Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes, Microsoft is Right...
Now many many users of Slashdot have expressed their dislike for search services that order results based on cash, and many of us don't use IE, so the question comes up: why should we care about RealNames at all? Why does the failure of some poorly managed, ill-conceived company warrant any space on Slashdot? Alternative root servers make for a better story, no doubt. I'm the first to agree that RealNames deserves very little of your time, but the story of RealNames has recently taken a turn that is both annoying to me personally, and worrying to me as a long time participant in the open source scene.
Keith Teare, CEO of RealNames, has tried to make it seem like it was Microsoft's monopoly power that made RealNames go out of business. Lets review: RealNames had a deal with Microsoft to provide the RealNames service to MSN and Internet Explorer, for which they paid Microsoft a fee, and in return they got to derive revenue from selling the RealNames to companies, so basically Microsoft was likely RealNames' sole source of income. Keith and his coworkers were very happy to tie their horse to Microsoft while Microsoft was willing to pull them.
I don't need to explain to the Slashdot reader why RealNames was a poor idea. It is something you feel in your gut. I mean, in the end if you're going to accept the consensus reality that is the domain name system, are you going to stick with the somewhat broken NSI/ICANN/Pick-Your-Favorite-DNS company structure? Or are you going to go to a completly left field, poor, expensive excuse for NSI like RealNames? If you are a company trying to establish a web presence, do you choose the system that everyone has agreed on and publicize your url "http://www.bobstigerrentals.com" ? Or do you put: "RealName: Bob's Tiger Rentals" in your ads?
To illustrate further: Back in the day, I bought the linux.com domain name for the then-VA Research (Now VA Software) from Fred van Kempen (And there was much publicity, huzzah). Four or five months after doing this, I got a call from James Ash at RealNames trying to sell me the Linux RealName. This was not unusual, as I'd get any number of calls trying to sell me anything from containers full of stuffed penguins to whole companies (I was the wrong guy for those calls ...) What shocked me was the price he thought we'd pay. My mind remembers it as a horrible inverted Ron Popiel style sale, with none of the charm of Ron's products. How much would you pay to control the "Linux" RealName for four years? You'll be all over MSN and IE! $19.95? $29.95? $39.95? Try 1 million dollars.
It was a lot of money then, it's a lot of money now. It was a lot of money for any business. I told him we'd get back if we were interested. I didn't get back to him.
This is the innovation that Mr. Teare claims Microsoft squished, his right to overcharge for a dubious product. While Caveat Emptor certainly applied in the case of RealNames, his claim that Microsoft, somehow, has some duty to continue to provide the RealNames "service" to their browser client rings false. And that is the point of relating this bit of personal history.
I have little interest in engaging in schadenfreude over broken companies and laid off workers, but I do take issue with Keith Teare's attempt to jump on the anti-trust complainants bandwagon. If it is his hope that by crying foul on Microsoft now he can derive some sympathy or some other unknown gain, he'll have to look somewhere else than here on Slashdot, especially considering those that have a valid complaint against the software giant. Even considering recent developments I can't find any sympathy for him or his company, a company that, in my mind, belongs in the same class as LinuxONE (the California, not the Korean, company) and Digital Convergence.
Don't say that. Everytime you say that, somewhere an open-sourcer dies...
Hell must have just frozen over!
Is to forgive completely
If he wanted to not have Microsoft control his coporate survival, he should have found someone else to be a customer. Depending on a single client as your sole revenue stream is a trap that has severely hurt at least one former employer of mine.
I am sick to death of alarmist stories on /. that assume that the average /.er will believe in anything but Microsoft no matter what the story.
/. and it's front page stories. Stories that are about so-and-so feeling screwed and wronged by Microsoft aren't automatically worthy of our attention. To me, that why the story of RealNames on /. is worthy of mention; because of /., not RealNames.
Hopefully, this is a sea change for
Thanks again....
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Waves hand:
*Microsoft is good.*
*Penguins are evil creatures.*
*Linus Torvalds belongs in the trash.*
*Slashdot sucks.*
*Internet Explorer is the best web browser.*
Get my drift? There are some things money can't buy, and for everything else, Microsoft is never right.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
RealNames wasn't exactly the best idea, I think we can all agree. But can anyone think of a system that is *seriously* better at everything DNS does than DNS? Even if someone could, who's to say that it would be adopted? IMO, DNS is far too entrenched to be pushed away at this point. Switching to another system would most likely be even more difficult than the switch to IPv6.
Beyond RealNames and other DNS-alternatives, it seems like once every year or two, a bunch of tech geeks get up on an anti-ICANN fit. They go off and create an alternate NIC, but about a year later, it's been mostly abandoned. It seems to me that until a large portion of the geeks (preferably those who control some of the lower-tier DNS servers) really unite and get serious, we may be stuck with ICANN, as sad as that may seem.
This is the statistical anomaly that will never happen again. M$ used their one "get to be right for free" card on knocking down realnames, so it's safe to assume they'll *never* *ever* be right again.
Satisfying, in a way.
Seriously, someone who can plant a story like this must be able to see them, right?
Nothing you can say will convince me Microsoft is right. Blatant troll.
;)
We all get along together like tornadoes and trailer parks.
As much as we English loving types had no use for real names, it was a viable way for Asian countries to use their own characters for DNS entries. It had a chance of being a standard. Granted, a skewed results go to the hightest bidders standard, but it was probably better than entering and IP everytime you wanted to visit a site.
Unless you don't use ASCII...
Then, well your now fucked, as DNS does not support none-ascii.
I guess you wouldn't mind if I got the rights to the Linux RealName then, eh?
;)
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
A search for "RealNames" puts them right at the top...
I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
Uh, yes. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
--
MacSlash: Your Daily Dose of Mac News and Discussion.
I hope M$ doesn't buy it up!
chrisd, Honest question: what exactly are you qualifications that put you in such a high and mighty position to lecture us?
The fact that you read the article.
I remember reading about the 'success story' of RealNames soon after it had started; how this entrepreneur was 'revolutionising' the internet. What a leap backword, to go from heirachical domain names, to the equivalent of the AOL Keyword (nowadays they would have patented it of course...).
It seemed like such a bad idea from the start; a similar effect easily achievable (although not necessarily of any use) in the browser itself, like that thoroughly annoying MSN Search junk that appears if you misspell a URL in Internet Explorer (Obviously both this and opennic are slightly different to RealNames, but I still don't feel that RealNames was any more useful).
