uk.co Domains Knocked Offline By Registrar Dispute 304
An anonymous reader writes "The .uk.co domain was wiped off the face of the Internet this morning with no notice, leaving more than 8,000 livid individuals and businesses - including Amazon and Priceline - with no Web presence or email.
I saw this on nvnews.net, which originally came from the register, but since the domain is wiped out, you can no longer reach the article." Actually, you can read the story fine on theregister.co.uk. ;)
Not true - or an exaggeration anyway (Score:5, Informative)
As The Reg article says, it was used by these two companies, for example, to catch people who typed http://www.amazon.uk.co by accident. Both these two still have their co.uk versions working successfully.
Re:Not true - or an exaggeration anyway (Score:3, Interesting)
--sex [slashdot.org]
Re:Not true - or an exaggeration anyway (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Wrath Of An Angry God (Score:3, Funny)
(Yes, I realize you are joking)
Re:Not true - or an exaggeration anyway (Score:2)
Why should Colombia be covering for people's misspellings in the first place? It's not as if there is a treaty covering the existance of
Re:Not true - or an exaggeration anyway (Score:2)
Re:Not true - or an exaggeration anyway (Score:5, Funny)
I allege that, were there such a person, the likelihood of them correctly typing a difficult word like 'amazon' shrinks to zero once they start getting co and uk mixed up.
Jesus, someone register me coca.com.www.cola. You know, just in case.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. (Score:3, Funny)
We've managed to prove that human stupidity isn't infinite by the sheer fact that we haven't yet left the planet for the cockroaches, but I assure you that value is very, very large indeed.
Re:Not true - or an exaggeration anyway (Score:2)
I think you'll find that we aren't the only country who have adopted a sensible hierarchical domain name system of
The "country code" is a ccTLD, and the Internet would appear slightly more organized if everyone chose to use it.
Re:JANET addresses (Score:2)
What? Reverse domains haven't been used for years and years, and it was only for academic use, i.e. people who should know what they are doing.
E-mail at all universities is someone@*.ac.uk, not the other way round.
Re:JANET addresses (Score:2)
Re:Not true - or an exaggeration anyway (Score:2, Informative)
In this capitalistic world with such tight margins as amazon & priceline operate within every sale counts. Especially on the web where the next store which has virtually the same prices and conditions is only a few clicks away, being online is essential to staying alive!
We've all worked for customers that believe it's the end of the world and reach for their lawyer-hotline as soon as a little snag is discovered in their o-so-great web-applic, but in the end many of these are also the ones to succede...
Who gives a f.uk.co (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who gives a f.uk.co (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Who gives a f.uk.co (Score:2)
Listen, I'm not going to lie to you. Those are all superior machines. But if you like to watch your TV, and I mean really watch it, you want the Carnivalé. It features two-pronged wall plug, pre-molded hand grip well, durable outer casing to prevent fallapart...
Re:Who gives a f.uk.co (Score:3, Funny)
Sub Judice... (Score:5, Informative)
For those that don't know, "sub judice" means that Mr. Fox doesn't want the media to do something that would influence the judge.
--sex [slashdot.org]
Re:Sub Judice... (Score:2)
Either that or it's the Israeli Underground system.
(Credit to I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue, from which I stole the joke ...)
Re:Sub Judice... (Score:3, Informative)
In other words rules of behaviour in public that could effect the case apply. This includes making statements to the public that could influence a judge or jury. Or for that matter doing *anything* that could blow your case, like, ohhhhh, confessing to a buddy or harassing a witness.
Under some jurisdictions violating sub judice can actually bring charges of contempt of court. I don't know if Columbia is one of these.
Sequestering jurors is based on the principles of sub judice.
Or, as it is more commonly explained by lawyers to their clients:
"Look, just stay home and keep your damned mouth shut. Ok?"
