McLaughlin Defends Site Finder As 'Innovation'

simeonbeta2 writes "Mark McLaughlin, Senior VP at Verisign, has an editorial up on news.com. McLaughlin casts the debate over sitefinder in terms of 'innovation' versus the status quo and threatens that stifling 'innovation' will lead to a weaker internet." There's more -- read on below.

psimeonbeta2 continues:"Additionally (shades of Darl) he suggests that an anti-capitalism animus is behind the resistance to sitefinder. This despite the known problems that sitefinder caused and despite the fact that breaking the DNS standards may have constituted a breach of contract on Verisign's part. Resistance, he concludes, must be due to some sort of techno-religious fervor.

While Verisign's chutzpah certainly doesn't rise to fiaSCO levels, I find the similar tones in spinning the issues at hand to be truly disturbing. Not only did Verisign screw us by changing how the internet works at a fundamental level, now they purport to be irritated that we didn't thank them for the favor! At least in this case the good guys(cherish this moment, ICANN!) won."

Comments

I kind of like SiteFinder

[Dancin_Santa]

Sometimes I misspell URLs and I actually *like* having a service that attempts to find the site I'm looking for.

I'm not saying that people who are against it are anti-capitalist or anything, but they certainly are a bunch of knee-jerk reactionists.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[g0at]

Congratulations.

On the other hand, some of us like having the choice to let the user-agent do that when NXDOMAIN is returned, which uh, it never is with Sitefinder.

(I mean, I like root beer. Therefore, I think that all fast food chains should make it the default, and not provide user choice... after all, I like it.)

-ben

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey McLaughlin,
Hows it been? I didn't know you read slashdot

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[realdpk]

Bookmarks are pretty sweet. Almost every modern browser supports them, I think they even have it in Netscape 2.0. Did the throbbing M have 'em? I forget.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[pantherace]

Then use IE (auto redirect to MSN search, unless disabled)

personally, I just autocomplete (have to type it right the first time, and the first couple of letters...I know it's hard), or have it bookmarked...

I will agree that some of this was knee-jerk, but implementing this for everyone without anyone else's input was definatly the wrong way to go about it.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Kufat]

Internet Explorer can do that with MSN search and it usually works well enough. (Too bad you can't use google instead...or can you? I don't have their toolbar since I don't use IE.)
Site Finder, however, takes EVERY invalid domain request from every kind of program on every platform, and breaks the DNS standard, with screwing over the other .com registrars as an added bonus.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Jonathunder]

Sometimes I misspell URLs and I actually *like* having a service that attempts to find the site I'm looking for.

So set your browser to do that. Most of the popular browsers will, and you can even chose your search engine.

No need to force that behaivior on every user of every Internet service. The Internet is not (just) the web.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Anonymous Coward]

You have the entire Internet bookmarked so you never need to type in a URL?

That's so cool!

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[interiot]

I like wood. It can be used in innovative ways. Therefore, I believe everything (cars, spaceships, skyscrapers....) should be built with it. If I were a government-granted monopoly with the power to mandage use of wood, I'd do exactly that. Surethere'd be technical problems here and there, but as long as the engineers talked it out with me, everything would be fine.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[m0rph3us0]

It used to be easy but not it requires a registry change. But it certainly works with google.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[doon]

or even better some of us don't like to have to rewrite tons of scripts that use the DNS system for something besides the web. I mean there is more to the internet then just the World Wide Waste :). When Verisign decided it would do this, I noticed all my domain checking scripts stopped returning NXDOMAINS, and had to be hacked real quick to look for the magic site finder ip, and then before that wonderful Bind patch, had to worry that they would change the magic ip thus breaking my scripts again.

Then to add salt to my wounds, they send me an e-mail saying that my domain name is expired and I should call a friendly Verisign scumbag^H^H^H^H^H^Halesperson to help get my domain back. This was the last domain I had registered on them, and it was moved to OpenSRS 5 months ago. I don't see how someone this incompentant and this greedy should be put in charge of something this important.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[ScrewMaster]

Uh ... no. Verisign altered and partially busted a rather critical piece of Internet infrastructure and caused significant problems. The Sitefinder aspect of their "innovation" was only part of it. Billions of lines of code out in the world were written to function with DNS servers that behave in a certain way, to a particular well-defined specification. Verisign altered they way the root servers respond to DNS requests, and they did it unilaterally, without warning, and for profit. That is precisely the kind of mentality we do not want in an entity that maintains systems and equipment that we all depend on.

Suppose your power company decided, all on its own, without consulting you or anyone else, that they were only going to supply 90 VAC to your home or office instead of the usual 120. Some pieces of equipment would work fine, others would simply fail, or even destroy themselves. You would probably not have any idea what the hell was happening. That's pretty much what Verisign did to programs that interact with .COM and .NET domains. There are other ways of providing SiteFinder-like capability with causing worldwide disruption, and if Versign is unable to handle their assigned responsibility it should be given to someone who can.

What Verisign did rocks the foundation of trust that other nations have in America's ability to operate such globally important services. Verisign's upper management needs an attitude re-adjustment, or better yet complete replacement with more ethical businessmen.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[David M. Andersen]

You can use google, believe it or not. Search sidebar (Ctrl-E), Customize (Alt-Z or toolbar option on top of search sidebar), Autosearch Settings.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[IANAAC]

For that I have google, which will then happily keep track of everywhere I've visited.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[morcego]

Actually, and someone please correct it I'm wrong, I do remember Mosaic having bookmarks.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[MisanthropicProggram]

Yes! The thing I hate is when I misspell a URL and someone else's website comes up. Here I was waiting for the website I thought I typed and instead something loads. I like getting the "Not Found Page" because it's quick and I can just go retype the one I want in. And if I'm looking for something in particluar,I ususally go to Google first.

The only time I just type something in is if I want a pr0n site. They're usually the ones that have the domain names for legitimate stuff. Like www.whitehouse.com. I always forget the .gov. ;-)

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't remember the last time I got a "not found" response to a URL I misspelled, always seems comes up Pr0n.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[rgmoore]

I noticed all my domain checking scripts stopped returning NXDOMAINS, and had to be hacked real quick to look for the magic site finder ip, and then before that wonderful Bind patch, had to worry that they would change the magic ip thus breaking my scripts again.

Couldn't you determine their magic site-IP dynamically? It seems to me that you could just look up an invalid address and then compare the result to what you got when looking up your questionable one. Looking up example.com should work, for instance. Even if Verisign deliberately broke things by making a distinction between reserved names line example and other errors, you could pretty much guarantee that your chosen domain was invalid by using a string of 30 random alphanumeric characters. Not, of course, that this justifies stupidity like sitefinder.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[ScrewMaster]

No bluster. I think you just don't realize a. the scope of this issue and b. the potential for future mismanagement. The problem came in because Verisign tried to think for itself, but it doesn't have a license to think! Their job is to competently maintain a prescribed service, not to "innovate", and frankly they failed on both counts. You may consider this no big deal (if you were the admin of a major network you might feel differently, I suppose) but do you really want a bunch of marketing drones making decisions that affect the root servers? That's what happened here, whether you like SiteFinder or not. If they aren't put squarely in their place now, the next time they make some stupid little decision it may have worse impact. Verisign likes to make a big deal out of trust, but they don't understand that trust comes from predictability: the knowledge that a trusted entity will behave in a known way. I (and pretty much the rest of the planet) don't want these people to innovate ... just run the damn servers they way you contracted to run them. And I will tell you this: they are a lot less trusted now then they were before all this foolishness.

As a developer of Internet-aware applications, Verisign already caused me some grief. We had a problem with one of our customer's data acquisition systems failing because they misconfigured the name of a remote server and the software couldn't tell! Ordinarily the software would have simply rejected the bad domain as unknown, but it (and we) had no reason to suspect that a long-time network standard would be violated simply because Verisign's marketing department saw an opportunity. So don't tell me this was no big deal: our problem was repeated the whole world over. I lost the better part of a day over it, and I have better things to do.

If Verisign wants to offer SiteFinder as a service ... fine. Some people might even pay for it. But what they did was utterly irresponsible for a company in their position.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Maskull]

I mean, I like root beer. Therefore, I think that all fast food chains should make it the default, and not provide user choice... after all, I like it.

No, this would just mean that if you ask for a beverage (or entree) that they don't have, they give you root beer, and you can't return it.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[nolife]

You can change IE's default to Google with this

I mainly use Mozilla and I use the Google toolbar from here.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[ElliotLee]

It sends you to sites of VeriSign's choosing. Say they wanted companies to pay them for it. They could kill small companies and damage competition, which is very bad news for consumers and the economy.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[doon]

well example.com wouldn't work as it's registered to iana, but yes in hindsight now(and what I will do if verisign turns the blasted thing back on), I could just look up *.tld, and get the magic address and store it. The problem was. Right when this was going on we where in the process of taking over another ISP, so trying to figure out if which of their domains was still valid, on on the hosts in question, got a lot harder...

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the time when I mistype something it is quite obvious what I spelled wrong, and I just want the error message, rather than having to wait for Verisign's wizbang search engine to come up. Or Microsoft's MSN search like IE's defaulted to do.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Night Goat]

NICE troll!

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[fishbowl]

You said they rolled out sitefinder "without warning", but I disagree, and that has been my problem with this from the beginning.

There WAS advance notice. And what didn't happen then was quite surprising: ICANN should have come down hard on VS for even suggesting that they might do this. They waited, and now they look like reactionary cowards instead of proactive stewards. ICANN looks weaker than Verisign at the end of the day, and Verisign isn't really discouraged.

I think they should ALREADY have their contract pulled, there should ALREADY be a termination date delivered to them, and there should be no discussion. THAT would send a message that says "this is not something you fuck with, and this is damned sure not a fuckup you have the opportunity to make twice in your position because, guess what, you're out of business. Have a nice live. Goodbye."

I really don't understand why that hasn't happened, except that ICANN is too weak and has too many conflicts of interest to make that happen and be done with it and we can wash our hands of Netsol and Verisign once and for all.

I don't speak for my employer, but they feel that way as well, and would say so with fewer f-words...

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[fishbowl]

(I mean, I like root beer. Therefore, I think that all fast food chains should make it the default, and not provide user choice... after all, I like it.)

IF the STATE has given you the sole authority to distribute beverages to all fast food chains, THEN you have an analogy...

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Anonymous Coward]

oh chill out.

you guys are so reactionary. i'm a web programmer as well (in c, not html) and although this affects everyone it's not the end of the world. It might be bad, agreed, but the slashdot reaction that this is the beginning of the end, which id ALWAYS the reaction, is just stupid. Give it up.

Note: I don't like this either. I think it interferes with effective and good end-to-end standards, I just think the /. reaction is reactionary, unthinking, and stupid.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. I find it amusing that you would even consider markup "programming" much less qualify it with "c" one of the more dubious choices for "web programming"

But aside from that.
Reactionary? Yes. Reacting against a stupid idea.
Unthinking? No. The comment you responded to was well thought out and gave an example of the trouble this causes.
Stupid? Not really. Fixing code for no other reason than verisign decided to break part of DNS and with the understanding it may break again in the future if they use another IP, is stupid.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[owendelong]

With all due respect, this could be very problematic if Verisign is allowed to continue it.
Not only because of all the technical implications, but, more importantly because it sets
the precedent that the .com and .net domains essentially belong to Verisign to do whatever
they choose with. If ICANN cannot stop this, then ICANN truly has no power to manage
it's resources in the public interest. If ICANN cannot do that, there is noone elase with
the public mandate to do so. This could be very bad going forward.

Given how hard Verisign is working on the PR engine against this, we should make it
as clear as possible that this is a significant operational issue with significant impact
to the community. We should stand united that this is a bad thing first and foremost,
and worry about the infighting about how bad later.

Owen

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[owendelong]

Sorry... Maybe the only application you use on the intenet is Web Browsing, and, so you
aren't effected by the things they broke. Lucky you.

However, for those of us that use other applications (email, ssh, IPSEC, etc.), which are suffering
incorrect error messages at best, and, significant malfunctions at worst as a result of this
action by Verisign, it's not a good thing. If you get a 404 page, you're welcome to go to
sitefinder yourself. You're welcome to go to google or any other search engine.

This isn't knee-jerk reactionism, it's response to painful stimuli. Additionally, Verisign made
this change without public review, without public comment, without public notice, and, without
approval from any of the governing bodies (IETF, IAB, ICANN) or the operational communities.
Further, when the governing body that owns their contract (ICANN) asked them nicely, they
refused to fix it. They had to resort to threatening legal action.

I hope this will help you understand the issue a little better and realize that most of the people
making the most vocal reaction are responding to real pain in trying to keep their networks
running. Most of us don't have time to be chicken little.

Owen

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Anonymous Coward]

or better yet complete replacement with more ethical businessmen.

"ethical businessmen" Huh?

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[ScrewMaster]

Well, so far I (and my company) was concerned there was little notice. Things just stopped working properly, that was our "advance notice." The fact that they might have told ICANN something is immaterial if that's where the information sat until the rest of the world figured it out.

But I agree ... making excuses for Verisign is dangerous. There are a LOT of companies that would love to opportunity to take this over, and I think perhaps it's time to give one of them a try. I know ... the devil you know versus the devil you don't, but Verisign is making me nervous.

ICANN is worse than useless, and we should do a clean sweep of both.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I don't see any sort of "Google" in that list.
MSN Search, AltaVista, AOL Search, Bigfoot, Euroseek, Excite, InfoSpace, Lycos, Switchboard, Yahoo, Look Smart, Overture...