Is Slashdot just the editor's personal soapbox?
Hey, I've got an idea... why don't you write an editorial about this shocking new concept in your local newspaper!
Um, that's what editors do. It's why they call things like this "editorials".
"...attempt to jump on the anti-trust complainants bandwagon..."
Well, it could have been worse, he could have blamed it on the terrorists.
The speed of time is one second per second.
Um, yes. Slashot always has been (and I imagine it always will be) a site for Rob and friends to post stories they find interesting, review books and movies they think are worth reviewing, and just say shit they think is worth saying.
How on earth did you miss this, having a low 5 digit UIN?
And another thing.. No one was lecturing you. chrisd posted a story about a case where someone is attempting to victimize Microsoft, possibly to give a little spin to the standard Microsoft bashing. Just deal with it.
The whole RealNames thing is basically an extension of AOL's Keyword idea.
The problem is that there are only so many "good" names to go around and soon the whole scheme becomes pretty much worthless since the RealNames are quickly snapped up by companies with deep pockets (assuming they didn't realize the obvious before it was too late). I found just as much value with AOL keywords (I didn't wanna use it... they MADE me!!).
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Thanks for telling it like it is.
Myth: Trolls are low lifes who hang out under bridges.
Fact: Trolls can also live in comfort in big ass ivory towers.
Why RealNames failed:
1) "Necessity is the mother of invention" - nobody NEEDED a little shortcut for their domain names.
2) Hardly anyone KNEW about the RealNames thing. The ones who knew were the most tech savvy, and they could probably have just made an aliases file to have "linux" go to linux.com or something....
3) it wasn't widely-spread. only a handful of keywords worked.
4) costed WAY TOO MUCH!
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
Hmm did someone skip the class on primary and secondary sources? Slashdot has a bunch of summaries that are nearly all second hand... so why does it surprise you that this is a 'soapbox' story. If you want unbiased news go.... nowhere, cause you're not going to get unbiased news from anywhere. Everyone who writes about something expresses an opinion in one way or another, nothing you can do about it. Since you're just starting to realize that Slashdot isn't always right maybe you should try checking out other sources like CNN, the BBC, IndyMedia, Reuters, AP news, etc.
Hmm..
Yeah. way to put your foot down, chrisd.
I sure am glad that the slashdot editors chose to step in and take decisive action before the RealNames people could bully the slashdot-reading populace any further.
We won't be pushed around with our vigilant editors here to be strong for us!
9. Beowulf clusters aren't so useful after all
8. IIS beats Apache in recent security audits
7. JonKatz reviews _______ in less than 1000 words
6. [Lucent | IBM | Intel] [invents | patents] [single molecule | [carbon | other element] nanotube | really small] [transistor | hard drive | computer] (wait... maybe we have seen that one before...)
5. CowboyNeal read this (marry me)!
4. 133t k1dd13z h4x0r3d /.
3. BeOS returns, outperforms Linux
2. Sometimes, Microsoft is right...
1. Bill Gates buys U.S. Supreme court, clears M$ of all charges.
>That means Microsoft is doing something right and
>those other companies is doing something wrong.
That's right. Theys be crushing the little guys REAL good.
lunky> c++; lunky> do{;}
They attempted to live by the Microsoft monopoly-sword, and now they die by the Microsoft monopoly-sword.
This is not, though, Microsoft necessarily being "right", so much as having failed in one Rule The World gambit, and rationally, cut its losses. That's not the same thing at all.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
As much as we English loving types had no use for real names, it was a viable way for Asian countries to use their own characters for DNS entries. It had a chance of being a standard.
Speaking of standards...
The IETF Internationalized Domain Names Working Group
IBM On Unicode Domain Names
Slashdot: Why Unicode will Work on the Internet
Verisign's Internationalized Domain Name Testbed
-Waldo Jaquith
it is my intention to cut this off before it goes any further
Umm, no offense but that's a little on the arrogant side I think...
I mean, Google is a good idea in the west, but in the east, it's still an english-language tool. And it's not just google: realnames was using the address line, so that {asian glyphs} were substutuded with {european letters}.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
An alternative domain name system should have the potential to provide for the existing internetwork name maps plus allow for decentralization of the network rooted servers. The maps worked without rooted servers until newer software happened to leave out support for particular older protocols.
p a.mil"?
Know of mail addresses of the format "mailto:the.user@desertt!azama!nib!nedal!busch.ar
The company RealNames had an innovatation layer that could be another dimension to the internet maps. No matter how companies push one way or another on how to implement another layer; we still have the older protocols to be of full implementation again.
He could of, and some people who read into their business model would have realised that he meant Microsoft anyway.
It has becoming kind of boring for the past few months about the number of bussinesses shutting down and claiming that they are totally screwed over because of the FUD resulting from the events of 11th Sept 2001.
Unless there was something in contract with Microsoft preventing them from looking for alternative avenues, they should have started looking at other means (technical/whatever), rather than setting up their business to rely solely on the money that they were going to get from Microsoft.
From the writings of Chris, it appears that they had an "interesting" way of doing business. They probably did not consider that there could be a market outside of the states (a fault of some US based companies).
There were several postings about realnames on slashdot, telling us about the fact that the contract was going to expire, then the screaming from the former CEO that he was shafted by Microsoft. And now this.
I would say that we now have a nice picture of what this was all about, why it died. Can we put this one to rest now ?
Microsoft is right
Pigs fly, Amazon profits
Satan buys ice skates
Even lazy reporters aren't rarely so brazen. They try to make up for their lack of research/interest by inserting the word "clearly" at the beginning of a sentence. They think it absolves them of their responsibility to inform -- I call it "intellectual bullying."
I'm not picking on your writing or trolling about your opinion. I happen to agree with your assessment of RealNames, but if you can't present your argument without the bullying your argument doesn't deserve a forum. Slashdot editors, please consider this before accepting/writing features.
420 dude!
And Attack of the Clones rulez!
It eats good and bad guys.
You are dead on.
Real Names was a parisitical idea that could be the
posterchild to the disturbing trend to commercialize everything.
If something happens like you blow a dandylion
and because it _wasn't_ genetically engineered to
have the seeds secured with different strengths
so it spells out some companies name... well then
money is being wasted.
These guys were like squuege kids or the towel
attendants in NYC niteclubs who want to shake you
down for handing you a towel.
It's not needed.
Good Riddance to Real Names.
Sometimes, Microsoft is Right...
Uh, Chris, did you forget again that the west coast viewers haven't seen the show yet?