KFG
Uh-oh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Uh-oh (Score:2, Informative)
Not to be a nit picker, but
Re:Uh-oh (Score:5, Funny)
Steve
Re:Uh-oh (Score:2)
No big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
(Idiot)UK == Colombia (Score:2, Insightful)
The Thought Process (Score:5, Funny)
1) Web user thinks: "I need to order a book, let's go to Amazon"
2) Web user types: "amazon.uk.co"
3) Web user sees 15,000 porn sites pop up
4) Web user starts to sweat, looks around office, hopes no one walks by
5) Web user clicks furiously, but fails to keep up with the rush of pop-ups, pop-unders, and installation prompts
6) Web user co-worker walks by, see's web user sweating, moaning softly and clicking so fast his/her hand is a blur
7) Web user hits reset button on PC, loses all work, but manages to stem the tide of porn
8) Web user sees co-worker next in cafeteria next day sitting with several other people, all are looking at web user and snickering...
It's happened to all of us, admit it! Getting rid of "spam" domains is a good thing!
Now, if they could could just get rid of whitehouse.com, I'd have a lot more respect for the American government!
Re:The Thought Process (Score:5, Interesting)
The US Government can't own or enforce a copyright or trademark, so they can't, by law, go after whitehouse.com. That being said, however, I'm sure the good folks at White House Apple Juice [whitehousefoods.com] have other ideas!
whitehouse.com (Score:4, Funny)
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2)
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2, Interesting)
Au contraire. Saying "Islam breeds terrorism" would be bigoted because it would require pointedly ignoring the fact that terrorism is in no way limited to Islam.
Religion as a whole, on the other hand, is responsible for the vast majority of terrorism and has been throughout history. Terrorism is irrational behavior that only thrives in the context of irrational worldviews.
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2)
I'm trying to think, and the only terrorist movement I can think that wasn't religiously tied was the IRA. Their terrorist actions were purely because they didn't have an army to fight, and took a rogue approach to it and created many of the techniques of bombings and such. The problem is after the agreement the people who enjoyed the terrorism aspect of it factored off to start new terrorist groups.
Religion teaches hate. Hate breeds terrorists.
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2)
Sorry, the IRA was originally started to gain the independance of Ireland from the British. It wasn't until much, much later in the history of the IRA that religion even became a factor.
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2)
Funny, considering the IRA wasn't even formed until 1916. Easter Rising, April of 1916 Patrick Pearse begins the Irish Republic movement, with the Irish Republican Army. It's sole goal was to win independance from the British. The violence before hand was not the IRA.
Here's a good timeline for you. My guess is you do not know anything of the IRA, or the history of Ireland and just copy and pasted the violence of Ireland and didn't actually stop to reference when the IRA came in. To re-iterate my original point, the IRA is known as the founders of modern day terrorist tactics. The IRA was not founded because of unfair treatment of religious groups in Ireland. The IRA was founded and worked towards an independant Irish Republic. If it was about religion, you wouldn't see Protestants and Catholics getting along in Dublin or Cork.
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2)
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2)
Um, my point is that the sectarian schism predated and underlines the terrorist movement. You can claim that all was forgiven and all wounds healed before the IRA formed, but it won't be very convincing.
I lived in the UK during the Canary Wharf attack, when the IRA was the centerpiece of every conversation, and have a good many Irish friends, who will talk about this stuff forever. I'm going to have to say I'm more likely to believe them than a PBS viewer who thinks that history is context-free.
Now we're back to logic class. The existence of Catholics and Protestants who get along does not mean that their different religions can't be the cause of conflict elsewhere or in other times. Likewise the existence of Muslims who are amiable towards the west does not mean that al Qaeda doesn't have an axe to grind.
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2)
The point of the IRA was for independance and civil rights in general. Not just a religious fight. My point is that the IRA is one of the few that doesn't have to do with religion as a factor. Same with Black Panthers. There is always religion as a background, as is the case in almost any conflict between humans.
I lived in the UK during the Canary Wharf attack, when the IRA was the centerpiece of every conversation, and have a good many Irish friends, who will talk about this stuff forever. I'm going to have to say I'm more likely to believe them than a PBS viewer who thinks that history is context-free.
