva ( 102828 )
      Servers move far more frequently than people do. I've had the same phone number for 22 years now; if slashdot.org used the same IP address for 22 years, I might start to access it without using DNS.
      • Servers move far more frequently than people do. I've had the same phone number for 22 years now; if slashdot.org used the same IP address for 22 years, I might start to access it without using DNS.

        But do you really? You don't have a pager, cell phone, fax, work phone number, etc.? I've changed my cell phone carrier (and number) at least 4 or 5 times in the past 7 years, my home phone number 3 times in the past 5 years, and my work phone number 3 times in the past 5 years. I've had 7 different pager n

    • Re:Modern world (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Zarhan ( 415465 )
      I don't know, but I would assume that even in the US you can get the same things as here in Finland - electronic phonebooks, available online in the web, on CD-ROM, or accessible via SMS (Just type in FIND [address] [hometown] and send it to number 15400, you'll get the number in reply. When using my company phone and need something (such as a taxi when I'm on business trip), I usually just dial to a phonebook service and ask them to connect me directly.

      So, we're hardly limited to a once-a-year updated bo
      • We have that here in the US, but it's not used by actual people. It's used primarily by telemarketing scum to find your number and call you at dinner time to sell you crap you don't want. My number is listed pretty much everywhere, but I'm on the NY do not call list, which is IMO the most important listing to be on.
        • We have that here in the US, but it's not used by actual people. It's used primarily by telemarketing scum to find your number and call you at dinner time to sell you crap you don't want.
          Sounds a lot like DNS to me. Unless you've run your own mail server, you wouldn't believe how much spam you get at any plausible-sounding-name@whatever.domain.in.any.tld

    • it's called LDAP (Score:4, Interesting)

      by axxackall ( 579006 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @02:05PM (#6267967) Homepage Journal
      I know, LDAP is designed to host and distribute personal user acount info, while you want LDAP for everyone, not only computer users. But the problem is that outside of computer industry itself computer information services are either expensive or useless.

      Twenty years is not really a long time interval to change our social life revolutionary. Although, it was in last 20 years that Internet have become a part of our life. Or have it?

      Most of information services in Internet are about other Internet informational services or about Internet technologies. No wonder: when it is growing on shoulders of Internet enthusiasts they publish what they know. And the best they know is Internet itself.

      The picture was going to change with B2C, but the boom has collapsed saddenly, and then all investors have frozen their money waiting when Mr. President [presidentmoron.com] will finally all his wars he's planned. I guess once he's doneand investors are back then B2C will take it's second chance and then we'll finally see more and more infomration services about resources directly not related to internet nor to computer industry.

      Another factor is that ma-bells in their core services are far from being "internetized". They might still afraid Internet after ATT was hacked famously in eary 1980s. I worked in ATT. I remember that Internet is prohibitted for all workstations (exception: http proxy for some of them). It's just an illustration of paranoid anti-internet environment there.

      Another factor is the modern anti-spam trend - people afraid spam and telemarketing and they don't want to publish their personal info like phone numbers and email addresses. I guess until there will be a law (international, as domestic laws do not protect such international thing as Internet) protecting from spam and from telemarketing, until then people will not let their info being published.

      Conclusion: let Mr. Bush finish his wars and investors to re-animate B2C, let ma-bells leave their paranoid fears of Internet, let the law protect people from the spam - and you'll be able to use LDAP to find you friends even if they are not connected to Internet.

      • Re:it's called LDAP (Score:3, Informative)

        by Surak ( 18578 ) *
        The picture was going to change with B2C, but the boom has collapsed saddenly, and then all investors have frozen their money waiting when Mr. President will finally all his wars he's planned. I guess once he's doneand investors are back then B2C will take it's second chance and then we'll finally see more and more infomration services about resources directly not related to internet nor to computer industry.

        You're kidding, right? You don't *really* think that the dot-com crash had something to do with
        • I did not tell that dot-com crashed b/c of Bush. I just told that after dot-com has crashed it did not have its chances to reburn yet b/c of Bush.

          In other words, if Bush would not have his wars, dot-com would restructure and come up again.

          I don't believe that Bush failed dot-com. But I do believe that Bush has made (and still is making) everything possible to keep dot-com down as long as it's possible.

          Since 2001 US administration has very many chances to help dot-com industries. US goverment has very

          • I don't think it was Bush's intention to keep the dot-coms down. Bush *did* contribute problems to an already hurting economy by creating uncertainty with this wars. But I don't think that his intentions were to keep dot-coms down.

            As far as the outdated web servers goes, I'm sure this has more to do with budget cuts then anything else. Bush slashed spending and the last thing that's going to get updated are the Web servers. You have to put your money into your actual program (whatever that is -- be it
            • Clearly housing the homeless or feeding the hungry are more important goals than having a Web server talking about housing the homeless or feeding the hungry. Make sense?