Mulder: Dana, the cigarette smoking man told me something... Something important.
Scully: Fox, what is it?
Mulder: Microsoft was right.
While I am no fan of Microsoft, and never really considered "RealNames" a viable business, I think that RealNames jumping onto the anti-Microsoft bandwagon is about as sensible as if Borland were to have done the same thing.
My problem with the RealNames model is that there are litterally dozens of instances of some names. In the work that I do, the Acronym ATM has two distinct meanings. In the past five years I have run into two instances where SME did not stand for Subject Matter Expert.
Kraft has one meaning at the moment, however Craft has two distinct meanings (ability to shape things, and vehicle).
My own website's name can have two different meanings, and I am moving from one to another.
My feeling is that "RealNames" was in the auction dns buisness. They would sell "names" to the highest bidder, and the price could go up every time the name came up for renewal.
If that is a "viable" buisness model that they presented to their ventur capitalists, I can see why the money dried up. The VCs would wise up once they figured out the problem with the model.
To blame this on Microsoft is inviting the wrath of your customers. You were attempting to hold a proverbial gun to their heads.
This does not make Microsoft "right" any more than the village drunk blaming the village idiot for the village drunk's drinking, absolves the village idiot of any idiocy.
-Rusty
You never know...
Fuck yeah! H0t Gr1tz 4 LIF3, M0th4fuck4!!!!!
I'm the uber anti-Microsoft guy and even I agree. RealNames just had a retarded idea and it naturally did what all companies based on bad logic eventually do - go under. Microsoft's investment in the company was stupid but had nothing to do with their failure.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Chris you are missing the point. Any reading of my WebLog at teare.com must lead you to the conclusion that the inability of DNS to support multi-lingual characters requires fixing, and that right now ONLY RealNames fixes this natively in the browser that is on 90% + desktops. Microsoft are now about to hard code the browser to Microsoft's OWN middleware - the MSN Search Engine. If you type "IBM Thinkpad" into the browser you will get an MSN Search result. Even if you do not like RealNames (its a free world) you have to acknowledge that ending up on the ThinkPad page at ibm.com is the right outcome. How you can support Microsoft tying the browser to exclusively Microsoft controlled middleware - and by so doing disable every language except English (7 bit ASCII actually) is baffling to me. Incidentally the business model you describe was abandoned many years ago. Keywords were $50 per year flat fee or $500 if it was a top brand with high traffic. Keith Teare Former CEO RealNames Corporation
Keith and his coworkers were very happy to tie their horse to Microsoft while Microsoft was willing to pull them.
Perhaps their first mistake was tying their horse to something in the hopes that it would get pulled...
Tastes like burning! - Ralph Wiggum
Ok So RealNames picked an idea that was somewhat obvious. They are allowed to do that (Its a free market).
What everyone is missing is WHAT IF MICROSOFT STARTS DOING THE SAME THING IN HOUSE?. Than what will we say?.
I see this becoming an issue when someone will be typing " web browser" in the adress bar and Microsoft redirecting them to IE (or pick your own example where microsoft decides where you will end up)
Remember That ALL Default settings in Microsoft's Browser points to thier own in jouse web sites. )and to change that setting you have to be a little tech savvy.
It's now an unobvious deep-link into the archives
Also available elsewhere
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
How exactly are these real names supposed to be used?
Does ANYBODY actualy have one?
I use IE every day, have for 3 or so years now, err;
They are integrated into IE? Really? Heh.
Could've fooled me. . . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
They wouldn't even have to. It's the software on THEIR END doing all the work right now anyway, so it would be quite easy for them to just switch the whole thing over to themselves anyway. Just pop up a new web site, accept applications, and replace all the people currently using real names. It's actualy a brilliant yet evil idea.
Let another company do all the hard work...
Have them pay you to do it...
Use your monopoly to keep up your end of the deal...
After a couple of years, cut them out 100%, and take over their incomes.
Now why didn't I think of THAT?
This should be a warning to any company that bets their business on being Microsoft's favorites rather than on innovating and competing independently. The lesson is actually quite independent of Microsoft: it is a fundamental mistake to build your business on a relationship with a single corporate partner. It just happens to be the case that in the software space, in some areas, there is no other partner around besides Microsoft.
Interesting perspective from the man. Perhaps you guys could tell him your comments directly instead of chattering at each other.
thinking the enemy of my enemy was my friend.
Unfortunately, this leaves Asian character set as URLs out in the cold. The Register talks about how RealNames allowed for Internationalized Domain Names, something not currently supported otherwise. The "Internet Engineering Task Force group working on a technical standard for addressing non-ASCII IDNs in the DNS" is doing just that, working. Its not set yet. So don't just slam RealNames for the ASCII keywords.
This reminds me of the guy who claimed ownership of the moon and is selling land on it...people think that they can make an e-business by selling the equivalent of a pet rock, only without giving the purchasar/registrar/commandar/landownar/whatevar any tangible thing...unless you want to count an acre of the moon that you can't really own anyway.
I hope that this e-commerce trend ends soon. The current domain name system, nobody-owns-the-moon-"ownership"-program, etc all work fine. I wish companies had learned their lessons back during the dotcom crash - to make money, you have to sell something that is real and/or is good enough to replace what your consumer has already got.
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
Was MS really right to begin with?
Just because Realnames was obviously wrong for trying to pin the failure of a bad business idea on Microsoft, doesn't mean that MS is right in any way. They still signed up with this stupid company to begin with.
I also see that allowing Realnames people to join the fight against MS by having them tell their sob story is sickening when we have real issues at hand, and at stake. It makes us as a group look bad to have a shady charachter in our ranks pretending to believe in what we do, when we all know that they don't believe, they just want to get even. But still, I don't see how the need to put a clear divider between the REAL fight against MS and this failed company shows that MS is right in any shape or form.
They aren't wrong in one tiny aspect, but they sure as hell aren't in the right. If anything, they are in the gray, in only one aspect of Realnames demise.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Microsoft finally being right about something is such a big story /. has a whole feature on it!!
I stole this Sig
Remember Smart Tags? They were designed to give Microsoft the influence and revenue stream RealNames's technology had... but on a broader level. RealNames was confined to the location bar, while Smart Tags could modify the contents of a Web page. Microsoft has a history of getting close to companies that have a hot new idea just long to figure out what makes it tick . Then it incorporates the idea into its products and either acquires the partner (Vermeer, VXtreme, etc.) or drops it like a rock (Novell).