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[digitaleus]

If Verisign got away with this, they would consider their "innovation" experiment a success.

Successful experiments lead to repitition.

Eventually, DNS would become about as useful for name resolution as MS Passport is for security.

Verisign has a great deal of power, and if they try to start "leveraging that asset", the web will be at their mercy.

Slashdot is a reactionary minority, yes, but a reactionary minority is needed to let the people with power know what could happen. It's a vital part of any healthy debate.

As for unthinking, there are always going to be some idiot posts in an open discussion board, but

• the signal to noise ratio is pretty good
• there have been many interesting points raised on the issue.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[FuzzyDaddy]

This can be acheived quite easily in the browser, without upsetting the other functionality. IE does just that - when you mistype a domain name, it returns to a MSN search page.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[geoffspear]

ICANN is not the STATE.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[F_SMASH]

I agree that the feature is useful sometimes. However, this feature should not be implemented at the TLD controller level, rather it should be at the application level (a.k.a. your browser software: IE, Moz, Opera, other?) I do not forsee any other 'fair' way of providing such a service. 'nuff said.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[mwood]

Two thoughts:

1) There's nothing wrong with SiteFinder. What was wrong was unilaterally changing the meaning of all DNS queries regardless of purpose, in order to force us all to go there whenever we fat-finger a URL, breaking the other 65534 Internet protocols in the process.

2) Oh, boy, let's also stop requiring manufacturers to make screws with standardized threads-per-inch and pipes in standard sizes. We've been crushing innovation. Let gas stations sell 30-octane fuel if they like -- shoot, don't even require it to be gasoline. Throw out those anti-business laws that forbid the "extension" of flour with sawdust. Eliminate the unnecessary burden that shoes must be manufactured in some specific size. Who cares if nothing fits or works, so long as we have Shiny New Products introduced every 28 nanoseconds?

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[fishbowl]

They still behave like they have the government contract a la IANA. They have a monopoly on the product. I think if you tried to compete with them you'd run into some serious opposition from the government. They are the closest thing the Internet has to a federal regulatory agency, and they have worse processes and less protection to the consumer. For all intents and purposes, they are the state.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Grizzlysmit]

Their job is to competently maintain a prescribed service

Yep and if the Us Government was even vaguely serious about protecting the internet as vital infrastructure, then McLaughlin and cronies would already be behind bars awaiting trial, this whole thing is the most unbelievable breach of trust, and threatens to undermine the infrastructure of the internet in ways that know terorist could even dream of doing.

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yeah,

That'd be great if the Internet were nothing but discreet individuals, manually driving browsers over port 80.

But there is email, FTP, voip, etc...

All have functionality based on having nxdomain returned.

Plus VS is using this to collect data on browsers.

I read the article. One word to describe Mark McLaughlin: "ASSHOLE".

Re:I kind of like SiteFinder

[ScrewMaster]

Interesting point, Grizzly. The destructive economic potential of the root servers is, well ... damn near thermonuclear. In many respects, the world's major economies have placed an awful lot of eggs in those thirteen electronic baskets.

So, naturally, we put a bunch of marketing guys with the ethics of used-car salesmen in charge of it (my apologies to any used-car salesmen in the audience.) I would love to have been a fly on the wall when some marketroid at Verisign first brought up the idea of hosing NXDOMAIN. The expressions of disbelief on the faces of their engineering staff would have been comical, I imagine.

Utter Crap

[l810c]

He makes this sound like the entire future of the Internet hangs in balance on this decision. Like routing all typos to Verisign is some critically important new technology.

If someone types in a bad domain name, they should get a message that states just that. I don't know if there are any statistics on this, but for me 9 times out of 10 it is a typo. If not, then you can go to the search engine of Your Choice and search for the name.

The decisions made over the next months and years will determine the future growth and vitality of the Internet
Should Read
The decisions made over the next months and years will determine the future growth and vitality of the Verisign.

Re:Utter Crap

[antimith]

Indeed, all unused names Must belong to verisign!

Now, If you do not imediately grant me commercial control of all unused channel numbers on cable, all ungranted patents and all unused snazzy product names, the world will explode.

Re:Utter Crap

[inode_buddha]

tinfoil hat time for me: maybe they have a *use* for collecting all those typos? Just an idea...

Re:Utter Crap

[monkeydo]

He also makes it sound like users didn't know how to use search engines to find websites before sitefinder.

Instead of getting an error page, its users get an option to search the Internet, try a similar name or search popular categories.

Re:Utter Crap

[Chmarr]

Even before sitefinder, Verisign were well able to collect typos by modifying the DNS server to record any query on domains that don't exist. If something got hit a lot, they could just 'squat the domain' themselves, and since they're a registrar, they don't have to pay any money to do so.

This is why I feel that registrars need to pay a small stipend for every domain they themselves host, perhaps to the IETF or some other body. THis way, they're not encouraged to give themselves free domains, and it can pay for a bit of network infrastructure for the common good.

Re:Utter Crap

[MrLint]

if !known_domain
then redirectositefinder;

Oh my god i just stole verisigns innovation!

Re:Utter Crap

[Trepalium]

ICANN's contract with Verisign said they could only hold 5,000 domains themselves. It's a lot, but perhaps not unreasonable. This modification by Verisign effectively gave them a very large number of domains (limited only by the maximum allowable size for a DNS query). Although, honestly, I was amazed at Verisigns self restraint on not putting a "Buy this domain" link on every sitefinder page. Guess they decided they couldn't get away with that... Not yet, at least.

Re:Utter Crap

[CAIMLAS]

I think I can sense a new Mozilla browser feature approaching. Optional, of course.

Re:Utter Crap

[ErikTheRed]

It's from the Microsoft "Freedom to Innovate" school of "innovation" (not sure how much more "innovation" the Internet can handle)...

Re:Utter Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember that it's implemented in the dns server, so:

$ORIGIN com.
* CNAME sitefinder.verisign.com

Re:Utter Crap

[glennypoo]

verisign sucks the big one. I hate getting re-directed to that POS when I look for twink sites that are closed.

Re:Utter Crap

[0x0d0a]

The proper way to implement this would be more along the lines of:


hostent_p = gethostbyname(addr);

if (!hostent_p) {
if (h_errno == HOST_NOT_FOUND) {
return USER_DEFINED_REDIRECT;
} else { /* TODO: error-handling code */ }
} else
return hostent_p->h_addr;


This code should only ever appear in a web browser (actually, it should only appear in a fork()-using web browser... :-) )

Re:Utter Crap

[nopatent]

They really have "Imagination" :

- not respect the signed contract with ICANN
- break the DNS standards. Even if a standard need to be break if it is to old, in this case the benefit only go to one company (for a public standard).

That a wonderfull imagination, but it seems the value "respect of others" it isn't included inside.

Re:Utter Crap

[pAnkRat]

The main misconception, totaly overseen (on purpose or not) by Verisign is that they asume that DNS query are only used for browsing the internet.

Altough this 'feature' may sound like an nifty thing to have for, say, my mom or dad, who are Internet Illiterates, it is not usefull for anything else. For a mistyped domain M$ IE pops up a page with the same 'functionality' Verisign offers, but because M$ implemenents it at the Browserlevel it is OK with me. If you don't want it you can use another browser, heck you can even find the HTML page on your harddrive and change it back to whatever content you want to.

Thus verisign reduces the use of the Internet to browsing the web. But as far as I known, the net is mostly used for things like emial, FTP, P2P,...

Having queries for mistypes domaines return valid info severly breaks the email-system, and patching a workaround to this 'feature' leads to crufty code in the mail server.

All in all the whole idea is not only dumb but very short sighted.

--
The Internet is a medium, being neither rare nor well done.

Re:Utter Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

The writer does have a point. Internet and UNIX standards do have a way of not accepting any changes anymore, instead use the 'that's how it works, how it's supposed to work and nothing can be changed'.

For instance he SMTP protocol was designed for use in a network of reliable sites, university and company mailservers. Now that any dialup/dsl user has his own IP, the environment has changed to untrusted. But a better mail protocol than 'simple mail transfer protocol' will probably never happen. It's how it's designed to work, and it works ok, that's what everyone says. Never mind those 100 totally anonymous emails everyone gets daily, promising bigger rods and offering fake viagra online. The technology is everything, the actual useability means nothing.

A network like IRC has been badly designed from the start, with users trying to flood others off, or even the servers itself, because the system rewards abuse with the channel op status.

If this continues, eventually the whole Internet and all its protocols will reach a state of uselessness.

Re:Utter Crap

[El_Ge_Ex]

From Article:For this vocal minority, resentment lingers at the very fact that the Internet is used for commercial purpose, which ignores the fact that it's a critical part of our economy.

No, everyone is resentfull because you've taken a stance with you contact that would make even Microsoft blush! (If that is in fact possible). Hey Verisign! You have nothing more than a contract and a big f****n database! Quit pretending you own the whole F****n Internet!!!

-B

Re:Utter Crap

[sketerpot]

Worse, he said that if they don't do things like this, it will hurt the long-term stability of the internet. What's he smoking?

what is it with these monopolies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello Verisign and Microsoft! Believe it or not SOME OF US DON'T WANT WHAT YOU OFFER!!! HELLO!!!

yes I know using so many caps is like yelling. sheesh.

Re:what is it with these monopolies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then don't misspell URLs. How hard is that?

Re:what is it with these monopolies?

[ScrewMaster]

yes I know using so many caps is like yelling. sheesh.

S'okay ... it's what the rest of us feeling like doing anyway.

His rational

[dattaway]

appears to be the same defense used by spammers.

Re:His rational

[Marc2k]

"rationale"

Let someone else innovate

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

Let someone else "innovate"; someone not trusted to serve the .com/.net root zones without biased interest in the outcome of how it works.

Re:Let someone else innovate

[Ohreally_factor]

Or better, let Verisign innovate, but without the terrible encumbrance of having to administrate the .com/.net TLDs. Give that responsibility to another organization that can handle it.

Re:Let someone else innovate

[Meshach]

I agree. This isn't innovation - it is stupid.

These comments are already full of analogies of how silly his point. When you act as a register or a controller over some major infastructure you have a responsibility to manage it in a fair and impartial way. If you don't no one will go to you for your services. Then you can no longer do business...

Re:Let someone else innovate

[Xerithane]

Let someone else "innovate"; someone not trusted to serve the .com/.net root zones without biased interest in the outcome of how it works.

Very true. If he wanted to be unbiased, they would have redirected to an actual search engine.

Re:Let someone else innovate

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, search engines are every bit as biased. While Google is pretty good, there's even reasons to not redirect there. It's just not a good idea because there is no unbiased search engine, either.

Re:Let someone else innovate

[Anonymous Coward]

I say we out source it to Chinese prison labor camps and vietnam. Who's with me!?

Re:Let someone else innovate

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure funny sort of innovation , when spell checkers have been doing bayesian analysis and 'like' lookups for the past 20 years. Not original at all. Google even prompts 'do you really mean'. and pops up paid sites

That V has some extra details to make matching better, changes nothing. Its a grubby real estate grab, beyond their original charter. What part of the RFC do they not understand?. If the site does not exist, that is an error message.

Re:Let someone else innovate

[pohzer]

He states "While similar services have been tested and offered before, VeriSign's Site Finder has triggered debate because it hasn't been tried for .com and .net domain names." Wrong. It triggered debate because it was a clear abuse of authority, and a unilateral change in practice possible only through exploit of the trust granted.

Re:Let someone else innovate

[drinkypoo]

It seems to me that this is actually a job for the government, as sad as that sounds.

Innovation?

[Texas Rose on Lava L]

Spammers do a lot of creative things to get their messages through. So, would it be "stifling innovation" to make spam illegal?

There's a difference between actual innovation that benefits society vs. people just finding a way to take advantage of the system.

Re:Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn straight, people trying to benefit society don't spend money buying off politicians --- which is, as we know, the 'murican way. Verisign screwed the pooch by not patenting the idea first!

Re:Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Verisign screwed the pooch

No, actually, it was CmdrTaco that fucked your dog.

Re:Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, that IS in fact what they claim too! I recall hearing that spammers think anti-spam laws are a violation of the constitution. Somehow, they just seem to think that their harassment is free spech and constitutionally protected. I suppose free speech includes sharing with me wonderful ideas like "MIRACLE PENIS GROWTH!!! INCREASE YOUR MALE MEMBER 20,000 TIMES!!!" and getting the point across by emailing it to me 100 times from false emails like "deadsexy@sexy4u.com"...

Re:Innovation?

[Texas Rose on Lava L]

I wonder what those same spammers think of our "free speech right" to post their home phone number on /. and mod it up to +5 Informative.

Re:Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't find Mark's number, but he's dead, so there's probably no point in calling him.

Fatally wounded, Mark McLaughlin lost control of the bus. It lurched through afternoon traffic and burst through a guardrail, plunging 40 feet.

Re:Innovation?

[vacuum_tuber]

dtfinch wrote:

Internet Explorer has had that feature for years, as well as many other browsers. What they tried to do is knock all other site finders out of service, regardless of user preference.

