.NAME at a Crossroads

Well,... by ksheka · 2003-02-12 03:06 · Score: 2, Funny

...what's in a name?

(OK, someone had to say it. :-)

--
alias uptime="echo '5:33pm up 22342352324 days, 6:28, 2124315623 users, load average: 2432.40, 12312.31, 123123.19'"

Re:Well,... by Xandar01 · 2003-02-12 04:31 · Score: 2, Funny

> ...what's in a name?

A .com load of debt?

--
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB

Die .name, die! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 03:06 · Score: 1, Interesting

You mean I won't get any more .name spam??? Good, let it die! .name was a lame idea anyway.

Re:Die .name, die! by morgajel · 2003-02-12 03:22 · Score: 2, Interesting

I agree.
Within 70 miles of my house, I accounted for 4 people besides myself that had the same name as me. Two even had the same middle initial.(This was the first thing I did when I was exposed to the internet for the first time way back when).

Now, my name isn't exactly common(Jesse), which makes it even more annoying. Spam for .name is a very LAME idea because names aren't unique, and most people know this.

--
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Re:Die .name, die! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 04:08 · Score: 0

Within 70 miles of my house, I accounted for 4 people besides myself that had the same name as me.

Ahh. I didn't realize that that there intarweb thing was a big thing down Kentucky way.
Re:Die .name, die! by Zeinfeld · 2003-02-12 04:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

You mean I won't get any more .name spam??? Good, let it die! .name was a lame idea anyway.
The problem is the spam. Very few people want to have their cyber identity tied to their email address in such a direct fashion.
The .name zone has about 10,000 Web pages in it. So you can work out the number of domains they have probably sold.
The big problem that the new registries face is that they thought that starting a new domain was a license to print money for doing nothing. They simply did not expect that there might be some actual work involved.
$35 sounds a lot by geek consumer standards, but you need a minimum of 2,000 names to cover the cost of hiring one person at that price - including salary, overhead, benefits etc. You need a minimum of 5 people to provide round the clock support.
The business models of the new domains expected people to buy millions of them in the first year. They did not understand that maybe it might take five years to build a critical mass.
It is always easier to look at someone elses business, particularly a successful one and decide that it is essentialy easy to run and cost free than to have your own idea. Look at all the folk who blundered into etail thinking that the economics of that space would somehow be different to the economics of mail order, a business notorious for its low margins and high infrastructure costs. Or look at the folk who blundered into home delivery of groceries, an even lower margin business, building $30 million distribution centers to serve markets that could not possibly support the interest payments, let alone register a profit.
Folk who have .name domains should not be too worried however. The same thing happened to .tv which spent through its initial VC funding at record pace and was bought out for about a tenth of the amount spent on building the brand. Someone will buy .name, although bidding is not likely to be brisk.

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Re:Die .name, die! by The_K4 · 2003-02-12 04:24 · Score: 1

Then again for someone who happens to have a last name that's failry unique (as in everyone in the US with my last name is directly related to me) this isn't a problem. :)
Re:Die .name, die! by notanatheist · 2003-02-12 04:47 · Score: 1

Take into account though that even though you may have the same name as half a dozen others you may have a nickname that's not the same as theirs. Heck, why would you even want to get a domain in your real name anyway? You'll just end up with more personalized spam.
Re:Die .name, die! by Galvatron · 2003-02-12 04:52 · Score: 1

Likewise, I was contacted one time by a guy doing our family tree, and he mentioned that all of us fit into the same family, no matter how distantly, going back to when Germany was originally giving out last names. On top of that, my great grandfather dropped the last n (so from -mann to -man) during WWI, so it's even less common now. I've got mylastname.org registered, so why would I want .name anyway?

--
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Re:Die .name, die! by The_K4 · 2003-02-12 05:15 · Score: 1

Well then if one of you cousins (and yes this is a hypothectical guess) with the same last name wanted a domain THEY could get yourlastname.name
:)
Re:Die .name, die! by meme_police · 2003-02-12 06:46 · Score: 1

One little difference between .name going under and .tv going under. .tv was a country TLD co-opted by capitalists. How much control does Tuvalu have over .tv now? They seemed to have sold their soul to the devil.

--
The meme police, They live inside of my head
Re:Die .name, die! by DuckyExMachina · 2003-02-12 07:08 · Score: 1

a quick google search returns no fewer than 6 people with my exact first and last names. while my first name is terribly common (Jessica), my last name isn't. they're geographically all over the place, and I'm not sure any of them are actually related to me. although there is this one girl in Kentucky with my name that did used to get my Nintendo Powers back in the day :D

really, I had a point. basically that any one of these people could have gotten to my .name before me. names are a limited commodity, and for those with with accidentally common names the other TLD's are more viable choices.
Re:Die .name, die! by Zeinfeld · 2003-02-12 07:58 · Score: 1

One little difference between .name going under and .tv going under. .tv was a country TLD co-opted by capitalists. How much control does Tuvalu have over .tv now? They seemed to have sold their soul to the devil.
I don't think you can equate a CC domain name with a soul. Selling the rights to the .tv name is considerably less likely to constrain the future development of the country than selling their satelite orbits which fetched considerably less.
The Tuvaluans got $50 million from .TV plus a share in the ongoing royalties from the CGMI deal which is a sizable chunk of change for each inhabitant. If they do decide they want a .tv name they can still buy one at the same cost as a .com.
This was considerably more than they got for selling the bird shit that used to make up most of their island resulting in an ecological disaster.

--
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Re:Die .name, die! by pediddle · 2003-02-12 09:18 · Score: 1

My Girlfriend's mom's name is Kathy Goldenkranz. There are about 50 Goldenkranz's in the entire country. But there is still another duplicate -- her cousin-in-law.

And just think how I feel with Peter [William] Davis. Even counting my middle name, there's a duplicate here in my own city.

Selling to individuals is good by xadhoom · 2003-02-12 03:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

I've never taken my .name domain just because they don't sell directly to individuals. But now, I have a chanche. I think that's a good idea, but the news should be promoted *alot* .

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I was there.

Re:Selling to individuals is good by capt.Hij · 2003-02-12 03:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

There is not much incentive for individuals to get this. Broadband seems to be the fastest growing way to establish a full time internet connection. Most broadband suppliers do not want people running servers on their networks. What would be the point of buying your own name when you can't flaunt your vanity by actually using it!
Re:Selling to individuals is good by vidarh · 2003-02-12 03:22 · Score: 1

Why can't you use it? It's e-mail forwarding and web forwarding to wherever you want.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:Selling to individuals is good by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 03:22 · Score: 0

It can be very cheap to have someone forward e-mail or web pages to your normal account. For a little more (still cheap), someone will configure there web server to server your pages too.
I find it hard to believe someone on Slashdot doesn't know this, but then Slashdot's getting to popular.
Re:Selling to individuals is good by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 03:25 · Score: 0

Exactly. I don't want only "john@smith.name" and "john.smith.name". I want all of "smith.name". Luckily when they openned ".us", I jumped and got "smith.us". Of course my names a little less common.
Re:Selling to individuals is good by vidarh · 2003-02-12 03:29 · Score: 1

But once one person have bought smith.whatever, the remaining 3 million people with Smith as their lastname will be out of luck. Hence .name, where all of them still have a chance at getting their firstname@smith.name (Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:Selling to individuals is good by Carmody · 2003-02-12 03:56 · Score: 1

But once one person have bought smith.whatever, the remaining 3 million people with Smith as their lastname will be out of luck. Hence .name, where all of them still have a chance at getting their firstname@smith.name (Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

So let's say (for the sake of an argument) that there are one-thousand first names. You still have 2,999,000 people who are out of luck.

--
God is real unless declared integer
Re:Selling to individuals is good by addaon · 2003-02-12 03:57 · Score: 1

And what about the fact that there are a thousand John Smith's? Personal names (that is, names of persons, not your company) are not designed to avoid name collisions, and the .name system that attempts to do so seems silly.

--

I've had this sig for three days.
Re:Selling to individuals is good by capt.Hij · 2003-02-12 04:07 · Score: 1

If I have to set up a service on a machine that is not sitting in my basement then I don't want to bother playing around with my own little .name. For me, the novelty of a .name address is the ability to play with as little fuss as possible. If I am going to set up a server account with someone then I might as well use .net and use it as an online resume. I would rather have a .name to display pictures of the family cat and keep it in the basement.
Re:Selling to individuals is good by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:13 · Score: 1

Sure. On the other hand, most people don't have a common lastname. The most common lastnames account for something like 10-20% of the population. Add to that all the people with nicknames, and middle names, and combinations including initials, and most people can get a good address.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:Selling to individuals is good by raju1kabir · 2003-02-12 04:15 · Score: 2, Interesting

But once one person have bought smith.whatever, the remaining 3 million people with Smith as their lastname will be out of luck. Hence .name, where all of them still have a chance at getting their firstname@smith.name

In other words, it's a totally useless service and I can't imagine anyone using it. You can get a proper domain from anyone else and do what you want with it, and do it properly. Why pay for this crippled version where you have to depend on servers run by some unknown entity with unproven email/web server expertise to pass your mail/web traffic along? I wouldn't use this for my personal snapshots-of-friends-weddings site, let alone something connected to my work as an author or artist.

The reason this is doomed to failure is because the only people whose needs are so shallow that they'd accept this arrangement, don't care enough to go to the trouble and spend the money, especially for something they can't really understand.

This enterprise will be belly-up by the year's end. They can go hang out at the bar with the Realnames people.

--
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Re:Selling to individuals is good by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:21 · Score: 1

It's an answer to a real demand. We're a subsidiary of GNR, who started out with the Nameplanet.com service, and quickly managed to get 1.5 million registrations of firstname@lastname., where could be anything from .com to .nu, .tc, .ms etc.
In reality, people are very creative about finding combinations that are available, such as using nicknames, initials, including middle names etc. .name isn't a total solution, but it helps widen the namespace considerably.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:Selling to individuals is good by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:27 · Score: 2, Informative

Exactly, and that's the focus of Personal Names: To let you set up a .name without anything except for an existing e-mail address and (if you choose) and existing web page somewhere (whether on it's own server or on a free webhosting service). When you register, you get to enter your forwarding addresses, and you can log in and change that at any point afterwards.
It's meant to be incredibly simple, and it seems to work - we're seeing a good amount of registrations (and btw. <shameless-plug>we have an affiliate program</shameless-plug>)
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:Selling to individuals is good by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:40 · Score: 1

Do you think bbc.co.uk is a proper domain name? If so, then what is different with your firstname.lastname.name? You do get full control over a proper domain, just as you would under .co.uk, and a host of other services.
However, in addition you get an e-mail forwarding on the second level. If you prefer not to use that, then that's your choice - noone are forcing you.
As for being doomed to failure, so far our campaigns show that it's only techies that seem to care at all that it's on the third level, and "ordinary people", that by far outnumber the techie users tend to love it once they see it and understand it. So our challenge is to get it out there, and make it visible, not that people don't like it.
(Disclaimer: I work for personal names)
Re:Selling to individuals is good by raju1kabir · 2003-02-12 06:30 · Score: 1

Do you think bbc.co.uk is a proper domain name? If so, then what is different with your firstname.lastname.name? You do get full control over a proper domain, just as you would under .co.uk, and a host of other services.
If that's the case, you should review your service agreement, which is very confusing on the topic. From reading this:
Personal Names does not accept applications to register or renew ,name domain names without email forwarding and cloaked URL forwarding

I infer that it's not possible to get a name delegation, but only some pointless forwarding service. Speaking of confusing, the whole site is vague and ambiguous to an extreme. The FAQs are thinner than a photo of Kate Moss. And your "tour" doesn't work at all on my computer.

As for being doomed to failure, so far our campaigns show that it's only techies that seem to care at all that it's on the third level, and "ordinary people", that by far outnumber the techie users tend to love it once they see it and understand it. So our challenge is to get it out there, and make it visible, not that people don't like it.

In addition to the possibly techie-only concern about having to pay for bundled "services" that don't interest me at all, and in fact make my life more difficult, I'd have to repeat my email address or web URL twelve times to each person I tell it to because they'll have no idea what I'm talking about ("dot-name? You mean name-dot-com? Huh?").

I suspect that techies and non-techies alike will share that objection, despite your "campaigns". The usual solution to such things is to discount until it gains market acceptance.

Instead, you've jacked the price UP - either I use your horrible forwarding service and get a short name, or I get to use proper servers but have to use a name longer than something I could just find in .com and avoid the whole issue.

Anyway, it's a free market - knock yourself out, have a good time.

--
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Re:Selling to individuals is good by great+throwdini · 2003-02-12 09:23 · Score: 1

On the other hand, most people don't have a common lastname.

How ever did any particular last name become common at all, then?
Re:Selling to individuals is good by vidarh · 2003-02-12 22:01 · Score: 1

There's many reasons for that, but I don't see how your question is in any way related to what you quoted.
If you go to www.census.gov and look at name statistics for the US, for instance, you will find that the top ten most common last names (Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown, Davis, Miller, Wilson, Moore and Taylor) only account for about 5.6% of the US population.
Only 74 lastnames are in use by more than 0.1% of the US population, and those 74 names only account for about 16% of the total population in total.
The 1990 census includes a further 88700 names spread over the next 74%, and doesn't even list the lastnames for about the last 10% because they are so rare that listing them would involve privacy concerns (the Census Bureau is extremely sensitive about not revealing census information that can identify any specific person)
As another international example, in France more than 900.000 lastnames are in common use, with a significantly smaller population.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names Ltd)

Advertising! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 03:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

Dang, I've never even *heard* of .NAME before. Just asked 2 coworkers, they haven't either.

Well shucks, I just can't figure out what the problem is...

Re:Advertising! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 05:15 · Score: 0

They should do some targeted advertising (banners, email) at genealogy web sites. They'd eat these up in a minute!

Does anyone have one? by krony · 2003-02-12 03:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

Seriously, does anybody here actually have a .name TLD for their website? More specifically, do you have a .name without the corresponding .net, .com, or .org?

Re:Does anyone have one? by vidarh · 2003-02-12 03:47 · Score: 2, Informative

Try searching google for "site:name -dfgdfgadfgaagdfg", and you'll find lots of .name site. Nowhere near the other major TLD's, but growing at a reasonable rate.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:Does anyone have one? by cosh · 2003-02-12 04:05 · Score: 1

yes and yes
Re:Does anyone have one? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 04:57 · Score: 0

I got a .name email address - myfirstname@mysecondname.name. It's a nice address but a fair few forms don't accept it as a valid email address, so I have to use another address.
Re:Does anyone have one? by AnswerIs42 · 2003-02-12 05:34 · Score: 1

Yes, I registed and got my .name domain ... but to be honest.. I have not used it at all, nor have I thought of a good use for it.. so I am going to ditch it after the year's up.
One of those "Hey! This will be kick ass!" to "Well, what the hell do I do with it NOW?" type things.
Re:Does anyone have one? by dragons_flight · 2003-02-12 05:53 · Score: 1

I seriously considered getting a .name address for my personal site. The thing that killed my interest was that while they promoted the convenience of the URL (firstname.lastname.name) and personalized email (firstname@lastname.name) as a set, they then turned around and said that the email is a substantial add-on cost. Plus the .NAME people insisted on at least a two year commitment. All told, the minimum price I could find from any seller was $90.

That's a lot of money to register a personal site that has no possibility of ever earning income. So instead I registered a .com based on my name, which included free email forwarding, for only $15 a year. In short, I think that the .NAME folks have an interesting product, but their pricing is way out of whack for something that is inherently targetted to individuals.

PS I haven't checked recently to see if they have changed the pricing requirements, but after they messed up the launch so badly I wouldn't buy now even if they had.
Re:Does anyone have one? by FTL · 2003-02-12 06:06 · Score: 1

> Seriously, does anybody here actually have a .name TLD for their website? More specifically, do you have a .name without the corresponding .net, .com, or .org?
You bet. My personal website is one. I got tired of moving my website from one employer's domain to the next. So I invested in a .name so that I'd have a permanent address.
What were my choices? I'm not a corporation (.com), or a network (.net) or a non-profit org (.org). I'm not sure if in the long run I want to stay in the UK (.me.uk) or return to Canada (.ca). So .name was perfect for me. It's just me.
Now the million dollar question is what will happen to my 'permenant' .name if the TLD goes .bomb? Will it be grandfathered? I bought it explicitly for stability.

--
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Re:Does anyone have one? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 07:09 · Score: 0

actually I have one. To get the registration was like $7.99 through godaddy.. and I basically use it tie all my email together. I mean.. you have an ISP email, a work email, a undergraduate email, a graduate email address.. etc. etc... I just wanted something plain and simple that was professional.

its really kinda sad though.. everytime I give it out I get questioned about the .name part. And this is from CS students, IT professionals, etc.. I love the idea of the .name, simple and easy to remember.. but they did such a horrible job advertising and branding the thing.
Re:Does anyone have one? by mlippert · 2003-02-12 10:55 · Score: 1

I've got one.

I didn't buy the .name email forwarding, I just use my full domain me@john.smith.name and www.john.smith.name.

Now that the email forwarding is cheaper I may buy it if my registrar offers it. I use gandi.net, and they currently don't offer the email forwarding for .name.

I use gandi.net because they have very reasonable prices and the best contract of any registrar I've seen. (ie it's my domain and they're just my representative, instead of it's our domain and you can use it under our sufferage, and we may take it away at any time for any reason including our error and you will have no recourse!)

- Mike
Re:Does anyone have one? by TekPolitik · 2003-02-12 11:02 · Score: 1

Now the million dollar question is what will happen to my 'permenant' .name if the TLD goes .bomb? Will it be grandfathered? I bought it explicitly for stability.

If the .name TLD ceased to function, all the registrars for it would be in breach of contract to all of their .name customers. Thus the registrars simply cannot afford to allow the domain to cease to function. I would fully expect to see a bailout of some description if GNR went near going belly up.
Re:Does anyone have one? by splatbang · 2003-02-12 11:47 · Score: 1

Yup, got one a few months ago. Got it through godaddy.com and while it's more expensive than other domains, it wasn't that expensive. I haven't started using the web addr yet, but I currently do use the email forwarding (setup through godaddy) for more and more personal mail.

I got it strictly for personal use, because it's easy for friends and family to remember, and I assumed it to be stable. Bad assumption; hopefully it will work out.
Re:Does anyone have one? by e.m.rainey · 2003-02-12 15:23 · Score: 1

I do! It's the perfect TLD for people who use the correct nomenclature. I am not a company, an orginazation or a network and while I should be registered as a lethal weapon I don't qualify as a military or a seperate government. What does that leave me for an individual's site? .NAME

Hopefully it'll be grandfathered.

--
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.

Being Anonymous by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 03:09 · Score: 0, Interesting

I like being somewhat anonymous on the internet and having my email address as my name just makes it easier to figure out stuff about me.

I want this URL by addaboy · 2003-02-12 03:09 · Score: 5, Funny

http://whats.my.name/bitch or http://say.my.name/bitch

Re:I want this URL by briancnorton · 2003-02-12 03:35 · Score: 1

on the day they opened up the registry for .name, I tried to get both, and many more, but it wouldnt let me. What a rip

--
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Re:I want this URL by Spunk · 2003-02-12 05:33 · Score: 1

Sorry, I think there's prior art.