              That would make sense with any other adminstration. But Bush cuts taxes telling that the money going back to people and that must create (somehow magically) more work places. I think that b/c the US economy was hurt first of all in dot-com and internet industries than it would make more sense to create work places specially in those indus

              • The purpose of the tax cuts as stated by the Bush administration was to provide a part of an economic stimulus package. Basically, its purpose was the improve the economy. It was predicted at the time of its passage that the economy would likely pick up in the second half of the year. Well, it's June, and there are signs of an economic recovery now.

                How much of that is due to the tax cuts and how much of that is due to a return from uncertain times regarding war and such is uncertain. Overall, I'd have

    • Re:Modern world (Score:3, Insightful)

      by d3faultus3r ( 668799 )
      It's the qwerty phenomenom. People have used it so many times it's ingrained in them. Plus, just about everyone has a phone in the industrialized world and even in the developing world most people have access to a phone. Imagine trying to reassign phone numbers based on some other system to all of those people while keeping the network up. It's a system that works quite well, so why spend massive amounts to change it?
    • Yes. I'm working on a solution for that. At least have been for years. You know how this goes for hobby projects.

      The solution is called SoFiNet (from the Dutch "social-fiscal number", popularized as "sofinummer"; US citizens may just like refer to it as SSNet). The idea is that you resolve people's PC's not by their Internet address, not by their domain names, but by the Social Security Number of their users. This is also ideal for applications like Instant Messaging, personal email, etc. Would also help y

      • The solution is called SoFiNet (from the Dutch "social-fiscal number", popularized as "sofinummer"; US citizens may just like refer to it as SSNet).

        You should seriously consider finding another acronym before offering that in germany...

        The idea is that you resolve people's PC's not by their Internet address, not by their domain names, but by the Social Security Number of their users. This is also ideal for applications like Instant Messaging, personal email, etc.

        But I have several computers, and only

        • (No flame intended, I seriously want to know)

          A little too serious, perhaps? ;-)

          Even if I'd ever finish anything, it would merely function as a great practical joke about the "your Sofinumber will only be used for fiscal stuff and will not become a general number the government will use to track your every step with" guarantee that's been firmly stated to the people when the SSN was introduced in America and later in the Netherlands.

          Social Security Numbers have since become part of the Dutch (and America

  • Now they tell me! (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Spelling Nazi ( 619562 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:34PM (#6267819) Journal
    the automated domain name system, or DNS...

    AUTOMATED domain name system? So I DON'T have to manually add every host on the Internet to my HOSTS file?

    Someone could have told me this a lot sooner!

  • Happy Birthday! (Score:5, Funny)

    by citizenc ( 60589 ) <caryNO@SPAMglidedesign.ca> on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:36PM (#6267837) Journal
    Happy birthday, DNS! I wasn't sure how else to celebrate, so:

    -bash-2.05b$ nslookup happy.com
    Server: dnsr01-eth0.nyc01.dsl.net
    Address: 216.175.203.50

    Non-authoritative answer:
    Name: happy.com
    Address: 64.45.128.45

    -bash-2.05b$ nslookup birthday.com
    Server: dnsr01-eth0.nyc01.dsl.net
    Address: 216.175.203.50

    Non-authoritative answer:
    Name: birthday.com
    Address: 207.5.97.78

    -bash-2.05b$ nslookup dns.com
    Server: dnsr01-eth0.nyc01.dsl.net
    Address: 216.175.203.50

    Non-authoritative answer:
    Name: dns.com
    Address: 127.0.0.1

    *Shrug* =)
    • Name: dns.com
      Address: 127.0.0.1

      Hey, that's remarkable. I didn't know that dns.com points towards my (or your) own computer, but in effect, yes, it does!
      • I didn't know that dns.com points towards my (or your) own computer, but in effect, yes, it does!

        Now it is about time to tell all those kidies who are the gratest wannabe crackers, that now they have the chance to become famous. Just DDoS dns.com, caus' they as all us others know how important dns is to the internet.

  • Typo-squatting happened one day later (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kickstart70 ( 531316 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:39PM (#6267849) Homepage
    when some ham-fingered PFY typed in 'sxe.com'

  • Using the Internet before DNS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:40PM (#6267855) Homepage
    I remember the old days, when you had to download the HOSTS.TXT file from SRI-NIC, using anonymous FTP. Adding a host required talking to people at SRI. Name propagation took months, because many sites didn't update their HOSTS.TXT site frequently. (Parts of the MILNET still work that way, for security reasons.)

    ARPANET IMP addresses were orignally 8 bits. They were expanded from 8 to 16 bits in the late 1970s, but some sites didn't upgrade their software and only talked to host numbers below 256. So having a low host number (1..255) meant something.