Right, in a very crude sense. But once again, this time with feeling:

• Internet Explorer is an application
• DNS is a system of protocol, servers, and clients -- the infrastructure for translating between host names and IP addresses for the Internet. DNS knows nothing about Internet Explorer.
• Internet Explorer is only one of many, many applications and lower-level processes that make use of DNS. Many of those applications and processes have nothing to do with the Web and many have no direct user interface. They depend on accurate replies from the DNS subsystem to queries about host and domain names.
• VeriSlime broke DNS in the .COM and .NET domains for all applications and processes other than Web browsers.
• When a browser such as MS Internet Explorer interprets a DNS no-find reply to kick off its own redirect to an MS search site, that has no effect on anything outside the PC where it happens
• When VeriSlime returned false IP address information for all nonexistent hosts or domains, they caused numerous things other than Web browsers to break -- things you may not normally see but without which you might become quite unhappy.

Think of it like an oil company suddenly changing to a new gasoline additive without consulting anyone, not even the engine manufacturers. It has only a minor effect on consumers, who put low mileage on their cars, but immediately causes engine failure in taxicabs, police cars, delivery vehicles, ambulances, and a whole host of vehicles that you, the dimwitted consumer, don't think about much, if at all. So things start to break all around you while you say, "Hey! What's the big deal?"

He is right! It is clearly innovation...

[Osrin]

... in the form that we have recently come to know it.

hmmmm

[the_other_one]

This sort of innovation followed by the "This will stifle innovation defense." must surely infringe on a Microsoft business process patent

I smell another lawsuit on the horizon.

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please have just one discussion where someone doesn't drag Microsoft into the fray when it has NOTHING to do with them?

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

No!

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

If Microsoft didn't fucking blow, people wouldn't pick on them. I'm so sorry you feel the need to defend the scum.

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO was already mentioned in the article. You know it was only a matter of time.

Re:hmmmm

[Guppy06]

Now now, dragging Microsoft into this is just a teensy bit extraneous, isn't it?

After all, I'm sure that the "One-Click C&D" is covered by an Amazon patent, not Microsoft. :)

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Extraneous? Near as I can tell, on slashdot, it's obligitory.

Re:hmmmm

[antibryce]

I smell another lawsuit on the horizon.

Smelling a lawsuit from a distance must surely infringe on a SCO business process patent. I smell a...er wait...nevermind.

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you smell the lawsuit comming from me
for the cost of the keyboard filled with
a mouthfull of beer that I just replaced.
Don't panic too much. Cicero makes a damn
good keyboard for $10 CDN.

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of innovation followed by the "This will stifle innovation defense." must surely infringe on a Microsoft business process patent

And a very innovative business process it is...

But seriously... This isn't innovation. Most of the internet's users already got something similar to SiteFinder, only it went to a Microsoft search engine instead of VeriSign's. So really, the 'innovation' here was verisign realizing they could abuse their monopoly to take over Microsoft's typo squatting.

Microsoft's typo squatting was pretty lame, but since it only affected users of their software nobody really cared too much.

VeriSign's typo squatting effects everyone, and bypasses Microsoft's. And it makes it impossible to use DNS to determine if a domain is valid. (No, treating the sitefinder IP as an invalid domain doesn't work - evildomain.com could decide to resolve to the sitefinder ip while x.y.z.evildomain.com doesn't; there are all kinds of other reasons that hack workarounds for sitefinder wouldn't work).

Basically, VeriSign broke the internet. I'd like to see some large open-friendly companies start a new .com/.net root server, initially mirroring verisign's, and a massive 'civil disobedience' campaign in which ISPs can take a stand against verisign by not using them anymore.

Innovative wildcards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is * in bind so special? Here are some more 'innovative' wildcards: rm -rf /* (innovative on sco's lawyers machines... won't take much time at all to complete...) cat * > /dev/null (Zero loss compression of verisign's arguments...) and the best yet... cat * > /dev/sda (or /dev/hda) (Method of preserving the data, but making it useless - similar to press releases by verisign)

Re:Innovative wildcards?

[robochan]

I'd like to "innovate" the highway system so that everytime McLaughlin takes a wrong turn or misses an offramp, he ends up at my house and mows my lawn.

Re:Innovative wildcards?

[Alan Hicks]

rm -rf /*

Dock yourself one sys-admin point for unneccessary use of a wildcard.

Re:Innovative wildcards?

[ComputerSlicer23]

Dock yourself one point for thinking that rm -rf /* is the same as rm -rf / in all shells. /* will not remove any dot files from the root directory. I'm not sure I know of a shell where rm -rf /* will do the same thing in the presense of a dot file, but goodness knows that some ancient version of korn shell might have done it.

Depending on the shell globing in use "rm -rf /*" and "rm -rf /" will remove two different sets of files. If you want to remove everthing the current directory, the correct way to do that I believe is:

rm -rf .

Not

rm -rf *

I know this to be the case in the one true shell, bash using GNU's rm.

That being said, it would be much faster on a filesystem with a reasonable large number of files (think ~1000 or more depending on the filesystem) to just reformat the filesystem then to delete every file individually.

Giving myself one point for being incredibly pedantic to someone who was already being pedantic. :-)

Kirby

Re:Innovative wildcards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give yourself a DILDO point, you fucking DILDO.

Re:Innovative wildcards?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL ...... +1 geek points just for knowing all that :P

Re:Innovative wildcards?

[John Allsup]

It's true in general. * will not expand hidden files (e.g. .emacs), so rm -rf * will remove all files and directories that are not hidden, whereas rm -rf . will remove everything.

Re:Innovative wildcards?

[r00zky]

rm -rf /* (innovative on sco's lawyers machines... won't take much time at all to complete...)
BS, we all know SCO's lawyers machines use Windows.

lets think of it neutrally

[Anonymous Coward]

If we think of the SiteFinder plan neutrally, granted, Verisign is offending most internet users and probably scerwing up the internet. But we should also think in terms of the average internet user - which is Joe Click-a-mouse. The internet is not all about linux, unix, code etc. It is also about usability. And if we think in this fashion it appears plausible that, *i might be wrong*, sitefinder might help people find the site they want?

tell me, how else would they find what they want if they dont have a complete URL? Suppose you had a wrong URL or did not remember the right URL? How would you find out the right one? Its impossible without sitefinder.

Re:lets think of it neutrally

[gdarklighter]

It's called Google.

Re:lets think of it neutrally

[rewster]

If we think of the SiteFinder plan neutrally, granted, Verisign is offending most internet users and probably scerwing up the internet. But we should also think in terms of the average internet user - which is Joe Click-a-mouse.

These two things are probably more closely related than you think, in that when things go technically wrong, the people who get the most upset are the "Joe Click-a-mouse"s, who only know that they're getting more of those viagra e-mails now than they used to without any real idea why.

The internet is not all about linux, unix, code etc. It is also about usability. And if we think in this fashion it appears plausible that, *i might be wrong*, sitefinder might help people find the site they want?

tell me, how else would they find what they want if they dont have a complete URL? Suppose you had a wrong URL or did not remember the right URL? How would you find out the right one? Its impossible without sitefinder.

As others have pointed out, there are plenty of good search engines out there. Users have a great deal of choice in that area, they can pick Google, Altavista, Yahoo, Hotbot, Dogpile, etc. In the case of Verisign, however, they get what Verisign tells them they want, because Verisign is the one with the root servers. Not cool.

And again, a lot of the problems that people had with site-finder is the side-effects, such as the breaking of several spam-filtering tools, which trickles down to your buddy Joe, and the only difference between him and us is that we know why.

Re:lets think of it neutrally

[rockhome]

The internet is not all about linux, unix, code etc. It is also about usability.....tell me, how else would they find what they want if they dont have a complete URL? Suppose you had a wrong URL or did not remember the right URL? How would you find out the right one? Its impossible without sitefinder.

What about the phone? I am sure that millions of people everyday dial a wrong number and have to do something about it. Most of us understand how to find phone numbers when we need them, yet we don't work for the phone company (NOTE: Author actually has worked for a Telco).

It is not impossible to find a site if you mistype it. I do that all the time, I just resort to typing a search term into my browser's search box and look for what I need.

If people have an implicit understanding of what to do and where to go for information, SiteFinder is redundant and useless. This is an issue of raising the technological savvy of a people at large, not obfuscating what is happening.

Re:lets think of it neutrally

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. People aren't morons. Most people know they can just look for some words on their favorite search engine, if they can't go to WhateverTheyWereTryingToGetTo.com

VeriSign could just pay a lot of money to get the word out, "Hey, next time you get a Host Not Found error, go to sitefinder.verisign.com and look for it. Or we'll break your legs." It's not that hard, you don't have to mess with the entire internet, you know?

Speaking of this, either they fixed something (correct me if I'm wrong), or my ISP did. I get the old "Sitefinderrrrrrssssssuxxxx.com cannot be found" error. Ahh, nostalgia.

In other news

[El]

... street beggars have announced that the "innovation" of pointing loaded guns at the people they are asking for money greatly increases their profits. "Well, we the panhandling industry can't just remain static. They should be thanking us for innovating new sources of revenue" said one street bum as he was being arrested...

Re:In other news

[cgranade]

Why not? After all, Bush "innovated" with his electioneering techniques, and SCO "innovated" with their sue-your-own-customers-till-you-piss-'em-off-so-ba d-they'll-never-buy-from-you-again business model... not to mention RIAA's "innovation" with cutting back on individual rights, and MS's anti-capitalist "innovation."

Re:In other news

[jcr]

After all, Bush "innovated" with his electioneering techniques

You know, I've seen a lot of people bitching about Bush winning an election which was, for all practical purposes, a tie, but I don't hear any of you offering to rescind the Kennedy administration.

-jcr

Re:In other news

[fredistheking]

How many of us are old enough to remember the Kennedy administration?

--

Re:In other news

[slackergod]

difference is... even if Bush honestly won,
without falsifying election results,
then he _still_ only won by a small margin.
Instead of acting like a candidate who'd squeaked
by on the barest of margins, he acts like
his views are supported by all Americans,
and does whatever-the-fuck he wants to.
As a president elected with 50% of the populace
behind him, he was not elected to serve only
those 50%, but all 100%... to not even pay
lip service to the other half is insulting
not just to them, but to the process itself.

Re:In other news

[Sanction]

With the pathetic US voter turnout, it is worse than that. Bush only has the support of 24.48% of voters (who actively voted in the election, not registered), and only 17.94% of the US population. Not exactly what I would call a "mandate" in the current political jargon.

Re:In other news

[Anthony Boyd]

El, I have taken your concept and RUN with it. Below is a first-draft parody of the entire editorial. I think some parts are inspired, but other parts could use some help. It doesn't make Verisign's claims look as crazy as they are, yet. Anybody want to take a shot at rewriting my rewrite? I figure we can throw it up on a Web site with a similar look to it, and let the parody stand as a good rebuttal. Here it is.

Hobocorp's decision to launch a new Bum Gun service that gives panhandlers tools and options when they harass people for money has spurred a debate about the future of a safe society. It is a debate worth having, because at the heart of it is whether innovation in a safe society will be encouraged or whether the status quo is good enough. More than 20 million times a day, innocent citizens receive a barrage of requests for cash when they walk or drive by street beggars (such as stopping at a light and having the windshield washed whether requested or not). Those requests for cash can lead to a dead end, with no money given to the beggar in compensation for his efforts.

That's what Bum Gun is about. Instead of begging for cash, its users get an option to intimidate the citizenry, try a holdup or simply assualt the victim. Thus far, people have used these guns more than 40 million times to get the money they want to have.

While similar services have been tested and offered before, Hobocorp's Bum Gun has triggered debate because it hasn't been tried for non-mafia and non-gang related groups. Seemingly ignoring that fact, the police cast a vote last week for the status quo by forcing Hobocorp to shut down the service. We reluctantly agreed and are exploring our options.

The police appear to have bought into claims that our society's safety has broken or will break. Anyone who has lived through it in the last three weeks knows that claim to be false. More likely, the police caved under the pressure from some in the community for whom this is a 2nd-amendment-religion issue about whether guns should be used for these purposes.

For this vocal minority, resentment lingers at the very fact that guns are used for extortion, which ignores the fact that it's a critical part of our economy.

We respectfully disagree with those who, in the name of anti-gun rhetoric, strive to hold society back. Society as we know it today was built by expanding beyond its origins. When clans -- the first known humans to group together -- became prevalent thousands of years ago, its purpose was to provide strength in numbers.

Over the next few millenia, every stage of what we now know as human society caused fierce debate and controversy. By not being afraid to test and try new things, a set of laws and rights was created that now serves as the foundation for commerce and communications.

While the current debate is not the first over the future of society, it is critically important because it could well determine its future development. Our society has been used for many innovative purposes over the last century -- look at what the USA and the European Union have been able to accomplish -- but the reality is society itself, the infrastructure that serves as the foundation, has not significantly benefited from innovation.

This is a significant test for the entire planet because if the world can't find a way to introduce new services while reaching a resolution on legal matters that might arise, then society's infrastructure will never improve. It's tantamount to saying that the world is flat and therefore there is no need for further exploration.

If that is the case, it doesn't bode well for Earth. If beggars and con men are discouraged from exploring the bounds of the law, it will mean less research and development and less investment into firearms and assault weapons. In short, a weaker society.

That should concern the panhandling community, NRA members, thieves and white-collar criminals alike. Less investment means a less-stable gun-lobby long-term, with de

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

It was rescinded, by Oswald/CIA/Mafia/etc.

Re:In other news

[jcr]

he _still_ only won by a small margin.

Umm, so what? Did that ever inhibit any other office holder from throwing his weight around?

he acts like
his views are supported by all Americans,
and does whatever-the-fuck he wants to.

Hmm.. Sounds like Clinton's socialized medicine plan.