The IRA changed a lot from the inception to the Good Friday Agreement. After Sinn Fein was officially a force in Ireland, the IRA became mostly obsolete. In fact, many would argue that after the War of Independance that the IRA should have retired at that point, I don't so much agree with that though. As for you calling me a PBS viewer, you want me to start talking in Gaeilge?
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2)
You disagree with history, and even what Patrick Pearse says. Good for you, sir.
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2)
There does appear to be isolated instances of Buddhists using terrorism, but hardly repressentative instances. :) (I didn't go into those, because if they actually happened, they would be the exception, and not the rule, eh?)
However, the wonderful thing about Buddhism, in my opinion, is that in order to accept it as a religion, it seems like you must first define the word "religion". I've always viewed it as more of a philosophy than a religion, because a religion seems to try to answer the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. I always say I don't have a religion because I don't even attempt to describe how the universe came into being, I just plain don't know.
Mind you, philophically speaking, I am kindred to Buddhism, although I don't have the pacifism that they do. :) That, in and of itself, is quite a difference. Anyway, the rest of the world may disagree with me, but I still don't see Buddhism as quite a religion. It just doesn't have the trappings of a religion, to me. I won't attempt to define religion, at this point, because I would only attempt to define it to support my viewpoint. Anyone have an objective definition?
Re:whitehouse.com (offtopic) (Score:2)
Sure they can, they are quite similar religions.
Ashoka (Score:2)
And at the very end of the film there was a text screen saying "oh, and after this he converted to buddhism and became a nice guy." Argh!
Re:whitehouse.com (Score:2)
There's a world of difference between some people claiming to be Christian (or Muslim, etc.) being terrorists and Chrstianity (or Islam, etc.) endorsing terrrists. Terrorists abuse religion and use it to try and further their own ends, much as politicians have done and will doubtlessly continue to do. that isn't the fault of the religion, it's the fault of the people abusing it. And I hadly think that 'love your neighbour,' 'love your enemy,' 'turn the other cheek,' 'and these three remain, faith, hope, love and the greatest of these is love,' etc. are endorsements or terror tactics.
I can't speak for much more than Christianity in this instance, but the basis of Christianity seems to be that you are a sinner, and that if you don't repent your sins, or do something else about them, you're going to ha-ell. For 2000 years christian churches and the dogma that's directly in the Bible (don't mistake me for one of those non-believers that hasn't read it) have threatened sinners with hellfire and damnation, talking about the original sin and so forth, using FEAR and GUILT as their tactics.
That makes them terrorists, regardless of what so-called modern-day terrorists do.
To the credit of Jesus, however, his teachings don't include this stuff. It was stacked on by other people after he died, assuming he ever lived in the first place. I definitely remember reading in Corinthians I about how men with long hair and damned straight to hell, and that women should wear hats or have long hair themselves. Admittedly, that's the Roman influence, but it is in the New Testament.
Fear is the weapon of a terrorist, and anybody who uses it (George W Bush included) is a terrorist.
Re:The Thought Process (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Thought Process (Score:3, Funny)
Happy Linux user, forgetful of those cute winky keys... :-)
Re:The Thought Process (Score:2)
If you were really happy Linux user, you would've used your window manager to bind the Winkey to some convenient shortcut or shortcuts, such as minimize all windows (there are some other useful ones too).
Or you'd just click one of your other 4 desktops that doesn't have anything on it, move your production apps over there and get back to work, killing popups only when people aren't looking, and doing it all from the panel.
Then you'd open Mozilla and turn the pop-up blocker on. :)
Re:The Thought Process (Score:2)
Yes, browser traping is annoying, and yes, I've even come across webpages that pop up a window even when unrequested windows are disabled in mozilla.
But the torrental flood of porn ads is entirely avoidable.
Then again you mentioned work, so maybe you're not allowed to install software on there.
Re:The Thought Process (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The Thought Process (Score:2)
I thought that
Re:The Thought Process (Score:2)
Actually, I just use Mozilla, and turn off popups. I also turn off images and JavaScript in my e-mail.