I'm too late by johnburton · 2003-02-12 03:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

My name has already gone so I couldn't have it even if I wanted it. There is no point having a variation of it either. I can't imagine how they expect this to succeed. There are far too many people with the same names, You need a proper hierarchy for this kind of thing.

--
Sig is taking a break!

Re:I'm too late by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 03:26 · Score: 0

Well, my name was taken by one of those companies that buy domain names in bulk, and then tries to sell them back to you for 10X the price
Re:I'm too late by FearUncertaintyDoubt · 2003-02-12 03:30 · Score: 5, Funny

My name has already gone so I couldn't have it even if I wanted it.
I know how you feel. I got muscled out by that guy John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt. His .name is my .name too.
Re:I'm too late by jd142 · 2003-02-12 03:46 · Score: 1

That's just horrible. ;)
Re:I'm too late by Carmody · 2003-02-12 03:50 · Score: 0

I wish I could mod you +6 Funny for that

--
God is real unless declared integer
Re:I'm too late by djrogers · 2003-02-12 05:58 · Score: 1

That is perhaps the funniest thing I've read on /. in ages!

--
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Re:I'm too late by zapp · 2003-02-12 06:29 · Score: 1

I don't think anything, ever, on slashdot has ever made me actually laugh (especially alone in my cube)....

bravo.

--
no comment
Re:I'm too late by glitch_ · 2003-02-12 08:14 · Score: 1

Am I the only person who can't read the name John Jacob without starting to sing that damn song? Now its stuck in my head...

Singing: John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt!! La la la la la la....
Re:I'm too late by mlippert · 2003-02-12 10:59 · Score: 1

I have to agree, one of the funniest posts I've encountered on /. Unlike the majority of posts that are modded up as funny!
Re:I'm too late by drDugan · 2003-02-12 14:30 · Score: 1

can you get these fsckos for squatting? I'd like to.

someone bought (myname).org and has one of the thousands of "Ultimate Search, Inc." pages on it.

thx

starting a registra by odyrithm · 2003-02-12 03:10 · Score: 1

whats it take to actualy start a registra and start selling some of your own TLD's?

--
moo

to market the .name tld? by _anomaly_ · 2003-02-12 03:12 · Score: 2, Funny

maybe it's just me, but i saw a bunch of marketing from my registrar (register.com) for the .name tld.

so much, in fact, that i went ahead and registered mine... and haven't done a thing with it since (it's been probably almost 2 years now maybe). this is mainly due to the fact that i'm lazy and not sure what to do with it... but still seems to be the norm for the .name tld.

--
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein

We then need a new gTLD by spacefight · 2003-02-12 03:12 · Score: 5, Funny

.bankrupt

nuff said

Re:We then need a new gTLD by Cyberdyne · 2003-02-12 03:41 · Score: 1

.bankrupt
nuff said

I thought .com got there first? ;-)
Seriously, I can imagine this being (ab)used a great deal; think of the fuss over people registering domains like "fordsucks.com" and pointing them at GM's website, or whatever - but multipled a thousandfold. Just run a "whois microsoft.com", then tell me that "microsoft.bankrupt" would stay unregistered for long!
Re:We then need a new gTLD by raju1kabir · 2003-02-12 04:19 · Score: 1

Seriously, I can imagine this being (ab)used a great deal; think of the fuss over people registering domains like "fordsucks.com" and pointing them at GM's website, or whatever - but multipled a thousandfold. Just run a "whois microsoft.com", then tell me that "microsoft.bankrupt" would stay unregistered for long!

I think you need to visit this site.

--
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS

Who wants anything but .com? by Mike+Rucker · 2003-02-12 03:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

I guess .net and .org are ok too but only if you also have the corresponding .com. If you get anything other than a .com then everytime people try to go to your website they are going to type it in wrong until they remember your strange extension.

Re:Who wants anything but .com? by LordWoody · 2003-02-12 03:30 · Score: 4, Informative

Me. Some of us still follow the distinction that the original tlds had (.edu for schools, .com for commercial, .net for networks, ISPs, etc..., .org for organizations such as community orgs, non-profits, etc..., and so forth).

While I think the whole tld was a terrible idea applied in an even worse fashion, I still register my domains based on what general tld they best fit. I have no interest in leading people to believe that our LUG is a commercial interest or that my business is some community group or non-profit. Although I am not above availing myself of the .us tld if that is the only non-misleading tld left for a given name.

With the advent of search engines like Google, the whole "what cool FQDN is your site?" is becoming irrelevant anyway.

--
Never meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and good with catsup.
Re:Who wants anything but .com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 04:10 · Score: 0

Me.

I love using "site:.co.uk" to filter out the dollar biased sites when trying to purcase anything. Mush too much noise on google otherwise.
Re:Who wants anything but .com? by smack.addict · 2003-02-12 04:40 · Score: 1

.com is a stupid extension based on the faulty concept that the world can fit in a flat namespace. It cannot.
Meaningful TLDs are necessary. Unfortunately, ICANN labors under the belief that namespaces are static concepts that should be regulated from high. That is just as stupid as believing in a flat namespace.
Re:Who wants anything but .com? by Animats · 2003-02-12 06:58 · Score: 1

If you get anything other than a .com then everytime people try to go to your website they are going to type it in wrong until they remember your strange extension.
I tend to agree. I own Downside.com, whihc provides financial information. I get mail intended for Downside School and Downside, the grunge band.
For a while, the band was a problem, because they were offering an E-mail service for their fans through some affiliate service. ("Your own 'name@downside.net' e-mail address!") This generated much clueless mail. But they stopped promoting that sideline.
I own Downside, the trademark, which is the important thing to own.

They aren't doing it right. by z_gringo · 2003-02-12 03:20 · Score: 4, Interesting

Either that or I don't understand. (It works out the same for me in the end).

I went to register my .name, just for kicks, I entered Z for my First name, and Gringo for my last name, and I was provided with the very helpful message:

Your own, impressive .name addresses
z@gringo.name; and
www.z.gringo.name
may be available right now.

Which isn't really what I would want at all, IF I did want a .name. I would want zGringo.name

Their version of "whois" isn't really what I'm used to.. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to work, but then, that also probably what I'm not really interested in a .name.

And, what's up with their response: www.z.gringo.name
may be available right now?? Is it available or not? It was a yes or no question..

argh..

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-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.

Re:They aren't doing it right. by Captain+Large+Face · 2003-02-12 04:02 · Score: 1

From what I remember, .name was supposed to be a method of grouping lots of people with the same surname, so the correct format would be:

www.firstname.surname.name

Personally, I think it sucks because it's too restrictive. For example, how many John Smiths are there reading Slashdot?
Re:They aren't doing it right. by anticypher · 2003-02-12 04:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

the .name service should all be put to death (in a texas department of corrections sense of the word) for their crimes against the internet community.

Really, what they have done is squat on tens of thousands of names, in the hopes of extorting a few services from the masses. They don't offer traditional DNS services, where someone types in a name and the resolver returns the IP address of your name server, they are offering only email and web redirecting services. Nothing else.

I want anticypher.name to point to my name server, but they won't do that. They will give me a heavily spammed anti@cypher.name email forwarding service, or a web redirector with WWW tacked on the front. I know a few people who stupidly signed up for these services, and got a torrent of spam afterwards because they are then marked as gullible, naive idiots, the scammers choice of easy victims.

The whole service should die, the sooner the better.

the AC

--
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Re:They aren't doing it right. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 04:20 · Score: 0

Probably as many as there are Anonymous Cowards

-AC
Re:They aren't doing it right. by FTL · 2003-02-12 06:12 · Score: 3, Informative

> They don't offer traditional DNS services, where someone types in a name and the resolver returns the IP address of your name server, they are offering only email and web redirecting services. Nothing else.
I'm sorry, but Slashdot really needs a '-1 Wrong' mod point.
The .name TLD will sell you any third-level domain that you want. Just like *.co.uk or *.ny.us does. The DNS lookups are perfectly normal. The email is perfectly normal. What more can I say ... what you stated is completely untrue.
And yes, I do know what I'm talking about. I'm a sysadmin, and owner of my own .name website. Go ping it.

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Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Re:They aren't doing it right. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 07:15 · Score: 0

heavily spammed? I'm confused.. I've been using my .name for almost a year now and I've yet to recieve 1! Yes ONE! spam message! Wheras my undergraduate and graduate email addresses are pounded with spam day and night...
Re:They aren't doing it right. by bugnuts · 2003-02-12 12:49 · Score: 1

I think a +0 Wrong (for the tag) would be better. I got problems with mods lowering scores simply because they disagree, instead of just replying.
Re:They aren't doing it right. by bugnuts · 2003-02-12 12:53 · Score: 1

For example, how many John Smiths are there reading Slashdot? I dunno, but I bet Anonymous@Coward.name was taken well before John@Smith.name

Here's my karma whoring for today by Doctor+Sbaitso · 2003-02-12 03:21 · Score: 1, Informative

A Whois Lookup for the .NAME domain can be found here. Apparently common names like john.name aren't even taken.

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Hello, Slashdot user. My name is Dr. Sbaitso. I am here to help you.

Re:Here's my karma whoring for today by Captain+Large+Face · 2003-02-12 04:09 · Score: 1

That's because "john" isn't a very common surname... :P
Re:Here's my karma whoring for today by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 10:47 · Score: 0

Unless you're Sir Elton!

Free the namespace! by Ashurbanipal · 2003-02-12 03:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

If they don't manage, this will be the first gTLD to go bankrupt. I guess that will put a damper on any plans to introduce more new TLDs.

Hopefully it will only put a damper on plans to introduce stupid TLDs that perpetuate the expensive stranglehold on naming that ICANN enjoys.

TLDs should be available to anyone who can run a secure, reliable root - this connects profit to performance, so we don't have to rely on the innate goodness of the root nameserver operators. The first thing that'd happen would be that pepsi.com, pepsi.net, and pepsi.org would be obsolete since .pepsi would be run by PepsiCo.

With the widespread popularity of search engines, nobody would have any trouble finding anything even if some temporary chaos were engendered.

Spare me the FUD about nameservices not scaling for this; I believe DNS and BIND are quite capable of it.

Re:Free the namespace! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 04:07 · Score: 1, Informative

The first thing that'd happen would be that pepsi.com, pepsi.net, and pepsi.org would be obsolete since .pepsi would be run by PepsiCo.
Errr... But how would you find the IP address of PepsiCo's nameserver? This sounds like a boot strapping problem.
Re:Free the namespace! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 04:36 · Score: 0

Yeah, sounds a neat idea...

And while we're at it, let's just get rid of the useless www. as well... http://pepsi/ is the way to go!

We can even save us the slowlyness of the DNS, let's just distribute a file with all the name/IP mappings to anyone.
Re:Free the namespace! by tmark · 2003-02-12 04:43 · Score: 1

The first thing that'd happen would be that pepsi.com, pepsi.net, and pepsi.org would be obsolete since .pepsi would be run by PepsiCo.

Forgetting the issue of whether or not your plan could work, the last thing your plan would do is free the namespace because PepsiCo is never going to feel their domain is obsolete because there always exists the possibility that some guy is going to go to pepsi.com. You really think pepsi would ever give up the .com, .net, or .org ?
Re:Free the namespace! by Fastolfe · 2003-02-12 04:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

The DNS software isn't the problem here. What you're recommending is basically a flat DNS namespace, where 90% or more of the present-day DNS traffic is moved directly to the root servers. You're going to need to beef up those root servers several orders of magnitude in order for this scheme to work. This has another order of magnitude impact on the survivability of DNS in the event of network problems. You've just increased your reliance on the root servers significantly, since it's unlikely your local caching DNS server will have names cached for every DNS request you make.

DNS is hierarchial for a reason, and the number of TLD's was small for a reason. The root servers should just need to be probed for a limited set of names, and from that set, it delegates to another set of servers, which delegates to yet another set.

Changing this primarily hierarchial arrangement to a primarily flat one (with some hierarchial vestiges left over, since you'll probably want www.pepsi to work "just in case") would require a fundamental restructuring of DNS and would impact reliability and performance in a very noticable fashion.

A more extensible, future-friendly option might be to put DNS back the way it was 10 years ago and build another distributed database designed to map real-world names to Internet domains.

I should be able to use this database to look up the name "Pepsi" in a business context, and have it return "pepsico.com" or something. A DNS SRV lookup on pepsico.com for the 'http' service might return "www12.web-farm.public-facing.pepsico.com" or some other company-specific hostname representing their web servers (it doesn't have to be a vanity "www.pepsi.com" since users don't need to see this anymore). My browser would then connect and I'd get "Pepsi"'s home page, not the home page of "pepsi.com". We need to start breaking this huge reliance on DNS names as a locator service and put DNS back to work at what it was designed to do: to put an alphanumeric label on Internet hosts.
Re:Free the namespace! by starcraftsicko · 2003-02-12 04:48 · Score: 1

And let us not forget that the squatters would be first in with the servers. Odds are that even if Pepsico managed to get .pepsi, without some governing authority, somebody would beat Coke to coke...
Re:Free the namespace! by Ashurbanipal · 2003-02-12 07:06 · Score: 1

What you're recommending is basically a flat DNS namespace, where 90% or more of the present-day DNS traffic is moved directly to the root servers.
No, I'm not. You are assuming that 90% of the current name-holders are willing and capable of running their own root TLDs, which is not the case.

Sure, zaibatsus like IBM and Coca-Cola will run their own, but they do not represent 90% of the present DNS traffic. Most people will still rent namespace from the registrars just as they do today. But the big bullies - the megacorps that have the bribe money and legal muscle to push the registrars around - will run their own TLDs.

The DNS today is crippled by the insistence that hierarchies of naming must reflect existing hierarchies of control. To put it another way, the intransigence of the US Department of Commerce and ICANN has prevented the DNS system from reaching its potential.
Re:Free the namespace! by Ashurbanipal · 2003-02-12 07:20 · Score: 1

Yeah, sounds a neat idea...
Thanks, I treasure the comments of ACs.

And while we're at it, let's just get rid of the useless www. as well... http://pepsi/ is the way to go!
Certainly, that's what wildcard DNS A records are for. Or at least that's how I use them... perhaps you haven't noticed that http://slashdot.org resolves just fine without any www?

We can even save us the slowlyness of the DNS, let's just distribute a file with all the name/IP mappings to anyone.
We do. It's called named.root and I always pick up a fresh copy by FTP when I'm configuring DNS servers.

You can't get away from the need to distribute the root nameserver hints with any of the software I'm familiar with. If we didn't distribute a file with the meta-server addresses how would we find them? Not by name, obviously; chickens and eggs come to mind.
Re:Free the namespace! by Ashurbanipal · 2003-02-12 07:41 · Score: 1

Errr... But how would you find the IP address of PepsiCo's nameserver? This sounds like a boot strapping problem.
Excellent question! The current method entails pre-seeding each DNS server with a copy of named.root which is available from hoary old RS.INTERNIC.NET, the site that used to distribute /etc/hosts back in my misspent youth. This will have to be maintained for the forseeable future in order to provide backwards compatibility.

But, if we free the namespace, we will greatly increase the number of root nameservers (a good thing) which will make the named.root file unmanageably long (at least at first, until things shake out) and very dynamic (a bad thing).

There are several solutions to this available using existing technology. A truly distributed, robust system (that doesn't eat bandwidth like Maddog drinks beer) is probably not attainable (yet), but system of meta-servers no less reliable than the current system, compatible with existing clients, would be fairly simple to engineer. Implementation would not be trivial, but it could be made to pay for itself - Ford Motor Company would probably just LOVE to be able to have an address of http://ford and they've got money (Well, they had money before the Bush economic miracle, anyway).

Take a look at the work the much-maligned AlterNic and more reputable OpenNic have done over the years - these people are proving that it *can* be done.

It's far less of an engineering problem than the ICANN would have you believe.
Re:Free the namespace! by bfree · 2003-02-12 08:35 · Score: 1
So what we really need to do is to allow anyone to buy their own tld ... at a price! First setup the dns "root server consortium" who are the central administration and funding source for the root servers. Anyone who wishes to setup a tld should then have to go through the following steps:
1. Deposit $PRICE1 (5000) to reserve their tld for up to $RESERVETIME.
2. Provide a correct (by the consortiums requirements) dns configuration for yourtld.test during your one year for a cost of $PRICE2 per attempt after the 1st.
3. Maintain the .test tld until a large enough access sample has been acquired to establish the stability of the servers (i.e. step 2 must run for at least $TESTMINDURATION (2 months)).
4. Deposit $BALANCEMINTIME (2 years) of the initial estimated costs (to the consortium) for your tld. You must pay this while your test site is active and before your reservation expires (maximum of reservation date + $RESERVETIME + $TESTMAXDURATION + $DECISIONTIME).
5. Every month you will receive a bill from the consortium which adjusts your deposit so as to have $BALANCEMINTIME worth of funds after paying for the last months root servers service. If your deposit runs out, your tld lapses.
What happens when a tld lapses is an interesting question though. I think a tld registrar should have to declare whether subdomains are sub-owned of not, and if they are they would be required to update a central (universal) database with the list of sub-owners. Then when the tld lapses, all sub-domains (and the tld itself) fall under the control of the public registrar who bills the sub-owners directly to continue the service (a nicety would be e-mail services so that e-mail addresses could live on aswell as domains). Who gets to run the public registrar and set it's prices? How about giving each tld registrar a vote and awarding the contract every 3-10 years? If a tld is not sub-owned at all (probably rare), then the tld should cease for 3 years, then be available to everyone except the original owener for another 3 years, then back available to all! They could even allow the normally 1 year reservation fee to be a lifetime delayed fee on any domain which is not sub-owned (if you really want .dot and your second there, you can put down $PRICE1 and it's yours if they drop it).

The best thing would be if the dns itself held an additional record to indicate the owner of each (every) item so that if you are meant to own blah.blah you can check the dns and see that you do so you know that your .blah is yours even if .blah falls (as long as you can live with the public registrars rules/prices). The only issue left is if the .blah registrar decides to give all it's dns space to another company and then fold and the only way to solve this is with the likes of ICANN accredditing registrars. When I say ICANN, I mean that when you go to buy blah.blah, you check out the .blah regitrar to see what (if any) protection you have and then you buy or pass.
--
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Re:Free the namespace! by Ashurbanipal · 2003-02-12 08:38 · Score: 1

You are correct that this is the biggest problem with socially responsible naming systems; greed drives humans to sociopathic actions.

Some say that this is good, and worship greed. They are typically very shallow people who lack inner peace. Think Donald Trump.

Some say this is bad, and that greedy people must be punished. They are typically even more shallow, and see all things as absolutes. Think Torquemada.

Some people just say "Hey, greed exists, and greedy people will always covet and accumulate power, so let's design a system so that each greedy individual's actions will serve the community as a whole". Since that is where's I'm coming from, obviously these people are correct! :^P

Eventually, the cost of maintaining spaces like pepsi.com and pepsi.org will outstrip any profit garnered from their existence, because it will be more cost-effective to advertise http://pepsi rather than the others and people will get used to it.

However, in the short run you are right. They won't give up their redundant names for decades unless forced to.

Any suggestions for a solution? The obvious one is to cut a deal - tell 'em they can't have any other names with "pepsi" in them if they want .pepsi, and arrange for a few years of forwarding. But that solution means the creation of another powerbroker like ICANN to enforce these rules... then we're back to square one.

