Slashdot Mirror
Why Can't Other Countries Have .gov and .mil?
blurzero asks: "I've been wondering why the USA is the only country that can use .gov and .mil? Why can't a country have it's own .gov and .mil domain names? It seems very unfair to me. " Honestly, I think it's high time that both of these TLDs were dropped and .gov. and .mil. implemented instead. Of course, I think that the entire TLD scheme should be rethought, but that's just me.
The sad part is the longer they hold the TLDs to what they are now, the more likely it will cause problems if they want to change it later. What about 4 letter TLDs or greater. Will today's software be able to handle this or will it automatically assume 2 or 3 letters? Shouldn't each country have responsibility for its own TLDs? What would it take for another country to unilaterally implement a new TLD?
Most countries use mil and gov TLD as a SLD (second level domain(tm)). For example: brasil.gov.br (brazilian government).
I don't think it's such a bad thing, if brazil was an english speaking language and our president lived in a white palace, we could have a perfectly legal and valid: whitehouse.gov.br.
Just my $0,02...
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
The only solution might be to stop new registrations for theses TLD's and let the TLD expire in two years while giving a nice offer to those who need a transfer.
The same thing also applies to Educational establishments. IN the uk we have ac.uk. And no it stands for Academic, not Anonymous Coward.
.us got entries for organisation type in it? I know the 2 letter state codes are all present & accounted for (apparently, they are fairly difficult to get hold of tho'....)
.mil, .gov & .edu could be obtained internationally nowadays. Anyone know about this?
Has the tld
As internic doesn't have a monopoly on tld's anymore, and there are authorities outside the US, i'm assuming that
Not to mention the .US domain reserved for US States. Man are we greedy.
You can register a .com for 10 years.
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
One World ... One .gov
All of this stuff is to do with history. Back in the days before the DNS became international, the US government ended up using .mil and .gov for US military and governmental institutions, in the same way as .edu is still almost entirely confined to US educational institutions. As the DNS expanded and country-level domains started being used, com., org. and net. became international in scope, but mil., gov., and edu. remained US-specific.
.com and the fundamentally erroneous "everything's in .com" attitude you find all over the net. We're also left with this bloody stupid practice of selling "popular" .com names for absurd amounts of money, which is just.. completely unnecessary and ridiculous.
.com, .net and .org are international in scope, but .gov, .mil, and .edu are US-specific domains which probably should have been assimilated under us. at some point in the past but weren't. Confusing? Right. It's all legacy stuff.
The us. domain just didn't take off, which is a shame - if it had, attitudes all over the net would have developed differently and, to my mind, the DNS wouldn't be in the toilet to the extent it is right now as a better structure would have evolved. Because of this, we're left with the flat-file mess of
Other countries generally keep their governmental institutions under their own country-level TLDs. For instance, the UK has gov.uk and mod.uk for governmental and military domains respectively. There's just no need to put them in the top-level gov. and mil. domains too. It also has the advantage that there's no central authority delegating _all_ the world's governmental and military domains.
In summary -
The reason why .gov and .mil refer to the US Government and Military is because the original designers of the DNS made it so.
The question, I think, has to be asked - why? Did they not believe in international computer communications? Or was it just some form of U.S. cultural arrogance?
Anyone know the answer to this? Are there any of the people who made that decision around that we could ask?
However, as those two TLDs imply the USA government, the obvious change would be to make them be second-level or third-level domains under a .USA/.US TLD or .GOV.US
you know, i would feel different about allocation of .gov, .mil, and .edu if it weren't for the fact that American dollars created it all. I wonder how long it would have taken a worldwide network to get to the current size of the internet without the US military having instigated things? .com from .net and .org addresses.
The fact is, we DID create it, so deal with it.
I'd rather energy be invested in creating new TLD and/or kicking businesses back into
stored on computers from birth to the grave
Some of you who are in K12 schools may know this. .us domain as well. Here in georgia, there are any number of sites ending in k12.ga.us, and I've seen lots of other states encouraging it too. We still have school districts who insist on having a shorter .org address, but they are (thankfully) the minority.
With the wiring of schools and school districts finally happening, due to e-rate funding and paranoid school boards, there has been an explosion of k12 presence, and a good use of the
stored on computers from birth to the grave
The US dominates far to much in the Internet space. I think people should be able to use whatever TLD they want. I want to register linux.sucks The rest of the world should protest the US dominated Domain name. Maybe when IP6 gets implimented sometime in the next 50 years.
.edu
.mil for everyone
What is the polict for other countries using
dictatorship.gov
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't the internet as we know it today developed by the Pentagon and MIT? Why shouldn't they be allowed to keep the top level .gov .edu and .mil? If I am right, then it was the US gov, military, and schools who made most of this possible in the first place. Does anybody have any more information on this? My name at hotmail.com to send me a mail.....