Re:The Thought Process (Score:2)
I love Evolution's option that will show images in emails that are actually embedded in the email, but refuses to go out to the 'net to retrieve any images. And if the mail is from someone you trust, just hit view/message display/load images (or make a toolbar button for it) to load them only for the one email.
99% of real messages use embedded images, and 99% of spam tries to fetch them (and possibly track your address) from somewhere else.
Every mail client should have that option. Except maybe mutt.
Re:The Thought Process (Score:2)
Of course, they're still annoying as all hell, but they can be dealt with.
Re:The Thought Process (Score:2)
Or get a browser that doesn't suck...
Seriously....should you find workarounds, or avoid the problem completely?
I prefer any sort of browser that allows Pop-up blocking....though tabs are also nice. For me, this means Safari is okay--but not quite there--but Chimera (soon to be Camino?) rules.
Don't have a Mac? How's about Mozilla or Phoenix?
Just a thought. :)
Re:The Thought Process (Score:2)
Although you make a valid point. I don't mind Popups (because I can block them...) nearly as much as those annoying-as-shit DHTML ads that animate elements on your screen, floating in a layer above the other content. Those piss me off. They guarantee I'll never use whatever is being advertised. I would hate for those to become the norm.
Good riddance (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like it would be good riddance if the .au.com domains [au.com] dropped off the internet. These scammers register a single .com domain for $15/year or whatever and then try so sell as many ".au.com" domains as they can, all pure profit, to suckers who couldn't get the .com.au domain they wanted.
Re:Good riddance (Score:2)
Re:Good riddance (Score:2)
cia.co might also get quite a bit of money.
Another way to lose your domain... (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt it (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow I doubt that amazon's web and email presence was severely limited by the lack of an amazon.uk.co domain.
So Castle.uk.co are fucked then. (Score:3, Interesting)
*: ALLEGEDLY
this isn't true at all (Score:5, Interesting)
Since December 2002, we had offered to enter into a new arrangement with Net Registrar in order to safeguard your uk.co registrations with them for a short period of time to allow you sufficient time to transition to alternative domain names.
A Council of State decision in Colombia dated 12 July 2002 ordered the Minister of Communications in Colombia to take over the administration of
They had been planning this since July, and while they were supposed to have done it on the 31st of December, they actually seem to have given all the
Re:this isn't true at all (Score:4, Informative)
Check your year.
Re:this isn't true at all (Score:2)
-blush-
Don't fuck with RMS (Score:5, Funny)
The whole domain thing is stupid (Score:5, Funny)
They should make a
Re:Convenience store chain... (Score:2)
The same thing happened to me... (Score:3, Funny)
Farging bastages...
.uk.co != .co.uk (Score:4, Informative)
Appearantly enough people though it would be cool? if you had
Who gives a flying ratz ass about
OK, let me humble myself for a moment. Any Europeans care to suggest to me that its a good idea to have both because some European languages...etc..???
Re: (Score:2)
What's going on... (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, I read the The Register article and attempted to glean some meaning from all it's implied context. What follows is my initial attempt to interpret what is going on...
The university [University of the Andes in Bogota, current owner of the CO. top level domain] announced in June 2001 that it was selling off the domain [uk.co.] to the highest bidder
The school is trying to make a quick buck by selling the UK.CO. second level domain to another registrar. UK.CO. is the reverse of CO.UK. Why does anyone care about UK.CO.?
The idea of the .uk.co names is either to act as an alternative to .co.uk if the domain has already gone or to capture the large number of Internet users that type the address in the wrong way around.
So if your a psycho activist and you hate Nike you might want to get nike.uk.co. and host a bunch of dubious Nike atrocity information to impress your psycho activist friends. A marginally legitimate use for UK.CO. is to return something sensible when someone makes a tyop. However, this fosters confusion, IMHO. Basically UK.CO. is a dark little corner of the DNS world that we'd all probably be better off without.
