Slashdot Mirror

I disagree completely. The .com, .org, and .net TLDs are your public, global websites. They're available to anyone. But having them redirect to a .cc TLD is not difficult, unreasonable, or uncommon.

This is NOT censorship -- it's a nation telling you what you have to do if you want their business. You do NOT have the right to shove your advertising, your business, your website, or anything else down the throat of the world just because you have a .com.

I call it an American-dominant perspective because it's mostly American-owned companies that use and want the .coms broadcast to the globe. Well, guess what, the globe does not have to let you do that.

I'd rather see the Belarusians allow the .com, .net, and .org TLDs as well, but I adamantly and absolutely defend their right to determine their own rules for doing business in their society. If that means no more twitter, no more google, and so on, so be it.

It's no easier to implement http://mydomain.com/cc than it is to register http://mydomain.cc/. Your cries of censorship are misguided and dictatorial to nations that want you to follow their rules. Who the hell are YOU to tell them how you are going to do business with them? THEY set the rules for their nation, not you.

You are, of course, free to skip serving their market.

Just wondering what slashdot does without the extra space:
http://mydomain.com/bankbanksecurity.html

Looks like it detected and trimmed it, which is why you had to put a space in there. So the answer is yes, goatse turned out to be helpful, giving us the tools we need to prevent phishing attempts.

It's a very mildly useful feature, but it's unnecessary bloat.

First and foremost: It's extra strain on (my) servers. Let's say this becomes an accepted standard and we start having every blogging/forum/comment system doing these lookups to find a smaller url. This means that any time a document on one of my servers is linked to, there's going to be at least one request sent for it so your system can check if a shorter url has been specified. So, now I'm serving up extra data for a feature I won't likely use, and your server has to parse the page to find the data it's looking for. Better hope my server is sending the proper headers and data...

Then we have the issue of bad urls in the link tag. We'll have the same problem that the current solution has, except I've still got the document telling you that the bad short url is good. Should your system assume my document is wrong and permanently ignore the short url? Should it check again later? Or should it even check the referenced url at all? What if I specify a completely different site/document? Malware sites could hide in plain sight when victims try to link to the offending page on some support forum, only to have the url turned into "http://www.google.com/search?q=rainbows" for everyone else.

In any event, I really don't see what the real need for this new "feature" is. The only argument I've seen for this is it allows content owners to provide a short url because their excessively descriptive long urls are exactly that: too goddamn long. Look, if you think your urls are too hard or too long for people to remember, then shorten them up. If you'd rather setup some goofy aliasing system, then do it. Why do you need some "standard" to do so? What's wrong with putting "LINK TO THIS ARTICLE: http://www.mydomain.com/article" on the page itself? Users don't get any advantages out of automating the url shortening process, and sites like twitter which require small urls are very very special cases. So... why bother?

Oh, and for what it's worth: It's pretty much common sense that the services like tinyurl aren't meant to permanently link to a site. Anyone who thinks otherwise is probably illiterate.

but http://mydomain.com/files/fuck.com
Is different from.

http://icann.suck.dogs.balls.com.sex.net.orgy/fuck.com [EDIT: look even /.'s confused]

The latter is far more confusing as to where the domain ends and the file begins.

Most users are still struggling with difference between mysite.com and mysite.net

Many years ago I proposed .here as something like the DNS equivalent of RFC1918 IP addresses[1].

e.g. anyone can then use *.here for their own network (stuff like .local or .localnet would probably be for machine use - but AFAIK they are not formally reserved either).

So if you roam to a WiFi network within range, http://jukebox.here/ could control a jukebox for that location.

And http://about.here/ might actually tell you something useful. On most wifi networks this could say something like:

"Welcome to the default LinkSys WiFi homepage. The owner of this network has not set a usage policy yet. You should probably assume you're not supposed to use this network unless otherwise authorized. Please be nice :)".

But some might provide permission (maybe with some T&C).

Of course it would be safer if https was used, or the http redirected to a FQDN + https e.g. https://about.mydomain.com/.

But you'd get lots of grumbles about certs and all that...

Unfortunately I don't have millions of dollars spare to buy a TLD and then give it to the world to use.

[1] http://www.watersprings.org/pub/id/draft-yeoh-tldhere-01.txt
http://www.circleid.com/posts/top_level_domains_for_addressing_by_physical_context/

Please stop using mydomain.com and other such nonsense. Example.com is reserved ... for use as a[n] example domain name. Please make a habit of using it instead of whatever name strikes your fancy, as it is probably in use by real people.