I personally would be willing to put up with the short-term problems for the long-term good... but what I do now is encourage people to use OpenNIC. If we all use OpenNic, ICANN's power-trip becomes unimportant.
Re:Free the namespace! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 09:16 · Score: 0

What you are proposing is technically feasible, including adding a DNS record type for ownership (DNS is designed to be extremely extensible).

The problem with such plans is that they require the people who currently control the namespace to either adopt a sensible set of rules that do not strive for artificial scarcities, or give up their control.

Which they seem unwilling to do. Perhaps their lives are so unrewarding that maintaining their power over the Internet namespace is meaningful to them.

Maybe they need to get laid.
Re:Free the namespace! by bfree · 2003-02-12 10:16 · Score: 1

One point, who controls the DNS? Is it the TLDs? Is it the hardware/software/isps who setup systems? My own personal money goes on the largest power being the combined international tld owners. If they want something like I suggested, they lobby their governments to use national and supernational (UN, G7, EU, whoever) powers to change the status quo! I think even U.S. politicians could be persuaded to endorse these changes if net stability enhanced (as it should be).

--
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Re:Free the namespace! by Fastolfe · 2003-02-12 10:56 · Score: 1

Why would anyone want to register a second-level domain when they can register a top-level one? The only way you're going to keep people out is to charge an exorbitant fee to register there.

And who decides who gets the "apple" TLD? This solution doesn't fix any of the problems that exist with today's DNS infrastructure and serves only to send more traffic to the root servers than before.

The only issue this seems to solve is "what to do about TLD's?" which is an artificial problem to begin with brought about by the general public's stupid need to use DNS as a commercialized locator service.

What "potential" do you feel that DNS isn't reaching? DNS is there to provide alphanumeric labels to Internet hosts, **NOT** to link company names and trade marks to web sites. DNS does what it was originally designed to do very well. It reached its full potential years ago, and is only now starting to suffer because its purpose is being twisted into something it was not designed to do.

Fix the real problem here, don't warp Internet technologies even further than lawyers and marketroids have already warped it.
Re:Free the namespace! by psamuels · 2003-02-12 15:08 · Score: 1

Excellent question! The current method entails pre-seeding each DNS server with a copy of named.root which is available from hoary old RS.INTERNIC.NET, the site that used to distribute /etc/hosts back in my misspent youth.

The root servers currently just service the root level - not the .com level. The .com level is taken care of by a host (pun intended) of machines at Network Solutions called *.gtld-servers.net.

So don't worry about the scalability of millions of TLDs. Netsol has already had to solve that problem - it would be no different (well, maybe one extra order of magnitude) to move those all down to the root level.

(No real benefit, either, btw - the usable / desirable namespace is basically the same size as before.)

But, if we free the namespace, we will greatly increase the number of root nameservers (a good thing) which will make the named.root file unmanageably long

There are only 13 .com name servers, [a-m].gtld-servers.net (compare this to the 13 root servers, [a-m].root-servers.net), and they manage to service the huge .com and .net namespaces. .org only has nine servers (*.nstld.com, also at Network Solutions). What makes you think the brave new No Particular TLD world would need any more than that?

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"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Re:Free the namespace! by psamuels · 2003-02-12 15:14 · Score: 1

The DNS software isn't the problem here. What you're recommending is basically a flat DNS namespace, where 90% or more of the present-day DNS traffic is moved directly to the root servers.

As opposed to 90% or more of the present-day DNS traffic going through the .com / .net TLD servers? I don't see how the one is any different from the other, except for who owns the servers (Netsol, in the case of gtld-servers.net, which manages .com and .net; they also of course own nstld.com, which manages .org).

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"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Re:Free the namespace! by Fastolfe · 2003-02-13 04:28 · Score: 1

Right, but those are not ROOT name servers! Assuming no caching occurs, a lookup for www.example.com goes through three steps:

1. Query root servers for 'com'
2. Query 'com' servers for 'example'
3. Query 'example' servers for 'www'

Since DNS servers cache data, step #1 is almost certainly cached, since a significant amount of queries end in 'com'. Likewise for 'net' and 'org'.

This means the 'bulk' of DNS requests don't hit the root servers, they hit the servers responsible for the TLD in question. And even this is because the DNS namespace for the GTLD's is more or less flat as well (most major entities have dozens of second-level domains in use, instead of just 1, which is all they really need). A good hierarchy (e.g. the old geographically-based .us domain) is very good at distributing traffic only to those servers that need it. A flat namespace prevents that distribution and reduces robustness.

The root servers are designed to be independent from registrar input, etc. They serve up responses for a very fixed and rarely changing set of names and can optimize themselves to that end. The servers handling the top-level domains are a bit beefier and more plentiful.

In a world where anyone and everyone can start allocating their own top-level domain, though, you're effectively folding the traffic from both of today's 'com' and 'net' and 'org' servers into the root servers.

This is a fairly significant thing.

And again, what is the benefit here? "No TLD mess"? Why is there a perceived "TLD mess" to begin with? FIX THE REAL PROBLEM here.
Re:Free the namespace! by Ashurbanipal · 2003-02-13 05:00 · Score: 1

Why would anyone want to register a second-level domain when they can register a top-level one?
You're missing the point. People with top-level domains should run the name services for that domain.

This restricts the availability to those technically capable of performing the role, or rich enough to pay for both technically capable people and high-bandwith links.

A TLD that was run incompetently or which had insufficent pipes would not get used. Problem solved by the economists' "invisible hand".

DNS is there to provide alphanumeric labels to Internet hosts, **NOT** to link company names and trade marks to web sites.
I am old enough to remember the implementation of DNS - before that we used /etc/hosts, downloaded daily from RS.INTERNIC.NET - and I can assure you that "DNS is there" to solve a bandwidth problem, and your belief is revisionist history at best. DNS is designed to be an extensible and multi-functional lookup service, and was never intended to be limited to a single record type.
Re:Free the namespace! by Ashurbanipal · 2003-02-13 05:56 · Score: 1

Agreed. All the technical issues are solveable, and in fact have been solved at some level; and the namespace would not significantly change in size regardless of structure (unless it shrinks majorly, as name-squatting becomes far less profitable).

The problems are non-technical. One is the FUD being spread about the technical issues (I am *really* tired of hearing all this nonsense about a supposed technical need for artificially scarce namespace) and another is the problem of rule creation and enforcement.

ICANN and the Department of Commerce control the rule-making and enforcement process (by holding the root nameservers hostage). It seems that they will not allow a better system to evolve.

Internet users' best bet is probably to end-run ICANN. Just as we can use samba and samba-tng to defeat Microsoft's attempt to dominate our networks, we can use OpenNIC and friends to obviate ICANN.

PS: I included the definition of obviate because I got savaged for using it in a post once. I can use the most arcane networking terms imaginable and nobody complains, but use a slightly offbeat non-technical word and everyone's suddenly too busy flaming me to look it up. ;^>
Re:Free the namespace! by psamuels · 2003-02-13 07:05 · Score: 1

In a world where anyone and everyone can start allocating their own top-level domain, though, you're effectively folding the traffic from both of today's 'com' and 'net' and 'org' servers into the root servers.

This is a political distinction, not a technical distinction. Namely, who owns the servers with the high-volume traffic. (Currently Network Solutions, as the registrar for .com/.net/.org/.gov/.edu and probably others.)

It's not like this would create a new technical problem. It's a solved problem, just not one the root servers currently have. Worst case, ICANN contracts Netsol to do the root servers (if they don't already - I don't know who actually runs the root servers at present.)

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"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Re:Free the namespace! by psamuels · 2003-02-13 07:12 · Score: 1

(I am *really* tired of hearing all this nonsense about a supposed technical need for artificially scarce namespace)

See, this is the point I've never quite understood. How is the .com namespace more scarce than a proposed open TLD namespace? It seems to me that the two setups are basically identical, except that in the present case everyone has to type ".com" at the end.

If what you don't like is the artificial price inflation of registering a second-level under .com, due to the dynamics of Netsol and the resellers, then say so. But I don't see how an open season on TLDs would solve that problem - somebody still has to manage registrations, after all, and I don't see why they would get any cheaper or more efficient just because you're registering under '.' rather than '.com'.

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"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Re:Free the namespace! by psamuels · 2003-02-13 07:18 · Score: 1

we can use OpenNIC and friends to obviate ICANN.

Just wanted to add that I appreciated your use of obviate here. (:

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"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Re:Free the namespace! by Fastolfe · 2003-02-13 07:25 · Score: 1

A TLD that was run incompetently or which had insufficent pipes would not get used.

I thought we were talking about giving TLD's up to anyone and everyone that wanted them. An example was "pepsi". Pepsi does not currently offer hosts under "pepsi.com" to anyone that wants to pay/register one, so they're under no obligation to have a beefy infrastructure in place to accomodate a million hosts under their domain. Absolutely they will run name services for their domain, just like they do today for pepsi.com. The difference is that now they're hanging right off the root zone instead of the com zone.

I think you're making the assumption that TLD's will primarily be used by companies wanting to sell domains ending in that TLD. I submit that if anyone and everyone can register their own TLD, they will do so for personal, vanity purposes. There may be companies out there wanting to sell/give out domains under their TLD, but they will be in the minority for precisely the reason that second-level domains aren't marketable for this purpose today. Why buy a domain under someone else's when you can just get your own at the same level?

Why in the world would I want to register (and maintain name servers for) "david-nesting.com" when I can register (and maintain name servers for) "david-nesting".

DNS is designed to be an extensible and multi-functional lookup service, and was never intended to be limited to a single record type.

This is correct, but I really don't see how you could ever hope to use DNS effectively as a proper name and trademark locator service, which was what I was talking about. Please explain to me how any of the hundred companies with names based on the word "Apple" can make their online presence obvious using DNS. Apple Computer has "apple.com" and nobody else can.

Perhaps I was leaning too heavily on DNS's original function in my last post, but it has very serious, fundamental flaws when you try to apply it to real-world names. The very fact that we even have litigation and arbitration over DNS names tells me that something could be done better. This does not solve that problem.

If you are trying to suggest that it's OK for DNS to be used as a locator service for real-world names and marks, how does allowing any arbitrary TLD help it do that? If anything, it hinders it, since a company's domain could exist under a hundred different TLD's now.

I don't know, maybe this isn't a bad thing after all, but without a good directory stepping up to fill this locator function, this is going to do nothing but reduce the usefulness of an Internet naming system.
Re:Free the namespace! by ketilf · 2003-02-13 09:14 · Score: 1

The DNS software isn't the problem here. What you're recommending is basically a flat DNS namespace, where 90% or more of the present-day DNS traffic is moved directly to the root servers. You're going to need to beef up those root servers several orders of magnitude in order for this scheme to work.

What makes you think so? Did you miss the recent research saying that
98% of DNS Queries at the Root Level are Unnecessary?

But there are better solutions than root servers anyway, for instance the one outlined by DJ Bernstein here.
Re:Free the namespace! by Fastolfe · 2003-02-13 09:28 · Score: 1

I recall the article you're referring to. Are you trying to say that moving DNS queries from TLD-level name servers to the root name servers will not impact the root servers because 98% of the queries to the root servers are unnecessary? I'm having trouble following that line of thought.
Re:Free the namespace! by Ashurbanipal · 2003-02-14 05:30 · Score: 1

I use DNS as a locator service all the time. For example, if I wanted to find General Motors, I'd type "gm.com" in mozilla... wait a sec, I'll spawn a new tab and try it... Hey, worked like a charm!

Nearly instantly I found what I was looking for - it was slightly slow because they seem to have a flash front-end. Most of the time I can find what I want this way. If I want BIND or DHCP, I know those come from Vixie and Lemon over at ISC, and I know ISC is not a conventional profit-making organization, so I type "isc.org"... hey, that worked too!

Let's try something more generic - I'll look for a new job at "jobs.net" - well, they threw a cookie at me, but now I'm on a global job search network. On the rare occasions that this doesn't work, or if I want more options, I schlep on over to Google (or search.com probably works too) and do a more thorough lookup.

I know that's not directly addressing your concerns, but it does point out that DNS is a better "real world" locator than you believe.

If I had done those lookups without the .com, .net, .org bits on the end, would there have been more requests made or more bandwidth spent? No. But there would have been a smaller, faster response from the root nameservers, because gm.org and gm.net are being squatted, and thus there are two useless and space-wasting entries in the root tables.

The economics of running high-bandwidth sites will always ensure that lower-level names like *.net.dhis.org are cheap (free, actually in that example) and TLDs are expensive. This alone will prevent the total flattening of the name space.

Not that I think flattening the DNS namespace would necessarily mean the end of the world as we know it, I just don't think it would happen.

Eventually, we'll probably wind up with a system where a certifying authority (not necessarily centralized, it could be a "web of trust") accredits TLD servers through the use of DNSSEC (signed zones) and TSIG (signed DNS requests) or some similar crypto tech. But that's not going to happen right away because DNS goes all the way down to individual client boxes, representing a titanic installed base of technology that we have to support for the forseeable future.
Re:Free the namespace! by Fastolfe · 2003-02-14 07:24 · Score: 1

I know that's not directly addressing your concerns, but it does point out that DNS is a better "real world" locator than you believe.

Only because of litigation, only because bigger "more visible" companies have managed to weasel "their" domains from other perfectly reasonable holders.

Your examples only work for well-known entities that either grabbed those DNS domains early, or were able to litigate to claim ownership of them. Every "confusingly similar" DNS domain now belongs to the companies that have the resources to take them, and that is what makes DNS a workable "locator service" for those companies.

But what about the small guys? There are a hundred companies that could just as easily claim ownership of "apple.com" but they can't, because it's already claimed. So they have to lengthen things, maybe "apple-bookstore.com", "applebookstore.com" or a handful of variants, so that DNS *can* be used as a locator for their business. What about a different "apple bookstore" in a neighboring state? Both have just as much claim to this same name.

Just because you use DNS today as a locator service does NOT mean DNS should be in this role, or that it even does this job very effectively.

Spammers killed this by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 03:23 · Score: 0

Since the only way to keep from being flooded with spam is to keep your email address private, why would any sane person want --let alone pay for -- a firstname@lastname.name email address?
<P>

To harvest email addresses, all a spammer would need is a list of names from the phone book. Those lists are already available on disk.

.name?? by s20451 · 2003-02-12 03:24 · Score: 0, Troll

If you're not a .com, you're not anybody.

--
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.

wait a moment by SubtleNuance · 2003-02-12 03:25 · Score: 1

Is the reason that the gTLD .name root provider went 'bust' was because of insanely bad business decisions? like $123131312Million in Venture Capital spent on B*shit (advertising/Executive Salaries/skybox at the %local_pro_stadium%)?

Because a few MBA dunderheads cant manage to make themselves filthy rich with a gTLD shouldnt restrict the creation of TLDs in the future.

What was the budget of the .ca or .au ccTLD until recently -- wasnt the *whole* of the .au managed until just (months?) recently by *one person*?

Yet another reason why the DoC and ICANN are a goddamn farce.

.NAME at a Crossroads? Hardly by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 03:25 · Score: 0

I don't think it's as bad as you make it sound.

Getting the ROM images can be a pain, not everything is emulated correctly, and performance can be an issue, but registry or no registry, people will always want to keep playing those vintage arcade games.

serves them right! by Kosi · 2003-02-12 03:25 · Score: 1

Just had a short search to freshen up my memory and I saw as I expected. It's hard to find a company offering .name domains, and then they'll charge you much more than for .de, .com, .net or .org!

Kosi

Anonymous.Coward.name by Fulkkari · 2003-02-12 03:25 · Score: 5, Funny

No one seem to have registered Anonymous Coward, even though Slashdots seems to be full of people with this name. How is this possible? You would think that at least one of these several hundred Cowards would register with their name. Things must be going really bad for .name...

--
I demand the Cone of Silence!

Re:Anonymous.Coward.name by Doctor+Hu · 2003-02-12 03:44 · Score: 1

Um, methinks you need to look up the definition of "anonymous".
Either that, or I've just fallen into a "+1 Funny" troll-trap.
Re:Anonymous.Coward.name by random_rabbit · 2003-02-12 04:01 · Score: 5, Funny

That reminds me. Last night my girlfriend said "I think that this Anonymous Coward guy spends far too much time on this site. He's all over it".
I wanted to agree, but I was too busy getting beaten for laughing at her.
Re:Anonymous.Coward.name by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 04:06 · Score: 0

Anonymous Coward / L33t_D3WD_69 - what's the difference really? :)
Re:Anonymous.Coward.name by artemis67 · 2003-02-12 04:09 · Score: 1

You would think that at least one of these several hundred Cowards would register with their name.

I believe those have all been reserved by France. Try checking coward.name.fr.
Re:Anonymous.Coward.name by Blimey85 · 2003-02-12 04:57 · Score: 1

No offense man, but get a different GF. For fscks sake.... that's just.... I can't even think of the right word to describe her lack of intelligence.
Now on to the topic at hand:
Why aren't companies limited to one or maybe a couple domains, rather than being able to register thousands if they want to? This makes no sense to me. Someone else mentioned peosi.net, pepsi.com, and pepsi.org... why not just pepsi.com and call it good? Lots of companies register all three even though they only need one. This was very common a few years back and I think it still happens far too often.
Correct me if I'm wrong but the only time you would have use for all three is if you are a commercial (.com) isp (.net) run by an organization (.org)? And if you are in the US, you should also get .US. And if your company has a name, you may want a .name address... and if you ever give out info, what the hell, add on a .info domain just for kicks. See how ridiculous this is? Get one domain, have one site, and then let it be.

--
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Re:Anonymous.Coward.name by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 05:36 · Score: 0

No offense man, but get a different GF.

ooh! dibs on his!

-AC
Re:Anonymous.Coward.name by Felipe+Hoffa · 2003-02-12 10:54 · Score: 1

So then you should get a different president.

Look at his quotes.

Fh

Ps: I am not trying to be anti-bush, I'm just trying to point out that you can't go changing friends (or president) for one (or more) stupid things they say. But in the meantime you are free to continue laughing at them.

Is that surprising? by t_hunger · 2003-02-12 03:26 · Score: 4, Interesting

Well, it does not surprise me... having a own domain is cool, I know. But john.doe.name just sounds stupid. And the more common names should be taken allready anyway. How they they handle that? john.smith294.name? Definitly uncool:-(

The registrar claims it is for indivuduals to register their name. I just tried "www.john.smith.name" und ended at www.smith.com, some company website. Doesen't that spoil the purpose?

Finally the website of that registrar claims that john smith "may be available right now." It's not, or it wouldn't redirect me to that company website. Why doesen't the registrar say so? What good is that query field if it cannot even figure out names that even my DNS server knows to be taken?

Now instead of this ridiculous ".name" they should have introduced ".sex" and forced all those sex-companies into that TLD. That could have helped parents to make sure their children do not get exposed to lots of the smut on the net and I'd be happy with just blocking all mails from "*.sex" and have way less spam in my inbox. Of course that wouldn't have worked out completly -- someone is bound to try to offer adult content under other TLDs -- but I'm sure it would have helped.

--
Regards, Tobias

Re:Is that surprising? by raju1kabir · 2003-02-12 04:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

Now instead of this ridiculous ".name" they should have introduced ".sex" and forced all those sex-companies into that TLD. That could have helped parents to make sure their children do not get exposed to lots of the smut on the net and I'd be happy with just blocking all mails from "*.sex" and have way less spam in my inbox. Of course that wouldn't have worked out completly -- someone is bound to try to offer adult content under other TLDs -- but I'm sure it would have helped.