-jcr

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, Clinon's "socialized medicine plan" was supported by a good majority of the populace, until the medical industry lobby decided to bankroll a multimillion dollar ad campaign against it. Maybe you and the corporate bigwigs don't give a fuck about fellow humans who need medical attention, but most of the civilized world would disagree.

Re:In other news

[jcr]

I must be heartless if I don't want to go along with Hillary's plan to scuttle the best health care system in the world, and replace it with multi-year waiting lists?

Oh, cry me a river.

-jcr

Re:In other news

[alister]

I must be heartless if I don't want to go along with Hillary's plan to scuttle the best health care system in the world, and replace it with multi-year waiting lists?

Heartless? Undoubtedly. But also thick. Your health care system is one of the most inefficient in the industrialised world, and it still doesn't cover a large chunk of your population. High costs for drugs, corrupt marketing techniques, and stifling of medical research are characteristics of the US health care system. In comparison, universal health care systems such as Australia's cost less overall and deliver better health care to more people. Anyone who thinks the US health care system is good (let alone the best in the world) really needs to make a slight effort to find out how other countries do things.

Re:In other news

[Trepalium]

Yet, your government pays more per capita for health care for its citizens than anywhere else, and a large number of its citizens are not covered by any health care plan, government subsidized or otherwise. Peculiar, isn't it? I know the health care industry used the Canadian system's fault to poison the public's attitude, but if you ask just about any Canadian, our health care plan is pretty good. A serious illness won't ruin you financially, here.

Re:In other news

[Nightpaw]

You're heartless if you even have to ask. In your haughty self-righteousness you forget the less fortunate who currently face infinite-year waiting lists. And don't worry, people with money are always free to pay more for better and faster service.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

You should cut down on the negatives (it is a press release) try stuff like:

"an impressed finacial transaction (ift)" for "holdup"
"physical expression" for "assault
"keep money in circulation" to replace "to get the money they want to have.

remember you can't patent the wheel but you can patent a "circular mobility aide"

Re:In other news

[jcr]

Heartless? Undoubtedly. But also thick.

Coming from one who insists on ignoring the failures of socialized medicine, I'm hardly stinging from your rebuke.

Well, my socialist friend, as it happens I have some direct personal experience with the factors affecting the costs of health care in these United States, and I can tell you that socialized medicine is an example of the problem masquerading as the solution.

Several years ago, I worked on the development of a karyotyping system, which could have sold for around $25K. The costs of complying with the FDA regs drove the costs to the point where we couldn't realistically consider selling the product for less than a quarter of a million dollars.

-jcr

Re:In other news

[jcr]

people with money are always free to pay more for better and faster service. ..only until the sociallists get their way and manage to ban private health care for all citizens, not just those over 65.

-jcr

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask about paying 50% in taxes and how they like it!

Keep your socialist ideas up north.

Re:In other news

[Arker]

Having lived for years below the poverty level in the US, and now living in a prosperous European country with universal health care, and having been a 'consumer' of medical care in both, I can tell you in no uncertain terms that you are full of shit.

The very lowest rung of US health care, the kind you go to if you have no insurance and no money, are clearly superiour in every way to what everyone is stuck with here.

Re:In other news

[matastas]

Then again, ask your average Canadian or Swede how effective their healthcare system is. While you're at it, ask the Swedes what it's like to pay 70% of their check in taxes.

The US healthcare system is one of the highest quality in the world, but perhaps not the most efficient. Case in point: I don't see people running off to Australia when they need bleeding-edge medical knowledge. The answer is most certainly not universal healthcare: that would break the US economy like an autumn twig, and create a monosterous bureacracy. I don't have the answer (a mixture of tort reform and bitch-slapping the HMOs might work), but UHC ain't it.

Bottom line: before you talk to me about UHC, learn to balance a checkbook: you'll notice things like 'negative balance' and 'massive debt' tend to fuck up your financies. The liberal notion of UHC often ignores the financial and administrative burden that's attached to it.

Re:In other news

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yes, please do ask any Canadian or Swede how good their health care system is. What you'll probably hear is, "It's pretty damn good." Study the facts, not the propaganda.

Re:In other news

[drinkypoo]

And the FDA is *dun dun dun* part of the health care system! As a regulatory body involved with the certification of drugs and equipment, I'd say that definitely makes them a part. A regulating part. An inefficient, bought-and-sold part. Kind of like the USPTO.

Re:In other news

[drinkypoo]

I don't know jack about medical care anywhere else but I agree that medical care for the poor in the US is fantastic. Actually, it's better than most people's insurance. I'm on Medi-CAL right now, which is simply how California chooses to spend those funds, and I have no problem getting emergency medical care with no co-pay. My local clinic charges a dollar co-pay, which is quite reasonable. You can find that in the parking lot outside your local store, if you look around :P And I have no co-pay for drugs, though some of them are unavailable or at least hard to get under medi-cal. Can't bitch about that, it's free money.

My girlfriend has had her gall bladder removed under medi-cal. Without it, we would be in endless debt. As a couple of students trying to make it, starting with not very bloody much, we are highly appreciative of America's health care system.

On the other hand, the health care system is terribly unfair to people who have actual jobs and have to pay for health care, but I think that this is mainly a side effect of living in a litigious society. Surgery is risky, and they inform you of the risks before you go in, but if you should die or come to harm even though no negligence can be shown, you can still successfully sue for buckets of money. That drives costs up, and the money has to come from somewhere. I just heard from a high school teacher (who, like me, is in the local community college's auto body and paint program) whose pay went up $100/mo but whose insurance costs went up $130/mo. Now that's progress! Today's the California gubernatorial election though. I have to find time in between my weight training class, spraying paint on my grandfather's truck's hood, and attending my student intern IT job (which I start tomorrow) to go "join arnold" :P

Re:In other news

[IthnkImParanoid]

Yes, our health care system may not cover the poor, or provide preventative and pre-natal services to most people, but when we need a quintuple bypass after 30 years of eating our daily big mac and otherwise treating our bodies like shit, our health care system shines.

We have exactly the health care system we deserve.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont think you know enough Canadians. Our system is indeed good for some things, but the costs go up every year (to the point now where it may not be sustainable in the future) and there are large large problems.

Re:In other news

[jcr]

And the FDA is *dun dun dun* part of the health care system!

Close, but no cigar. The FDA is the health care *prevention* system.

-jcr

Re:In other news

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I dont think you know enough Canadians. Our system is indeed good for some things, but the costs go up every year (to the point now where it may not be sustainable in the future) and there are large large problems.

Fair enough; but subsitute "Americans" for "Canadians" and "isn't working right now" for "may not be sustainable in the near future" in your post, and it's still true.

I've said this before, but it's worth reiterating: I've worked in Federal government health care, city government health care, and private health care -- and in my experience, the standard of care is roughly comparable across the three, but efficiency and accessibility go down in the order I listed them.

Re:In other news

[drinkypoo]

I wouldn't say they're all bad. They no doubt prevent some genuinely harmful products from making it onto the marketplace and into the bodies of millions of Americans. Of course, they also prevent a lot of companies from marketing useful items, and their reasons are not at all transparent. It would be interesting to know who is pulling their strings hardest.

Re:In other news

[alister]

Coming from one who insists on ignoring the failures of socialized medicine, I'm hardly stinging from your rebuke.

Well, that's the "thick" point proven. Yay me.

You neglect to note my point that universal health care both costs less and delivers better health care to more people. There's really not much more to say - the US health care system clearly is not the best in the world. It doesn't even come close.

Re:In other news

[alister]

The liberal notion of UHC often ignores the financial and administrative burden that's attached to it.

The administration of our public health system is far cheaper than our private system. From memory, administration costs in the public system are half that of the private system. It takes little effort to see why this must inevitably be the case.

Of course it was innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

It was obviously innovation. Nobody had ever done it before, yes. (Sure there were wildcards in other TLDs, but they weren't trying to provide the service SiteFinder was.)

The thing is, not all innovation is good. In this case, VeriSign innovated, and most people didn't want their innovation.

If they like, they could provide the *exact* same innovation by distributing a fully opt-in browser add-on.

Re:Of course it was innovation

[oolon]

And the place for it IS in the browser not the DNS, makes me with MSIE had a search on badly typed domain name feature, that way MS would have bitch slapped Verisign.

James

Re:Of course it was innovation

[michaelhood]

Uh, they used to. IE4. It went to MSN's own little sitefinder.

Re:Of course it was innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is it in a nutshell. The functionality, per se, I don't really have a problem with, but the provider of the functionality I do. A fully opt-in browser add-on could do the same function and for the most part I would agree this is a good idea. The amount of times i have received a call from relatives " The internet is not working!" after they have mispelleed a URL (ok, so it's only acouple of times but you get the idea)would encourage me to install it on their machines ina second. But the registrar TRUSTED with the TLD's? I can't really blame them for trying to make some moolah but they took on the responsability they should treat it responsibly

Shitefinder...

[nigels]

The Verisign Business Model:

Embrace, extend, extinguish...

geez...

[Anonymous Coward]

I simply cannot beleive his ignorance... You know he is just being a PR shill, and I can't beleive CNET put him up... Petition time for cnet?

Who cares about this guys perspective on anything?

Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

The same people rooted for SiteFinder removal that think that stealing SCO's property is perfectly legal.

Innovate? Innovate?

[KevinMS]

I just innovated 4 of my domains over to
another registrar.

Re:Innovate? Innovate?

[FattMattP]

I just noticed that VeriSign owns Thawte, who I used to get two secure certificates. My renewal is coming up and they're emailing me to renew. That's $300 each for a two year renewal. $600 total. So I'm going to get new certificates for those domains from someone else.

What convinced me that this was the right course of action is that Thawte's slogan is "It's a trust thing." Well, yeah, it is and VeriSign has shown that it can't be trusted. So I guess I'll give my money to someone else.

Re:Innovate? Innovate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good one...now if everyone follows suit, it will show how innovative their customer base is. I am doing the same thing with my SSL certs. Cheers.

Re:Innovate? Innovate?

[Mattcelt]

What I find saddest is that before Verisign bought Thawte, the Thawte certs were only $50/year.

The quality of the certs hasn't changed, only their owner.

Gotta hand it to Verisign for getting people to believe that a commodity like a digital certificate needs to cost so much.

It's similar to the DeBeers diamond market control, and it's incredibly lucrative. Wish I'd thought of it first. :-)

Re:Innovate? Innovate?

[Moofie]

You sure can get a lot of money, if you don't feel you have to keep your integrity. Welcome to the jungle.

Re:Innovate? Innovate?

[blibbleblobble]

"I just innovated 4 of my domains over to another registrar."

To quote NANOG: Wildcard this

Re:Innovate? Innovate?

[drinkypoo]

What I don't understand is why some organization like the EFF hasn't started a CA. If you can show some level of effort spent on maintaining security (like an air gap? you can always batch cert in and out data to be transferred onto removable media) then I would think that it would take only time to become a trusted CA, with enough weight behind them. And we are that weight. Isn't it about time we were able to buy certs from someone we trust? I mean obviously you can generate your own, but then people get those browser popup messages.

Alternately, perhaps the USPS should be selling them. The USPS has a long history of fairness, transparency (they might open your packages, but they tell you they're going to do it beforehand, and they make the rules pretty clear) and of charging only as much as it costs to cover their costs. That's why postage to send a letter between any two places in the continental U.S. is still a mere thirty-seven cents. The USPS is at once among the most inexpensive and the most efficient postal systems in the world. If I would trust any government agency to issue certificates, it's the USPS.

Look at it from both sides...

[thecampbeln]

Looking at SiteFinder from the viewpoint of a "stupid user", it's pretty damned neat! I mean, it's kinda like calling the wrong 800 number and the person who answers says "Oh this happens all the time, the number you actually want is...". This is a nice feature!

Now looking at Sitefinder from the technical perspective, it's a scary ass "development". As once again, calling the wrong 800 number, the person could say "Oh this happens all the time, but I know a better place get (insert product/service here)! Try calling...", here in lies the devil!

It would be nice to have the feature in the first instance, but we all know that it will end up being served as in the second instance (besides all the anti-SPAM issues, et la). <rant>Since the CEOs of now are children of the 80's, everything always boils down to the all mighty $</rant>. BUT... is there any way that this idea could be put to good use?

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[jackb_guppy]

But that same stupid user is already using MS, that does it for them.

So back to the base question: "Why?"

Answer more money into the Versign pockets.

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[thecampbeln]

RMFP (Read My Fucking Post) - BUT... is there any way that this idea could be put to good use?.

Granted, this COULD be taken as "this" refers to wilding-carding .com/.net, but it does not. "this", in this case refers to the idea of redirecting a user when a typo is made, nutin else Sparky.

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[jhunsake]

Which is why you're fucking idiot. This "idea" has been around, and put to "good use", for years and years. Where have you been?

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[typobox43]

Unfortunately, he didn't get modded anywhere - apparently his karma is good enough for the +1 bonus? I hope someone fixes that...

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[thecampbeln]

2 things...

1) The implementations I've seen are not nearly as useful as the SiteFinder site (MSN is and has never been a feature, a "feature" as in a bug maybe). Oh, also it's not that I really like SiteFinder, not that it's not already too late to mention, but I digress...

2)<Trollin>I must have been fucking my girlfriend, or some otherwise non-neard persuit</Trollin> (and just to head off the jokes, you should try fucking my girlfriend, she's GREAT, as is my mom, as is her mom...)

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[jhunsake]

1) I hope you are trolling on this part too. There are more than a few services: they don't distort the results, you can actually get a response in your language, they can be turned off, and the list goes on and on.

