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.
Hell must have just frozen over!
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!
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?
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.
/me claps
don't die, open sourcer!
/me claps harder
don't die!
Um, that's what editors do. It's why they call things like this "editorials".
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
, 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.
Sometimes, Microsoft is Right... (Score:-1, Flamebait)
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.
Since they were flogging a dead horse, the image is even funnier: the microsoft truck pulling a diseased corpse of a horse along, with RealNames execs walking behind, saying "Oooh, this is good".
graspee
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.
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."
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
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 => $] >= 5.006;
Hate M$ 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.
MS didn't reneg on their agreement. They just decided not to renew their contract. The effect of that, of course, was to put RealNames out of business. Apparently MS didn't want them around, even though they offered an attractive package.
That's perfectly within MS's rights, and isn't dishonest, mean-spirited, or anything else. If you make your money selling water you draw from my pump, you have little right to bitch if I decide to buy a box of dixie cups and stop renting the pump to you when your lease is up.
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
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"