No, it's very stupid and it wouldn't help at all. I don't say this to be insulting, but because this supposed panacea is constantly being brought up by people who can't or won't think things through.

People selling smut want to get it under the noses of as wide a potential audience as possible. Hence the existence of things like www.whitehouse.com. You will not be able to stop them or even put a dent in their operations unless you manage to outlaw porn in general worldwide, which is (A) bad policy, and (B) highly unlikely. If you create a .sex domain, then the porn operators will register in both - it costs them $10 and gets them more exposure.

If you want to provide a child-friendly environment, you can create a domain called .kids or whatever. Require organizations registering in it to either provide references from established child-friendly outfits (school system, CTW, etc.) or to post a large cash "smut bond". Anyone found with porn on a site reachable via a .kids URL (whether it's because they ran an open web proxy, or because they willingly put it up) forfeits their bond and loses their domain.

This works, because you have a finite number of domains to monitor, and you have specific disincentives to leverage. Trying to keep pornographic content out of the "rest of the internet" is an impossible task and only an idiot (or someone with a fat non-outcome-based contract) would attempt it.

--
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Re:Is that surprising? by dissy · 2003-02-12 05:01 · Score: 1

Most porn sites on the net actually are honest busineses.

Most encourage software like netnanny and the like, and would willingly move to a .sex TDL.
This blocks people that a) dont want to see it, and b) are kids, both of which are not paying customers.

Also why piss off parents of kids by not making it easy to block sites, when in fact those parents are potential customers.

Granted there are lots of businesses run by idiots that dont have a clue how to run a business, and some of those people will be in the porn industry as well i have no doubt, but id like to atleast try and be hopeful that most people are not like that :)

The transistion will be hardest.

The best route for state two (Havent thought much about stage one yet) is for you to get a .sex domain matching your .com, then have .com redirect (activly) to the .sex domain.

This way people with existing bookmarks or whatever that type the .com get forwarded to the .sex.
At this point, if a filter program is running, it will not allow the 2nd url to load (blocking *.sex) and stop there. No actual content on the .com.

If ICANN did this so that credits on existing .com domains would be applied/transfered to the .sex and you only keep .com for one year from that point, I think most porn sites would do so.

The only problem (otherwise known as state 1) is how to fairly do the transistion.
*.com.sex .net.sex etc is in a way aginst the point, but it would indeed work.

I know they would say .com should get the .sex and .net/.org go in .net.sex and .org.sex and so on.
Most people here would say first come first serve.

I think .com.sex and so on should be only for the existing .com domain (same with net and org) and top level .sex domains are on first come first serve basis.

But of course there are plenty of problems in all of those cases.

Even so it would make it even more obvious which companys are doing ethical business and which arnt.
If two years after this is setup and done has passed and you get a porn spam from a .com domain, suing them would be much easier cuz you automatically can prove they are trying to trick people into not thinking they are a .sex site.
A little intention goes a long way. (Or it used to atleast.. but thats another rant all together)
Re:Is that surprising? by prizog · 2003-02-12 05:31 · Score: 1

Now instead of this ridiculous ".name" they should have introduced ".sex" and forced all those sex-companies into that TLD.

Lots of people think that this is a good idea, because they have a very clear idea of what a sex website is. Unfortunately, if you asked ten of these people which websites were sex websites, you would get ten very different clear ideas.

Trojan Condoms?
Go Ask Alice?
Reverse Cowgirl Blog?
My dream log, which occasionally talks about sex, but has not yet described it in detail?
The Bible?
Bible Sex Facts, an evangelical Christian site with explicit discussion of sexual behavior?

--
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Re:Is that surprising? by Wiwi+Jumbo · 2003-02-12 05:36 · Score: 1

From what I remember reading, Whitehouse.com is for a magazine called "Whitehouse".

Which in turn was named after a woman (" Whitehouse") in the 70's, 80's, 90's(????) who was a outspoken opponent of porn.

A porn publisher at the time decided to have a little fun with right to free speech and named his next mag after her.

I do not think she was amused.

But then again... maybe this story wasn't true when I read it.

--
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Re:Is that surprising? by Mitreya · 2003-02-12 05:52 · Score: 1

Finally the website of that registrar claims that john smith "may be available right now."
I would advise not to search for a name that you are interested in. The wiser thing would be to register if you are, or use a webbrowser. I have heard that some of these web-forms might register things that are searched for... So what they might mean is that "it may be available once we are prepared to resell it to you for 2x the price".
Re:Is that surprising? by toastyman · 2003-02-12 05:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

No offense, but I don't think you really understand the "adult" industry on the web.

Not all of us want to spam you with our website.
Not all of us want to trick you into visiting, or deluge you with popups should you ever commit the horror of trying to leave the site.
Not all of us have a blatant disregard for wanting to keep kids out of our sites.

Personally, I'd love to transfer EVERY domain we have over to a ".xxx" or ".adult" or ".sex" or whatever TLD. Existing *.com domains we'd setup to redirect to the *.xxx version.

Yes, something like this would be voulentary, and yes there would be people out there who wouldn't do it. However, I'd love there to be a way that we could easily segregate our adult sites away from the rest of the internet, so that those who DO want to block such things can do with a reasonable accuracy.

It really could go either way. With a *.xxx policy, you'd have very few false positives (who would register and use their .xxx domain, knowing that many people would block it?), but a decent number of false negatives until it caught on.

With a *.kids policy, you knot only have to have someone very STRICTLY controlling its use (or it becomes useless), you'd be forced to limit browsers use to just *.kids if you wanted to play it safe. That's not going to leave much of the internet left until it had a real critical mass going.

You'd also have to deal with the sticky subject of what exactly IS .kids material? What's okay for 15 year olds isn't okay for 7 year olds. Whose idea of what's acceptable do you use?

99.99% of the adult webmasters out there would LOVE a way to keep kids out of the sites. We would love a simple check box that every ultra-conservative letter-writing crusader could check that would make sure they never saw our sites. Yes, we use ICRA style tags that are meant as content advisories to browsers, but every attempt at making THOSE known to users have failed.

I can understand some of the reasons people have for not wanting an "adult only" tld, but I think its use would have a much greater public good than... oh, say... .aero?
Re:Is that surprising? by raju1kabir · 2003-02-12 06:12 · Score: 1

Yes, something like this would be voulentary, and yes there would be people out there who wouldn't do it. However, I'd love there to be a way that we could easily segregate our adult sites away from the rest of the internet, so that those who DO want to block such things can do with a reasonable accuracy.

You contradict yourself. If there are people out there who "wouldn't do it", then you can't use this voluntary domain scheme to block "such things" with "reasonable accuracy."

With a *.kids policy, you knot only have to have someone very STRICTLY controlling its use (or it becomes useless), you'd be forced to limit browsers use to just *.kids if you wanted to play it safe. That's not going to leave much of the internet left until it had a real critical mass going.

With a .sex policy, it's never useful, from day 1 to day infinity. There will always be plenty of people off it, so blocking it just takes business away from the subset of porn providers who choose only to register there. The rest of them, who want to get business from all the people who surf porn at work, from the people who do it from college campuses, from the people who do it from Singapore, well, they'll all just keep on .comming. In the long run they'll make a whole lot more money.

.kids, on the other hand, would start slow, but it would become steadily more useful over time, to nobody's detriment. The first year maybe it would only be used by parents who otherwise wouldn't allow their kids to use the internet at all. Then it would get used by schools. And it would grow from there.

You'd also have to deal with the sticky subject of what exactly IS .kids material? What's okay for 15 year olds isn't okay for 7 year olds. Whose idea of what's acceptable do you use?

What's porn? Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition? Typical northern European late-night TV fare? Manhattan cable channel 34 ads? Whose idea of what's acceptable do you use?

--
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Re:Is that surprising? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 06:50 · Score: 0

Hrm if that's true, we should go to the search site and pound on the keyboard some. Then find out how many resellers grab up asdfasgawe.asdfasdfasd.name

Now I have to pay attention to TLDS - agggh by jj_johny · 2003-02-12 03:26 · Score: 4, Interesting

The fundemental problem that .NAME faces along with the rest of the internet is no garbage collection. These new TLD are pretty useless when you have to make sure that people remember the ext. When it once was default that if you worked for a company, your email was some variation of your name, the at sign and some variation of the company name and then you assumed the .com. If you worked for the gov or an organization, it was pretty clear what its end was. (At least in the US.) But now you have all these bloody domain names that everyones significant email and web address is now 4 or 5 characters longer.

Next they will try a TLD with umlauts and maybe some of the cyrilic letters.

Re:Now I have to pay attention to TLDS - agggh by Tim+C · 2003-02-12 03:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

Next they will try a TLD with umlauts and maybe some of the cyrilic letters.

And what exactly would be so wrong about domain names in non-ASCII character sets? If you can't read the language, then there won't be anything there for you, so why do you care? If you can read the language, then isn't it a good thing to be able to have a domain name in your own language, without having to transliterate it into a foreign character set?

The web was supposed to facilitate communication, not force everyone into a single character encoding for no better reason than the country that developed it used that one.

--
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Re:Now I have to pay attention to TLDS - agggh by Luminous+Coward · 2003-02-12 04:21 · Score: 1

And what exactly would be so wrong about domain names in non-ASCII character sets?
You are then vulnerable to homograph attacks as was discussed on Slashdot. You can also read DNS Chaos Feared on Account of Multilingual Domains.
Re:Now I have to pay attention to TLDS - agggh by raju1kabir · 2003-02-12 04:46 · Score: 1

Next they will try a TLD with umlauts and maybe some of the cyrilic letters.

That's old news. Incidentally, why just "some" of the cyrillic letters? You mean, like these: A B E M H O P T X ?

--
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Re:Now I have to pay attention to TLDS - agggh by Fastolfe · 2003-02-12 05:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

There are two schools of thought here.

The first advocates a "lowest common denominator", where hostnames are explicitly restricted to a subset of the world's scripts. Some will have little or no problems with this (e.g. Americas and most of Europe) while others may have to transliterate significantly.

The second advocates a full internationalization of DNS, allowing hostnames to be represented in any and every script imaginable. Nobody would need to adapt to any lowest common denominator, since they can just use names in their native scripts.

The first approach encourages interoperability at the expense of those furthest away from the standard (e.g. asian scripts). The second approach encourages expanding language barriers into the area of Internet hostnames.

With multiple scripts in DNS hostnames, it's now difficult for me to correspond with an abuse contact at a provider in an asian nation, because I can't type their e-mail address. This is a very bad thing.

I might not have a problem with this approach if the world didn't have this immense reliance on DNS hostnames. If we had another directory sitting atop DNS, mapping real-world names to DNS domains, and a more integrated database of contacts and Internet resources, I shouldn't have to type or cut-and-paste much of anything in the future, and this wouldn't be much of a problem. By the same token, however, users will be abstracted away from DNS hostnames for the large part, reducing this perceived need for hostnames in multiple scripts. We can then go back to technically-oriented reasons for why this is or is not a good approach, and these seem to strongly favor interoperability, which, at the moment, favors a lowest-common-denominator approach.
Re:Now I have to pay attention to TLDS - agggh by bonez_net11 · 2003-02-12 09:21 · Score: 1

<rant> I agree with _some_ of this message. There are too many domains, and the TLDs dont describe what kind of domain it is anymore. Once upon a time, there used to be .com used for commercial companies, .net used for networking companies and .org used for non-profits. Why did these open up? Why didn't _new_ TLDs open up for general public? I mean, .edu, .gov and others are _restricted_ to certain places and such. .com should be for commercial companies _only_. So, I have a .net and thats good and all, but why not have general public TLDs and block off all the others? Sometimes its hard to tell which domains do what. verizonreallysucks.com is hardly something that should be under the .com TLD. I mean, come on. Finally, I suppose it's too late to do _any_ of these changes. I just wish things weren't opened up in the first place. I know I may be wrong and they may have never been restricted, but at one point if they weren't restricted then people actually registered domains that were in the correct TLDs, instead of companies registering ALL the TLDs with their company name. We all know Pepsi is going to be under pepsi.com. We all know they are not a networking company (.net) or a non-profit (.org). </rant>
Re:Now I have to pay attention to TLDS - agggh by pablo.cl · 2003-02-13 07:45 · Score: 1

Next they will try a TLD with umlauts and maybe some of the cyrilic letters.
Isn't Cristóbal Peña entitled to cristóbal@peña.name? He can apply for cristobal@pena.name, however peña means rock and pena means sorrow.
On the other hand, the quoted sentence probably is a troll.

What I'd Like to See by syr · 2003-02-12 03:27 · Score: 2, Interesting

The only second generation names I'd like to see would be .kids and .xxx. These two TLDs would solve more problems than they would create, imo. It wouldn't necessarily cause a policing effect on the Internet but it will help narrow potential searches for children and adults to sites that they were actually looking for in the first place.

I'd hate to see what kind of *.xxx domains get picked, though. And for that matter I'd hate to see some of the scary things placed under .kids.

Syr GameTab.com - Game Reviews Database

Re:What I'd Like to See by Jugalator · 2003-02-12 03:41 · Score: 1

I assume you're suggesting .kids should then be only for the US then, or are you suggesting an international organization merely to check which sites match the .kids domain or not. That would be a huge undertaking and there'd certainly become a grey zone as well. Personally, I think a search engine would do a much faster and more efficient job at that:

http://www.dmoz.org/Kids_and_Teens/
http://dire ctory.google.com/Top/Kids_and_Teens/

Better that than getting a false "safety" that all .kids sites are actually for kids and, whoopsie, stumbling upon a kiddieporn site someone set up under a fake name. Then the .kids "police" would have to shut the site down and the story would repeat itself. The .kids domain would have to be more or less bullet proof and the majority of kid sites would have to get such a TLD, or much of the point would be lost. If only a "few" kid sites got such a TLD, we'd still have to let search engines do the job and check the site to be sure we came to the right place. Much like the problem with a spam filter that only works to 50%. We'd have to check lots of spam to make sure we didn't loose a legit mail just to be sure, which is exactly what we did without a filter.

--
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Re:What I'd Like to See by Xandar01 · 2003-02-12 04:25 · Score: 1

A domain name such as .kids (and possibly .xxx or .sex) would better served as second-level domains to ccTLDs. This would allow a more localized control to determine appropriate (or in the case of .xxx, inappropriate/unlawful) based on the society of each individual country.

This kind of control would be necessary to appease the purists, but it would not stop individuals from leaving kids.us and checking out kids.uk or kids.jp if I wanted too. (The same goes for a .xxx.us, it would probably be to dry so one would search for .xxx in more liberal ccTLDs.)

--
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB

Advertising? Technical issues? by Tokerat · 2003-02-12 03:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

Until this article I had never even heard of a .name TLD. Perhaps if more people knew it existed? Most average people are still stuck on .com anyways. I tell them my website's address, 4am.kicks-ass.net (yay DynDNS), which ends in .net, and they call me up complaining it doesnt' work. Some of them put .com, some of them actually put .net.com, and still others put www.4am.kicks-ass.com. Point being, how many people are going to get bounced e-mails from frank@rizzo.com or frank@rizzo.name.com?

Also, once I get this TLD I need to do something with it. After I pay for hosting or a mail server setup (which is what most people woudl probably want a .name for), this becomes a little more expensive than simply being "gt3trkj3p6@verizon.net"...

--
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?

Re:Advertising? Technical issues? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 03:41 · Score: 0

Lucky you. My lusers tend to mail www.userid@domain when they screw stuff up. Their one-watt brains seem to believe that EVERYTHING is "www dot" on the big bad "Innernet".

I also have a bunch that must take after Katz, since they try to mail domains with 1s in the name, and they use l - the letter!
Re:Advertising? Technical issues? by vidarh · 2003-02-12 03:41 · Score: 1

The reason we started the registrar was exactly that so few people know .name exists, because very few registrars promote it effectively.
As for getting people to understand it, I personally use my .name a lot, and a few people do ask what it is, but most people have no problems.
Anyway, as long as you have an existing mail address, that is all you need to get your .name address to work, and you can change which address it forwards to at any time.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:Advertising? Technical issues? by Darnit · 2003-02-12 03:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

I checked out the website and it is confusing me. If I type in my name in the box "Tim" "Darnit" it says that I can get Tim@darnit.name and tim.darnit.name. What does that get me? Do they delegate tim.darnit.name to me or darnit.name. Do I have to have the email forwarding? If I set up my own domain with tim.darnit.name then I would only be able to give out buelah@tim.darnit.name to my wife. To be Buelah@darnit.name she woiuld have to pay for her own stuff. Am I correct on this?

This must be marketed to more mainstream net users and not people like me.
Re:Advertising? Technical issues? by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:00 · Score: 1

As it is now, to cater for ordinary users, tim.darnit.name's NS records would point to Personal Names nameservers, for the purpose of the web forwarding, however we would be happy to have to pointed to you directly if you choose to register (anyone can get that by mailing customer service for now). On .name no second levels are delegated.
Personal Names doesn't sell domains separate from the e-mail forwarding, but other registrars do. You won't save much, though. And yes, you would have to pay for each third level. Some people choose to register "family.lastname.name" for that purpose.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:Advertising? Technical issues? by Tokerat · 2003-02-12 05:01 · Score: 1

ahh, I get it now.. RTFM, tokerat :-D=

--
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?

No surprise? by Jugalator · 2003-02-12 03:28 · Score: 5, Interesting

I think this post summarizes the outstanding problems well.

Two points from that post:

- .NAME is a TLD targetted for individuals, but priced for organizations, even if .NAME DNS requests should be far less common than .COM lookups.

- .NAME in your e-mail let spammers easily detect individuals, merely by looking in a phone book and putting an @ between the forename and surname, and finally applying .NAME.

--
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!

Re:No surprise? by vidarh · 2003-02-12 03:33 · Score: 2, Interesting

Considering how spammers can easily autogenerate spam lists for most of the major ISPs by following easy to guess allocation patterns, I don't see why your name would be any easier.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:No surprise? by entrylevel · 2003-02-12 05:27 · Score: 1

Excuse me?!?! I don't know about IN SOVIET RUSSIA, but here in the good old USA my ISP asked me what I wanted my e-mail username to be. In fact every ISP I've ever used has done that. Where in the world do ISPs "allocate" e-mail addresses in easy to guess patterns? You don't even need a phone book to spam .name, you just need a sizeable list of common first and last names.

If you ask me, .name was just a really poor marketing ploy and little more. First, as the numbers have proved, very few people want this service (or you failed to spam^H^H^H^Hmarket enough). Second, the few people that actually do want it can't even have it if someone else with the same name has already signed up. Finally, from what I gather, you're living in the 20th century. Your "query" form doesn't query anything, and you can't do anything but web forwarding set up from the web interface. You don't even tell people that any other services are available. If you are paying people to do things which are that easy to automate, you might as well just light your remmaining cash on fire. I wouldn't blame the quantity or quality of the marketing, the actual idea and implementation just isn't very good.

