On Sun, Jun 07, 1998 at 08:10:09PM -0300, Chuck Gomes wrote:
idNames, now a part of Network Solutions, offers registration in country code TLDs for companies that would like to do that. Is that fraud? What am I missing here?
First, Chuck, please adjust your mailer so that it hard breaks lines at about 72 characters, won't you? Now that we've gotten _that_ cleared up :-) I read both replies to this to make sure I didn't overlap first, and I'm glad I did, since _I_ hadn't done the math yet. $243/domain is quite a bit high, probably unconcsionably so, although I'm not here to cast asparagus. What _I_ take issue with (as most regular NANOG readers probably already know) is this "the second level is really the first level" bullshit that's being promoted by the unresponsible half of the Internet world who are only in it for the money. Domain Namespace is a natural resource, Mr. Gomes. There _is_ only one root; there can only be one root. Thus, top level domains are scarce, each one can only be used once. Encouraging people to register their second level domain in _every available TLD_ is inane at best, and horribly stupid at worst. This same sort of crap is why the government has felt it necessary to step in and legally limit the taking of natural resources in the physical world. At least, _there_ the benefits people were trying unfairly to reap were _tangible_. In the DNS namespace, all this does is confuse the "normal users" (IE: everyone who isn't a geek like us :-) to a faretheewell. "Oh, cocacola.com is the same as cocacola.net, which is the same as cocacola.co...? Why are the '.com' things there, then, at all?" See how moronic this is? There's some truly dumb stuff in the namespace, but this idea takes the cake. If this is the best y'all people can do -- and yes, my finger is pointing _straight_ at NSI, Chuck -- y'all deserve to have every last thing you do regulated by government lawmakers who don't have a clue about engineering _either_. But don't take the rest of us down with you, ok? I think poking a couple congressmen with a decent grasp of technology to get a full audit of Net Sol's contract with the NSF might be interesting indeed... but it would sure as hell make your life difficult. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "Two words: Darth Doogie." -- Jason Colby, Tampa Bay, Florida on alt.fan.heinlein +1 813 790 7592 Managing Editor, Top Of The Key sports e-zine ------------ http://www.totk.com