2) You're still a fucking idiot.

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, when i posted that, he had a score of 2

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[BigRedFish]

it's kinda like calling the wrong 800 number and the person who answers says "Oh this happens all the time, the number you actually want is...". This is a nice feature!

Problem is, it's also like writing the address wrong when you send your mom a gift for her birthday certified mail, and rather than the post-office quickly return the letter 'addressee unknown,' instead the person who tries to deliver it keeps the letter and says 'Oh, I can't deliver because no one is home right now' and tries to deliver it again day after day. After a while, the post office might learn that when a certain Mr. Verislime answers the door but says he cannot accept the letter for your mom, that really means the address is wrong. If a different person answers the door, though, it happens again until that person becomes known. Repeat until insane.

This is not a feature, it's a malfunction. Given their position, Verislime had to know they were doing it, and such irresponsibility should get their admin rights revoked immediately. If you or I knowingly and purposefully did something at work that Broke Everything, how long before we would get the sack?

If I ever screw up at work so bad I'm gonna get fired, I've gotta try the innovation line though. That's rich. 'Sorry I blew up research areas A-F, I need to do more research to see how mixing large quantities of hydrogen, oxygen, and fire in the open areas is received company-wide before I change anything, I'm just trying to be innovative and you wouldn't want to stifle innovation!'

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[ChaosDiscord]

I mean, it's kinda like calling the wrong 800 number and the person who answers says "Oh this happens all the time, the number you actually want is...". This is a nice feature!

It's more like calling a phone number that doesn't exist. You used to get magic tones followed by, "The number you have dialed does not exist. Please check the number and try again. 4.2.1." But it's been replaced by an answering service that offers guesses as to who you wanted to call. Sure, it seems beneficial to the average person, but for services that rely on the magic tones to determine that there was an error (Automatic dialers, or systems that don't understand humans (like a fax machine or modem), they have no way to cope. If the magic tones continued, phone manufacturers could, if there was demand, sell phones that attempted auto correction by redirecting you to an 800 number that would offer suggestions. Different phones could offer different services (This one is cheap but doesn't offer the service, that one is expense and offers a computer run service, this other one has a monthly fee but offers a human run service). This sort of service already existed for web browsers! But by removing the well known error code and behaving like the number exists, those services stop working and new services cannot be created.

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[Anonymous Coward]

web != internet
web is a subset

They did not just break http. Now your TV acts funny so a luser gets 'better' phone service.

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh this happens all the time, the number you actually want is...". This is a nice feature!

BECAUSE YOU ASKED FOR IT: (look from the other side)

OK, mogoce bi bila to dobra lastnost zate, vendar pa zame in za moje uporabniko to med drugim pomeni, da v taksnih primerih preprosto ne vedo kaj storiti, in poklicejo tehnicno podporo. Na zalost pac ne govorijo vsi ljudje na tem planetu anglescino in niso vse spletne strani v anglescini. Ali si sploh predstavljas kako tezko je razlagati lastnikom majhnih podjetij, da je problem povzrocen na kraju, ki ni pod tvojo kontrolo, ceprav si ti tisti, ki tem podjetjem zagotavljas povezljivost v medmrezje. Hvala lepa za taksno uslugo. Zaradi taksne usluge smo imeli precej stroskov s podporo in se dodatne stroske z nadgradnjo BIND-a z verzijo, ki nam omogoca zaobiti tovrstne "izume", ki jih imajo v glavah ljudje. Konflik interesov je v tem primeru zelo resna stvar.

For all those language apt: If you can't read or understand what is written above, then you might understand what kind of gibberish the sitefinder is to most internet users (moms and pops) in my country. The way the sitefinder is done is bad, it breaks a lot of assumptions and deserves to be shot, stomped upon, and done other nasty things.

Anonymous Cowards Unite

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[king squid]

if they want it then give it to them (closer to the application level). As suggested on nanog Squid is your friend..

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[Anonymous Coward]

From the view of a stupid user, IE, mozilla, and Opera (only browsers I use regularly, so probably most of the others too) did the SAME THING already, without breaking dozens of really important things.

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great comment.

A minor point is that new services can be created. When DNS returns the IP address of SiteFraudster(TM), the browser can treat it as an error. Of course Verisign is scum enough to change the IP address when enough clients figure rely on it. They'd probably call it an innovation.

Re:Look at it from both sides...

[bizard]

Even for stupid users, that only holds if all you ever did was call 800 numbers (aka use a web browser). If you used the 'valid caller' service from the phone company (you only allow calls which transmit the calling number) and all calls with caller ID blocking started coming through as '411' then you would suddenly be inundated with calls you didn't want. Likewise, my spam almost doubled during the week or so of SiteFinder.

Innovations that break things are not innovations

[Lehk228]

Since the Site finder breaks some anti-spam tools and makes web admins jobs more difficult due to every address having an IP address returned it cannot be considered an "innovation" a new type of computer that ran a little faster but messes with the voltage on the power line so that other devices would'nt work right wouldn't be an innovation, it would be a piece of crap, as is site finder

Real innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

might be everyone deciding to play their own top level domain registrar with some community integration/collaboration. Yeah things would be pretty much broken all the time, but ... hmm so I guess innovation can suck it.

No technical knowledge?

[interiot]

First he continues the Web==Internet BS, then he strongly implies that Verision Sitefinder's drawbacks had a technical solution other than complete negation of what they'd done. If they think there's a technical alternative to making Sitefinder useful and only show up for WWW users, suggest it. I've heard of no such thing.

Re:No technical knowledge?

[Trepalium]

Oh, quite easy. Instead of modifying DNS, you could always just modify the WEB BROWSERS, or go through a web proxy server that would do this for you.

Re:No technical knowledge?

[pla]

then he strongly implies that Verision Sitefinder's drawbacks had a technical solution other than complete negation of what they'd done.

Well, an alternative technical solution does exist, it just wouldn't put money in Verisign's pockets...

Instead of returning basically an ad, they could instead compare the result against a table of, say, the top 1000 domains to see if they have a close match (such as off by one character). If so, return that as a likely misspelling.

This would solve two problems with one solution - It would undo most of the damage caused by resolving everything to sitefinder, and it would make squatting on anything currently popular quite a lot more difficult.

Re:No technical knowledge?

[interiot]

Doing this sort of funky stuff at the DNS level would still break things.

-interiot@am4z0n.com

The Internet Will Break...

[FsG]

ICANN appears to have bought into claims that the Internet has broken or will break. Anyone who has used it in the last three weeks knows that claim to be false.

Bullshit. This is clearly written from the perspective of the user, who will click the pretty buttons while completely unaware of what's going on in the background. Instead of asking "anyone who has used it," why not ask a DNS admin or someone who is similarly qualified to make a decision on this point? Those people will tell you loud and clear that this thing indeed caused serious problems.

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[ZuperDee]

I'm sorry, but I think you are a little off-base here. After all, it is *USERS*, NOT syadmins, who are at the end of the computing comsumption chain. If you even think about it for one minute: what is computing technology designed first and foremost for? Answer: To meet computing needs that USERS have. It is NOT designed just to please other geeks. Now I realize I'll probably get modded as a troll, even though I am *NOT* excusing Verisign's attitude by any means... But I do think this attitude that "we geeks demand strict adherence to standards, even if it means disabling features that might make life easier for end users" is a bit of a troll, too.

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[Marc2k]

That doesn't make sense. Yes, the end result (now) is to make good little consumers happy. However, the poster was talking about DNS admins, y'know, the people who make sure we don't have to type in IP addresses anytime. The people who assure that the average user doesn't have to type in 216.239.37.99 or 66.218.71.198 everytime they they want to search for something. The people support the fundamental services that please the people you specify. I think they have a say.

If I were building a theme park, I'd care more about engineers giving me the thumbs up than the kids.

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[FsG]

A valid point, but I think you misunderstood. My point was that the admins who run the networks (not just DNS admins) are often the only ones who see when something breaks. Users are often entirely unaware of the problems going on in the background, the ones that cause these admins to stay up all night. As long as the buttons still go clickety-click, the users are happy.

DNS admins should have a louder voice on this not because they're "fellow geeks," but because when something goes wrong, they are the first to notice. Therefore, their opinion on the question of "did something go wrong?" is more important.

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[ZuperDee]

I'm sorry, but that phrase "good little consumers" is already an indication of an arrogant, condescending attitude toward consumers. This is EXACTLY what causes consumers to revolt in the end, and it is precisely this attitude that I am complaining about. There is no question Verisign broke things, and should never have done it in the first place. There is absolutely no question they showed a wreckless disregard for the DNS admins, but who are you to complain when you are doing EXACTLY the same thing, only with consumers?

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[FireBreathingDog]

If I were building a theme park, I'd care more about engineers giving me the thumbs up than the kids.

And if I were building a theme park, I'd want thumbs-up from both.

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[Linux_ho]

If I were building a theme park, I'd care more about engineers giving me the thumbs up than the kids.

And if I were building a theme park, I'd want thumbs-up from both.

Absolutely. But the point was, which one is more important? I think I'd have to go with the engineers. Are you familiar with secondary MX hosts? It's a backup feature. It only gets used when your main mail server gets hosed, or the DNS for your main mail server gets hosed. That feature was broken by Verisign's "innovation". The users don't care about that, because they didn't even know they HAD a backup mail server. Just like the kids at the theme park don't care about the mathematics of roller coaster load distribution. Nobody cares about it but the engineers, until something breaks.

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[canadian_right]

When I want to fix my car I don't talk to those uppity mechanics - I talk to end users behind the steering wheel who realy know whats going on. Who cares if the "end user" fix will destroy my engine in a week - I want my oil pressure gauge to play musical jingles for all my favorite oil companies!

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[LadyLucky]

Well, technically he's correct. The internet didn't break. Well, maybe that's because somewhere upstream of me someone's blocking the sitefinder service. So there was no breakage! Yay!

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[belarm314]

It was exactly the strict adherance to standards which you seem so eager to abandon that brought you things like the internet, plug and play monitors, and, oh, i don't know...QWERTY keyboards on every desk.

When you break standards for profit, you begin degenerating into situations like the wonderful browser wars that brought us the (ugh) blink tag, among other attrocities. And, as has been mentioned in another post, the reason things haven't been all THAT bad since verisign implemented this "innovation" is those very sysadmins whose opinions you seem to think don't matter.

Additionally, for those users who want this type of service, there is a popular and widely (too widely, IMHO) available technology which already addresses the issue at the user-agent level. It's called Internet Explorer. If users on a given network want something like this to be implemented system-wide, DNS admins are free to place wildcards in their own, local DNS caches. There are even situations where it's appropriate (we have such a system at our university for unregistered computers; when the user opens a web browser, they see the registration page...and that's all they can get to). But for Verisign to implement this for everyone is simply ludacris, and violates the trust put in them by ICANN and the *USERS* who utilize the internet every day.

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[0x0d0a]

Okay, let me put it this way.

Verisign made a business move. We all know and agree that there are technically superior ways to provide the same service -- from within the browser.

At the very least, Verisign has only moved to a local maxima -- they *may* have improved the overall user experience somewhat, but had they *not* done so, more significant user experience improvements could have been provided.

Frankly, I think it's more that consumers don't realize the magnitude and impact to them of what Verisign is doing, so they aren't complaining because they only occasionally see the drawbacks.

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[Anonymous Coward]

God, what crack pipe are you hitting on? At least try to keep your trolling consistant.

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[Shardis]

Wow, sad.

What you don't seem to realize is that this affects "users" too. They just don't know how or why their widgets broke. It'll look superficially fine, but those that frequently work with the systems will realize that there's something up. That's why sysadmins got pissed, because they do know. So just let them fix things instead of raising the cry, "But what about the users?!?!" *shudders* Reminds me of people whinging, "But what about the children?!?".

Why do you think sysadmins got so upset and going through all this trouble for? The users. :P

And oh, sysadmins are users too when they're off the job - we like things to "just work" too! *sniffs*

Anyway, why is it wrong to think that most of the decisions should be made by those actually qualified to make them? After all, others don't exactly know what's really going on, do they? :P I don't want some ignorant idiot supervising the nuclear reactor in my backyard, thank you! Good grief...

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[pyz]

Bullshit. This is clearly written from the perspective of the user, who will click the pretty buttons while completely unaware of what's going on in the background.

That's what it is all about, the unaware user and his/hers pretty buttons. Without them, this discussion wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be here.

cheers,
Pyz

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[Shardis]

Funny, without admins, no user would know what they were missing on any computer network. ;)

Re:The Internet Will Break...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who has used it in the last three weeks knows that claim to be false.

That's right. We all agree. All forty fucking million of us. It's in the sitefinder policy:

By accessing this server, you agree that this service is innovative.

one problem

[linuxislandsucks]

the problem is versign signed up for the status quo.. its called an internet standard!

don't like the standard, than stand down as regsitrar and start your own internet!

Who's going to be the first to hack it?