--
Karma: Incomprehensible (Mostly affected by posting at +5, reading at -1, and metamoderating everything unfair.)
Re:No surprise? by vidarh · 2003-02-12 05:40 · Score: 1

Look around at e-mail peoples e-mail addresses. Most ISP's will let you provide your name, but many will then just allocate an address. And in the case where they let you choose, peoples affinity for their name will still lead to tons of easily to guess names.
And ever tried looking at web registration interfaces lately? Most will suggest alternatives if your preferred address has been taken. The patterns for those are easy to find, and it would be trivial to write a program to find the @hotmail.com, for a given list of first names, for instance.
Before doing .name, we ran Nameplanet.com, a webmail service, and we saw spammers use that technique more than once. It's easy, cheap, and beats harvesting addresses any day if you don't give a shit whether people want your spam or not.
As for your comments about your service, our form checks the registry EPP server, and hence reflects the registry system contents live. As for not being able to do anything but setting up web forwarding and e-mail forwarding, that is what most customers want. If you register, and want something else, great, we will be happy to delegate the .name domain of your choice wherever you want, but face it: most users don't know what DNS is and have no clue what they can do with a domain - for them it is a web address, plain and simple.
Regarding marketing, I fully agree with you, "we" didn't market enough. Unfortunately, "we" in this case means all registrars collectively. That's why Personal Names was set up (and cause quite a bit of concern with other registrars), because frankly GNR isn't going to sit still and wait for the registrars to step up and market the product when they haven't done so so far.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:No surprise? by entrylevel · 2003-02-12 06:22 · Score: 1

Thank you and kudos for the prompt, polite, and insightful reponse to my half-flame. ;)

Regarding guessing e-mail addresses: I though about and I agree with you for the most part. Corporate e-mail accounts are almost always based on the person's real name. Private e-mail accounts (counting strictly person-by-person, since most people have many long-forgotten "spam catchers") probably have a 1.5:1 ratio of nicknames:realnames. Certainly e-mail addresses are several orders of magnitude easier to guess than passwords. Nonetheless, I think it would be easier still to guess .name "names". Then again, I don't understand how there is a (apparently lucrative) market for lists active "opt-in" e-mail addresses.

Regarding marketing: I think you mistook me here. I was trying to say that no amount of marketing would make .name a good idea (where good == desirable to a large enough percentage of your reachable target audience). I'm just thinking about the number of people who really want to be easily locatable online, are willing to pay for it, don't already have a website with a short, descriptive URL, and have the same name as someone else who matches the previous criteria. I just can't see there being too many of these people. Then again I use a Mac for developing command-line software in C, so I probably shouldn't talk demographics out of my ass ;)

Regarding web interface: I take back the part about querying for your name. It works perfectly well. I figured it was safe to believe someone who said it didn't work just because they got modded informative. Wrong. Last time I do that! As for customer service, if your company is hurting for cash (even if it isn't), the last thing you need is to pay a bunch of people $10/hour to sit and wait for the occasional geek or power user to call and ask about additional services, when that could easily be made available with a FAQ and an "advanced options" in the web interface. That's $20,000/person/year you probably don't need to spend. Worst case scenario you could me to program it for you and you'd only have to pay me for two days of work (less for anyone else, because I suck at web applications!)

Anyway, you seem like a reasonably well informed, good mannered, comptent, and hardworking (hey, slashdotting is hard work!) bloke, so I wish you the best of luck in the coming job hunt!

--
Karma: Incomprehensible (Mostly affected by posting at +5, reading at -1, and metamoderating everything unfair.)
Re:No surprise? by vidarh · 2003-02-12 07:22 · Score: 1

I agree with you that a lot of people won't be interested in revealing their name. However we don't need a large percent of e-mail users to thrive. A percent or two and we'd be set for life ;)
As for customer service people, don't worry, we're not hiring someone to sit around and fix the occasional power users issues - the few requests we get are handled by people who are otherwise very busy, including with improving the interface and adding new features.
Don't worry, if things go wrong I'll have no problem finding a new job, but I'm certainly not going to plan anything now - registration numbers are picking up quite quickly.
(Disclaimer: I work for personal names)

Starting a registrar by Burb · 2003-02-12 03:30 · Score: 1

Things to consider...

Contact the registry for the TLD.
Read their contracts and sign up to be a registrar (this will probably cost)
These days you will be required to implement the EPP protocol for registrar/registry communication
Profit (or these days, not)

What you may find more useful is to be a reseller, dealing with a registrar, rather than dealing with the registry directly. Some of the stories I've heard about the competition between registrars to get soon-to-be-released domain names from the registry would make your hair curl....

(Having done some work for a registry, Poptel who manage .COOP, implementing the EPP protocol for them, I can tell you it's not an easy way to make money!)

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They do (sorta) by kikta · 2003-02-12 03:32 · Score: 2, Informative

The current scheme appears to be that they aren't selling domains, per se. After visting the link (which gives you a list of registrars), I found that no one will sell me "kikta.name". However, all seem to let you buy something in the form of "jason.kikta.name" (which comes with an email address of "jason@kikta.name"). So they're not really selling personal domains, just "firstname.lastname.name". If anyone can find anything different, please say so, but I tried 5 of them before I gave up.

FYI, "scream.my.name", "whats.my.name", and "say.my.name" are all taken already. ;-)

Re:They do (sorta) by vidarh · 2003-02-12 03:50 · Score: 2, Informative

No second level names can be bought under .name from anyone. So yes, you do get a domain, but it will be on the third level, just as it is for for instance .co.uk, and in a lot of other cases. It's no less a domain name than something at the second level, and it is regulated by ICANN just as any second level .com.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:They do (sorta) by kikta · 2003-02-12 04:08 · Score: 1

Yes, sorry for the ambiguity. That's what I meant; no one can personally buy a second level domain. Which I understand the reasoning, but it's still a little disappointing. :-)
Re:They do (sorta) by hucke · 2003-02-12 04:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

Does a person registering within .name get full control of an actual domain - with the ability to create usernames at will, change the nameservers, etc.?

Someone buying "john@smith.name" owns only an email address within a domain he doesn't control. "john.smith.name" is a bit better - if this is actually a domain name that they'll have full control over. If it's just an "A" record in your server, it's not a good deal.

These names have less value than any other domain. I initially registered "hucke.org", years ago, so I could have "matt @ hucke.org"; since then, I've given email addresses within that domain to my mother and brother, at no additional cost. I still pay only $13.50 a year for that domain, regardless of how many addresses or subdomains I create within it. Can john@smith.name do that?

"John Smith" may have a slightly better chance of getting john@smith.name than he would johnsmith.org - but that remains true only as long as .name remains unpopular. If .name domains ever did become popular, you'd suffer from the same unavailability of names as anywhere else.

And john@smith.name still can't add an address for his wife or mother without having to pay an additional fee.

For $19.95 a year, you're delivering a product with *less* value than registrars in other TLDs.
Re:They do (sorta) by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:35 · Score: 2, Informative

Yes, you get full control over the third level domain, with the ability to create usernames at will and change the nameserver etc. Currently Personal Names Ltd. handle that functionality via e-mail to customer service, as most of our users prefer to just use the web forwarding we provide.
You're right that someone buying john@smith.name doesn't get control over smith.name, but yes, you would own john.smith.name, just as you'd own johnsmith.com.
As for adding additional addresses - you either need to do so under the third level name, or buy another e-mail forwarding. That's how .name is structured in order to give more people a chance at their lastname (try getting a common lastname under .com, for instance)
As for less value, if you can get your firstname@.com, sure, go ahead. For most people, that is not an option, as their lastname was registered years ago. We're giving people another chance at that a reasonable address. If they don't think it's worth it, then that is obviously their right. So far, however, our research indicate that people aren't particularly bothered about the price - either they want it and the price isn't an object, or they don't.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names Ltd.)
Re:They do (sorta) by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 05:00 · Score: 0

I couldn't get doe.com, but I sure wasn't going to pay twice the price for john.doe.name when I can get doe.us, doe.cc, or doe.tv, etc. Yes, I did look at .name first and thought a third level domain was pretty lame. If I wanted to set up multiple e-mail addresses (for sorting spam), I'd have to use mail1@john.doe.name, then the spammers would figure out what my primary box name was. But with my .us second level name, I can use mail1@doe.us.
Re:They do (sorta) by vidarh · 2003-02-12 05:11 · Score: 1

Sure. But how many ordinary internet users would even consider using multiple mailboxes? And how many ordinary internet users does it take to look for an address like that before the various other TLD's don't have their lastname anymore?
Besides, most ordinary internet users don't even have a clue as to what a domain name is - they want the e-mail forwarding. That is what GNR (the registry) has been trying to tell the registrars for ages now (based on extensive, costly marketing research), and the reason Personal Names Ltd. was formed was that the registrars didn't seem to be listening.
You hardly seem like an average user (take that as a compliment), and perhaps our service isn't right for you. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a place - there are registrars out there doing great business at much higher prices for .com, because there are customer niches that couldn't care less about price.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names Ltd)
Re:They do (sorta) by SecretAsianMan · 2003-02-12 06:11 · Score: 1

So far, however, our research indicate that people aren't particularly bothered about the price - either they want it and the price isn't an object, or they don't.
Then the logical conclusion is that you should increase the price of the service to infinity. Saying that the price "isn't an object" futher convinces me that your firm is already dead. There are very few, if any, customer-oriented business ventures where price is not important. Your research is wrong.

--
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Re:They do (sorta) by SecretAsianMan · 2003-02-12 06:24 · Score: 1

Currently Personal Names Ltd. handle that functionality via e-mail to customer service
Arggggh! We left the Stone Age quite some time ago. Email as a domain management interface is not the way to attract customers. There's certainly something to like about web-based administration, like that available at my favorite registrar. With such an interface, I can make changes instantly. I can check the status of all my domains instantly. With email, I would would have to wait on a customer service monkey to go do my requests for me, which would probably get botched the first three times around, anyway. And if I sent an email saying "What's the status of my domains?", I would surely not receive a response.
Once someone gets used to web-based domain administration, they'll never go back to email. That means they won't be your customers either.
Botched launch, bad pricing, complicated product, inane business plan... you guys are fixing to party like it's 1999.

--
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Re:They do (sorta) by vidarh · 2003-02-12 07:17 · Score: 1

No, the logical conclusion is not that. I did not say that price would not affect peoples decisions, but that they aren't particularly bothered about the price - intended to tell you that at the price points we have researched so far, there is small to no difference in signup rates. In fact, certain lower pricepoints cause WORSE performance and FEWER sales than our current price.
Our research is based on running campaigns with multiple prices and seeing which generate the best conversion rates. If you think it's wrong, that's up to you, but I doubt you'll be hired to do market research anywhere.
Re:They do (sorta) by vidarh · 2003-02-12 07:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

The point is less than 1% of our customers have even asked about the availability of features like that yet. Most of them wouldn't know what a name server is, or what a domain name is. It wouldn't be cost effective for us to postpone launching the service just in order to get in place features that most of our paying customers couldn't care less about, and wouldn't even understand.
This is something many Slashdot users seem to get wrong: Slashdot users are generally not particularly attractive customers. Sure, there are many people here, but most people here show around for price, complain a lot, are power users that require tons of features normal users aren't interested in, and generally don't like to pay for stuff they can do themselves for free or cheaper.
In other words, while we're happy to take any customer that want our product, and will happily help more advanced users, it would be economic suicide for us to try to cater for Slashdot users instead of people that are less demanding, less price sensitive, more willing to spend and hundreds of times as many.
There are certainly services for which Slashdot users would be the right primary audience, but this is not one of them.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:They do (sorta) by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 08:15 · Score: 0

"This is something many Slashdot users seem to get wrong: Slashdot users are generally not particularly attractive customers."
So the business model is to target those without a clue rather than educate them and provide services? Thanks to your posts, I now understand.
Re:They do (sorta) by vidarh · 2003-02-13 04:46 · Score: 1

No, our business model is to target people that are willing to spend money for our product online without costing us a fortune in support and additional development work, namely mainstream consumers, as opposed to Slashdot users who in my experience (from past Slashdotting while working for other companies) are very demanding but does not have much willingness to pay.
Of course there are exceptions, and we saw a good increase in registrations both yesterday and today thanks to this Slashdot article, and some very nice customer service e-mails. And we're happy to help out people who need something slightly more advanced than what we currently offer in our web interface.
However, educating users is extremely expensive - it very rarely makes economic sense to even try, which means it's not often a viable path for a for profit business. It is much more cost effective and profitable to meet your customers at the level they are at and provide what they ask for, and most potential customers aren't anywhere near as technical as Slashdot users.
This is a matter of basic economics. Most people don't understand domain names, don't want to understand domain names and couldn't care less (certainly not enough to bother letting you "educate them"), as long as they get the service they want if they buy from us: an easy to remember e-mail address, and possibly web forwarding.

The masses... by Mike+Rucker · 2003-02-12 03:37 · Score: 1

The general populace does not know what the different TLD's stand for. My mom, who uses the internet quite frequently, had no idea that .com was for a commercial entity. Most people think that .com is "the internet" and have no idea what the rest mean.

Re:The masses... by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:09 · Score: 1

You mean "most Americans" think that .com is "the internet". In most countries, the country TLD and is fairly well used, and people are far more used to dealing with other TLD's.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:The masses... by The+Evil+Couch · 2003-02-12 04:49 · Score: 1

America may provide the bulk of the computer illiterate(*cough*AOL*cough*), but to say that other countries know their way around the internet means that you haven't been talking to very many "normal" people. Computer literacy is really not that common, no matter what country you're from. Certain countries may have a greater percentage of people that know what they're doing, but the bulk of the world is clueless to doing much more than point and click web-surfing.

--
The World's Worst Webcomic!
Re:The masses... by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:58 · Score: 1

I'm not saying that normal people know their way around the internet. I'm saying that normal people outside the US are more used to non-.com top level domains.
I've got no problems with Americans (well except for that Bush guy :-) - it's not an issue of intelligence or experience or anything of the sort, just that people outside the US tend to get exposed to many more TLD's simply because many large local sites use their local TLD.

.NAME and owership rights? by OpCode42 · 2003-02-12 03:38 · Score: 1

Thinking about it, what if someone registered johnsmith.name - given the large amount of john smiths in the world, whats to stop them getting swamped with all the john smiths claiming ownership of the domain? And who's to say which john smith should have it?

Re:.NAME and owership rights? by vidarh · 2003-02-12 03:44 · Score: 2, Informative

.name uses a dispute resolution method that give you automatic right of ownership to the name you have registered if it is your own name, the name of a deceased person that you have the right to control (for instance as the executor of an estate) or the legitimate trademark owner of a fictional name.
So if you really are John Smith, and registered john.smith.name, noone else named John Smith could take it away from you.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names Ltd)
Re:.NAME and owership rights? by addaon · 2003-02-12 04:02 · Score: 1

So if I draw a five-minute cartoon of George Bush the Walrus-Man and trademark the character I can block any other George Bush (of which there are far too many) from ever getting george.bush.name?

--

I've had this sig for three days.
Re:.NAME and owership rights? by Cro+Magnon · 2003-02-12 04:24 · Score: 1

Does that mean that once someone registers john.smith.name, the other 2,000,001 John Smith's are SOL? If so, what good is it? If not, what does happen with John Smith #2-X?

--
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Re:.NAME and owership rights? by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:24 · Score: 1

No :-) The Republican National Committee already control george.bush.name on behalf of a certain president...
But in theory, yes. Are you willing to pay trademark registration fees to prevent someone from getting a domain name?
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:.NAME and owership rights? by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:44 · Score: 1

That depends on them. Many of them will have nicknames - some will even prefer to use their nicknames. Many will have middle names. Many will be ok with using their initials, in front of or after the first ".", and with and without hyphens. Some will grumpily accept a digit or two. Or they won't register.
Fact is, users with Smith and other common lastnames only make up a small percentage of the potential users anyway (10-20%), and while we'd love to give them a better chance, there's nothing we can do about that.
However, users do show a lot of creativity. And while the primary purpose is for your name, many people use weird nicknames etc.
Look around on the net for various vanity e-mail address services - there are tons of them, so the market is there.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:.NAME and owership rights? by addaon · 2003-02-12 07:27 · Score: 1

Presumably if I was willing to pay the domain registration fees anyway, yes. It just seems like this is a massive hole which totally prevents the whole idea of 'if it's my name, I have priority.'

--

I've had this sig for three days.
Re:.NAME and owership rights? by vidarh · 2003-02-12 07:39 · Score: 1

Well, unless you actually use the name in carrying out a business, your trademark could be easily taken away from you. So you'd have stiff trademark registration fees, and further costs in ensuring enough activity around the name to ensure your trademark will be enforcable.

What is wrong with these people? by TPS+Report · 2003-02-12 03:41 · Score: 1

If they don't manage, this will be the first gTLD to go bankrupt.

Good. Most people on the net have gotten used to the "ford.com" instead of "fordmotorcompany.com".

--
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...

Whatever happend to ".i"? by spike2131 · 2003-02-12 03:41 · Score: 1

I remember when ICANN was announcing the finalists for the new TLDs a few years back, .i was the only one I though was any good. The purpose of .i was to be a TLD strictly for individuals. Then when the new domains were announced, .i apparently had been dropped from the list. I never did see an explanation. .i was a far more badass idea for a TLD than .name will ever be. I have far too much pride to own a .name domain, but .i is short, simple and cool, and I'd probably own one today if they were available.

Its a shame.

--
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container

Everything may be available? by z_gringo · 2003-02-12 03:42 · Score: 1

After a few more minutes of playing, I couldn't come up with a single .name that it told me was taken already!

Here, Look:

Your own, impressive .name addresses
john@smith.name; and
www.john.smith.name
may be available right now.

It says that for everything you enter...

--
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.

.name TLD has incompatible site! by Vadim+Makarov · 2003-02-12 03:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

Any TLD authority whose site doesn't work in Netscape 4 looks cheesy to me... (reach for IE) and the one that requires Flash definitely won't be on my list. Period.

--
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.

Re:.name TLD has incompatible site! by smack.addict · 2003-02-12 03:48 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Anyone who builds a site to work for Netscape 4 is wasting their time.
Re:.name TLD has incompatible site! by cant_get_a_good_nick · 2003-02-12 04:00 · Score: 1

I have Mozilla with "notify on cookies" turned on. I got nailed on a cross-site cookie. I looked around for what game me the cookie, was a web-bug.

Any website for a top level domain that exists essentially solely to map personal information to an email address that is also clueless enough about privacy concerns to have a cross site web bug on it (from stats.superstats.com) would probably not inspire confidence in me about their willingness to respect my privacy wishes.
Re:.name TLD has incompatible site! by Captain+Large+Face · 2003-02-12 04:12 · Score: 1

There is no error checking on the form either. If you leave out a "firstname", and enter "smith" in "lastname" you get offered the following:

Your own, impressive .name addresses
@john.name; and
www..john.name
may be available right now.

Fuckwits.
Re:.name TLD has incompatible site! by Captain+Large+Face · 2003-02-12 04:15 · Score: 1

Or rather, smith.name. Doh.
Re:.name TLD has incompatible site! by Vadim+Makarov · 2003-02-12 11:20 · Score: 1

I agree. For most sites, it's true, or should I say it's up to them to decide what browsers to support.

There is, however, a class of sites that are mission-critical. Such an important thing as controlling your domain name or finding information on the site of a TLD authority, must work in any browser, down to those used by 0.01% visitors.

Netscape 4.x is still used by perhaps one or two percent visitors, while requiring Flash locks out a hell lot of them.