I believe Microsoft dropped RealNames because they sucked all the intellectual lifeblood it could from the company, not because it thought RealNames was a bad idea. Microsoft shelved (turned off) the Smart Tags feature under heavy criticism, but made a point of stating the feature may be released in a future version of IE.
complaining about "redundant article explains redundant story".
So neener, neener, neener!
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
At the risk of being accused of splitting hairs..
shouldn't (horse = cart) in the following sentence? happy to tie their horse to Microsoft while Microsoft was willing to pull them.
Well, it is kind of a funny image..
Ansi's and stupid tricks!
If you read the post above this in the comic book store owner guy's voice from the Simpsons, it much more entertaining....try it:
Um, yes. Slashot [sic] always has been (and I imagine it always will be) a site for Rob (look he's on first name basis with CmdrTaco, I bet only 5 digit UIN's get that) and friends to post stories they find interesting, review books and movies they think are worth reviewing, and just say shit they think is worth saying.
How on earth did you miss this, having a low 5 digit UIN?...
...In fact since I am UIN number 79727 I have much greater knowledge of the ways of Slashdot than the rest of you and it is my duty to hence enlighten thee!
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
, and many of us don't use IE
You said that in reference to Slashdot users. Perhaps you were meaning to say that in reference to Linux users? I find it hard to believe most Slashdotters, no matter how big of linux zealots they are, are using Mozilla or Opera. Many of us surf at work, and our only choice is IE.
Um, yes. Slashot always has been (and I imagine it always will be) a site for Rob and friends to post stories they find interesting, review books and movies they think are worth reviewing, and just say shit they think is worth saying.
;-)
I disagree. I think some of the editors, Rob, Hemos, etc. included, have worked to make it a site they'd like to read. Rob has said as much in his posts. And they've done a great job of it, and along with it, built a sizable community.
With that community seem to have come a new wave of editors who seem like they have been appointed leaders. I would place timothy, michael, and chrisd amongst them. This is a depature from the early generation in several significant ways.
First, they didn't use slashdot as their tree stump. Sure, they would a post a story with a blurb or two throw in, but if they wanted to make a comment, they posted in the comments not make an independent story of it.
This story is a perfect example. Why couldn't have chrisd posted his comments in the earlier story on the same subject? I have no problem with him expressing his opinion, only the manner in which he expressed it. The difference is in how you perceive yourself in context of the users. I think Rob, etc. see themselves as users. I think T/M/C see themselves as above users. Obviously, some find this annoying. (Myself included.) If, as you state, this has always been the case, I challenge you to find comparable examples of Rob, Hemos, CowboyNeal, etc. doing the same. [1]
I think my case is pretty clear and simple. Based upon other discussions here, I know I'm far from the only person who's felt the same thing about the same editors. This isn't rabid I-hate-everything Slashdot critizim, but legitamite concern about a community we find ourselves members off.
Anyway, my two cents.
-Bill
[1] Although to be honest, I probably wouldn't have a problem with such posts as I'm a fan of them and consider them informed individuals.
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
http://www.realnames.com/body/home.asp
I typed in a keyword and this I saw an option to buy a keyword. It took me to that page.
My guess is Microsoft simply didn't want to be bothered making a keyword system while they were improving IE (remember IE sucked at 3.0, got average at 4.0, and has been pretty stable for most users from 5.0 on). But now that they have spare time why outsource something and pay extra that a few spare employees can develop in-house? And the bonus is you get to direct where the keyword takes you. When people need a mp3 player I'm sure it will take them to the media player that people hate to use.
This happens to be a good article, if a little oversimplified; certainly available to Realnames, as it was published in 1997. They really should have read this part:
Doh.
Must have thought it a good idea, as tonight I accessed Slashdot through RealNames, by typing slashdot in the address bar of my freshly installed Konqueror.
Microsoft also thinks clubbing baby seals is bad too. How could we ever have doubted them before?
Isn't this why there is a diary section?
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
Keith does seem to have one point though - why cancel the contract when the company was just beginning to be profitable? I'm think they were just irrititated as hell at Keith - he made some pretty nasty threats - look at the weblog:
"I will wait until the close of business tomorrow before I say anything more in public on these matters. I am aware of various meetings still to take place. I certainly want to give peace a chance. However, should the status quo prevail at that time I guess all bets are off."
I'm not sympathizing with either party here because I think they are both nasty pieces of business.
Sometimes, Microsoft is Right... (Score:-1, Flamebait)
I guess the recent issue of Business 2.0 mag was a bit late for RealNames to get a clue hammered into their head. The recent article in this months editions talks about the fact that nearly all companies that get in bed with MS end up being either devoured or destroyed by them eventually. The one exception being Apple since they are one of the few who have sort fo survived having a relationship with MS in recent years.
With a title like that...
Slashdot must have been cracked!
-granpa
But is this really going to happen anyway? People are trained to use standard addresses. If it doesn't end in ".com" people are very confused. No one is going to just type "Web Browser" in to their addresss bar. They'll type "www.webbrowser.com" because that's what they've been trained to do by being saturated with web addresses for the past 5 years or so.
Even if Microsoft implements this, I don't think anyone will use it.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
because it's even money that the average /. reader is _not_ as smart and erudite as you or i believe ourselves to be.
my guess is that chrisd believes that everyone who doesn't understand it should have an opportunity to. i for one was thankful for the presentation because i spent too much time at school trying to optimize tail-recursive algorithms, and not enough time in business courses.
united states nuclear device terrorist bioweapon encryption cocaine korea syria iran iraq columbia cuba
If RealNames was as useful outside the USA as its founder suggests, then the company would not have gone under as soon as Microsoft ended the deal.
If there was consumer demand for their services, RealNames could survive by distributing a browser plugin that hooks into the RealNames naming service. Something like the Google Toolbar would have worked perfectly. Those people who are apparently now sitting around crying because RealNames has gone out of business would instead be rushing to download the new plugin and it'd be business as usual.
But RealNames business plan wasn't based on being a useful service, it was based on being a part of Internet Explorer. Any business that bases its entire business model on a single contract with a single company is doomed. Any business that bases its entire business model on a contract with a company as well-known for looking out for number one as Microsoft is doubly doomed.
Charles Miller
The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
I have no pity for some poor CEO who's now making $300K in severance. So what? What about all those people who he laid off now and can't get jobs? It really sucks for him. He might have to move into a *gasp* three bedroom house and live in the *oh no* suburbs.