Apparently (although the The Register article does not say this,) the school sold the UK.CO. to some outfit called Net Registrar. The Columbian Government (a sovereign nation that ultimately has the school by the short hairs,) was not happy about this. The Man was so pissed (not to mention jealous they didn't think of it first) about the school playing fast and lose with CO. that they decided to take over CO. This was to happen in December 2003.
The following fun ensued as Daddy (Columbia) started setting deadlines:
In December 2002, the University informed Net Registrar of the impending transfer [to daddy] and tried to draw up a new arrangement with the company.
Ok. Lots of implied stuff here. No mention of what the "new arrangement" looked like.
The following is guesswork, and I'll bet it's damn close: The school figures it's got a year to extort Net Registrar because daddy doesn't take away the toys until the end of 2003. So, the "new arrangement" includes a few small increases in price and changes to payment terms.
Meanwhile, Net Registrar is like "whoa, we don't even know whether we get to keep CO.UK. after Daddy gets here," and does this:
Net Registrar immediately put a stop to all new registrations and attempted to get assurances from all involved over maintenance of the .uk.co domains.
The PR spin from the school sums all of the above up like this:
The university claims that it "sought to agree a new arrangement with Net Registrar to facilitate the transition by Net Registrar's customers to new domain names", but "Net Registrar did not agree to the terms of this new arrangement", and so it cut them off.
The PR spin from Net Registrar looks like this:
"Since we received notice from the Registrar [the school] that it may cease to have responsibility for the .co domain we have been trying to obtain assurances on the maintenance of the uk.co subdomain. [obtain assurances probably means negotiations with Daddy] To date we have received no such assurances. [Why should Columbia make Net Registrar any promises, there is a clear opportunity to extort a shiny little penny here!]. In order to prevent the possible termination of the service we have been obliged to issue proceedings in the High Court of Colombia."
Possible termination? Terminated pal. All your base are belong to us. The school neatly sliced your UK.CO. clean off. Restrict your business dealings to grown-ups next time.
With the Colombian government assuming control of the domain and wishing to invite international investment, it is unlikely to adopt a year zero approach to domains and so Net Registrar should retain control of www.uk.co and hence continue to be able to sell .uk.co domains.
Yeah, Net Registar is likely to keep its SLD after the right Columbia hands get greased. In the meantime, they and the Government need to see what they can do to reign in the school. Nothing to see here folks, please move along.
Re:What's going on... (Score:5, Interesting)
So if your a psycho activist and you hate Nike you might want to get nike.uk.co. and host a bunch of dubious Nike atrocity information to impress your psycho activist friends.
This has nothing to do with the issue. Whether it is psyco Nike haters, or porn operators, or whatever, the ultimate issue is only whether Universidad de los Andes had a right to turn off the second level domain. We care because turning off domains without notice is A Bad Thing(tm). A second issue is whether the people that purchased the right to that domain made an honest effort to negotiate, and whether they communicated well with their customers.
The following is guesswork, and I'll bet it's damn close: The school figures it's got a year to extort Net Registrar because daddy doesn't take away the toys until the end of 2003. So, the "new arrangement" includes a few small increases in price and changes to payment terms.
I do not see who charging fair market value, or even deciding that a product is no longer worth the effort, is extortion. I might choose to clean your house, but I have a right to ask for any amount of money to do so. You have the right to decline my offer, and I have the right to leave. The fact that you are about to have a dinner party is of no consequence unless there is a written contract. Likewise, if you choose to hire me even though the government says you shouldn't, it isn't my fault when you get into trouble. Business is based on supply and demand, and products are removed from market all the time because they are no longer profitable. If the uk.co domain was so profitable, the resellers should have taken the issue more seriously and at least set up some contingency plans.
Possible termination? Terminated pal. All your base are belong to us. The school neatly sliced your UK.CO. clean off. Restrict your business dealings to grown-ups next time
I wonder who the children are here. The University personnel who probably represent some of the best minds in the hemisphere, and were only responding to an offer for an addition revenue stream to help educate the students, or the get-rich-quick-script-kiddies who decided that co.uk might be a way to avoid real work for another couple years.