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
I wouldn't have worded the prior comment as strongly, but there *is* a lot of historical precedence for the US having the unadorned TLDs. Great Britain introduced the postage stamp, so British stamps *alone* don't have to specify their country of origin. All other stamps have to provide that information. It's Boy Scouts of America, but again it's just the Boy Scouts in their first country. Ditto the American Red Cross, etc. We can argue that the North American dialing zone (USA, Canada, and some Carribean nations) don't "deserve" country code "1" just because the first practical telephone system was invented here. We can argue that American institutions don't "deserve" the unadorned TLDs just because the bulk of the work was done here. But if we're going to level the playing field, let's do it *everywhere* - don't single out the US. Some standards are arbitrary (the prime meridian has to be *somewhere*, so why not keep it in London), but don't bitch about .gov being US-centric when the Greenwich Observitory is still making noise about how it, *alone*, defined the moment that the entire world entered the year 2000, or it still makes a big deal about a brass rod marking the "prime meridian" when in fact it's moved a few hundred meters to the east (due to a slightly different model of the earth used in GPS-based coordinates. London "moved", but it minimized the shifts required worldwide.)
At least you can see goverment sites on Mexico with .gob.mx, but it was decided that .edu.mx was not to adapted by our country's NIC for some strange reason
In the future, navigating will be all keyword based, and everyone will have forgotten what domain names are. Enter "Coca-Cola" and you'll be taken to the Coca-Cola website. (Or more likely, you'll be given a list of choices--official Coca-Cola site, Coca-Cola memorabilia site, Coca-Cola criticism.) Enter "Official Coca-Cola site" and you'll be taken directly there. (Imagine Google's "I feel lucky" button, except the smart browser will know when to offer you a list of choices, and when to take you directly there. Or perhaps you'll be taken directly to the official site even with the more general search, with a list of alternate choices in a different windowpane.)
Anyway, my point is that we shouldn't spend too much time worrying about things like whether the .gov TLD should be shared with other countries, when no one will even use URLs in a few more years.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Has the tld .us got entries for organisation type in it? I know the 2 letter state codes are all present & accounted for (apparently, they are fairly difficult to get hold of tho'....)
.us domains are, unlike almost everything else, based on geography. They in the form of organization.city.state.us So, for example, Slashdot would be slashdot.holland.mi.us There is *no* .com.us, .org.us, or anything like that. The city and state are supposed to be based on the location of the organization (or person)'s headquarters, so you'd be stuck with things like "dupont.wilmington.de.us", even though they have facilites all over the country.
.com
The
As you can see, there are some problems with the system. Add that to the length of the names, and there's not much reason to migrate from
The big benefit, though, is that they are free. Despite this, they still aren't used much, which I think says a lot about the whole system.
For more info, check out http://www.nic.us/.
I expect that phone numbers will have gone the way of the dinosaurs within 3-5 years. When you think about it, they're rather kludgy anyway, being a compromise between machines and humans which are ideal for neither. Switching equipment has to figure out which phones they go to anyway, but since humans aren't very good at remembering that many numbers, separating them into groups of 3 or 4 digits is supposed to be more mnemonic, but isn't completely satisfactory in that regard. There are just way too many phones, so the number of digits just get longer and longer every few years. (Was that phone number on the commercial I saw yesterday 1-800, 1-888, 1-877?)
In the future, dialing will be all keyword based, and everyone will have forgotten what phone numbers are. Just say "Coca-Cola" into the phone and you'll be connected right to Coca-Cola's CEO. (Or more likely, you'll be given a list of choices -- your local Coca-Cola distributor, a Coca-Cola bottler in your state, a nearby convenience store that sells Coca-Cola, an antique shop that has a case of super bowl commemorative Coca-Cola with Mean Joe Green's picture on the bottles, another nearby convenience store that competes with the first one, an order-line for Coca-Cola memorabilia, nutritional information for Coca-Cola, a list of human rights groups protesting Coca-Cola's involvement with oppressive governments in the third world, the vault where the secret recipe for Coca-Cola is kept, a fax-back copy of a bogus study implicating the nutri-sweet in Diet Coke with Gulf War Syndrome, Coca-Cola's consumer information line, ...) Say "Official Coca-Cola line" and you'll be taken directly there.
Your smart phone will figure it all out for you. You'll be connected directly to a recording describing an endless list of menu items to choose from. Because we all know that choosing from a preselected list is always much more accurate than having to be specific about what you want ahead of time.