Write a browser plugin. Now you no longer need MS and if you're crafty you can write something that works in Netscape, Opera, etc.
I bet if you wanted you could tell people how to build a custom search in the QuickSearch.exe that's part of the IE powertools! I built a custom search so 'gg term' searches google and 'dict word' brings up the dictionary.com page. Wouldn't be hard to build a 'RN whatever' to go to your site and redirect. All this from the address bar.
Stop whining that the powers that be destroyed your horrible business model (all eggs one basket) and be creative and do something else.
If you get the winxp powertoys, one of the functions allows you to add new searches to the address bar. For example, if I want to search google for, say, linux, i type "g linux" in the address bar and hit enter. Boom, up comes the google search results page. You can use any prefix for any site - fully customizable.
Isnt this the third sign of the apocolyps?
--aiee
Konqueror has given the ability to add fake protocols for a year and a half now. I can enter gg:blah to search google for blah, for example.
if the article is about Microsoft fault, the /.ers comments quickly pile up, but if its not then no comments at all. Whats the matter? Is the horde too biased to admit it?
Many/Most Americans are on a first name basis with just about anyone else.
I got "Ima Lamer" for free by signing up for a free Homestead web page. Problem was Homestead went out of business first.
The problem was, at that time not everyone used Internet Explorer® in Windows® even.
Get your Unix fortune now!
But why would you want to go outside? If hell has frozen over, then surely Debian stable has been released, Mozilla has hit 1.0, Duke Nukem Forever is out, and you're probably putting off having sex with a supermodel to play with all that new software.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
He may be out of business, but he gets double his $300K salary - and karma to boot!
OK. RealNames is a piece of shit company. Selling keywords is a bad idea. That's what the search in search engine is for. It was stupid to bet the farm on Microsoft, though it was the only way it could work.
However, the really interesting thing is we are being provided with the gory details and Microsoft isn't looking good. We see MSFT slit the companies throat and then pick it's pockets as it's lying on the floor.
We'll get to see who's worse when Teare has to decide to sell the IP of the company to msft or try to fuck microsoft's keyword search offering and patent in court.
May they both lose.
My perspective on this is slightly different. The number of companies that have had successful, long-term partnerships with Microsoft is surprisingly small. IMHO, this is because M$ is now big enough that they don't need to afford any risk --- if a partner making a good enough profit on M$, then likely it could make money for a competitor. So they either re-create the technology in-house and attempt to kill the former partner, or they buy the partner. Either way, they control the technology.
RealNames just happened to fall in the category of "easier to build then buy." Which goes to show you, if you're gonna play at a table with M$, you'd better bring something they can't make themselves.
Nice UIN! ( ;
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
The MS Troll Squad has targeted /. with a vengeance.
The amount of posts with a pro MS slant have grown to significant proportions. The last time this happened (so that anyone knew) was the ZDNet fiasco, where spook MS employees were tracked back to the Redmond campus. This time, it looks like MS has gone back to their old tactic of hiring marketing wonks (from the agency that handles MS publicity) to cruise sites that encourage a chat type of dialog...one where they can push a steady diet of ms hype.
If you read a pro-ms post, and think 'hey, that guy is a pretty smooth talker', stop and ask when the last time you heard any ms user speak in a concerted tone with measured beliefs....without being paid, this type of otherwise casual exchange would never happen.
The water is foul here...don't drink it.
What's so bad about MS...read here for some back notes...
That's part of the problem ...badmouth Microsoft on one hand, while on the other hand you're using Microsoft products as much as humanly possible.
...there are good browsers (Opera) available for the Windows platform, IE is not the "only choice".
Can you say "hypocrate"?
And spare me the 'at work' excuse
Does that explain the Visual Studio.NET banner that i see on the top of the page right now?
I am a genius; therefore, you suck.
Damn, really? Oh but wait, they didn't have tanks, missles, or bombs then, did they?
How many tanks do you have in your personal arsenal?
If RealNames had instead tried to get on the ICANN bandwagon and had this done as a standard extension to the DNS system on the server side of the equation, they might still be around. Their options would have been much much bigger. They could have patented the system or just GPL'ed it and they would still have companies doing business with them. Their problem was greed, greed and more greed.
On Linux and Windows at least. "g blah" searching google for blah, and there's a bunch of others.
Mozilla also allows you to type something into the URL bar and then hit the down arrow key to go to "search [configurable search engine] for [what you typed" in the URL auto-completion drop-down box.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Cut Microsoft some slack... this might be the only time they ever get to be right. Give them the benefit of the doubt :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
How long until the Konqueror team pick up the opportunity to sell their web shortcuts? "gg:" must be worth a bit (:-)
Andrew Yeomans
In fact, even www.google.com will automatically select the Japanese language if you're browsing from Japan (not sure if they're going off browser settings, IP address, or DNS).
All this talk about how the DNS desperately needs to be internationalised overlooks one vital fact: the DNS intentionally uses a limited character set. a-z, 0-9 and -, that's it. This allows hostnames to be used in all kinds of useful places without quoting (like URLs!). And it means they have a single, unambiguous, canonical representation.
If I can register ".com", shouldn't someone else be able to register "/.org"? How about "slashdot.org"? If not, why not?
DNS names are mnemonics, not keywords. Their purpose is to be easy to remember, not to provide a human-language description of the domain. If you want to search for something, please use a search engine. That's what they're there for. Any reasonable browser will let you search from the URL bar.
use constant PERL_IS_BROKEN => $] >= 5.006;
You all realize that RealNames was a scam to draw the interest of moron investors who new nothing of technology or those who use it....the greedy who want more. Think about it, to a moron with a big wallet it sounds like a great idea...."a system where users type in a "®ealName" and it just goes there!!!"
"And BTW, Microsoft has it in all their browsers!"
Well, you have a couple things here, ease of use, controlling a medium, and Microsoft support...of course, what they are missing is a good product....we all know this and they know it too but it has all the properties of a so called good investment.
Microsoft didn't decide to stop their contract....they offered Microsoft such a bad deal at this time M$ had no choice but to say no and then they can say MS booted them....of course, their pockets are lined with the investors lazy money.
Brilliant!
"Allez Cusine!"
While I don't like the confusion of domain names with keywords, and think that adding a potentially conflicting alternate domain name system is a stupid idea, I do think the company has a point.
If your business model relies on an agreement with another company and that company reneges, then you're in trouble. If the company holds a monopoly, preventing you from making a new agreement with an alternate supplier, then that's unfair use of a monopoly.