Given the disrespect shown to developing countries by the imperialists, I suspect the negotiations went something like this. A token sum of money was offered to the university. The university was told to take it or leave it. The university said no. A gamble was taken that the university could be forced to take the token sum of money, so no contingency plans were developed. After all, they are just stupid savages, so we can just pay someone off. We are very used to going into developing countries and taking what we want. The arrogant strategy did not work, and the domain was shut down. One can even detect the arrogance in the Register article, decrying the unfairness to legitimate first world companies.
Re:What's going on... (Score:3, Insightful)
WRT verbiage, that would be fascinating.
This has nothing to do with the issue. Whether it is psyco Nike haters, or porn operators, or whatever, the ultimate issue is only whether Universidad de los Andes had a right to turn off the second level domain.
Apparently I touched a nerve. Criticizing activists and their supporters tends to do that. Porn operators, typo domains, activists... it doesn't matter. That sort of activity probably dominates the UK.CO. domain. I singled out activists. So what. Get over it.
I do not see who charging fair market value, or even deciding that a product is no longer worth the effort, is extortion.
You have absolutely no knowledge of terms of the schools new offer to Net Registrar. Neither do I. I, however, qualified my speculation as exactly that. You wish that I would assume something similar to the following?
The University personnel who probably represent some of the best minds in the hemisphere, and were only responding to an offer for an addition revenue stream to help educate the students
The CO. TLD is run by a school most likely because there were few other organizations in Columbia with any interest in doing so at the time CO. was created. That's noble. On the other hand I am not so naive as to assume that just because it's run by a school that it is indemnified of any suspicion. I have no doubt that behind the UK.CO. dispute is a university bean-counter with profiteering ambitions.
I might choose to clean your house, but I have a right to ask for any amount of money to do so. You have the right to decline my offer, and I have the right to leave. The fact that you are about to have a dinner party is of no consequence unless there is a written contract.
How capitalist of you.
I wonder who the children are here. The University personnel who probably represent some of the best minds in the hemisphere, and were only responding to an offer for an addition revenue stream to help educate the students, or the get-rich-quick-script-kiddies who decided that co.uk might be a way to avoid real work for another couple years.
Someone went into the CO. zone and hacked out the NS delegation records for UK.CO. It wasn't Net Registrar. Whatever arrangement with Net Registrar that was in effect prior to the Columbian government deciding it wanted control probably could have remained in effect until the transition. It didn't happen that way and I suspect it has a lot to do with the revenue the school is about to lose. Whatever went wrong when the school "sought to agree a new arrangement with Net Registrar" probably has everything to do with this.
I don't know much about Net Registrar. I don't assign any amount of nobility the their existence. All I know for certain is that Net Registrar had an arrangement with the TLD operator, the TLD operator decided to change the terms, and when Net Registrar failed to agree the TLD operator pulled the plug. I can't ascribe much fault to Net Registrar without knowing more. Neither can you.
Given the disrespect shown to developing countries by the imperialists, I suspect the negotiations went something like this. A token sum of money was offered to the university. The university was told to take it or leave it. The university said no. A gamble was taken that the university could be forced to take the token sum of money, so no contingency plans were developed. After all, they are just stupid savages, so we can just pay someone off. We are very used to going into developing countries and taking what we want. The arrogant strategy did not work, and the domain was shut down.
That's your speculation. There was an existing agreement. It appears that the "new arrangement" was initiated by the school. In a broader sense this should have been simple. The cost and rules of the existing arrangement should have simply transferred to the new operator (Columbia) in Dec 2003. Someone (the school) had a better idea and things went to hell from there. That doesn't fit your speculation very well, but since neither of us know the full details, your speculation is as good as mine.
One can even detect the arrogance in the Register article, decrying the unfairness to legitimate first world companies.
I can't imagine which Register article you've been reading. The one I read contains nothing approaching this. I think you're bitter about something and that translates into some imagined slight [imagines weeping violin sounds].