Besides, not working in Netscape 4, while often being nearly meaningless in itself, is actually a reliable sign of further troubles with your Web design. It's just a correlation that for some reasons exist in today's Web design.

--
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
Re:.name TLD has incompatible site! by smack.addict · 2003-02-13 23:54 · Score: 1

There is, however, a class of sites that are mission-critical. Such an important thing as controlling your domain name or finding information on the site of a TLD authority, must work in any browser, down to those used by 0.01% visitors.
I will guarantee you that 99% of so-called mission critical sites that decide they absolutely must support Netscape 4 are not accessible to users with disabilities. Besides, your statement is blatantly false. There is not web site that needs 100% browser coverage.
Besides, not working in Netscape 4, while often being nearly meaningless in itself, is actually a reliable sign of further troubles with your Web design. It's just a correlation that for some reasons exist in today's Web design.
Quite the contrary, all the contortions you have to go through to get to NS 4 support suggest you probably have tons of non-standard (and thus non-working) HTML/DHTML code.

You fool! by ackthpt · 2003-02-12 03:45 · Score: 1

You fool! (and I mean this in a nice, constructive way) maybe it's just me, but i saw a bunch of marketing from my registrar (register.com) for the .name tld.

so much, in fact, that i went ahead and registered mine.

You know you're not to give in to spam, it just perpetuates it! Here I have to wade through piles of it, like I'm in hell, up to my neck in feces. Thanks.

BTW, mine is probably one of the 100 most common name combinations in the USA & Britain & Australia & New Zeeland & The Falklands & Gibraltar & Canada , so mine was probably taken on the first day by (a) someone with the same name OR (b) some speculator. I lose no sleep over it. Besides, if I had a fairly unique name, which could be found on 411, I'd probably want to keep my anonymity. I'm not fond of my phone ringing with calls from strangers.

On another note:

I guess that will put a damper on any plans to introduce more new TLDs."

I guess this means .pr0n is dead.

--

A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar

The rest of my comments.. [slashdot ate them] by TPS+Report · 2003-02-12 03:46 · Score: 1

If they don't manage, this will be the first gTLD to go bankrupt.

Good. Most people on the net have gotten used to the 3 letter (or less) TLD scheme, due to using .com/net/org for quite some time. Longer TLDs are counterintuitive. On top of that, because the .name TLD is not popular, it perpetuates the issue. Nobody has to repeat ".com" when explaining where their website is - the .com domain is universally understood and remembered. On the other hand, .name is not. You'll probably end up repeating yourself a couple times if you give out a .name address, and chances are your customer will probably try .com to reach your site, when they can't remember .name ...

The majority would also probably prefer to type less when surfing the net, not more. Most people type "ford.com" instead of "fordmotorcompany.com".

Also, the TLD itself limits the usefulness. "name" classifies the site; .com/net/org have been diluted to the point where they are generally accepted as "generic". The three extensions (except for perhaps .org in some situations) do not really differentiate themselves anymore, regardless of their original intention.

A TLD that wants to succeed will market a shorter, more generic TLD at a decent price.

--
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...

Gee, why *IS* it failing? by Asprin · 2003-02-12 03:49 · Score: 3, Funny

It looks like they left off a reason why sales are slow: because it's a stupid idea!

How many people really want a personalized email domain that maps directly to your real name, cannot be changed and therefore says "HEY, SPAMMERS, I'M OVER HERE AND I DON'T GET ENOUGH CRAP IN MY EMAIL!!!!!"

I don't know what bothers me more - that they thought it was a good idea to begin with or that they think it just isn't being marketed well enough.

BTW, I *fully* expect that before they cash out and go home, we'll hear that they tried to market their customer database to spammers, not realizing that a 1 line perl script could generate a list of valid addresses of the form 'john@smith.name'.

What a bunch of maroons!

--
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie

Re:Gee, why *IS* it failing? by FTL · 2003-02-12 06:29 · Score: 1

> How many people really want a personalized email domain that maps directly to your real name, cannot be changed and therefore says "HEY, SPAMMERS, I'M OVER HERE AND I DON'T GET ENOUGH CRAP IN MY EMAIL!!!!!"
This is insightful?
Ok, lesson 101 in .name:
You get the domain firstname.lastname.name. This is a perfectly normal domain name. You can do anything you like with it. Including anything you want with email. So you can create as many email addresses as you want. I freely fill out forms with spam@neil.fraser.name, knowing that my mail filters will promptly delete the garbage. I have other email addresses for other purposes.
Yes, the .name TLD does offer me the option of having neil@fraser.name, but I chose not to invoke that option. I'd rather have the flexibility.

--
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.

Who the hell wants .name after their name? by operagost · 2003-02-12 03:50 · Score: 1

Like I really want to be known as John.Smith.name. It's like you're on the internet version of the Batmobile and you have a little placard labeling everything. See! That's my NAME! They might have done better thinking up a somewhat less moronic TLD, like .me (stupid, but cute), .home, or .family.

--

Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.

Re:Who the hell wants .name after their name? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 06:41 · Score: 0

Personally it seems to be rather arrogant to want to have John.Smith.name . Yup, I'm John Smith
the one an only. If people want John Smith, they'll get me.... even though there are thousands
of other John Smiths in the world.... I'm obiviously the important one because I registered first...

Almost as bad as an article I read about a small town's PTA group that was upset that they couldn't get a simple domain name like "teachers.com"

YRO? by sporty · 2003-02-12 03:50 · Score: 2

Having .name is a right? I thought free speech was a right, at least according to the constitution.

Bush, did you slip the .name registry in the constitution again? Bad bad president.

--

-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only

Why do we need structured TLDs anyway? by devaldez · 2003-02-12 03:52 · Score: 1

So...let me posit the idea of no structured TLDs...while it would be a medium technical pickle to solve, the DNS structure doesn't really NEED defined TLDs anyway. If ICANN was serious about solving the problems associated with TLDs, they should consider having specified TLDs for a particular group of activities (.com, .net, .org, .sex, etc) but have it open otherwise.

You'd still have and need registrars, but you could register jose.martinez as your domain and that would make everyone happy, I think...

--
"... but you can love completely without complete understanding." - Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It"

I have my own .name domain by magicianuk · 2003-02-12 03:53 · Score: 1

In fact, I have two. I, as an individual, had no problem in buying chris.oshea.name and the.magician.name from www.register.com

Email forwarding is setup so if you email me at
the @ magician.name
it gets delivered to my home email account.

It would be a shame if it folded, but since I mainly bought these as "vanity" domains and don't publicise them, I wouldn't be too upset if .name went away ...

Re:I have my own .name domain by clarkcox3 · 2003-02-12 03:59 · Score: 3, Funny

It would be a shame if it folded, but since I mainly bought these as "vanity" domains and don't publicise them, I wouldn't be too upset if .name went away ...
You call posting to /. "not publicizing"? :)

--
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.

the.site.with.no.name by wowbagger · 2003-02-12 03:56 · Score: 5, Funny

the.site.with.no.name - be a good Spagetti Western homage site.

theyve.given.me.a.number.and.taken.away.my.name - The Prisoner and Secret Agent Man homage site.

went.through.the.desert.on.a.horse.with.no.name - fan site for the band America.

a.policeman.knew.my.name - Site for The Who.

--
www.eFax.com are spammers

Re:the.site.with.no.name by British · 2003-02-12 05:14 · Score: 1

My idea:

domain.name
Re:the.site.with.no.name by wowbagger · 2003-02-12 06:28 · Score: 1

speak.not.his.name - Cthulhu fan site
whats.your.name - Lynyrd Skynyrd fansite.
bingo.was.his.name - Oh!

Don't mod me past three!

Come up with your own - it's fun!

--
www.eFax.com are spammers

Register.com by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 03:56 · Score: 1, Informative

I registered my .name right after they came available from register.com. Their management tools are crap, you have to wait weeks if you make any changes for example to the redirection email address.

Re:Register.com by Xandar01 · 2003-02-12 04:09 · Score: 1

The fact that you admitted to registering a .name while posting as AC proves how un-cool a .name TLD is.

--
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB

Indeed! by ackthpt · 2003-02-12 03:57 · Score: 1

everytime people try to go to your website they are going to type it in wrong until they remember your strange extension.

You got that right. I've fallen into squatter servers (or parasites as I refer to them) which parallel a site I'm looking for, too often. Even though my own site mainly consists of a bunch of cycling and vacation pictures (and one or two of Bill the Cat) I've got me a .com

Maybe I'll have something to sell one of these days (other than a few odd items on eBay, for which I do my own photo hosting thankyewveramuch), but I'm not ruling it in or out. So, for the moment I'm just a fraud :-)

--

A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar

Not surprising by artemis67 · 2003-02-12 03:58 · Score: 1, Insightful

It seems bizarre that anyone thinks they are going to make money with a new TLD, when ".org" and ".net" registrations COMBINED pale in comparison to ".com" registrations. Businesses are scared to register anything other than ".com", so they certainly aren't going to go with a TLD that most people haven't heard of.

I would say that, in order for a new TLD to really make money, it would have to be issued by companies that are willing to manage the content. In this way, TLD's could be really useful by classifying websites; keep .com, .org, and .net for general content. For example, I know that the idea of using ".kids" for kid-friendly websites has been discussed; great idea, but who is going to ensure that ONLY kid-friendly websites use that TLD? Maybe if a coalition of kid-friendly companies (Disney, CTW, etc.) managed it; I could even see them being able to charge a premium price ($500?), because owning a ".kids" site would be a stamp of approval. Pricing it high would also dissuade jokesters from setting up ".kids" porn sites or hosting adult content.

But, there's is NO FRICKEN WAY another TLD is going to make a dent in the market without adding some additional value in.

Re:Not surprising by wolf- · 2003-02-12 04:11 · Score: 1

Disney is kid friendly?

Maybe we would need to define "friendly"/

--
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Re:Not surprising by artemis67 · 2003-02-12 04:26 · Score: 1

Yes, Disney is kid-friendly. I've watched countless hours of the Disney Channel with my kids, I've seen countless Disney movies, bought countless Disney toys, and visited several Disney theme parks. I have no problem declaring that anything marketed under the "Disney" brand is going to be kid-friendly.

The advantage of having a company the size of Disney involved in the management of ".kids" is that 1) they're going to use it themselves, and 2) they'd actually put a little marketing muscle behind it so that maybe somebody will hear it exists (unlike ".name").
Re:Not surprising by utopyr · 2003-02-12 05:16 · Score: 1

For the sake of comparison, I ran vidarh's Google search "site:name -dfgdfgadfgaagdfg" on the other TLDs, and got these results:
Google results for TLDs:
site:pro
Results 1 - 5 of 5
site:aero
about 28,900
site:name
about 36,500
site:coop
about 44,500
site:museum
about 68,400
site:int
about 723,000
site:biz
about 1,040,000
site:info
about 2,000,000
site:mil
about 2,620,000
site:gov
about 5,300,000
site:edu
about 18,200,000
site:net
about 31,800,000
site:org
about 32,200,000
site:com
about 110,000,000

Have they registered any names? by asmithmd1 · 2003-02-12 03:59 · Score: 1

smith.name is not taken!
track my cell phone in real time

--
Free cell phone tracking

Because it's against the rules by magicianuk · 2003-02-12 03:59 · Score: 2, Informative

You can't have john.name (the same way I can't buy magician.uk, I can only buy magician.co.uk (which I did))

It's firstname.lastname.name and basically that's all they allow. In theory it has to be your real name too, but somehow I managed to get the.magician.name as well as my real name, but it does leave me with an email address of
the @ magician.name which isn't terribly good.

Heh, by magicianuk · 2003-02-12 04:11 · Score: 1

I never even mention smof.com on slashdot and I get several hundred spams a day sent to all sorts of names@ that domain.

It's even being used as the sending domain by some b*stard spammer (no, not an open mail relay, just as the forged header) so I'm getting dozens of bounced messages a day coming back to me and so far only one "stop spamming me" message from someone that doesn't understand about forged headers.

One problem with the .name TLD is... by krouic · 2003-02-12 04:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

..that it contains 4 letters instead of 3 or less for the other common TLDs.
I have had my .name email address refused by several on-line purchasing systems, because some dumb programmers decided that an email address that had more than 3 characters after the last dot was invalid. So I have had to get an alternate address to be able to access these sites.

Re:One problem with the .name TLD is... by hastings14 · 2003-02-12 05:07 · Score: 1

I have had the same problem, and this is at some pretty tech-oriented sites that you would think would be knowledgeable about these sorts of things. I have no idea what poeple with international TLDs do....

A BIG warning by Gudlyf · 2003-02-12 04:13 · Score: 4, Informative

I signed up for a .NAME domain, stupidly through Network Solutions, for a fairly high price. This was because other registries such as Go Daddy weren't registering domains under .NAME at the time (I hear they do now). I was being all hasty about things, and decided to nab my .NAME ASAP with NetSol.

The price NetSol charges, like with anything else, is outrageous, but that's not the worst of it. When I tried to have the domain transferred to Go Daddy (much, much cheaper), I found that I can't! In fact, what I believe happens is that once you apply for your .NAME domain (i.e., john.smith.name), NetSol takes ownership of "smith.name", and you're given the right to use the "john" subdomain -- it can't be transferred! (or, at least, they're not allowing it)

NetSol also makes you purchase email hosting with the domain, and tries to tack on some web hosting. Simply put, DO NOT go through NetSol for this service. (I can hear the collective, "Well DUH!" now)

This is why I'm letting my .NAME domain dry up and die, and will continue to handle my email the way I always have. There's no way in hell I'm paying NetSol's outrageous prices until I'm able to transfer to some other registry.

--
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.

Re:A BIG warning by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:15 · Score: 3, Informative

Luckily, you're wrong. The second level (smith.name) is NOT delegated from the registry. You have a right to transfer your name, unless your contract with Netsol says something else.
I suggest you contact GNR (the registry) and talk to their customer service people to get help in getting it resolved.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names, the registrar mentioned, and we're a competitor to Network Solutions)
Re:A BIG warning by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 06:43 · Score: 0

"You have a right to transfer your name, unless your contract with Netsol says something else."
This is from the current Network Solutions service agreement:
Transfers and Licensing of Use. You agree that you may not transfer your domain name registration to another domain name registrar during the first sixty (60) days from the effective date of your initial domain name registration with us.
So you have a *restricted* right to transfer.
Re:A BIG warning by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 06:56 · Score: 0

I would also like to mention my experience in setting up a .name domain with NetSol. (I will not be trying to justify why I chose NetSol or why I wanted a .name address in the first place.)

I ordered the .name address last March, but I refused to use any of NetSol's email or hosting services. So I found a web hosting company that I wanted to work with, but it took a full six months for NetSol to get the damn thing set up. They could not perform the simple feat of putting my requested name-servers into the GNR database in that whole time. I still do not know whether it was a technological problem or an organizational problem on their part.

I called them about once a week for the entire period and had to re-explain my problem to tech support each time. During that time, I sent two complaints to ICANN, and one to GNR customer service to no avail.

Furthermore, don't even bother sending email support requests to NetlSol. They deal with such requests by sending out a human-written reply one week later that usually provides an answer to a question you didn't ask and no answers to the questions you did ask, and very obviously tries to brush off any real technical issues as misunderstandings or incompetencies on the part of the user.

At one point I tried to change my registrar. NetSol cannot stop you from doing this, but no other registrar was accepting transfers of .name domains. Hopefully, the GNR's new registrar will be doing this immediately.

Bottom line: If you are interested in .name, stay as far away from NetSol as possible.

(And as a last note on .name email addresses: I have recieved zero spam in the 5 months that I have had a working .name email address.)
Re:A BIG warning by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 14:29 · Score: 0

is it just me or does the name "godaddy" seem a bit..incestuous?

GNR's Claims invalid - RE: [registrars] GNR/Person by hlh_nospam · 2003-02-12 04:20 · Score: 1

There was a reply to the letter mentioned in the lead story, which outlines many good reasons for the failure of .NAME, including the main one that prevented me from getting a .NAME account: cost.

GNR's Claims invalid

I looked at the sales site that Global Name Registry Ltd started to try to sell .NAME, and it has basically the same problem (they want $20/yr for a .NAME registration), so I can only conclude that they are not listening. I predict they will fail. Whether or not they make it, I'm not spending $20/yr for a .NAME.

--
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas

I use .name domain and e-mail... by Przepla · 2003-02-12 04:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

...and I will be very unhappy if it disappear.
First of all, I want my own domain and since I am not an ORGanization, not a COMmercial business, not a NETwork backbone .name suits me very well.

I use it since beginning and I receive very little spam (while I post to USENET without even spamblocking my e-mail).

If I would buy .com domain my personal data will be reavealed in Whois database, so I don't care if my name is put in e-mail itself or not.

And finally now I can switch from different ISP without changing subscription addresses, my Bussiness Cards, and sending e-mail to all my friends about new e-mail.

I can agree with one thing, it is not properly advertised. But did you hear about .museum, .coop or .aero domain?

Note: English is not my native language, so please disregard any spelling or grammar mistakes.

--
When in doubt, go to the library. - Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Re:I use .name domain and e-mail... by SparklesMalone · 2003-02-12 04:59 · Score: 2, Informative

I too use .name, and frankly I couldn't care less about people figuring out who I am. I only give my .name address to friends and associates and use a throw-away Hotmail account (or nothing) for more public spaces. If I want to post anonymously I deserve to be labelled "anonymous coward". If I have the guts of my convictions I should have the guts to put my name on it too. The print press has it right; if you want mass readership (letters to the editor) you've got to fess up to who you are.

Democracy demands it. Gov't of the anonymous, by the anonymous, and for the anonymous? How do you know 50,000 "Invade Iraq" posts to the Washingon Times aren't generated by Haliburton?
Re:I use .name domain and e-mail... by MightyYar · 2003-02-12 06:52 · Score: 1

I'm with you. I have a .name address and it is very nice. People always tell me what a cool address I have, and I never have to worry about sending that dreaded "My new email address is..." email to all of my contacts.
The only problem is that I had to jump through hoops to register it - it is no different than buying any other domain name. That is too difficult for most people. For this to work, it needs to be as easy to set up as yahoo or hotmail.
For the record, I used register.com to get the domain based on the price for mail and http forwarding. They have an annoying add in a frame that appears when you are forwarded, but a little javascript kills it on IE or Mozilla.

--
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Re:I use .name domain and e-mail... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 08:45 · Score: 0

Ditto to the above. x@y.name is so much more elegant and, in my case, accurate than me@x.y.com (the latter still works, of course)

The only problem is that I had to jump through hoops to register it - it is no different than buying any other domain name.

Yeah, I'm a bit worried by all the comments that your domain can't be hosted away from your original registrar. Must be news to my host!

Australian individuals also have .id.au as a similar option.

Hmm, if the 10,000 pages quoted is accurate, I'm 1% of this TLD. Ha!

Yours, happily ensconsed at http://davidj.richardson.name/

bill.gates.name by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 04:26 · Score: 0

Someone beat me to it...

linky

Dot-Names are pointless by YetAnotherName · 2003-02-12 04:27 · Score: 1

There's no meaning in a domain name that ends in .name except to say the name exists. Big deal. It's the DNS equivalent of a passive verb.

kelly.com - a private company; probably KellyGirl or Kelly Services or whatever they're called now.
kelly.org - a nonprofift; probably the Kelly Family Fund for the Arts or somesuch.
kelly.name - who cares?