[the man with the pla]

Starting nmap 3.28 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2003-09-15 06:36 PDT
Host sitefinder.verisign.com (12.158.80.10) appears to be up ... good.
Initiating SYN Stealth Scan against sitefinder.verisign.com (12.158.80.10) at 06 :36
Adding open port 80/tcp
The SYN Stealth Scan took 94 seconds to scan 1643 ports.
Warning: OS detection will be MUCH less reliable because we did not find at least 1 open and 1 closed TCP port
For OSScan assuming that port 80 is open and port 36304 is closed and neither are firewalled
For OSScan assuming that port 80 is open and port 43206 is closed and neither are firewalled
For OSScan assuming that port 80 is open and port 44655 is closed and neither are firewalled
Interesting ports on sitefinder.verisign.com (12.158.80.10):
(The 1642 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered)
Port State Service
80/tcp open http
No exact OS matches for host (test conditions non-ideal).
TCP/IP fingerprint:
SInfo(V=3.28%P=i386-portbld-freebsd5 .1%D=9/15%Time=3F65C0E9%O=80%C=-1)
TSeq(Class=TR% IPID=Z%TS=U)
T1(Resp=Y%DF=Y%W=16A0%ACK=S++%Flags= AS%Ops=MNNTNW)
T1(Resp=Y%DF=Y%W=16D0%ACK=S++%Flag s=AS%Ops=MNW)
T2(Resp=N)
T3(Resp=Y%DF=Y%W=16D0%A CK=S++%Flags=AS%Ops=MNW)
T4(Resp=Y%DF=Y%W=0%ACK=O %Flags=R%Ops=)
T5(Resp=N)
T6(Resp=N)
T7(Resp=N)
PU(Resp=N)

TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=truly random
Difficulty=9999999 (Good luck!)
TCP ISN Seq. Numbers: 673A4C36 652AB817 BBE534C3 685BB54A
IPID Sequence Generation: All zeros

Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 137.552 seconds

Re:Who's going to be the first to hack it?

[dAzED1]

wooooow...you can use nmap. And not even the newer, more intelligent version. Good for you.
I think you should hack it. That would be SO cool. Like, you'd be THA MAN. Wouldn't that just show them - if they act like asses, we can too!

service and profit

[maliabu]

i think at least some internet users will find Site Finder a good service, especially when you're not too sure about a URL, or mistyped one.

the annoying part is the opportunity for verisign to make a good profit out of this as there are quoted millions of mistyped URLs daily.

however who wants/can to provide a sevice (which costs money) for free? or even, who wants to not make a profit when there is profit to be made?

anyway, if site finder is associated with a neutral web directory like dmoz.org, it might be a different story.

Re:service and profit

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone stupid enough to not know how to find a website if its not found will be using IE which redirects not found domains to MSN.com

Everyone else uses Mozilla (or in my case Opera)

there is no purpose for sitefinder unless its an optional service that end users choose to use.

Re:service and profit

[Trepalium]

Either way, there are less intrusive ways of doing this. HTTP proxies are one way of doing it, as they can return anything they want when they get a DNS error. Modifications to a web browser are another option (I believe Internet Explorer already does this).

Re:service and profit

[ChaosDiscord]

i think at least some internet users will find Site Finder a good service, especially when you're not too sure about a URL, or mistyped one.

Let the web browser provide the service. That way we can have lots of healthy competition (Buy my web browser, it's got SiteFinder! No, but my web browser, it's got something better than SiteFinder! No, use anyones web browser, but but my plugin thats even better and works with every browser!) By providing the server on the DNS level you effectively lock out all other options.

It doesn't matter where the SiteFinder points, be it dmoz or Overture, it's a bad idea.

Re:service and profit

[DickBreath]

i think at least some internet users will find Site Finder a good service, especially when you're not too sure about a URL, or mistyped one.

People who are looking for real content will not find VeriSlime's advertising driven ShiteFinder to be useful. If I am looking for Shite, I could use Google. What if I want my browser to take actions of my choosing for a non-existant domain name? Do I not have that right?

Re:service and profit

[SoTuA]

i think at least some internet users will find Site Finder a good service

This is the misconception that initially brought us SiteFinder. The World Wide Web (as in, the pretty pages you load with a browser) is a subset of the Internet. While this travesty on the DNS root servers may be "good" for WWW use, it completely breaks applications and systems relying on DNS to return an error when you enter a nonexistent name. You know, the ones that run over the Internet, not the WWW.

Re:service and profit

[danielsfca2]

> if site finder is associated with a neutral web directory like dmoz.org, it might be a different story

Assuming by "Site Finder" you mean forging DNS responses as if a nonexistent domain exists in order to pander to clueless WWW users who don't know what DNS is, then no, it will never be a different story.

The right way to do this is to let it be implemented on the client side. While I personally would never install a piece of malware from VeriSign, I think they should create such a program, an MSIE-for-Windows add-on, and advertise it just like those "Taskbar Update" hawkers with the "clock synchronizer" the likes of Gator, SaveNow, or WeatherBug, since that's the type of program it is. Plenty of idiots would install Site Finder if enticed to in that way, and thus VeriSign could provide this *cough cough* "service" to those who want it. An even more effective option would be to get it into the next release of Kazaa. Meanwhile, all kinds of non-WWW services wouldn't break, and I wouldn't hate VeriSign on such a personal level. (I'd just hate them as sleazy ad companies like WhenU and Gator.)

As for a similar, non-profiteering version, if someone needed this, I would have thought someone would have coded it by now. It wouldn't be that hard.

"End to end" was the innovation.

[dpbsmith]

There's nothing innovative about having the network do centralized processing, and perform those specific functions that Ma Bell or Verisign or whomever thinks it can market and charge money for.

What was innovative was the concept of a network that just provided connectivity, and allowed the users at the network termini to provide the innovation.

To call SiteFinder innovative is like cutting the wings off an airplane and saying that you've created an innovative new form of ground transportation.

Re:"End to end" was the innovation.

[Anonymous Coward]

To call SiteFinder innovative is like cutting the wings off an airplane and saying that you've created an innovative new form of ground transportation.

Damn, thats a good idea. Take a single-prop plane, cut the wings off of it and take it on the highway. that'll keep those damn slow people out of the left lane.

Re:"End to end" was the innovation.

[Alsee]

To call SiteFinder innovative is like cutting the wings off a dove and saying that you've created an innovative new form of kitten.

-

Exploitation of...

[globalar]

Trust and responsibility is nothing new, he's right.

A quote from the article:

"That error page can lead to a dead end, with no options on how to get to where you tried to go."

Perhaps Mr. McLaughlin should try something like Google, where a service is performed at your request, not the advertiser's/coporations insistence.

Too easy.

[Asprin]

I dub thee....

... Mark Mc-Laugh-In

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week!

Re:Too easy.

[PhxBlue]

I dub thee....

... Mark Mc-Laugh-In

Very interesting. . .

. . .but stupid. ;-)

"Innovation"

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

"You keep using that word. I believe it does not mean what you think it does." -- The Princess Bride

Re:"Innovation"

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed.

See here for Cringly's observation on the difference between innovation and invention

Re:"Innovation"

[ron_ivi]

That Princess Bride quote was quite apt. Check the subtlties of the definitions from Cringely's article

' The word they are replacing is "invention." Only now we innovate, which is deliberately vague but seems to stop somewhere short of invention. Innovators have wiggle room. They can steal ideas, for example, and pawn them off as their own. '

Re:"Innovation"

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep using that quote. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:"Innovation"

[jreynold]

The precise quote is:

"You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Re:"Innovation"

[babyrat]

apt but incorrect...

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

It's my favourite movie...technically they didn't innovate or invent as to innovate is "To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time." Dictionary.com

They didn't do it for the first time, others have done it before (the museum domain. for instance)

Perhaps they are innovating new ways of breaking the internet?

Re:"Innovation"

[Anonymous Coward]

"You keep using that word. I believe it does not mean what you think it does." -- Darl "The Princess" McBride

Re:"Innovation"

[kagejishin]

So now Sitefinder is considered innovation?? Inconceivable!

Re:"Innovation"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's inconceivable indeed that this is innovation

Good Fertilizer

[FsG]

*takes article, rips into small pieces, spreads over lawn*

Excellent! Normally I'd have to pay top dollar for such high-grade bullshit.

Sitefinder itself is anti-capitalist

[ModernGeek]

The whole idea of sitefinder is "implemented" by other companies, and this destroys all of the "competition", so how are we the anti-capitalist saying others should be able to handle DNS errors their own way, rather than have them shove their stuff down our throats using somthing that goes against RFC, they are one of the most important companies to run the net, and they don't obide basic RFC, I think the gov't should step in and take away their .com and .net privledges away and give them to someone we can trust...

Standard are there for a reason

[rborek]

They exploited a known feature in the DNS system, and abused their monopoly. There's no innovation there - just an abuse of a government-granted monopoly position. Had they actually proposed something innovative, and proposed it as an RFC (even if it was an Informational RFC), then maybe things would be different. Instead, they decide to do something that was not contemplated by the IAB for the standard. The Internet is built on standards - and sometimes standards can be slow to change because of the sheer number of different systems involved. You can't expect things like DNS standards to change overnight.

Re:Standard are there for a reason

[muonzoo]

I completely agree... of course, that would be "Submit a DRAFT" and IFF (if and only if) you are "measured and not found lacking" will it become an RFC (with MUCH review and oversight). In fact, there is just simply NO WAY that this "service" would have made it past the IETF review process. None. Nadda, zilch.

His stance

[DJ Rubbie]

His stance is just like those record houses who try to "innovate" on the CD standards to prevent "piracy". Altering the base DNS entries for their own gain and claim it dealt no harm is just like them making a CD-like disk that breaks the CD standards and claiming it to be a CD. Result of Verisign's arrogance caused broken spam filters and programs, so did the "broken" CD's damaged various computer systems (most notibly the Mac's).

He might have a skinny, crippled leg to stand on

[Ohreally_factor]

IF Verisign had vetted this idea first. Gotten feedback. Instead, their "innovation" was shoved down all our throats, with no care given to any ill-effects it might cause.

TRUE dns/httpd innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Youaremyfriend.com - displays a shockwave animation for Firstname.Lastname.youaremyfriend.com

This is what RFCs are for.

[Vultan]

He wants to innovate? Submit an RFC (Request For Comment). Let the community decide whether or not this innovation is good for the Internet.

Re:This is what RFCs are for.

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense to this poster, but this is -1 Redundent.

Count 4 posts up to post (#7149655).

The earlier post even mentioned the possibility of the Informational RFC. This guy couldn't even get that part copied properly into his post.

BTW... From here: http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc2223.html you can see that the different types of RFCs are:

Standards Track

"This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited."

Best Current Practice

"This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Distribution of this memo is unlimited."

Experimental

"This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. Distribution of this memo is unlimited."

Informational

"This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited."

---
My formatting may be slightly different, but the content is the same. And, if there have been any updates to this RFC since October 1997, I'm sure someone will provide the knowledge.

Re:This is what RFCs are for.

[muonzoo]

Of course, that would be "Submit a DRAFT" and IFF (if and only if) you are "measured and not found lacking" will it become an RFC (with MUCH review and oversight). In fact, there is just simply NO WAY that this "service" would have made it past the IETF review process. None. Nadda, zilch.

Innovation? No, world's second oldest profession

[morelife]

Dude, abuse of power, greed, and lying to the public are not exactly "innovation". Can we please have our "weaker" Internet back? Uh, thank you.

Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we talking about a means to a monopolistic "sitefinder" that steals legitimate users from the sites they wanted to go from in an effort to make money, or are we talking about the internet being destroyed due to lack of innovation, ...and the something about the discovery of the west continents? I fail to see how one can link an advertising based search engine to Christopher Columbus... I guess he's been talking to Darl McBride a lot as of late...

Innovation

[deltagreen]

Claiming critics of Verisign are stifling innvation is ridiculous. If the internet is going to work, it needs to use open standards that everyone agrees on. The problem is that Verisign, as a commercial company, implemented their own implementation on a whim! If they thought this was such a good, altruistic idea, why don't they try submitting it as a standard for the internet and get it peer-reviewed instead?

Re:Innovation

[doon]

why don't they try submitting it as a standard for the internet and get it peer-reviewed instead?

Simple, they knew the stink it would cause. It is the same tatic I have used with my wife when wanting a new toy -- It is better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Re:Innovation

[pVoid]

Cause if your customs are attaching leeches to your veins to cure yourself, you're not exactly in a good place to begin with.

Everything in moderation. It's no use polarizing the polemic.

It should be clear though, that what Verisign is doing is wrong, not because it wasn't done before or some very esotheric reason that only a slashdotter could come up with, it's because DNS is not only used by HTTP (as the ICANN very aptly explained). The very bottom line is that DNS is used by more than just humans. That being said, yet another point against them: DNS over HTTP is used by more than just english speaking people.

Re:Innovation

[Tony-A]

Everything in moderation.
Especially moderation
Sorry, couldn't resist.

While it is true that progress requires change, change is, in and of itself, bad. Even when change is required, it's important to make changes going in the right direction. Change the places where you attach the leeches will generally make things worse.

What you say is all very true. I just saw the term innovation one time too many.

Re:Innovation

[YrWrstNtmr]

If you were able to ask a SARS virus (and if he could reply), he would proably say that he welcomes this bit of evolution/innovation.

His hosts/customers, OTOH, may not agree.

Re:Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

IE already does it, but without breaking DNS for non-web clients. How can this be innovation?

Re:Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

--Bacon

I wouldn't listen to what Bacon has to say.

Re:Innovation

[pVoid]

This reply is kind of off-topic... it's kind of a random conversation with you. What I want to say is that IMHO you shouldn't view change as being bad. Change is inevitable, and as some wise folk said, change is the only constant in the world.

Thinking about change always reminds me of Bruce Lee's famous quote, (and I'm only paraphrasing) I'm as strong yet as soft as water. I find it helps me a lot knowing that nothing is static in day to day life. It gives me a different perspective and lets me let go of things more easily.