Anyway, my point is that we shouldn't spend too much time worrying about things like who has what address. We'll be satisfied with the selections presented before us because the big moneyed corporations who bought up all the keywords will always know what we are looking for and what we should be getting.
Now that the Internet is so important for commercial activities, I wonder when the "logical next step" will come about...
.uk from the root DNS servers... Of course, there are work arounds, but none of them are easy. And, of course, no country uses the Internet for tactical communications -- but they do use it for "routine matters". It's hard to fight a war if you can't get shoes!
The US still effectively controls the top level DNS servers. Let's say we went to war against, say, the UK. We obviously want to disrupt the UK's government and military communications as much as possible, so we remove
The only example I managed to find so far is Fiji's Law Reform Commission (and with the recent coup, who knows if it still exists):
http://www.flrc.gov.fj
The US dominates far to [sic] much in the Internet space.
If it was your country than started a small network, designing to the needs of the system, funded by your (parents'?) tax dollars... would you feel the same way?
ARPAnet was around in the 1970's. Since it is easier and cheaper to devise a non-scalable system, that's what they made... kind of like FAT12 was "big enough" for a floppy. <arrogance>So quit whining and put up the dollars to fund a better system, or come up with some ideas for (mainly US-based) companies and institutions to throw R&D money at.</arrogance>
-- LoonXTall
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
"We're also left with this bloody stupid practice of selling "popular" .com names for absurd amounts of money, which is just.. completely unnecessary and ridiculous."
.com names and have been offered obscene amounts of money for them. It has happened to two people I know already, it will happen to more before this is all over.
..unless you own one of these "popular"
Internet ethics are nice, but when a six-figure check is offered with your name on it all for a goofy name you registered in 1994, well, it makes you laugh.
Wish I could moderate this up for you. Or in the lingo at Abuzz, "applause".
Mambo dogface in the banana patch
Has the tld .us got entries for organisation type in it? I know the 2 letter state codes are all present & accounted for (apparently, they are fairly difficult to get hold of tho')
Will I retire or break 10K?
I've seen .us domains (e.g. FWCS) without a city. Couldn't .co.us (State of Colorado) sell its namespace like Christmas Island (of Goatse.cx fame) did?
Will I retire or break 10K?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I definitely agree with you!
.mil and .gov like www.ph.gov, www.ph.mil. Life would be easier as anybody will be able to go to a country's gov or mil site without guessing.
.corp, .inc, .inst, .plc, .ltd, .comp, .ngo, .isp, .ind, .int, .pub, .free, .nic, .wan, .asia, .euro, .global, .gbl, .america, .i, .tel, .data, .ent, .sports, .news, .mail, .web, .ftp, .chat, .per, .world, etc...? At least there will be more available domains for .com, .net, .org. If people believe that domains are not commodities, then using those TLD will not be a hassle since it will be better for localized comanies that cater to a specific market. The TLD will be used as they are intended for.
.com?
It would be nice to get www.philippines.gov, www.uk.gov, www.frace.gov. At least, it would be easy to go to those country websites instead of guessing, www.philippines.gov.ph or other domains. Better yet, I would suggest a secondary domain to those root
Also, the ICANN should grant more domains (this is for you seniors IT decision makers.) Appeal to them. Request domains like:
Hey it is nice to see
linux.news, tennis.sports, athome.isp, bbc.news, cnbc.asia. They are better (for me) than linux.com, tennis.com, athome.net, news.bbc.co.uk, cnbcasia.com.
Or there should be a way of getting IP address like 111.111.111.111, 123.123.123.123 (something like remembering telephone numbers). Why not get even 12.12 (12.0.0.12) or 1.1? At least, if everybody gets the available domain names, get the numbers.
The Internet is an unlimited virtual space. Why it be like registering all the companies in the world under the
Johnlaw
Think and Speak!
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
And i guess if you owned the IP for the first fax machine you wouldnt let anybody else have one.
The internet is only valuable because its widespread, who got there first isnt relevent, its vaulable becasue it got accepted everywhere.
Maybe one day you will understand how rewarding it can be to give and ask nothing in return.
Have you ever heard of leading by example ?
If you truely believe in something it is irelevent what others think.
Judge those other examples on their own merits it has nothing to do with the net.
Was the DNS scheme designed before or after widespread international use?
----------------
--------
"It is one thing to show a man he is in error, and another
to put him in possession of the truth." -- John Locke
--Justify
"It is one thing to show a man he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth." --John Locke
Like most things on the internet, change is driven by demand. The US military began the whole thing, and there's just not enough demand to change it, so it stays. If enough people objected to it, it would be changed.
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
Yes, but how many times has somthing seemed to work only to flop when implemented across the board.