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VeriSign Shutting Down Site Finder
00420 writes "VeriSign, the administrator of the .com and .net domains, made plans to shut down its new Site Finder service Friday, after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ordered the company to undo controversial changes. Of course they're not taking it down because it affected the internet, they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community. (Seems a little late for that doesn't it?)" The shutdown is not complete yet, though: VeriSign hasn't changed their wildcard DNS entry (64.94.110.11).
I never much liked Verisign in the past, but since I already had an account there, using them to register new domains was simply the path of least resistance. But their SiteFinder is the straw that broke the camel's back.
Jason.
Call me paranoid, but... I wonder if they'll try to revert the situation, or come up with some other (equally hazardous) idea to replace this one. If they invested some money into the idea, I guess they won't give up that easily.
I love how they play it off like: "Fine, ya big babies, we'll turn it off for a little bit; just to shut you up."
They're such a bunch of jackasses! It's like spitting in our faces for THEIR wrong-doing.
they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community.
So, it has nothing to do with the three lawsuits by godaddy, netster and their ilk?
Riight.
-Gwala
#!/bin/csh cat $0
I'm sure that site has already been registered as a porn site, it seems the only people who would have had anything to lose in this case would be the porn sites, they take all the misspelled words and wrong domain names and take them as their own. Whitehouse.com? Homestarunner.com?
Simple solution. Everyone just has to manually edit their HOSTS file every time Verisign changes something.
Good thing people like you are around to tell us these things.
Of course they're not taking it down because it affected the internet, they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community.
Nonsense. They have already demonstrated significant contempt for the technical community -- remember their original response to ICANN's advisory?
They are doing it because ICANN's last letter put their super-duper exclusive right to operate the DNS in play. Maybe ICANN could terminate, maybe not -- but who would put the entire business on the line for this opportunity -- particularly when there still is a chance to negotiate something like that in the future?
I find interesting that Verisign requested 3 days before shutting down the service to give time for the tech community to adjust.. Did they do this when the service kicked in?
Also, a quick hint to all of you stuck with Verisign to renew because the domain is past due:
Verisign renewal
Pay 15USD instead of 35USD for the very same 1 year reneal service.. Ain't that great?
have you been defaced today?
Easy: the one way to guarantee us geeks will get our panties in a BIND (heh heh) is to have a Responsible Designated Party (tm) violate an RFC or standard. The standard says a DNS server does not return an IP address when no such host or domain exists, NOT that the DNS server resolves the request to some "default no such domain" domain.
I think it also irked a lot of people because it really shows how much the Web has been pushing out all other Internet protocols to the point that the rest don't seem to matter to the Powers That Be anymore. Quite a few Internet users, I imagine, access email and news (and even chat) through the Web. But the other protocols are still there, and still in use.
Personally, it pissed me off because I administer several nameservers and when I mistype a domain in a dig or nslookup I want to SEE IMMEDIATELY that no such domain exists rather than remembering "oh right that's the Sitefinder IP address". Some of the scripts I've written depend, in fact, on nslookup saying "server can't find yaoho.com" and I've had to instead look for the sitefinder IP address.
Anyways, short answer is: geeks hate it because we tend to believe in standards since adhering to standards is the only reason the Internet got off the ground in the first place and it's just as important nowadays that we keep them up.
All's true that is mistrusted
You do realize you can like some things they do, but not others, right?
Try it. Say "As a whole, I dislike ICANN, but they are right on with this whole SiteFinder thing." It makes you look like you can form a rational opinion on something, not this childish "give me some candy or you aren't my friend anymore" attitude that is so popular.
As long as Verisign can get people to believe their 128-bit certs are better than the next guy's 128-bit cert, they'll get the premium. The problem is usually the people who control the money and decide which vendor to use. They're often not the ones who can evaluate based on technical merits and often the ones more susceptible to marketing.
But hey, that's what marketing is for right? Selling something based on perception instead of it's own merits?
The HUGE problem does not have to do with affecting an individual in a big way. So just because you have blocked this problem, does not mean that your simple solutions solves a big problem.
The HUGE problem is that if affects everthing using the internet. The real solution is to fix it at the source.
Locking youself in a steel box to protect you from criminals does not solve the problem of crime.
Sometimes shielding yourself from the problem is useful, but it will end up affecting you indirectly sooner or later. Like when spam filters start failing or when DNS starts to fall apart.
Letting verisign do something like this will just open things up for them to do dumber and dumber things.
Well it bothered me a lot. I had two excruciationg minutes the other day, while trying to figure out why a hostname had an A record but the domain had no NS entry. Then I remembered the DNS wildcard and damned Verisign to hell.
Do not fuck with the infrastructure of the internet. It is the life blood of successful networking.
All interpreted languages are abstractions over Lisp
The shutdown is not complete yet, though: Verisign hasn't changed their wildcard DNS entry
Actually that means the shutdown has not started yet. Removing the DNS entry is the only thing that matters. The actual webserver can stay for as long as they want, but the IP address 64.94.110.11 will of course never be usable again. We will have switched to IPv6 before the last filtering of that address is removed.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Verisign's connections with the government are MUCH more insideous than most people know.
I still believe the whole concept of charging for domains was technically illegal. They had a grant from the government to manage the TLDs and almost EXACTLY like what happened in the DNS redirection debacle, they decided to arbitrarily change the terms of their service in direct conflict with the agreement under which they were operating.
At the time of the domain charge scam, they got away with it in part, due to the inciteful activity of one big corporation that decided to register virtually every common name they could think of, from diarrhea.com to diapers.com. So the public turned the other way and didn't question the legality of the domain charge in the first place. Only later did someone challenge this and something like half the charges were ruled illegal. But who got their money back? Nobody to the best of my knowledge. NSI stole millions of dollars from the Internet community. What happened to this money?
Then there is the whole issue of the ridiculous terms of service Verisign/NSI employ which are arguably legal in the first place relative to managing domains. Up until recently, we had a domain that legally didn't require any renewal fee (because it was registered before NSI had the facist TOS agreement) but when we changed the nameserver, we couldn't do so without agreeing to the new terms and then were liable for renewal charges.
Many installations of several Web browsers are susceptible to exploitation. If SiteFinder were somehow compromised externally or internally, one could hypothetically distribute malicious software to a prodigious group of individuals. According to the relevant Yahoo! article, approximately 1.5 million clients were redirected to the "service" daily. Imagine the possibilities!
Do you like German cars?
VeriSign stated that Internet users had visited the page more than 40 million times in the last three weeks.
:)
Is telemarketing "well received" because 40 million people actually pick up the phone? (regardless of whether they hang up or not)
"The service has been well received by millions of Internet users who appreciate getting navigation tools as opposed to the 'dead end' of an error message," VeriSign's Lewis said in the statement.
Of course, it's considered "well received" because of its 40 million hits... that 99% of which were not intentional. (Of course, the only ones who would actually go somewhere like that intentionally would be us Slashdotters... have to see what all the buzz is about
The question is meaningless. We don't have to "like" ICANN just because they did something "right" today (sort of). Nor do we have to dislike an organization or person that is mostly good if they do one bad thing.
Maybe life isn't black and white. Maybe things aren't just "good" and "bad". Maybe a rational human mind can simultaneously hold two opposing ideas. Maybe an organizations historical competence and intent isn't changed by a single isolated action.
Don't know why I bother. Here, I'll just go for my guaranteed +5, Funny. "You like ICANN today because they're beating up on Verisign, who you don't like even more. Be sure to tune in tomorrow so we can tell you how you feel about Microsoft!"
Pfeh. Anyway, who's this "we" you all keep talking about?