Just a thought I thought I'd share...

Re:Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

first, Tony-A: for innovation apply correctly in your example, the established customs would have to be bad... but they aren't. They're actually quite essential to the way things work.

for pVoid: Bruce Lee's quote may sound philosophical and whatnot, but he's really just referring to the physical properties of water. In other words, he can flow smoothly, but if you fuck with him, it'll be like running into a brick wall. After a certain speed, anything (a person off a bridge) hitting water will discover how little water compresses and for the first fraction of a second, that surface will be harder than a rock.

Bruce Lee was not telling you to let things go, he was letting you to always be ready to respond to a situation... with maximum force. If you've ever meet a well trained martial artist, watch them walking. Most of them are very relaxed, but in the same sense that a cat is relaxed. Sliding along yet very alert. Don't forget that Bruce Lee made his name famous through the controlled use of violence

Re:Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why you are hiding behind AC, but I'll tell you something: what you just said about Bruce Lee is the most stupid thing I've ever heard.

I have seen trained martial artists, and I do martial arts myself. If you want to butcher Bruce Lee's statement into something completely pragmatic, that's your choice, but at least do it properly: it's about not replying to force by force... for example in Aikido: using your opponents force to your advantage. And sure, he can be explosively violent when he wants to, but stupid expenditure of force will just get you in a situation where your opponent will just take all you've given him, and whip it right back into you.

Btw, don't even bother answering, I'm not going to read.

-pVoid

Re:Innovation

[Citizen of Earth]

from dictionary.com

There's also a new technical meaning for "innovation", which is synonymous with "monopolization". Whenever you hear Microsoft saying "innovate", substitute "monopolize" to extract the true meaning. Now it's the same with VeriSign(R).

Re:Innovation

[Maserati]

Yeah, innovation. He starts off okay, to catch the "first three paragraph's crowd", but he really doesn't get it. He starts losing the careful reading with a strawman, claiming that ICANN said that "the Internet had broken or would break"., which is a blatant exagerration of what ICANN said - which was expressing concern that certain servcies that depended on DNS following documented standard practices had or could break. Every mail domain now exists for starters, which confuses some anti-spam systems.

He goes on to bemoan the lack of innovation inherent in an Internet that is "flat" and of proscribed boundaries. Write an RFC buddy. Or better yet, read one.

Re:Innovation

[orangesquid]

Innovation, changing society, can lead to good or bad. It's not some clear-cut evil thing. Freedom to innovate is freedom to break rules... for hackers and other clever people, with good intentions, this can lead to cutting through layers of crap and figuring something out for what it really is, solving a problem directly, and possibly confusing and/or irritating people in the process.

There's lots of bullshit out there which isn't doing the majority of people any good... and, in fact, is doing good to a very small number of people and hurting everyone else in the process. That kind of stuff needs to go away, and innovation is the way to do it.

Good innovation is finding a better way to do things that makes life safer, easier, more enjoyable, or more tasty, like hot grits on a statue (just kidding!).

But, I would argue that some innovations will only push society along the path toward total commercialization, loss of identity, universal culture, and monopolization. A society built in this manner is weak, because everybody will share the same weaknesses... so if you can knock one man down, you can take control of the whole culture. Some significant amount of diversity is the best tool for survival and stability (in a big-picture sense)---nature shows us that.

So, really, anything which makes our lives more commercialized or monopolized, while it may appear at first glance to be potentially useful, might contribute to a major problem down the road of losing the diversity that makes us strong.

But, I could be totally off my rocker... after all, I am no longer rocking, and I can't seem to find the armrests on this here piece of carpet.

(Yes, I realize I am somewhat America/Euro-centric. Forgive me.)

Re:Innovation

[nocomment]

agreed. This is total BS.
I think commercial companies should not responsible for root servers. Just because of things like this. What if Ford was reposible for the roads? Maybe they would put a peg sticking up out of the road that ran along a track in the middle of the lanes and attached to Ford cars to keep them from crashing. That would be innovative too, but then Chevy's and Dodges, and Volwagon's et al, would no longer be able to use the road.

Maybe the DNS system does need some tweaking and updating, but springing the modification on a few hundred million people out of the blue is irresponsible.

Re:Innovation

[gl4ss]

well, one could just hang him to the words *something new*... it's not new in any other sense that they were never expected to do such (old) bull with .com..

-

Re:Innovation

[kidlinux]

"Cause if your customs are attaching leeches to your veins to cure yourself, you're not exactly in a good place to begin with."

Slightly off topic, but that is actually still in practice in modern (even North American!) hospitals. I believe it's often used when reattaching extremities. The leeches prevent clotting, and keep blood flowing.

You can google it, but I found this for starters.

Re:Innovation

[FictionPimp]

Wait Wait Wait. So your saying, theirs more to the internet then AOL? Where might I find this "other stuff" that you speak of? :-p

Re:Innovation

[drinkypoo]

They're not attached to the veins themselves in most cases, as far as I know :) Let us not also forget maggot therapy, in which maggots are introduced into a wound because they will only consume the rotting flesh. Many a person has died in the jungle because they took the maggots out of a wound which then festered and killed them.

Re:Innovation

[Anonymous Custard]

They're not attached to the veins themselves in most cases, as far as I know :) Let us not also forget maggot therapy, in which maggots are introduced into a wound because they will only consume the rotting flesh. Many a person has died in the jungle because they took the maggots out of a wound which then festered and killed them.

you win the "first /. post to make me shudder today" award :-)

Leeches used to be the entire "cure", as opposed to the surgical tools they are used as today.

Re:Innovation

[rifter]

"--Bacon"

I wouldn't listen to what Bacon has to say.

Is that because his former roomate's aunt's poolboy dumped your sister?

Re:Innovation

[Tony-A]

The Frech have a saying to the effect that the more it changes, the more it stays the same.
Oh, I accept change, not that I really have a choice in the matter.

It's when I make changes that other people have to accept, that I need to be careful. Change something, something reacts. Change it back, it doesn't quite go back the way it was. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Oddly enough, when you can see what's broke and understand why, you can do most anything you like and it will work.

Re:Innovation

[Tony-A]

The French ...
That'll teach me to trust my fingers.

Re:Innovation

[drinkypoo]

But if the leech cures the part of the sickness that is depressing your whole system, and your body's natural autonomous defense systems are then able to recover and respond, they're effective. Obviously with what little was known of the human body at the time, they would have been overused, but I suspect that more often than not, they were helpful.

Remember that back in the day they also used a lot of organic, natural remedies, many of which are actually useful and work just fine today, but it's simply a lot cheaper (or at least easier) to do the same things with synthetics. For example, if you got a scrape, you could make a poultice out of comfrey leaves, which will generally prevent infection and accelerate healing. If you had access to aloe, you could add that to the mixture, though generally one didn't have access to both (one being a desert plant, and the other growing principally in moist areas without extremes of temperature.) Aloe helps your skin heal better than anything else you can put on it, in fact it is even useful in the treatment of radiation burns. But note that aloe and leeches are not generally close to one another, either :)

At least come up with a legitimate argument...

[BlabberMouth]

inovation is a joke. Nobody buys that. I'd like to see him explain exactly why Verisign should own the rights to the "bad domain" page. Obviously he can't, thus the "inovation" argument. If he could explain how the user gets the slightest bit of value out of this, I'll eat my underwear.

Re:At least come up with a legitimate argument...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll eat my underwear.

I always pick up two pair of edible underwear, because I always end up snacking on one in the car on the way home.

Wrong place

[countach]

The problem is not that something like sitefinder isn't a good idea. The problem is that putting it in the root name servers is the wrong place for it. Something like a browser plugin or browser feature is the correct place for it. Users can have the feature, and it may even be good, but this is the dead wrong way to implement it.

Re:Wrong place

[swb]

It is broken to wildcard the .com. and .net. -- but what if the right to have the wildcard was auctioned off to the highest bidder, and the proceeds went to IETF or some other body with the goal of improving core protocols like DNS or SMTP and delivering an open source reference implementation of these improved protocols?

The term of the auctioned lease would be six months with no repeat for a minimum of 24 months, registrars and the controller of .com. and .net. and their subsidiaries or related companies automatically excluded, only static HTML could be returned -- no java/javascript/activeX or other scripting technology -- and a fixed banner image returned from a neutral server MUST appear at the top of the sitefinder page indicating that the requested page was unavailable, the A records returned must be fixed and publicly available, and no other protocols than http may listen on those addresses.

We, the users of the internet, get the benefit of a revenue source for internet development. The biggest price we pay is for some breakage to DNS, which isn't to say it wouldn't be a pain, but kludges could be implemented for mail or other apps where a lack of NXDOMAIN is a big problem.

It *might* be worth it, but the benefit (beyond the marketing value of appearing on every unknown domain) should ALL go back to the community. It never should be something that only one company can leverage to their own advantage at everyone else's cost. Anyone with a political bent about it could null route the sitefinder IPs or flip whatever switch ISC puts into named or something else.

Re:Wrong place

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. Let's look specifically at why it's better to implement it on the client side:

(1) A client-side solution allows for options that don't impose any HTTP lag time. For example, a nice option might be to suggest alternative spelling(s) based on MRU or MFU. A client-side solution is superior to Verisign's solution because the client requires no HTTP lag time to suggest the spelling alternatives.

(2) The client-side solution allows for options that have full access to the client's native GUI (like special popup menus and such) -- something that Verisign's server-based solution can never do.

(3) The client-side solution can be customized based on any and all client information. For example, you might want the behavior to be different depending on the user's preferences, privileges, and parental controls. This level of client integration is something that Verisign's server-based solution can never do.

(4) The client-side solution is fully controllable by the user. In contrast, Verisign can change the behavior of their server at any time, and if the users don't like the new behavior, they have no recourse.

(5) The client-side solution doesn't break the Internet's RFC specifications for DNS behavior.

It's important for people to know why Verisign's solution to the misspelled-domain problem is vastly inferior. When you see all of its design flaws enumerated, it becomes obvious (even to the casual observer) that the design of Verisign's "innovation" is utterly incompetent.

Re:Wrong place

[Trepalium]

Client side handling also allows administrators to enforce a uniform implementation, rather than having one search engine for .com and .net, a different one for .ca, another for .us, something else for .uk, and so on.

Re:Wrong place

[todd1000]

Sitefinder's a great idea for dumb users. I think it used to be called AOL... Verispam abused their monopoly and should be replaced by a neutral non-profit company. If we want "site finder", redirections should be evenly distributed to everyone selling domins.

Re:Wrong place

[Anonymous Coward]

The right place is somewhere that will make the "service" web-specific. Then it really will be a service. Note how McLaughlin repeatedly uses the word "Internet" when what he really means is specifically the Web:

More than 20 million times a day, Internet users receive an error message when they mistype a domain name (such as typing in orangd.com when they meant orange.com). That error page can lead to a dead end, with no options on how to get to where you tried to go.

That's what Site Finder is about. Instead of getting an error page, its users get an option to search the Internet, try a similar name or search popular categories. Thus far, people have used these tools more than 40 million times to get where they want to go.

There is not one mention in the entire article of the fact that non-Web-based Intern et services exist.

Along that line of thinking then...

[The Ancients]

Jack the Ripper must have been innovative too.

As were the first spammers.

As would have been the inventors of anthrax.

Being first doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing however...

reducing choice != inovative

[jkcity]

there is not much difference between versigns service and internet explorer forwarding you to msn search, except you can choose not to have internet explorer do that, with versign you can't.

I would'nt exactly call reducing choice inovative at all.

oh dear

[cca93014]

Verisign clearly want to innovate so much that their homepage contains 87 HTML errors, check the w3c validator, in less than 300 lines of code.

That has to be some sort of innovation record!

So now whenever we have a problem with ICANN...

[CatPieMan]

...they can just remind us that they are the ones who got rid of sitefinder and we should shutup that they just broke everything else.

But, the internet is dying, right?

-CPM

Re:So now whenever we have a problem with ICANN...

[magores]

But, the internet is dying, right?

No. That would be BSD.

Sitefinder not innovative

[Chuck Chunder]

Web Browsers have been doing this for non-existant domains ages.

The web browser is the right place to implement such a feature. Providing extended functionality to the user is the role of the user agent.

Implementing it all the way down in DNS is just bonkers.

Re:Sitefinder not innovative

[ComputerSlicer23]

Implementing it in the DNS isn't "bonkers". Implementing in the _root_ DNS servers, with no warning, no RFC, no discussion, and no debate is bonkers. While I agree that the most appropriate way to do that is in the user agent.

I mean if AOL wanted to put this sort of rule in their DNS server, more power to them. If cox.net wanted to do it, great. If my work wanted to do it fine. If they are prepared to suffer the consequences, and will allow me to route around it, I'm fine with it.

The people who run the core of the DNS system for the two most commonly typed domain names? Gosh darn irresponsible. Just insane. Bonkers. Foolish. Strange. Inappropriate.

I don't mind others breaking their perspective of the internet. However, I have serious issues with people who break my corner of the internet.

Kirby

Re:Sitefinder not innovative

[satterth]

Implementing it in the DNS isn't "bonkers". Implementing in the _root_ DNS servers, with no warning, no RFC, no discussion, and no debate is bonkers.

Nail, head, hammer... I agree with you 100% What on earth were they thinking. Must have been looking to make a quick buck somehow. Maybe re-direct all unregistered domains to "ONE" registrar for a cut of the pie.