You're right! I have my domain name registered under MyDomain.com. You can register a domain name for $9, and they'll include email forwarding, etc.

Please don't use them to test your email-fu.

once again...
http://mydomain.com/woooosh/index.html

Or perhaps:
http://www.mydomain.com/robots.txt

More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_Exclusion_Standard

Jeez. That should be http://mydomain.com/woooosh/index.html
Try to keep up.

http://mydomain.com/woooosh.html

Hmm, good, except that at some point you will have to enter your pass code (the "Do_not_edit_this_subject_line_or_I_won't_receive_ your_email!" part) into a website so that the website can e-mail you, and then all the spammers have to do is build a database of addresses paired with codes.

So, your solution will work fine until a significant number of people are doing it and the spammers learn about it.

click

http://mydomain.com/

I can see this working already ;)

The tools are already in existence to secure communications, and they are already in use. The flaw in the system is not the domain names or secure connections but the users who are deceived into accessing other sites and to give up personal details. .safe will not end deceptive practices, especially when success = money.

Education is the way to secure users, that and banks and other entities that really require security to actually employing some decent security.

What's that thing again? You're only secure is you have two out of three of the following; Something you know, something you have, and something you are. Many financial institutions continue to base their entire security on just one of those things, of course this is made a mockery of with the aid of a little social engineering.

Unix was designed to operate over slow serial lines. That's why commands are silent when they work, by the way.

I wager that between the two, it would probably be MUCH faster for me to walk someone through installing drivers on Linux. I mean, I could send them to a website, or I could say "Type wget http://mydomain.com/nvidia.sh", which I have temporarily redirected to the right file. Hell, I can probably force it to skip the license.

I've used MyDomain for 3 years and I am happy with them. I've never had a problem with my domain, and it only costs $8.50 a year.

Aside from offering many services for little or no cost, I have stayed with them because they have frequent promotions (right now I have free WHOIS privacy protection for a year) and their forums have a lot of common questions and answers you might have about your domain.

Granted, I've never tried out other registrars, but I've never felt the need to!

Besides, I was never suggesting sequences of 9 random alphanumericals.

No, you were suggesting 5 random alphanumericals. Which wouldn't work, by the way -- you'd very quickly fill up on things like sex.whatever.

Because there are plenty of other people who have just as much right to the name "coke" as the coca-coly company.

Which is why we mostly do first-come, first-serve.

Examples include suppliers of dry-destilled charcoal, columbian drug-cartels, people working to help coke-addicts, people who think the coca-cola company sucks, etc...

Wow, watch this: charcoal, columbian-coke, coke-addiction, cokesucks, coca-cola. And whoever is first to register gets "coke".

Actually, it's not named Apple Corp, it is named Apple Inc (and it was Apple Computer Inc until 8. jan 2007).

For someone so worried about confusion: I very specifically meant Apple Corps, which does not sell computers.

Many companies use different names when they register as a business, and when they conduct their business with real customers.

And in the corporate world, domain names are not business registrations, and business registrations are not domain names. Domain names are where they conduct business with real customers.

So, let's talk about Apple Computer: I don't go to applecomputerinc.com, I go to apple.com. If Apple Corps wanted a real web presence, they'd probably own applerecords.com (which it seems they do, it's just mis-managed). If Apple Records got there first, I could live with applecomputer.com, or mac.com (which does exist, and is owned by Apple).

Furthermore, this doesn't stop us from doing nice things like redirecting to a more relevant site, if you think someone might get lost -- parrotcode.org is about a VM called "Parrot", and it does say "Parrot is not about parrots", with a link to a Google search on parrots, the first result of which is the Wikipedia page. That Wikipedia page, by the way, is about the birds, but does provide a link to a disambiguation page, which includes links to pages about Parrot VM, and Parrot Records, and so on.

Of course, SSNs doesn't work within USA, so your idea may still have some merit.

You do realize that was sarcasm, right?

In the real world, we almost never run into people with the same first and last name, and if we do, we have things like nicknames, or "of $state", to sort them out. However, the real world is not exactly analogous here, as we do have a central authority of this kind of thing. Just as there can be only one "Apple, Inc" in the US, there also can be only one "apple.com" on the Internet. Both of them are generally first-come, first-serve. I just don't get why you want us to add random alphanumeric strings -- if you aren't imaginative enough to register "cokesucks" when Coca-Cola already owns "coke", then you don't deserve a web presence anyway.