    I got the fifth Class B IP block (128.5.xxx.xxx) for Ford, and that was being nice - we probably could have gotten a class A. BBN had four class A blocks back then.

    And there was no spam. Not ever.

    • No spam ever? That even predates DNS.

      See This Slashdot story [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Using the Internet before DNS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by edhall ( 10025 ) <slashdot@weirdnoise.com> on Sunday June 22, 2003 @04:55PM (#6268859) Homepage

      As you imply, back in the really old days, there was effectively only one class C (later an effective class B) for the entire ARPANET (although they didn't actually have such a thing as "class A," "class B," and so on back then). Everyone was on net 10, e.g. 10.0.0.1, 10.0.0.2, and so on. The place I worked at then (RAND) had 10.0.0.7. I'm sure that at the time some folks thought that using four address bytes was gross overkill, but in retrospect it was amazingly far-sighted.

      It's not a coincidence that when the Great Split of the ARPANET into MILNET and the public Internet happened, net 10 was declared dead (and thus unrouted). That's why the entire class A net 10 is now used only for private networks (along with net 192.168), since these addresses will never be used on the public network (and aren't likely to get anywhere should they "escape").

      -Ed

    • Re:Using the Internet before DNS (Score:4, Interesting)

      by stanwirth ( 621074 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @01:40AM (#6271220)

      Well I used to update our /etc/hosts (in Unix, we don't use the suffix -- you must have been on one of them VMS machines, calling it HOSTS.TXT!) every friday without fail-- but then, campus networking would do the (long, slow) download from sri.nic.arpa for the benefit for the rest of the sysadmins, plus you could get just a patch and apply the diffs -- so it wasn't that big a deal to get it over the network, no hours of babysitting an FTP link back to the mothership SRI. Sort of like the way DNS actually works now -- like a phone tree.

      I figured they got the idea of how to set up the DNS distributed hierarchical database bits by studying the pattern of how people actually distributed their hosts files -- and wouldn't it be nice if they'd only have to distribute the changes: just like sending out weekly patches. Plus ca change, plus ca change pas.

      When we got ahold of the first alpha and beta versions of BIND in the mid-80's, downloading the hosts table was still preferable because there were just too many bugs in BIND at that stage. It's kind of annoying that so little stuff is set up to fall back to the hosts tables properly anymore.

    • Re:Using the Internet before DNS (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ben Hutchings ( 4651 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @09:54AM (#6272871) Homepage

      Ford did get a class A - 19.0.0.0/8:

      $ whois NET-19-0-0-0-1
      OrgName: Ford Motor Company
      OrgID: FORDMO
      Address: P.O. Box 2053, RM E-1121
      City: Dearborn
      StateProv: MI
      PostalCode: 48121-2053
      Country: US

      NetRange: 19.0.0.0 - 19.255.255.255
      CIDR: 19.0.0.0/8
      NetName: FINET
      NetHandle: NET-19-0-0-0-1
      Parent:
      NetType: Direct Assignment
      NameServer: DNS004.FORD.COM
      NameServer: DNS003.FORD.COM
      Comment:
      RegDate: 1988-06-15
      Updated: 1999-12-07

      TechHandle: ZF4-ARIN
      TechName: Ford Motor Company
      TechPhone: +1-313-390-7095
      TechEmail: dnsadmin@ford.com

      # ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2003-06-22 21:05
      # Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.

  • Success? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:42PM (#6267868) Homepage
    first successful test of the automated domain name system, or DNS...

    Conventional wisdom is that we have yet to witness such a thing.

  • In related news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:48PM (#6267903)
    SCO says it owns DNS and will sue everyone on the internet for using it because it violates their intellectual property rights. They have detected what appears to be similar code spread across any damn computer connected to the internet.

    More fake news at 11...
  • from the better-than-most-tlas dept.

    Oh, it's TLAs. D'oh! I read that as "better than most TLDs". :-D

  • Cease & Desist (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tokerat ( 150341 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @01:52PM (#6267917) Journal

    Re: Infringements of HAPPY BIRTHDAY Copyrights and Trademarks

    I write as attorney for the Recording Industry Association of America ("RIAA").

    As you are, no doubt, aware, RIAA owns all of the rights to the musical composition entitled HAPPY BIRTHDAY and all derivatives, including HOW OLD ARE YOU NOW, and the YOU SMELL LIKE A MONKEY remix (collectively the "HAPPY BIRTHDAY Properties"). These rights are protected by numerous copyrights trademarks in both the compositions themselves and the lyrics, sheet music, and other elements appearing in those compositions.