Re:Typo typos (Score:2)
Re:Typo typos (Score:2)
was wiped off the face of the Internet (Score:2)
Who Let This Happen Anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
The
If you can't find something, you go to a search engine to help you find it. Let's not turn DNS in the Domain Category System.
I would like to see domains be required to register in their proper countries and that we do away with the non-country top-level domains. As we add more TLD's, the Internet just becomes more confusing.
Would it really be a bother if we had to type http://www.amazon.co.us or http://www.amazon.co.uk instead of http://www.amazon.com?
Re:Who Let This Happen Anyway? (Score:2)
DNS naming conventions (Score:2, Interesting)
I completely agree for national companies. So, for example, www.someUSonlycompany.com.us
But for something that trades in many companies, it's understandable to want www.globalcompany.com
Mind you, most of the global companies register all over the place. www.sun.com www.sun.com.au Interestingly www.sun.com.us doesn't exist. Race you to the courts! :)
Seriously, the .com servers must take a hell of a long time to update their records, and if you could take them offline it would have almost as much impact as knocking off the root servers. It's unfortunate that IT tends to be driven by management, rather than practical considerations.
With regards to your comment about TLDs, if you include the country codes there are a LOT of these already, and each country can define whichever sub-TLDs it wants. In a world of global communications, I think it makes more sense to classify things by catagory rather than location. Things like .edu should be in country codes for sure (why do the US unis get .edu, when everyone else doesn't?), and except for the United nations, so should .gov and .mil. But I don't see any reason why .shop .bet .health .science and so on can't exist, as long as there are reasonable regulations to cover what goes in them. How are they enforced? That's an Ask Slashdot in and of itself. At least this way you have some idea of what you're going for. .com is too generic. If you're a software/hardware company, what's wrong with .comp.com? If you specialise in farm equipment, .farm.com. I applaud the way .name.com is going (tho I wouldn't use it myself because I want to manage for my whole family) or .id.au - you can put your name in some form before .id.au for a personal domain. This makes sense to me.
Okay, that's about 10c worth.
Re:Who Let This Happen Anyway? (Score:3, Insightful)
For reasons like this I agree with the idea of no non-country TLDs (with exception of
Pity.
Re:Who Let This Happen Anyway? (Score:2)
Re:Who Let This Happen Anyway? (Score:2)
And i hope you also realized the difference between
while you are complaining about 'pure profit' (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not suprised (Score:2)
Why do people fall for these scams? (Score:2)
OK, I understand why people who don't understand the way the the DNS works fall for it but what about this example:
National Curriculum for England online -- http://www.nc.uk.net/ [uk.net]
How on earth can a UK Government body that could get the .nc.gov.uk domain fall for this scam?
One positive side effect of the permanant reorganisation of government web sites is that the use of this domain for XML namespaces(!) for the UK National Curriculum (see the metadata standard [uk.net]) has been overtaken by another web site [curriculumonline.gov.uk] dealing with this...
Good Riddance (Score:4, Informative)
This is a good thing, and very amusing to those of us in the internet industry in the UK. These guys were slimeballs, their sales tactic was as follows:
1] Phone a company, any company
2] Tell them "There are too many domains under
OR 'Some company just tried to register yourcompany.uk.co but we thought we would phone you to check it was OK. Do you want to register it yourself for a premium?
3] Offer them the
Despite a couple of phone calls from myself to Nominet, nothing stopped this tide of sales calls - I do feel sad for the 8000 businesses that were scammed out of their money, though having said that, I'm very glad these sleazeballs have been cut off at the knees - extorting money from people in this way is no way to run a business, and I hope they don't get to carry on using the
Re:What country is .co? (Score:4, Informative)
Read the article on el Reg, it's got the goods.
Personally, I believe people that do this ( like the .au.com people ) deserve what they get.