Arguments that it was stupid to trust Microsoft and that their contract should have covered them for the case where Microsoft backs out have some merit but don't really change the moral situation.
I said:
"new nothing..."
Change that to:
"knew nothing..."
I'm an idiot but not *that* bad! =)
Should have used preview.
"Allez Cusine!"
If said editor holds such an anti-biased position (for which i do applaud, you cannot argue that there IS a M$ bias), how did the original post of the story come to be? I would love to see more of this partisan posting from different views on single stories. Perhaps make this forum as unbiased as any else due to the sheer volume of biases....
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=%s/ /www.google.com/search?q=cache:%sg oogle.com/groups?q=%sc h?q=%s
http:
http://groups.
http://www.google.com/sear
I have them as the following keywords: ggt, ggc, ggg and gg.
(You can also do a similar thing in IE.)
Hate M$ all you want, but all these anti-trust crap is bad for the business as a whole, it states "if someone is big, we can cash in by suing them for whatever comes along".
It should be the business of the goverment to deal with bad business practises, not a personal vendetta powered by other companies (splitting up windows is just a bad deal for the consumers, imagine paying for all the parts of your car and then assemble it yourself...), especially not via states.
It's a market economy, make products that won't sell and you loose, just like this "alternative" DNS scam (isn't AOL doing the exact some crap?). Give companies a good chance to succeed with good products instead of pointing fingers like kids in a sandbox.
Damn some people are pity whores. I'm just sick of all these people who screw up thier business ventures crying about his or that andblamingother people. Is it Microsoft's fault?? I don't know I don't care. I just wish he people in charge of RealNames would just asccept they failed.
I just want to know where I can find this "Bob's Tiger Rentals" place. I can think of a few times it would have been nice to be able to just go rent a tiger for a day (during those extremely annoying tech support days perhaps?)
It's good to see someone give some objective critisism on articles posted on slashdot. I see alot of posts claiming that slashdot is nearly enquirer like in it's flamebate headlines, which is true sometimes, however I've never seen an article like that that didn't get either ripped in the comments section completely destroying it's credibility, (you wouldn't see that in normal print newspaper), or even better still a follow up post like this where someone presents an antithesis. The truth is not some holy omnipotent being penning words of wisdom that canot be refuted because of it's innate rightness, it's having the right and the ability to comment and debate. I would argue that it is nearly impossible for libel to happen on slashdot for the reason that any parties who care enough to set the record straight have the ability to do so, and then a reader can make an intelligent decission on what the truth is. We are after all capable of free thought. RMS might be a good example here. I've never seen anyone who gets as many words thrown into his mouth, or at the very least talked about and critisized as much as he does, however love him, hate him, he takes great pains to be unwaivering on his resolve about things and his intended goals. When there is question about such things, he usually trys to set the record straight. I'm sure I'm going to get blasted for this last RMS comment, like I said, mere mention of his name seems to spawn controversy. I admire his ability to weather it.
How true is this and does anyone have an alternative solution that has any chance of catching on?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Hmmm, kinda like the innovation M$ uses every time they come out with a new distro of Windows.....
-please forgive my spelling, I go to a tech school...
-Tolerate my intolerance
Microsoft? Right on Slashdot?!?! WHAHAahahHAHAHahahah!!!! Oh, the guy has a sense of humor!!! Friends! Romans! Countrymen! Take up arms and defend your stuffed penguins with your last breat and every cliche you can muster!! We cannot afford MS to be in the right no matter how logical the argument for them is! It's YOUR DUTY TO PUSH MS INTO THE SEA in a religious fevor only seen since the likes of the Crusades!
You need a FREE iPod Nano
A lot of the general public use microsoft products for self-abuse.
So do a lot of companies it seems.
From my Autobiography - "Lifestyles of the Sad and Desperate"...
If you enter the following into a .txt file, rename it to a .reg file, then double-click it, you can have your internet explorer "I'm feeling lucky" address bar.
e arch?btnI=I&q=%s"
--Well, almost-- Actually you must type:
. searchterms
(aka: period space searchterms)
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\.]
@="http://www.google.com/s
" "="+"
"#"="%23"
"&"="%26"
"?"="%3F"
"+"="%2B"
"="="%3D"
This site sucks!
You preach OpenSource, free this, free that. Well you're giving OpenSource a very bad name with shitty writing like you're above article regarding RealNames. Now, do I care if some company wants to replace a monopoly with a monopoly of their own? Not really, that's what breeds competition in the first place you dimwits!
Secondly, you seem to think that OpenSource methodology is the one true way, and nothing else is good enough. Hello?!? Fucktards! If you can't make money with something, or save money on something, you, as a business should drop it. You see, Slashdot tries to maintain this air of elitism about how open and free they are with regard to the internet, political activism, and technology, but the true fact remains that there is a big fucking ad right in the middle of the story above, and this is NOT a free website, and the journalists on it ARE out to make a buck.
Does Microsoft suck ass for blinding us to what has now become a severe stranglehold on computing? Yes! What should our response be? Create something better, that costs less, and is more flexible. Guess where Linux stands in that mess? You guessed it, NOT free for a business because of support costs, but a hell of a better deal than a Microsoft product.
Slashdot is full of hypocritical morons.
This is the statistical anomaly that will never happen again. M$ used their one "get to be right for free" card on knocking down realnames, so it's safe to assume they'll *never* *ever* be right again.
If you knew how to play "Monopoly," you'd know that a "Get out of jail free" card goes right back into the draw pile as soon as it's spent.
Nothing microcrash say or code can by definition
be anything but plain stupid.
They're winning the market cause most people are
just that, stupid. (= dislike intellectual challenges)
Personally I wouldn't be confortable using anyting
created by someone who prefer drag'n'drop programming techniqes. (= the new fucking frame work with c-fucking-sharp-wanna-own-the-net-language)
I actually have a friend that put up with working there for more than four months.
what's that topic again?
Now if only we could admit that it was Netscape's poor product and corporate management that killed them, not Microsoft, the world could be open to more meaningful dialog.
I see a biased history interleaved with paragraphs that say "RealNames is bad, you agree, right?" and then doesn't actually offer any lucid explanation. I don't know why you wrote this column, and frankly as someone unfamiliar with the issues, I found it to be incendiary and argumentative, and didn't give me nearly enough information to form my own opinion on the subject. Thanks for nothing!