Re:Dot-Names are pointless by vidarh · 2003-02-12 04:54 · Score: 1

It says that it's likely a personal name. Probably a personal homepage.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names Ltd)
Re:Dot-Names are pointless by YetAnotherName · 2003-02-12 07:32 · Score: 1

Again ... who cares? (Except perhaps Kelly?)

This has been tried before by madstork2000 · 2003-02-12 04:37 · Score: 3, Informative

I worked for a startup that was selling "third-level" domains to doctors under the .md domain. The company purchased severalthousand .md domains that represented "surnames". So we owned "smith.md", "wilson.md", etc.

We provided web hosting (http://www.john.smith.md), email (john@smith.md), easy to use templates, for non tech savvy doctors.

Several issues worked against us. First the company controlling the second level domains (i.e. the "surnames") that we had to purchase, charged too much for the business model (upwards of $300 /per year for a single second level .md domain).

The other issue was we couldnever have all the names. so we could not do large "instatutional sales" effectively.

these first two issues shouldnot effect .name, but the other issues we had problems with would:

1. Name Overlap -names are not unique, we never achieved a large enough user base for this to be much of an issue, but it did come up occasionally.

2. SPAM- the addresses are pretty easy to guess, since first@last is pretty easy to guess. the other SPAM issue was that more and more ISPs require the outgoing mail address to be on their network, and sothe users needed to configure the IMAP/POP accounts to use our sevrers, rather than their local ones.

3. User ignorance, the way the email was/is built of the second level domain (john@smith.md) and the website is off the third level - john.smith.md confused the users, the sales people, and management. We never effectively explained the subtle difference to non savvy users.

4. Long names. http://www.john.smith.md is an ok sized domain name,but if you had a long orhyphenated name, the email address and domain name become excessively long, and awkward to work with in "real world" applications,likeputting on business cards and letterhead.

In short it sees the .name folks are making some of the same mistakes, and not addressesing the inherent problems needed to overcome the issues.
In retrospect there are several more trouble issues that both our .md plan and .name share,
but no sense in beating a dead horse, they definately need some help, some luck, and cash if they expect to succeed.

I wish 'emluck cause I think they will need it...
-MS2k

Re:This has been tried before by Przepla · 2003-02-12 05:02 · Score: 1

Regarding Name Overlap -- that problem exists to every domain, not only .name.

Regarding Spam -- it's also pretty easy to guess that there MUST exist john@hotmail.com or fred@whitehouse.gov -- try to guess my name using some telephone directory. (Or just try to say it ;-).

Regarding long names: Not everybody lives in US. While in Poland it is possible to have domain in ccTLD (like www.onet.pl), in UK for instance all must use subdomains (like co.uk) so in UK people use addresses in third level domain (like bbc.co.uk).
And I have no problems telling people to use my .name address. They don't have any problems using, it it's rather web forms that objects.

And you can register not only firstname.lastname.name, but also initial.petname.name or nick.nick.name.

So I think problem lies in marketing the product not in product itself.

--
When in doubt, go to the library. - Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Re:This has been tried before by Badger · 2003-02-12 05:36 · Score: 1

Regarding long names: Not everybody lives in US. While in Poland it is possible to have domain in ccTLD (like www.onet.pl), in UK for instance all must use subdomains (like co.uk) so in UK people use addresses in third level domain (like bbc.co.uk).

I think you totally missed his point. This isn't about multiple levels, it's about having your entire name be your email address. If you have 20-some odd characters in your name, that can be very difficult to give out, or (as he said) put on cards.
Re:This has been tried before by Przepla · 2003-02-12 05:52 · Score: 1

Well, I have 22 letters in my name I have no such trouble. It fits nicely on cards and nobody has no trouble in writing it down. On the other hand here in Poland everybody has at least 10-15 letters in their names so we are get used to it.

--
When in doubt, go to the library. - Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Re:This has been tried before by vidarh · 2003-02-12 05:58 · Score: 1

This has been tried before by many other people as well, some of which are actually making a nice profit by reselling third level name based addresses on .com etc. Heck, our company started out as Nameplanet, the webmail service, that got to 1.5 million users of the (free) service before it was sold. It is now a for-pay service and doing quite nicely.
Essentially, your concerns are mostly invalid. First, overlap is much less of a problem than you'd think - people are happy to use variations of their name, such as including a middle name or initial, and the vast majority of people have uncommon firstnames, lastnames or both. Second, spam seems to be less of a problem on small TLD's or small domains, not more, because addresses are equally easy to guess for large ISP's, and large ISPs like AOL are much more interesting targets than a small TLD.
As for user ignorance, we rarely faced that problem with our webmail service. 1.5 million users did not have a problem with it at all. Sure, some people will have problems with it, but hey, we'd be happy with a percent or two of the potential market.
As for length, the longest name I've seen registered was 132 characters long. Obviously that's extreme, but people aren't that concerned about it. With regards to business cards, almost anyone have their name on it. How much more space does "@" instead of space and a ".name" at the end take?
Using "http://www." in front of the web address isn't needed.
You might think we're making mistakes with it, but we did spend year and a half doing a site that provided the research and experience of peoples interest in their name before we started doing .name, and everything we learned from that was incorporated into .name.
Funnily enough, one of the key thing we learned from our research, was that no matter the complaints on here about how .nom/.i/.me/.per would be a better extension, the clear outcome of our market research was that average users far preferred ".name" as the TLD extension - otherwise we would have asked for something else.
(Disclaimer: I work for personalnames)
Re:This has been tried before by madstork2000 · 2003-02-12 08:32 · Score: 1

The million dollar question is not whether the average user prefers ".name", but is willing to pay for ".name".

Almost all the doctors we approached with the .md names loved the concept, but few really saw the value.

Personally I like the idea of personalized domains. I realize that overlap can be dealt with in a variety of ways using nicknames, pet names, intials, we even reversed surnames and first names smith@john.md on occasion.

Part of the problem with these strategies though is they dilute the market message, and are unacceptable to a lot of people.

The ignorance was more of a problem for us because we were offering more than just webmail. (we tried to sell offices on the group features of IMAP), for a couple of reasons. First, was that web mail did not meet all the needs at the time, considering contrary to popular belief the doctors were almost all on slow dialup connections, if they had internet at the office at all. Also webmail didn't work as well for us because we tried to encourage them to simply forward their new email to an existing account (to make setup easier).

SPAM was an concern (not really an issue since we never achieved the kind of penetration we expected) because it was targeted. It is pretty easy to get a list of doctors names in a state or area, so it would be very easy to do targeted SPAMing (as opposed to the normal SPAM that just carpet bombs everything).

We marketed the www. in front of the domain name, because we found at the time most people still expected to see the www, especially when there was a third level. Remember we were doing this over three years ago now.

I realize the Internet community is more savvy now, but in order to tap users who see the words AOL and Internet / Web as synonomous, the message and service need to be crystal clear. Part of the problem with ignorance that I didn't make clear earlier was not just with our customers directly but was with other people who our customers shared the email with.

For example I had a first@last.md email for a couple of years, and at the time most people would question my email address, some flat out didn;t believe me when I told them. I got a lot of "testing 123" email to the address just to see if it was real and they could send to it. I also had minor problems with poorly written web scripts that didn't like ccTLD addresses. These issues when looked at by themselves were small, but all required time and education in the market to address.

The business card issue was two fold one being aethestics, the other being length. Obvisously it is very subjective. Something like this looks fine (albeit a bit repetitive)

John Jackson
Jackson Works, LLC
john@jackson.name

This starts getting awkward:
George Wojonowseski
Jackson Works, LLC
george@wojonowseski.name

Then the issue of duplication comes up:
John Jackson
Jackson Works, LLC
johnmichael@jackson.name

The three "examples" illustrate three "real-world" problems I see (again these are subjective, but they are issues that our customers brought up.)

In the first case there was too much repition, people kind of thought it looked silly. I never agreed personally with that assessment, but I think part of it had to do witht he general unfamiliarity and novelty of the personalized domain. I suspect this is nolonger an issue.

the second case, the personalized email is longer than most emails, and as such awkward for most people to remember and use. "George" himself probably wouldn't mind because its his name, but the people he shares his address with probably would prefer a shorter and easier to type address.
The other issue Using it on a business card, the email does not reflect the company. Again, this is probably not an issue for .name, as they are targeted at end users, but was an issue when we were trying to sell doctors on .md. e attempted to sell to whole practices/offices/hospitals. Many simply prefered to have the office affiliatation. Other who wanted just a personal email were usually happier with their med school alumni addresses. f.last@med.havard.edu or fist.last@johns-hopskins.edu where prefered for the vanity value in my experience.

The third "real world" issue is the problem overlap causes, especially if you are promoting the first@last.name in your marketign media. The Fact that the email address is not the same as the guys name defeats the whole purpose. If the John Jackson own Jackson Works LLC, what email will have more value to him?

john@jackson.name
johnmichael@jackson.name
joh n@jacksonworks.com
jjackson@jwllc.com

The first one MIGHT have the most value, but the "overlap" email address almost certainly will have less value. So again it boils down to your marketing and reaching the people your after.

Anyway, you've obviously done better than we did in our attempt, simply because your company still exists. The question is whether you can ultimately convince enough "AOL" users that having a personal email is valuable enough to keep paying for after the novelty wears off. In other words is it sustainable?

-MS2k
Re:This has been tried before by mlippert · 2003-02-12 13:45 · Score: 1

The one thing I think you're missing is that .name is targetted at being a personal address (email and web).

As such, sure some people will put it on their business cards, but I think people will eventually recognize the value of having multiple identities, a personal one (.name) and a work one (related to their company).

And actually it's worthwhile having a 3rd "personal public" email that you can replace when it starts getting overloaded with spam.

I only give my personal (.name) email to friends and family. I use the public email for USENET and subscriptions and online commerce, and I keep my work address for work relations.
Re:This has been tried before by vidarh · 2003-02-12 21:43 · Score: 1

That's a good point. I use several different addresses myself as well, in particular to keep most of my work e-mail separate from my personal e-mail, and think that's important. In particular, if I switch jobs, I don't want personal e-mails continue to pour into an address I no longer control, and that likely would be read by my line manager, and similarly I wouldn't want stuff related to my old job to be sent to an e-mail address I'd still control in case there were confidential stuff there and someone leaked it (the chance of an ex-employee with easy access to info being blamed is quite high).
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

Other TLDs? (slightly OT) by PontifexPrimus · 2003-02-12 04:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

Quick question:
What happened to the other new TLDs (.aero, .biz, .coop, .museum, .pro, .grumpy and .sneezy)? I don't consciously remember ever seeing one of them - just like I never saw a .name URI. Why introduce all this crap at all if no one uses them?
(Oh, and don't bother checking out www.canna.biz. It's already taken...)

--
-- Language is a virus from outer space.

Re:Other TLDs? (slightly OT) by vidarh · 2003-02-12 05:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

.biz and .info are doing pretty well (closing in on a million registrations), .name is lagging a bit behind, the rest are still very small, but that's to be expected considering their special nature. The closest comparison would perhaps be .int - how often do you visit .int sites? Yet some very large organizations use .int domains as their primary internet presence.
Remember .com had about a 15 year head start...
Re:Other TLDs? (slightly OT) by Ducon+Lajoie · 2003-02-12 07:01 · Score: 1

I have a .int email. I also have two .ca email (ISP and University), a couple .com (yahoo, hotmail, a bunch of redirects to manage spam and mailing lists, and a website of mine) and I registered my name as a .name.

Why? Well first, despite what I've read so far in this thread, I like the concept of registering (and owning) a domain that is neither a vanity domain, a corp email or an ISP dependant email. There IS a growing need for that as people start to realize that keeping a presence is important. Just like phone numbers or physical address, it is important to be able not to vanish in thin air when you change jobs/move/don't log in for more than 45 days.

My .name is my own for my personal mail (and eventually a personal non anonymous web presence). I was bitten by many free providers going non free (iNames, mail.com, iTools) and I decided that if I was going to pay to get a stable email addy, I might as well get my own name and actually "own" something. I don't think it'll look silly in 5 years (well, that is if they don't go bankrupt).

I like the idea of .name, it's probably the smartest of the new TLDs or rebranded ccTLDs (.biz? .ws?! Gimme a break...) and if it was not that ridiculously expensive, it might sell better.
Re:Other TLDs? (slightly OT) by mlippert · 2003-02-12 14:07 · Score: 1

I always forget that .int even exists when I'm trying to list the original gTLDs :-)

But I completely agree with you that people are going to start recognizing the use of owning an internet ID that doesn't change. I don't have the email forwarding feature of my .name domain, but I don't miss it that much. I have set up several addresses at my domain which I have hosted for $3/month. And registering the domain only cost me 12 euros at gandi.net.

Oh, so that's where those guys from... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 05:05 · Score: 0

...the old OS/2 marketing team ended up.

GNR To Launch Registra - Conference Call Frida by t0ny · 2003-02-12 05:08 · Score: 1

We believe NAME is not selling at the same levels as the other gTLDs for the following reasons:

1. The idea is really stupid, and nobody with two brain cells to rub together should have invested in this.

2. There really isnt a need or demand for alternative TLDs

3. The company in charge of .NAME, GNR Ltd, was created for the sole purpose of lining the pockets of its board of directors and the executive staff with the ungodly ammounts of venture capital we raised. Boo-yah!

Very truly yours,

R. Charles Mancini

CEO - GNR Limited

--

Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.

200 million online in North America??? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 05:11 · Score: 0

Did you read the statistic at the end of the link from the DNSO mailing list?

I highly doubt that there are 200 million people online in North America. If that isn't an over-inflated, misrepresented statistic I don't know what is.

2/3 of every person in the US is on the Internet? Please that is just bullshit. My guess is that they take all the ISP subscribers, multiple them by 4 since there are usually 4 people in a family and somehow get to 200 million. There's no way that 2/3 people are on the Internet. I don't think there's even that percentage of households with computers for fuck's sake.

Doomed to Failure by Shadow+Wrought · 2003-02-12 05:13 · Score: 1

I'd have to guess that this is going to doomed to failure. The biggest lure to the internet for most people is the anonymity it provides. If you puy your actual name there, that's lost.

Just take a look at all the posters here. How many of the nicknames are the posters real name?

--
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?

Re:Doomed to Failure by Lovejoy · 2003-02-12 05:35 · Score: 1

Hmm.. Not sure.

--
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Re:Doomed to Failure by vidarh · 2003-02-12 05:46 · Score: 1

So register your nickname. The .name registry agreement specifically allow you to use a nickname, as long as it's a name you're commonly known under.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:Doomed to Failure by Shadow+Wrought · 2003-02-12 05:53 · Score: 1

Well, luckily, I am;-)
I am really doubtful as to whether or not this constitutes a service of which the populace is desirous.
Maybe I am just too cynical, but this really strikes me as an idea hatched by folks out of touch with the common internet using consumer. People might think that having an email that says bob@dickweed.name is cool, but how many of them feel it is $14 cool?
Having an e-mail address has usually meant having your name either distorted (at your work usually ala bdickweed@theman.com, dickwb@theman.com, etc.) or the ability to create a user name that you can wear as a mask (happeningpartydude35287@aol.com) when you are home. The desire of people to have .name just isn't there.
While I could be misjudging this, I find the fact that they are flirting with bankruptcy to give a cynical argument more credence.

--
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Re:Doomed to Failure by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 06:02 · Score: 0

Actually, my nickname is my name. ('course, it's also one you wouldn't necessarily guess was a name if I didn't say so - hence the fact that I'm posting as an AC right now.)

None the less, I don't see much point in dot-name. Maybe in my case that's because I already have a slew of domain names in .com, .net, and .org, some of which are based on my name and therefore lend themselves to being remembered by people who know me. But I don't think that's the whole reason.

I provide personal web space and e-mail to several of my friends, and have offered some of them the option of registering and maintaining personal domains for them. They aren't interested. In fact, they'd rather be user@place-we-hung-out-in-college.com and www.place-we-hung-out-in-college.com/~user. (It probably helps that place-we-hung-out-in-college is only eight letters)
Re:Doomed to Failure by Lovejoy · 2003-02-12 06:09 · Score: 1

Yeah, I don't want a .name TLD either, but it's not because I like being anonymous.

It's just because I think it's a dumb idea.

Spelling out my e-mail address is tedious enough as it is. I can't imagine explaining that .NAME is the end of the address. People wouldn't get it.

--
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Re:Doomed to Failure by Shadow+Wrought · 2003-02-12 06:54 · Score: 1

So register your nickname.
I did. I registered it at yahoo.com because it is free. I didn't have to pay $14 bucks to get it.
If people want a web presence then they want a domain that they have absolute control over. The people who like to surf, but aren't necassarily interested in having a presence, utilize the e-mail services of their work, their ISP, or a free one such as Yahoo!
You seem to have a great deal of passion for this which I find comendable. My belief, however, is that .name offers something to consumers in which they are, frankly, not interested. Afterall, the posting here is not that .name is taking names and kicking everyone else's collective arse, its that it is struggling and may go bankrupt.
I know that this is wholly unsolicited, and maybe even undesired, but my (free) advice would be to read all of the comments to this discussion and find ways to answer all of the questions and negative postings. If you can do that, and implement it, then you may yet find success.
I sincerely wish you well in acheiving success if for no other reason than that you have a passion to make it work.

--
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Re:Doomed to Failure by vidarh · 2003-02-12 07:36 · Score: 1

I have a great deal of passion for it, as I have myself used my personal name as my e-mail address for the last five years or so. First as vidar@hokstad.com, then as vidar@hokstad.name, and I like it. GNR and later Personal Names was started explicitly because we noticed the huge amount of personal names that had already been registered (this was back in '98), and how hard it had started becoming for people to get a name based address anymore. We started out with a webmail service. 1.5 million people signed up in a year and a half, and our competitors signed up hundreds of thousands as well. .name was the logical continuation of that.
In other word, our experience is that the market is there. Our problem has been that the registrars don't know how to reach consumers - they're only used to marketing to businesses.
So we've decided to do it ourselves to show them how to do it.
(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)
Re:Doomed to Failure by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 10:46 · Score: 0

Since everyone and their dog can now get ADSL or some equivalent form of always-on service, more and more people who know how to use computers will be setting up websites... and considering that broadband is *at least* 25 UKP a month here in England, can anyone really complain too much about paying less than that *per year* to have an easy-to-remember server address? c'mon, people - .com ain't cool any more, and .info is for libraries :)

I'm on tom.molesworth.name, by the way, but the good stuff ain't on the main page before y'all head over to investigate!

The .name DNS solution is rock-solid (I should know, I helped set it up). I've seen .info and .biz servers drop off the net at random intervals without any decent excuses... but that seems to be the way of the internet these days, no one cares how good the technology is, as long as you can market your product widely enough. :(

I'm surprised to see the Slashdot crowd slating .name, since it spent far more effort on the tech side than any marketing or other hype (apart from a few enjoyable parties at ICANN conferences, maybe).

You all think that .name should have partnered with AOL and grabbed that market share with both hands? ".name" is a stupid idea for a gTLD, huh? Haven't learnt how to deal with spam yet? Haven't even *heard* of .name? damn, next thing you know people will be asking "what's this binary stuff about then?" And you people call yourself "geeks"! :P

When/if IPv6 turns up, a .name address will be a useful thing indeed.
https://fridge.kitchen.tom.molesworth.nam e/get?bee r will be one of my bookmarks, for sure.