    We have recently learned that you have posted various elements of the HAPPY BIRTHDAY Properties on your site at slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/22/172247. For example, we refer to your posting entitled "Happy Birthday, Dear DNS" (the "Synopsis"). Your posting of these items is an infringement of RIAA's rights in the HAPPY BIRTHDAY Properties.

    Based upon the foregoing, we hereby demand that your confirm to us in writing within ten days of receipt of this letter that: (i) you have removed all infringing materials from your site, including the aforementioned Synopsis and all HAPPY BIRTHDAY references; and (ii) you will refrain from posting any similar infringing material on the Internet or any other on-line service in the future.

    The foregoing is without waiver of any and all rights of the Recording Industry Association of America, all of which are expressly reserved herein.

    Very truly yours,
    Troll.
    [Attorney]
  • He means:
    "still lives on just 13 so-called root servers"

    http://www.root-servers.org/

  • celebrate DNS (Score:2, Funny)

    by anwyn ( 266338 )
    In order to celebrate, somebody create a hosts file for the Internet, then everybody download it!

  • Let's not forget Dr. Vinton Cerf (Score:4, Informative)

    by dmehus ( 630907 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @02:52PM (#6268195) Homepage
    On this anniversary, let us not forgot one of the other fathers of the Internet, Dr. Vinton Cerf who co-created the TCP/IP protocol and was a major contributor to the invention of DNS. Dr. Cerf is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors at ICANN [icann.org] and Senior Vice President for Architecture and Technology at MCI® [mci.com]. So, Dr. Cerf, combined with Dr. Postel and Mr. Mockapetris, are the three fathers (or, father, mother, and uncle) of the Internet.

    Best,
    Doug

  • You're 100% wrong! SCO owns DNS! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Newer Guy ( 520108 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @03:35PM (#6268418)
    SCO chairman Darryl McDrivel today asserted SCO's claims of them owning the Internet, DNS, IRC and FTP. "We're 100% sure of this. Unix started the Internet, so by extension we own 100% of it - completely and absolutely".

    SCO attorney David Bores confirmed this during the press conference by stomping up and down yelling: "We own it...WE own it!...WE OWN IT!". He also took his thumb out of his mouth long enough to give a 'thumbs up' to Mc Drivel during the press conference.

    Mc Drivel also announced that the RIAA and SCO were currently involved in merger talks. "We believe that there is a good fit between both companies' philosophies. Together we shall dominate - er - license our intellectual property to everyone".

  • It has been 20 years. Lets try to get it fixed. DNS configuration and operation is something even geeks try to avoid. It is easy to get wrong (who has setup their DNS server right the first time around?), hard to fix, insecure... It has done a great service but time is almost up.

  • What fitting timing (Score:3)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @04:24PM (#6268669) Homepage

    What fitting timing. I just deployed a replacement for BIND called NSD [nlnetlabs.nl] for all my authoritative name servers. Now I need to choose a good resolving server. Maybe tinydns.

  • SCO must demand shutdown of all root servers (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They were running AIX, right?

    SCO, do what you must do!

  • Me Too! (Score:4, Funny)

    by scsi_pants ( 675297 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:17PM (#6269370)
    Finally a celebrity that I share a birthday with that I actually recognize. And DNS even responds to my requests....

  • DNS is not a locator service (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:21PM (#6269392) Homepage Journal
    DNS is not a locator service, but unfortunately people treat it as if it were one. They think "ok, I want to find the web site for XYZ Corporation, so all I have to do is just prepend WWW to the name and append COM and it'll be there." This line of thinking is what has created all of the fighting that goes on over domain names -- the reason we seem to treat domain names as if they were real estate. A true locator service would have a number of fields you could fill out to tell it what you're looking for, and it would find it for you. Perhaps it would simply find the domain name, which in turn would find the IP address.

    It's not going to happen now, though. At least not using the IETF standards process. Back when DNS was invented, people knew how to participate -- the result is things like DNS, and SMTP, where everyone talks to everyone else. Now that the corporateheads have taken over, everything gets invented in lawyerspace, where standards take a back seat to money (or at least some corporate idiot's dream of making lots of money by owning a choke point) and you have horrid nonstandard systems that don't talk to each other (like the various independent instant messaging systems).

    Oh well.
    • We do the same thing with phone numbers like 1-800-CALL-ATT.
    • I would rather type in www..com and be right, than using a lookup service. It is much more overhead to type in these informations, and the resultings urls might be difficult to remember (think ibm would probably be under ibm-computer.com, because some other used ibm.com first. In a locator service one would argue, that the real domainname won't matter (and thus won't be fight over) and therefour "real" ibm should have no problem in not having ibm.com. Do you really want this?

      This would mean, we all would h

  • First DNS exploit (Score:3, Funny)

    by more fool you ( 549433 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:34PM (#6270104) Journal
    Happy birthday to the very first DNS-Nuke program, in about 5 minutes!

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