"I don't like big companies putting up billboards along the main roads, while other people with fewer resources, who has something to say, are not allowed to put their own billboards up..."

Ahem. Domain Names are dirt cheap.

Besides, you yourself said:

And the coca-cola company probably has enough money to repeat registering their name untill they come up with something more rememberab

I insert a fake email address into the comments section of the html such as mailto:blah@mydomain.com and have blah@mydomain.com redirect as an alias to newspam@mydomain.com which then trains my spam filter. Of course this means you definitely will get mail from the spam harvesters, but it also allows you to keep an old fashioned useful real link on your website to a real email address.

I have nothing particularly against Dotster but last time I looked, Dotster and MyDomain.com looked suspiciously like the same system behind the scenes except that all the extras that Dotster charge for are free at MyDomain.

I don't use them these days but MyDomain.com generously do a pretty good free DNS and email forwarding service for any domain. It doesn't even need to be registered with them.

By incredible coincidence: Dotster and MyDomain have the same phone and fax numbers and adjacent PO Boxes.

www.mydomain.com. $8.50 a year to forward whatever@yourdomain to gmail. And that includes the cost of the domain name itself.

Some domain hosters provide the same service, through whatever means they might care to use. In particular, I use mydomain, but I'm sure they're not the only ones. This way I don't have to host my own anything, maintain the email service, etc., and anything@whatevermydomainis.com gets forwarded to my real email account, and I can filter out the spammers easily by giving every website or whatever a unique name linked to who they are.

$ siege -c25 -t1M www.mydomain.com
** Siege 2.59
** Preparing 25 concurrent users for battle.
The server is now under siege...

In other news, domain/hosting company mydomain.com was under a heavy DDoS attack, it's believed that the attacks were done by members of a geek news website called Slashdot.

I think I'm the best registrar. I signed up with Tucows and only pay $10/year for a domain. Of course, I signed up with them before MyDomain started offering domains for $8.50/year. They handle my email forwarding for free, even though I didn't get a domain from them, but obviously they offer it for those who do get a domain through them as well. I haven't had much downtime at all through their forwarding, and email is robust enough that a little downtime is not that bad. That's who I'd suggest: MyDomain.

They don't offer telnet/ssh access with their accounts, but it's not neccessary as anything you want/need installed they do for you. You are basically free to do what you want with your service and I have yet to have a problem with them on anything. I wanted PHP4 and they installed it when they got my email and I was setup the same day I emailed them. There's other features from xeran, here's a few quick links:

Hosting plans

Reseller accounts (Basically you can host webpages through them)

They also offer co-location and dedicated server, but I don't see why you'd need that. What most everyone does with me is register a domain then they use dns from MyDomain and do a blind redirect to a subdirectory of my site. So they have their own .com and they don't pay a cent for it. If you can find somewhere that will host a free page for you, MyDomain might be all you need, they are free and do really cool things.

For Example:

Main Site (dugnet.com)

monkeypirates.org

www.dugnet.com/monkeypirates/

If you notice the last two look alike, but the address is different. It helps to know someone who is willing to offer some free space for sure, just ask all the moochers on my site :-)

Sorry for the slightly off-topic posts...

I have become frustrated with my current domain/dns situation and need something new. What I would really like is domain name registration and DNS hosting for <= $15/year. Something reliable would be nice.

Any suggestions in general or comments on, pairNIC.com, ZoneEdit.com, MyDomain.com, or EveryDNS.net?

http://www.mydomain.com (next time try google, not slashdot).

You can configure your web server to listen on a different port. Use your members.home.com webspace (or whatever you have) to host a page that redirects to your IP address/port combo. Then use a redirection service like MyDomain to do URL pointing to your webspace. Viola! You're back up and running.

It's not as clean as having DNS point to your IP address, but it's the only workaround I've found for the port 80 blocking.

- Leo

_________________

They offer perl, php3, mysql, shopping cart, secure server, pop, ftp, majordomo, telnet and 350 mb webspace. (+frontpage for dummies)

And the fee you pay is for life.... I'm paying now 2/3 of their current rate actually.
Ok, it's still pricy, but on company level it's a small cost to make.....

BTW: I use mydomain.com for aditional domains (mx records) and granitecanyon.com for secondary dns. My uptime is 99.998%

my $0.02