Tom

Re:Other TLDs? (slightly OT) = Trademark Tax by hastings14 · 2003-02-12 05:18 · Score: 1

".biz" and ".info" are only doing well because large companies that have trademarks to protect will always go out and register any rights they have in their name. Most of these web-sites are not used, but are just registered to keep other people from using them. None of these companies want to be like Nissan Motors (which lost out out to the small but scrappy Nissan Computers in their legal dispute).

.name is a true indicator of consumer demand for domain names, although its a flawed model because these domains cost four times what a ".com" domain goes for, and are plagued by spam and other problems.

Unless there is a restriction that no one company can own ".com", ".org", ".biz" and ".info" domains all with the same name then this sort of TLD expansion is just a tax imposed on business by trademark attornies and domain name registrars.

Re:Other TLDs? (slightly OT) = Trademark Tax by vidarh · 2003-02-12 05:26 · Score: 1

How are they plagued by spam? I've had a .name domain name since day one, and my corporate e-mail address has a way higher spam volume than my personal .name address have, despite being on tons of mailing lists and posting to Slashdot regularly.

As for being and indicator of consumer demand, take a look at the advertizing for .name vs. for .com, .info and .biz. Seen many .name ads recently? No, probably not. That seems to be a much larger part of the reason for the level of registrations - the ads we've put out so far seem to work well.

(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

Appropriate tld's by Anitra · 2003-02-12 05:40 · Score: 1

There are some exceptions. For example, DynDNS.org, which started as a non-profit/hobby service. It has slowly become a commercial entity over the past 2 years. But they're not going to give up their .org tld - it's been their URL for 5 years. Changing it now would just confuse the customers.

--

Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?

I disagree by overunderunderdone · 2003-02-12 05:41 · Score: 1

People selling smut want to get it under the noses of as wide a potential audience as possible. Hence the existence of things like www.whitehouse.com [whitehouse.com]

You seem to think that people aren't *looking* for .sex . If there was such a TLD I am pretty sure a fairly large number of searches on google (and even more at images.google.com) would be restricted to the .sex domain - those looking for their favorite porn star named "bambi" aren't interested in pictures of animated deer after all. It works both ways - both someone with a fetish and someone who doesn't want to see that would know the likely differences between nurses.com and nurses.sex. To some extent the porn providers would move to .sex on their own to follow the market.

Re:I disagree by raju1kabir · 2003-02-12 06:03 · Score: 1

You seem to think that people aren't *looking* for .sex .

No, I know that some people are looking for it, and others who aren't motivated enough to go looking, will take it when it jumps out at them. Hence all the spam. Hence the need to advertise. More importantly, not only do I know that, but so do the pornistas.

If there was such a TLD I am pretty sure a fairly large number of searches on google (and even more at images.google.com) would be restricted to the .sex domain - those looking for their favorite porn star named "bambi" aren't interested in pictures of animated deer after all. It works both ways - both someone with a fetish and someone who doesn't want to see that would know the likely differences between nurses.com and nurses.sex. To some extent the porn providers would move to .sex on their own to follow the market.

That's excellent reasoning for 1962.

However, in 2003, a porn provider can be both in .sex and in .com without any additional cost. It's not like having to decide whether to use one's limited resources for a store either in Hell's Kitchen or in the Museum District. Even if the center of gravity of the industry moved to .sex (which I don't see happening), only a highly irrational actor would choose not to be accessible in .com as well, gaining whatever incremental traffic was available that way.

--
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Re:I disagree by bfree · 2003-02-12 08:57 · Score: 1

Perhaps it would be the case that porn providers will go to both, but you could (most probably) get a huge number of users to start far more agressive filtering. Imagine a broser plugin marked "sex-ban" which lets you turn on and off the .sex tld, then you add the ability to mark visited pages/servers as "sex" which gets blocked on your machine when it is in clean mode (in sex mode they appear). The .sex users would help update the non .sex content themselves for when they don't want anyone else to see smut, and if the plugin built distributed lists of sites (using weighting and trust to build the most reasonable global list) outside .sex but sex related they would get filtered to oblivion. Use those lists for mail fitering too! Then finally add the ability for users to block .sex sites based on related non .sex sites, then if .sex users want everyone to move to .sex and drop the rest they will have a method to push them with, if they don't then you are absolutely right, but it would provide the force around which filtering would become a whole lot better (come to think of it could we not train some browsers to recognise porn using bayenisian filtering, a large body (hehe) of work is easily available and it should be a lot more obvious than spam).

.sex would work, if only because most of the money in porn is for legal stuff, and the people who pay it don't want it to go on illegal stuff so knowing companies were happy about defining themselves as a sex company and behaving responsibly (making it easy for kids not to see it) would make them more likely to purchse there (think hardcore.sex or hardcore.com). Having said that, if you want to really try and ensure that no sexual content gets through to a browser, .kids or .safe is a better bet though it is at the expense of filtering virtually the entire web. It's the lost traffic from being outside .sex (anything that's interested at least offers the chance to filter you based ips serving sex outside .sex) that makes it work, not the extra traffic gained from being in .sex.

--
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source

Google makes this pointless by djKing · 2003-02-12 05:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

Dave King, a very common name, but now that I have a modest blog I'm the number 2 Dave King, any one who knows me would be able to add other terms that should make my blog #1, so why would I need daveking.name?
-Peace
Dave

--
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."

Re:Google makes this pointless by Carmody · 2003-02-12 08:39 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Dave King from the incomprable Bob And Dave strip? I'm still a fan, Bananaman

--
God is real unless declared integer
Re:Google makes this pointless by djKing · 2003-02-12 09:04 · Score: 1

no, not that I know of. Like I said it's a very common name.

-Peace

--
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."

troll warning by DarthWiggle · 2003-02-12 05:57 · Score: 1

ok, troll me, but this is the stupidest TLD. ".nom" would have been better. or ".i" or ".id" or ".anythingotherthanname" ".name" is, to use a nickel word, is simply not euphonious. It's nasal, harsh, terse. Plus, in a world of "cutting edge sounding" .com, .net, .org, ".name" is just boring. Dumb dumb dumb. They would have done better to purchase me.com and sold hostnames off of that. Bleh.

Re:troll warning by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 22:32 · Score: 0

in a world of "cutting edge sounding" .com, .net, .org, ".name" is just boring.

Wow, buzzwords mean a lot to you, don't they?

as with everything where the rewards are great ... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 06:07 · Score: 0

money, and lot's of it.

Re:GNR's Claims invalid - RE: [registrars] GNR/Per by vidarh · 2003-02-12 06:09 · Score: 1

We are listening, and we have tried promotions at lower prices. However, what we are finding is that there is little to no price sensitivity among the users we send to the site - if they want the name, they buy it, regardless of whether they've been offered a promotial price or the normal price. Since our margin is perhaps 5-10 times as high on the normal price, we have absolutely no business justification for lowering it - we're getting a much better return by spending more money on marketing rather than lowering the price, as we actually sell more that way than by lowering the price.

(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

Not your typical TLD by Skwidd · 2003-02-12 06:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

The .name registry has some unique features:
- Customers register 3rd level names (ie: firstname.lastname.name)
- They charge an additional annual fee to have access to the corresponding e-mail address (firstname@lastname.name)
- Customers can't use the DNS services that they use for 'real' domain names

The dotName people had some lofty ambitions when the registry was created. They were hoping that their names would become the standard for unique ids over all kinds of communications -- they'd point to your website, e-mail, cell phone, etc. This sounds like a reasonable idea (a unique communications id), but names are not unique enough...

Is anyone familiar with any similar (but ideally smarter) efforts?

Re:Not your typical TLD by Przepla · 2003-02-12 06:43 · Score: 1

You wrote:
- Customers register 3rd level names (ie: firstname.lastname.name)

So what? If you want .uk domain it's the same.

You wrote:
- Customers can't use the DNS services that they use for 'real' domain names

They can. At least Verisign provide "point this domain to: My own DNS" checkbox in their account manager.

You wrote:
They charge an additional annual fee to have access to the corresponding e-mail address (firstname@lastname.name).

AFAIK it is not like that. firstname@lastname.name is just being forwarded to firstname@firstname.lastname.name by mx.nic.name (Want to see my e-mail headers?). So if you want to run your domain yourself you can set MX for firstname.lastname.name whatever you like. If you want virtual hosting -- you pay for it extra (but isn't just the same like with all other domains?).

So I blame marketing, not idea.

--
When in doubt, go to the library. - Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Re:Not your typical TLD by mlippert · 2003-02-12 13:53 · Score: 1

Actually they do charge an additional fee for the 2nd level email address. The letter referenced said that they were reducing the fee they charge to registrars for the combination of the domain and the email forwarding service.

I've registered my .name (using gandi.net) and they don't offer the email forwarding feature, just the domain.

So where I host my domain I can create as many email addresses at my domain as I'd like, ie me@john.smith.name, maillist@john.smith.name, slashdot@john.smith.name, amazon@john.smith.name etc.

However email sent to john@smith.name goes into some black hole because I don't have the email forwarding feature.

Now that the email feature is cheaper, maybe they'll convince gandi.net to offer it, and if it doesn't cost me much more I may get it when I renew, or add it before that if they make it easy.

bad marketing and implementation by dpuu · 2003-02-12 06:13 · Score: 1

To succeed, a product needs to attract potential customers, then convince them to buy, and then keep them happy (so that they buy again and make recommendations to others). Everything associated with dot-name fails to do any of these things.

First, you need to get me to come into the store. Where do I go to get a dot-name domain? Google isn't much help, because "name" is a common word. When eventually I constructed appropriate queries I found the initial press releases, but not much else. Oh, I did find a really horrible presentation where you entered your name to be told all the benefits of a dot-name domain, but that boiled down to "the benefit of a dot-name domain is that you have a dot-name domain: would you like to buy one?"

So there was no useful information on the web to help me make a purchase, but fortunately I have a a few friends who recommended various registras. I ended up with register.com, despite their main page "click here to check availability ... <click> ... congratuations on your decision to buy ... <back>". Anyway, my friends advised that the site was OK, once you held you nose and actually bought something.

I understand that there's a difference between domain registration and web hosting. If dot-name is intended for Joe Public, then the techology needs to be explained up front -- it needs a usable user guide. URL forwarding is a lame technology: a dedicated dot-name registrar should probably provide some limited free web space: just to help the newbies. But I digress.

Having got my .name domain, I then started to use it. This might sound strange, but a dot-name domain doesn't work as well as a dot-com domain. Why not? Because many sites have really stupid validation code in their web-forms. Like the old Y2K problem, but less forgivable. On many sites, I enter my email address as "dave@whipp.name", and get told that it is invalid because a TLD must be either 2 or 3 characters. Sounds stupid, is stupid. But its all too common.

So what needs to be done to fix the dot-name? Its needs to be *properly* marketed (no slease), and it needs useful tutorial (not marketing) that describes the process of getting a domain. People need to be comfortable with the process. Money needs to be invested into making the technology work. Perhaps the people running it need to talk to people who are their potential customers -- or at least people who are their customers despite their best efforts to scare us away.

--
Opinions my own, statements of fact may contain errors

You know what... by Mustang+Matt · 2003-02-12 06:38 · Score: 1

If they want to make .name successful, they should have lobbied for a worldwide .name law that would have made it illegal (with huge penalties) to send unsolicited bulk email to any .name email address.

I would have bought one if that were the case.

--
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin

Wow... by meme_police · 2003-02-12 06:42 · Score: 1

...I wish my boss at my last job understood this: "you need a minimum of 5 people to provide round the clock support." Two people didn't quite cut it!

--

The meme police, They live inside of my head

Re:Hey Dumbass Mods! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 06:55 · Score: 0

Sheesh, the fucking morons that pass for moderators nowadays...
and they're wondering why Slashdot is losing popularity FAST....

Ah, the sounds of a /. newbie complaining about how bad things are getting. It'd be funny if it weren't so sad. No, wait, it's funny.

redundant... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 06:57 · Score: 0

Well, I always thought .name was abit redundent...
A domain name is just a name afterall. :)

I don't think this will cause other tld's to
come into existance though. More tld's is a good
thing I beleave... as well as a truly distributed
and non-hiarchial dns system.

-lile
hacker artist
GeekMaids.Com - Creating Order out of Chaos... Cleaning and Beyond!

How about some *sensible* TLDs? by Sheriff+Fatman · 2003-02-12 07:54 · Score: 3, Insightful

I must admit, I'm not surprised to see .name going tits-up, and I'll be surprised to see how .me.uk plays out over the next year or two. I think this whole notion of trying to cater to individuals is pretty well doomed - there's always going to be too many people with the same name, and they're going to end up as the exclusive preserves of the rich and vain people who happened to get there first. If they really want to sell domains to individuals, give them a bit of character... hands up anyone who wants their own .geek domain?

On a more general note, I may be missing something *really* significant, but I really think that the internet DNS system suffers heavily from piss-poor management. As it stands, we've got all these fairly uninspiring TLDs - .museum, .aero. .info, the list goes on. I can't believe any commercial organisation are going to go for a .biz or a .info domain without trying to get the .com as well. One of my clients provides information publishing services to the media industry, and they're now buying .com, .co.uk, .biz and .info for every domain they register - not 'cos it's bringing them any extra revenue, but because they're worried about cybersquatters and competitors trading on their brand.

Added to this, I really don't think ICANN are doing a particularly good job setting up the 'new' TLDs. I've said this before on /., but why the hell isn't there a .movie TLD? Every mainstream film that's released these days has an official website with a fat marketing budget behind it. Movies tend to have short, easily memorable name, and - more importantly - they're almost always unique names, to avoid people confusing one movie with another. Since films don't really depend on their internet presence for revenue the way many companies do, they'd probably be a lot more receptive to using something other than .com at the end. As long as the registration process was vetted the same way as .edu or .ac.uk, you'd rapidly create a system where a .movie site was guaranteed to be the 'real deal', leaving the fanboys to fight over www.starwarsepisode3.com. I'm sure there's numerous other candidates - .game, .book, .show, maybe .band or .music or somesuch. Certainly none of them can be any worse than .museum - do a Google search for 'museum', and see how many pages of results you have to go through to find a .museum TLD. I got bored after about a hundred results.

.sex and .xxx offer possibilities, too. It can't be that hard for an ISP or hosting company to insist that their customers use a specific TLD for pornographic sites. All concerned parents have to do is block access to .sex and voila! they can sleep at night believing their kiddies are safe from the child-eating internet porn monsters.

At the end of the day, if ICANN want to provide TLDs as a service, they've got to accept that no-one's going to get rich, and if they want to get rich, they should be identifying their potential markets just like any other business and working to meet the needs of those markets. TLDs like .name and .aero just seem like a waste of everybody's time and bandwidth.

--
-- Open Source: It's mad, but you don't have to work here to help.

Re:How about some *sensible* TLDs? by BinaryC · 2003-02-12 14:34 · Score: 1

Apparently there's about 50,000 of them, though that really doesn't make it any less silly. Personally I love the .movie and .music TLDs. That's got to be the best idea I've ever heard. I really like .sex, but that one's too controversial to ever happen.

--
Ne Quid Nimis - All things in moderation
Re:How about some *sensible* TLDs? by pablo.cl · 2003-02-13 08:18 · Score: 1

do a Google search for 'museum' [google.com], and see how many pages of results you have to go through to find a .museum TLD.
This one solves your problem :-)
"site:museum museum"
Re:How about some *sensible* TLDs? by Sheriff+Fatman · 2003-02-13 09:52 · Score: 1

I take your point, but c'mon - according to these results, the world-renowned York Castle Museum ranks ahead of the National History Museum, the Smithsonian, the Louvre... The 'big' museums all have .com or .edu or .ac.uk addresses because they're established. That's the other great thing about .movie - with a very few exceptions, movie sites spring up a couple of months before the release, hang around until the DVD sales drop off, and then they're history. There's no long-term investment in their online presence. The Natural History museum have already printed www.nhm.ac.uk on countless brochures, letterheads and souvenirs, and I can't see them switching to .museum just 'cos it's there.

--
-- Open Source: It's mad, but you don't have to work here to help.

The real problem with .name? Not sexy. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-12 08:32 · Score: 0

.com .edu .net .org .mil .gov

Notice something, there. Three letters each. Since the beginning, our TLDs have had three letters each, and that's the way we likesed it!

Say what you will, but I say with certainty that name wouldn't have bombed if it was .nam.

Re:Other TLDs? (slightly OT) = Trademark Tax by hastings14 · 2003-02-12 11:00 · Score: 1

Spam - If I buy a .com address, I can set up multiple e-mail accounts - one for public use that spammers hit, and one for personal friends, etc. With .name, you have a publicly registered address thats in your own personal name and you only have that one. For me, at least, it was an issue. However, a MUCH bigger issue is the fact that I can get a .com domain on sale for $6, and a .name domain costs around $24 (actually, I just checked and its down to $20 - still excessive). I have never noticed any advertising for any domain. I have several domains and I certainly didn't rely on any advertising.People who buy domains are corporations or geeks and I don't think either of those are likely to rely on advertising.

Re:Other TLDs? (slightly OT) = Trademark Tax by vidarh · 2003-02-12 21:37 · Score: 1

People who buy .com's are mostly corporations or geeks perhaps. Do a search on google for .name sites, and you'll find a much more diverse crows. Our experience so far, though, is that .name appeals much more to non-geeks than to geeks. Perhaps because most geeks seem to have one or more domains already, and are passionate about setting up multiple accounts etc.

With non-geek customers, which make up by far our largest market, that is something we are simply not seeing at all. Most of them don't even know what a domain name is, which is why we are consciously marketing it as an e-mail forwarding address and web forwarding address, and not a domain name - most of our customers don't even care about the web forwarding, they're only interested in getting a nice e-mail address.

(Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

.AU space by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-13 02:27 · Score: 0

The .AU domain space was under the custodianship of one person (I think has name is Robert Elz from memory) who had passed on the responsibility of actually running it to the University of Melbourne years ago. So your claim is only half right.

In time, the University of Melbourne spun off a corporation called Melbourne IT to fulfil the same role. The public float was/is shrouded in controversy over early and exclusive options to buy stock going to UMelb directors. By early 2001 (I think) Robert Elz had ceded control (somewhat begrudgingly I believe) to an independent body called AUDA who are an open and seemingly accountable non-profit non-government body. There was a tender put out to run the .AU registry by AUDA and by mid 2001 (or was it 2002?) the new registry AUSREGISTRY was operational and the .AU domain space was deregulated, halving prices literally overnight for domain names.

Things have been going swimmingly since then. In fact, they have been going a lot better than before, and despite changing both the body responsible for the .AU domain and the registry, from the users perspective the whole system never missed a beat.

Disclaimer: I believe the order of events is correct in the above but the dates may be wrong, sorry about that.

TLDs known by the masses by pablo.cl · 2003-02-13 07:15 · Score: 1

Mike Rucker: The general populace does not know what the different TLD's stand for. [...] Most people think that .com is "the internet" and have no idea what the rest mean.

Here in Chile everybody knows at least .com and .cl. However the default choice would be .cl (even I chose that for my nickname).

falabella.com, manquehue.net and fundes.org felt compelled to honor fallabella.cl, manquehue.cl and fundes.cl also.

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