... when other people were saying the same thing.
t icleID=25242
From http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Ar
Microsoft Puts RealNames Out of Business... Or Did They?
This week, a little-known company called RealNames charged Microsoft with corporate murder after the software giant refused to extend a licensing deal with the company, causing RealNames to terminate its entire staff. RealNames had been providing an IE feature that allowed users to type in ordinary words in the IE address bar in order to search for information on the Web, a feature Microsoft has described as unnecessary and, more importantly, one that was never actually used by many of its customers. To hear RealNames describe the situation, Microsoft stabbed them in the back and is secretly developing its own in-house RealNames-like technology. But the truth, of course, is a bit less one-sided. RealNames was offering a fairly unexceptional service that could be (and was) duplicated by any number of competitors. More importantly, companies that signed on to the RealNames services expressed outrage when RealNames' prices rose dramatically after the first year. The lesson here is obvious: Don't put all your eggs in one basket, especially if that basket is a software development monster with over 25,000 programmers just waiting to turn your entire business into a single bullet point on a PowerPoint slide detailing the features in its latest browser. Everyone loves to beat up on Microsoft, but the reality is that RealNames had a pretty tenuous business to begin with.
go fuck the dead corpse of princess di yu british shit head
"I don't need to explain..." and "To our credit" are hardly insults nor are they bullying. They are somewhat lazy as writing devices. And they deliberately compliment the reader (sometimes known as "pandering" if such compliments are intended get better ratings or higher sales or more click-throughs).
/. reader.
/.) since the responder is absolved of the need to prove the contrary and only needs to prove that it is not clear.
Anyone who feels bullied by such a comment would have to be in need of emergency intervention from a self-image-rescue team. Not exactly your average
"Clearly" is hardly a mark of excellent writing, but generally means that the author thinks he or she has a strong argument for the position being identified which is so clear it's not worth devoting space to. It can be a sign of lack of research but is more likely related to a desire not to waste the readers' time. As a means of intellectual bullying, it falls flat on its face. Anyone who uses "clearly" to bully is setting themselves up for an intellectual thrashing (especially on an open forum like
I would be fascinated to hear the logical steps needed to get from a compliment like "To our credit" to "if you don't agree with me, you're a moron." Perhaps the poster feels the threat of withholding the compliment is somehow intellectually intimidating.
Most slashdotters wouldn't.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I disagree strongly on the issue of language and multi-national characters. If the French want to have their own private Internet, fine. Same for the Spaniards or the Russians or anyone else. This is not a troll.. hear me out.
My feeling is that the Internet is best served by standards that all (or most) people can use and understand. Having multi-language support is antithetical to this goal.
Please don't call me an English-only bigot. I freely admit that I know no other written/verbal language. However, I truly wouldn't care what language was used, as long as it was the univerally understood standard. If Swahili was the standard language of the Internet, I'd have learned Swahili so I could use the Internet.
Perhaps one language is too few.. maybe 3 or 4 languages would be better... IF everybody (or most everybody) could use them. I don't want the Internet to become segregated.
Find a standard language, ANY language... Use it exclusively in a global medium. This promotes global communication and prevents people from having their own little private "Internets" where the rest of the world can't understand a thing they're saying, much less search and browse through their "private world".
Right now, English is the standard, right or wrong, for better or for worse. Whether or not English should be the standard is a different debate to me. My point is that we should have a standard language and maintain it in order to keep the whole thing all together and on the same (web) page.
If you want to reach out and communicate with people across the globe, you have to have common ground. On the Internet, that's langauge. So, on the Internet, España is "Spain".
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
OpenNIC is still around, and has been for two years. It was proposed on K5 1 Jun 2000, and was operational soon thereafter. A month later, it was serving 4 alternate TLDs. Today, it serves 6 with a specific new one pending, and talks of serving out several language-related TLDs (like the ccTLDs, but for languages). Others have been around since before us, and they're still reasonably active. There's also AlterNIC, PacRoot, ORSC, ORSN, and others.
Most, if not all, alternative roots peer the majority of legacy TLDs (i.e., those of ICANN), including the new ones. We (OpenNIC) have peering agreements with AlterNIC and PacRoot, and we're working on others as well.
So, what exactly are you talking about? Geeks haven't abandoned alternative roots. We are quite active.
of the forthcoming Apocalypse!!!!!!
/. would AGREE that microsoft did something, ANYTHING right!!!
I'm gonna do a screen Cap and save that header on my website, I NEVER thought I'd see the day when
Kudos
moo.
Basicly all points are point 3.b.
dictionary.com gives crap definitions.
basickly
space is a void, that things can exist in. so you can't heat the space, only the things in it.
space Pronunciation Key (sps)
n.
1.
a. Mathematics. A set of elements or points satisfying specified geometric postulates: non-Euclidean space.
b. The infinite extension of the three-dimensional region in which all matter exists.
2.
a. The expanse in which the solar system, stars, and galaxies exist; the universe.
b. The region of this expanse beyond Earth's atmosphere.
3.
a. An extent or expanse of a surface or three-dimensional area: Water covered a large space at the end of the valley.
b. A blank or empty area: the spaces between words.
If he wanted to not have Microsoft control his coporate survival, he should have found someone else to be a customer. Depending on a single client as your sole revenue stream is a trap
Fact: RealNames had thousands of customers. RealName's customers were the people buying keywords. Unless they were buying keywords, Microsoft was not a customer. They were, however, RealName's primary vendor and a significant shareholder..
I said this last week. The demise of RealNames isn't any more Microsoft's fault than the demise of any company who puts all their eggs in one basket.
Poor business decisions, poor business model, inflated prices. That's what killed RealName.
I don't like Microsoft, but they really can't be blamed for this one. They're just an easy (and believable, most times) scapegoat.
If we blame MS for everything we'll eventually be counted in the "boy who cried wolf" group and when we point out the wrongdoings of Redmond we'll be completely ignored. We don't want that, so look at this situation objectively.
I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
Who else makes a widely used browser? Netscape?!? Sure, everyone on Slashdot uses Mozilla, Conqueror, iCab, and lynx, but ...
--Pat
I can't even bring myself to type it...
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Very, very cool. I just created the Google and dictionary.com entries. Tres sweet! :) Thanks again.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
No, they most certainly have never got anything right. If by "right" you mean being able to know how to cheat the most effectively, then your definition of "right" is simply too twisted for us to communicate.
Yeah... (why do AC's think they are so smart).
I got the HomeStead page 'free' and when they closed 'free' pages they went outside of my price range.