Re:What country is .co? (Score:2)
Re:What country is .co? (Score:2)
Re:Why doesn't everyone just get a .com? (Score:5, Insightful)
Err, because if every domain was a .com, we may as well drop the .com suffix and go to arbitrary names. Which would defeat the purpose of the domain name system altogether --- we would lose easy distribution of the workload, and just put more pressure on a few servers.
Heirarchies are a Good Thing, as any geek should know.
[and, besides, often you want to distinguish yourself as belonging to a specific region...]
Re:Why doesn't everyone just get a .com? (Score:4, Interesting)
Heirarchies are a Good Thing, as any geek should know.
Only a poser geek, really (based on moderation you received, we clearly have a lot of those on /.). Hierarchies are actually a very bad thing because they obscure information. That is, in fact, what this whole story is about!
The real situation is this: we have companies in the United Kingdom that want to be found on the Internet. The problem is that there are two actual hierarchies in place that could be the root under which to file such a domain, those being .com and .uk. Then there are the "off" hierarchies that get used not because of their geographical location as intended, but because their abbreviation corresponds to some common usage (.co being the case here).
So the hierarchy adds to the confusion of both the user and the company. The company has to figure out and register domains in whatever branch of the hierarchy the user may have wandered into, and the user never learns how addressing on the Internet is supposed to work and so they continue to wander around without aim. Elimination of the hierarchy would go a long way to clearing up the confusion and getting back to the simple idea of looking for, among other things, a company in the UK.
Of course, nobody should expect that to happen any time soon. Getting rid of the hierarchy means getting rid of the need to create new top-level domains and therefore eliminates that ICANN profit center.
Re:Why doesn't everyone just get a .com? (Score:3, Interesting)
A monocline grouping is essentially a two-level hierarchy; like car makes and models, brands and products, file folders and files, or menus and menu items. That's the reason (or one of 'em) that the CCTLDs that had been holding out for a complex city.region.category.tld naming system have been reluctantly converting to name.tld - a two-level hierarchy is ideal, from a UI perspective, and has many useful parallels in the real world.
Re:Why doesn't everyone just get a .com? (Score:2)
Well I am glad the Internet architects were poser geeks or IP routers would have lookup tables with 2 billion entries.
You're looking at my comments the wrong way. Hierarchies often make things easier for computers, and that was necessary when a lot of the technology (networking and otherwise) was new. It's the same way a file hierarchy made sense for simple storage, but a database is usually a better choice when you want to deal with the actual properties of the data rather than their path. So the properties a domain might have are entity="commercial" and location="United Kingdom". Those could be abbreviated to co and uk respectively, and discarding the hierarchy would actually reduce the size of lookup tables because register.co.uk and register.uk.co (to say nothing of all the other combinations) would resolve to the same entry. The only tricky part is doing discovery without a hierarchy in place, but that could be addressed by associating a priority with a property.
Yeah, really (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why doesn't everyone just get a .com? (Score:2)
Re:Why doesn't everyone just get a .com? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why doesn't everyone just get a .com? (Score:5, Funny)
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How do I get all this sand out of my eyes?
Re:Why doesn't everyone just get a .com? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why doesn't everyone just get a .com? (Score:2)
What are those? Are you talking about Russian school girls that work hard and study a lot?
Re:What does .co.uk stand for? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What does .co.uk stand for? (Score:2)
It was originally expected that all countries would have a two character extension = eg co.uk, co.us etc...
That was all fine except for (as usual) the Americans decided to do their own thing, ignore everyone else, make a
Nick...
Re:Ahh... just like my old freemail address... POO (Score:2)
I was quite proud of my "permanent" iname.com address several years ago... till mail started to jam or be delayed for days. Then they were bought by mail.com, and it got even worse. The conditions kept deteriorating slow, bounces, no POP mail, and one day ALL my mail folders disappeared during an outage when no mail was delivered fpr several days. They apologised, but it was gone. By then of course I'd gotten a (slightly) more reliable primary address, but it was still galling. At least it still worked well enough for me to set up an auto responder to tell people to telephone me instead (I wasn't going to give my new address to spammers). So I use Yahoo, and then they upped the charge (for POP) to $20/year....