Actually their e-mails to me indicated that their company changed hands...
Get your Unix fortune now!
Dialog and Microsoft is an oxymoron and your post is offtopic.
OpenNIC is still active? You could have fooled me. It's been around for a year, and most of the "registrar" pages are still placeholders. I was thinking about supporting it, until I realized the lack of strong support. If people can't be bothered to write a simple CGI application, in a full year, then exactly how strong is the support?
It honestly doesn't occur to them that they could point it to anything else. It's what they know, and as far as they know, it's what they have to go to in order to connect to the net.
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
But the RealNames saga *is* about Microsoft doing something wrong. In the past. They cuddled up with RealNames in the first place. The "doing something right" in this case was merely a matter of ceasing to do something wrong that they shouldn't have started in the first place. Praising them for it is kind of silly.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
See the subject line. That's the key difference. If I type "IBM Thinkpad" into a search engine, I don't get just the one hit that the name maps to. I get a comprehensive list of many sites that deal with that string. The problem with RealNames was that they would offer you only to the "official" place for information about IBM thinkpads, where "official" is a synonym for "most willing to pay us money".
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Why? Because their approach required a tie-in with the browser.
There are only three browsers in wide use: IE, AOL, and Netscape/Mozilla.
IE is the overwhelming favorite, to the extent that many businesses completely ignore all other browsers. If a company can serve 90% of the users with one platform, then the company is likely to stop right there as the remaining 10% of users/platforms require just as much effort as the first 90%.
In RealNames' case, it's not just about their deal with Microsoft, it's that they had no one else to do business with. Netscape and others are not viable competitors to IE. Without serious browser competition, IE doesn't have to worry about someone else having a feature that they they need to match. In short, RealNames had to deal with MS so they could serve the 90% of users on IE.
Yes, we all know MS eats competitors and partners alike. And when MS is the only browser worth supporting, who else are you going to deal with?
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
1 - What about web admins that don't want their site to be catalogued in the search engine for everyone to find? Right now there's ways to make that happen, such that the few you do want to know about your site can be given the DNS name to access it, but you want to do away with that.
2 - What about web sites that aren't linked to from anywhere else, such that Google doesn't find them? This could either be because they aren't popular, or because the site just got put up.
3 - What if I know of some obscure site that I want to visit that isn't well known, but is of interest to me? Unfortunately Google ranks it low in the list because it isn't well known, so it takes me a lot of scrolling and "next" clicking to get to it. Now if only I had some kind of unique name to refer to to that site and that site only right away with one hop. Gee I wish there was some kind of system that does that.
4 - Okay, even ignoring those other problems, lets say they all get solved. So I use Google to find all web pages. Great. Now that you've done away with DNS, how do I get to an IRC server? How do I get to the IMAP mail server on campus? How do I "ssh" in to a machine at work to work from home? I assume a poster to slashdot would at least be aware that port 80 isn't the only way to access a host on the internet, and therefore a mapping that gets you to a host for other services is needed too. Gosh, I wonder what we could call such a mapping...
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Look, technical people are the MINORITY of Internet users. You guys are missing the point entirely and you must have no idea how "people" (i.e. not you self-centered geeks) use the web.
If you observe the behavior of regular internet users, you will find that they type words and phrases DIRECTLY into the address/URL bar. They don't type URLs. Even when they do, they type "hotmail.com" into the search box on the default home page (i.e. MSN, Netscape, AOL).
RealNames makes real sense where it's based on real behavior. If you don't understand this or disagree, you have no experience with user based or customer based design.
There's a word in the dictionary: empathy. Look it up, then think about your mom, your grandmother, your non-tedchnical co-workers, your non-technical friends (do you have any?).
People type in what they think, not what some geek spec tells them to type. Grow up, get over it, get real (no pun intended).
I have just finished reading the State of New York et al.,[Plaintiff] v. Microsoft Corporation [Defendant]. Much of the discussion centers on what the court calls "the application barrier to entry". This describes a situation where Microsoft, through its monopoly of over 90% market share of operating systems, prevents applications from third parties from gaining distribution.
The browser is now part of the operating system. This is no longer a controversial viewpoint - although whether it should be still remains controversial. As it is part of the OS, IE has the same power - to prevent distribution of third party applications - as the OS. However there is a difference. The browser speaks to a service - as middleware. If middleware is not available to the user through the browser then, due to the browser's dominance, it simply does not exist as far as the user is concerned. Over 500 million desktops simply cannot access it.
Microsoft therefore has the power of life and death over middleware. The decision not to renew the RealNames relationship literally kills the middleware from the point of view of the user. This is the impact of monopoly produced by a 90%+ browser market share.
The "application barrier to entry" is repeated, but now it is the browser and internet middleware that is being squeezed.
The following diagram shows the impact of Microsoft excluding all middleware but Microsoft's own MSN Search from the browser.
http://www.teare.com/afterrealnames.gif
In the post-RealNames world all access to content from the browser address bar will be mediated by an interstitial page - delivered by MSN Search. It will be impossible, in any language, to type in a name and go directly to a place. Microsoft will - of course - monetize the interstitial page. Is this a good user experience? Will brand managers appreciate all navigation to their brand being interrupted by a visit to MSN Search? Is this a good outcome? Is it a violation of anti-trust regulations concerning the "application barrier to entry"? I think we will have answers to these questions in time.
Who cares what was said by whom. The core issue is whether the RealNames idea had merit and whether the cost was justified. The MARKET determined that merit by letting them go out of business from lack of interest. Frankly, I don't see anything bad about the idea. Who cares if someone wants to cater to technophobes (who don't like using PCs anyway, but may have to) by allowing them to type in the more human readable "RealNames: Linus's Socialist Operating System" instead of the more technically precise "http://www.linux.org"? FREEDOM is all about the ability to do things without interferance from those who fear and want to control ideas. If no one likes the idea or it has no real value, it will die. The fees RealNames wanted to charge were almost certainly the reason they failed. Just as Apple failed to compete on price in the late '80s with their PC that was arguably superior to Windows based PCs and lost almost all of the market, RealNames tried to charge an absurd amount for their idea and their company died. This is simple market economics, not cosmic justice for doing a BAD THING.
That Microsoft recognized the stupidity of their marketing plan should be no surprise. Microsoft's biggest talent is marketing.
d4,...,Nf3, or maybe I should use a Ratfaced Mcdougal?
Read this article http://www.angelfire.com/rebellion/teare