Re:Sitefinder not innovative

[John Allsup]

Furthermore, StieFinder or something else should be implemented in a way that a DNS query still produces something that is an authoratative 'domian name not registered' so that software that wants to deal with this can do so.

What is bonkers with COM and NET is, for example, if I type www.bonjourdefrance.com, I get a French only website. If I type www.bonjoudefrance.com, I'd get SiteFinder, in English, not French, which is clearly the language of the person doing the search. (And that person may not speak English.)
Similar points are valid for other languages.
Here, VeriSign have failed to ask: who uses .com and .net. And blindly assumed it's the americans or English speakers only.

Dealing with DNS failures should be dealt with nearer to the user doing the DNS request (where more information is available about what they want, e.g. their probable languages, etc.)

Re:Sitefinder not innovative

[reifchen]

> Implementing it in the DNS isn't "bonkers".

> Implementing in the _root_ DNS servers, with no warning, no RFC, no discussion, and no debate is
> bonkers.

This sort of inaccuracy always gets my heckles up. The change was not made to the _root_ DNS _servers_, or the _root_ DNS _zone_. The _root_ DNS server operators would collectively have a fit and refuse to serve the zone if they noticed such a change.

The change in question (wildcard label) was made to the Global Top Level Domain _zones_ of .com and .net. These are just two (but extremely popular) of the 15 gTLD domains referenced in the standard _root_ domain.

Otherwise, you're quite correct; making the change to two gTLD zones with no warning, no RFC, no discussion and no debate is completely bonkers. Complaining about a lack of warning, discussion or debate in the removal of such is also bonkers.

Re:Sitefinder not innovative

[drinkypoo]

Just for the record, I think that there should not be any .com, .net, .org etc TLDs. It should all be tucked under .us. But since that is unlikely let's just attack the real issue. Those three letter TLDs are assumed to be in the US. If you want to use them for something else, well, apparently we can't stop you, which I think sucks. I think that vanity extranational DNS is lame (though I used to have one of my own.) But it's still your problem.

Invention vs. Innovation

[ron_ivi]

Cringley said it best, in his article Why Business Isn't as Fun as it Used to be where he writes on innovation vs invention.

' But there is another issue here, one that is hardly ever mentioned and that's the coining of the term "innovation." This word, which was hardly used at all until two or three years ago, feels to me like a propaganda campaign and a successful one at that, dominating discussion in the computer industry. I think Microsoft did this intentionally, for they are the ones who seem to continually use the word. But what does it mean? And how is it different from what we might have said before? I think the word they are replacing is "invention." '

Perhaps Verisign will help the world see through this concept of "innovation" and let us get back to inventing things.

Innovation, like MIcrosoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see.. Who else abuses the word "innovation" to pretend that their underhanded manuvers are a good thing?

MODS ON CRACK. PLS METAMOD.

[Anonymous Coward]

The post has a valid point. Which zealot modded it down? I thought this is a free speach site?

Re:MODS ON CRACK. PLS METAMOD.

[cujo_1111]

BTW it is spelt 'speech'.

Re:MODS ON CRACK. PLS METAMOD.

[Anonymous Coward]

modded down = read threads at lower threshold, see all comments. Even the offensive ones, sorry.

Where should innovation be done?

[nacturation]

Personally, I think this kind of innovation is a Good Thing. However, the innovation should be done at the application level, not at the infrastructure level. Let applications determine how to handle the case where a DNS query returns NXDOMAIN. But don't break the infrastructure and force all applications to go south just because you want a web browser (1 port out of 65K) to handle DNS differently.

</rant>

bah..

[Strych9]

Good, I hope 'innovation' all over, such as the likes of Microsoft innovation, is stiffled. This way perhaps we can get back to 'invention' again.

So what if it IS anti-capitalistic?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's our right so shove it up yer ass verislime

Sounds good to me ....

[El Cubano]

McLaughlin casts the debate over sitefinder in terms of 'innovation' versus the status quo and threatens that stifling 'innovation' will lead to a weaker internet.

Great. Where can I send donations to their lobby group/PAC that is lobbying for repeal of the DMCA/UCITA/Palladium/whatever and fighting for our digital freedom?

What? They have no such group? They don't really want to strengthen the internet in general? Just the parts that profit them?

Phew, glad that was cleared up.

Hey Mark,

[pair-a-noyd]

Pass the crack pipe back to Darl.
You shouldn't bogart man, it's rude, dude..

Re:Innovations that break things are not innovatio

[quacking duck]

I'm not defending Verisign by any stretch of the imagination here, and I definitely DON'T consider sitefinder "innovative" (I hate MS-speak as much as anyone), but I have to disagree with your argument.

/.'s covered issues of broadband over power lines "breaking", ie severely interfering with, ham radio systems, for instance. Just because hams are in the minority in their case and we're in the majority against Verisign, doesn't make their plight less of an issue.

Ballmer & McLaughlin

[Anonymous Coward]

They sound the same. Totally full of it. Freedom to innovate. What a cowardly thing to hide behind a cheap slogan.

Standards and Innovation

[Mostly Harmless]

innovation \In`no*va"tion\, n. [L. innovatio; cf. F. innovation.] 1. The act of introducing something new. 2. A change effected by innovating.

In no dictionary did I find "breaking compliance with well-established standards" as a definition of innovation. Verisign must not have included research in their operating budget this year. Go figure.

So What If It Was?

[MBCook]

So what if it was? I think the idea of something sorta like sitefinder, where if I type slahsdot.org I'm given a list of things it thinks I mean (like slashdot.org, obviously), would be nice. Now I have opinions on the sitefinder service (which I'll attach below just for the sake of it), but my problem isn't so much with sitefinder, but they way they went about it.

Could I opt out of it? No (changing my hosts file or something similar doesn't count). Did I have to opt in? No. Did I get a choice of any kind? No. Did I know that it was comming, was I given a chance to learn about it? No. Was it agreed upon by people who know what they're doing, who know what's good for the internet? No. Did it break existing internet "custom", which was almost a rule), without my consent? No. Was it shoved down my throat with no warning? YES!

Look, I can see where something like sitefinder could be helpful, but they went about it the wrong way. I don't like them messing with DNS responses breaking the protocall. I don't like them adding in search results. In my example above, I wouldn't mind if it autodirected me to slashdot.org. I wouldn't mind if it presented me with alternate spellings. But if I'm trying to get to compusa.com and I mistype that, I don't think that it should give me links to CDW, Newegg, or other computer stores (I don't know if it did this, but I wouldn't be suprised). They went about this in COMPLETELY the wrong way, and screwed themselves out of anyone rational who might have though that their service was a good idea, at least to start.

Ugh. No!

[tarzan353]

You know, this is just going to place a good bit more load on everyone's nameserver, not just the roots. Every request that used to be discarded from NS caches because it didn't exist will now be cached normally as a "good" request. 10-12% more data load might not be much for small DNS uses, but for companies like AOHell and other large ISPs, VeriSign is just screwing them over.

On another note, this would have to be some form of nameserver hack, not a root file hack(correct me if I'm wrong). But not all of the root servers are controlled by Verisign. Are those independant roots going to go along with this? Why should they?

Don't Give me a Hernia

[ThisIsFred]

I put my back out during yardwork last week, so Slashdot's editors shouldn't post articles that make me laugh so hard. How about a warning next time, k guys?

Redirecting from a dead-end link to a preselected webpage is innovation? Uh, let's see where I've run across this before Verisign implemented its SiteFinder service:

* Microsoft's "friendly" HTTP error messages

* Domain squaters that buy common domain name misspellings

* My own proxy server project that displays a custom HTML page following a bad look-up

It's obvious, and in the case of an important 'Net infrastructure like domain name services, it's unethical exploitation. Why don't they just spam people like every other company out there?

Easy rebuttal

[lightspawn]

Build a similar feature into a browser such as Mozilla.

This will prove that:

* You can achieve the exact same effect without breaking other applications
* The thing that bugs verisign is not that people can't find the site they need, but that they can't use their monopoly to force people to do it through their site.

My original proposal-in-a-nutshell:

Browser/options/network (or something):

When server does not exist
[.] Display modal error message
[.] Display non-modal error message
[X] Redirect to:
[.] Domain search site A
[.] Domain search site B
[.] Domain search site C
[X] Custom search:
[ http://www.indiesearchguys.net?host=%h ]

The sooner this gets implemented, the easier it will be for everybody to see through Verisign's lies.

Re:Easy rebuttal

[Anonymous Coward]

> My original proposal-in-a-nutshell.

It's also important to enumerate why your proposal is far superior to Verisign's implementation. Here are a few reasons why:

(1) Your solution allows for options that don't impose any HTTP lag time. For example, a nice option might be to suggest alternative spelling(s) based on MRU or MFU. Your solution is superior to Verisign's solution because your solution requires no HTTP lag time to suggest the spelling alternatives.

(2) Your solution allows for options that have full access to the client's native GUI (like special popup menus and such) -- something that Verisign's server-based solution can never do.

(3) Your solution can be customized based on any and all client information. For example, you might want the behavior to be different depending on the user's preferences, privileges, and parental controls. This level of client integration is something that Verisign's server-based solution can never do.

(4) Your solution is fully controllable by the user. Verisign can change the behavior of their server at any time, and if the users don't like the new behavior, they have no recourse.

(5) Your solution doesn't break the Internet's RFC specifications for DNS behavior.

As good as your proposal is, it's even more important for people to know why Verisign's solution to the misspelled-domain problem is vastly inferior. When you see all of its design flaws enumerated, it becomes obvious (even to the casual observer) that the design of Verisign's "innovation" is utterly incompetent.

No you didn't...

[RdsArts]

You just paid someone else to register it with them.

Ah, the joys of a monopoly.

Re:No you didn't...

[skookum]

Yes, but in this case they're only getting $6/year, as opposed to $35 or $50 or whatever they're charging currently. If everyone used an alternative registrar (e.g. godaddy.com) then Verislime would -definitely- feel the hurt on the bottom line, where it counts.

Re:No you didn't...

[Tokerat]

]?? they'd raise their prices for registrars that offer their namespace once that starts happening and be profiteering gluttons again.

It's sad to see that after the tech boom, the only survivors are the absolute top and bottom of the barrel.

Re:No you didn't...

[kasperd]

they'd raise their prices for registrars

Now that would be innovative, wouldn't it?

I have this technology I call "bait and switch"

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I trick people into coming to my site, then I try to get them to ignore their original request and purchase a "service" I offer.

Wait a second, Verisign beat me to the patent, darn it. Back to used cars for me.

Seriously

[tugrul]

I hate M$FT as much as the next guy here, but their autosearch solution was innovative* (* not sure if it was their idea). Without changing how the internet fundamentally works, they chose to render a failed DNS lookup as something more friendly and functional than a limited, rather useless OK popup. Something well within the right of a client application, and easily checked off if it doesn't float your boat. And it only affected those people that voluntarily chose to use their product (don't beat me up on the voluntarily bit).

With Verisign, there is no choice. They took a common community resource that should benefit all equally and biased it in their favor. They were selected as guardians of the system, not burdened with a mandate to "improve it". If they really think themselves clever, have them deploy a new, distinct system and compete for our patronage.

Re:Seriously

[Lord_Dweomer]

"With Verisign, there is no choice. They took a common community resource that should benefit all equally and biased it in their favor. They were selected as guardians of the system, not burdened with a mandate to "improve it". If they really think themselves clever, have them deploy a new, distinct system and compete for our patronage."

It would be interesting if instead of typing in a mispelled name......it redirected you to a google search. I wonder how it would be received if they did that....and also didn't collect money from it, just offered it as a service....now THAT would be a better version of this whole fiasco, thats for sure.

Re:Seriously

[tugrul]

It would be interesting if instead of typing in a mispelled name......it redirected you to a google search. I wonder how it would be received if they did that....and also didn't collect money from it, just offered it as a service....now THAT would be a better version of this whole fiasco, thats for sure.

Why bother theorizing the impossible? It is evident from their low key approach to introducing this service that they knew they were in the wrong. Why would they knowingly enter into such a situation unless motivated by profit?

Somebody posted the definition of innovation earlier, noting that it didn't really clarify the nature of the change. Well, with these guys, you can be certain profit is a prerequisite to innovation.

Re:Seriously

[theOnlyTPC]

It would be interesting if instead of typing in a mispelled name......it redirected you to a google search. I wonder how it would be received if they did that....and also didn't collect money from it, just offered it as a service....now THAT would be a better version of this whole fiasco, thats for sure.

Interesting, true, and claims about "innovation" might actually be believable if they redirected to Google. However, a service (or "service") such as Sitefinder belongs at the application layer, not the network layer. Part of the power and flexibility of the Internet is the layered approach used to build it. Smooshing the layers together, for commercial benefit or otherwise, is not innovation.

Re:Seriously

[0x0d0a]

Weeeellll...while I agree entirely with most of your points, I'm not sure I agree that

Smooshing the layers together, for commercial benefit or otherwise, is not innovation.

There is significant benefit to several types of networks in not having clear separation of layers. Most ad-hoc networking systems maintain some type of routing cache -- such a cache would exist and operate at the network layer, but would probably benefit from utilizing information only present in the transport layer (you probably wouldn't want to throw out cached routing information for an open TCP connection).

A similar argument goes for IPSec and similar network-level security protocols.

In wireless protocols, it may be beneficial to utilize information from the transport layer (don't bother retransmitting UDP packets, for instance).

The isolated-layer structure provides for simpler state machines. This is a big deal -- they're easier to write, and easier to avoid bugs in. However, sometimes useful information is thrown out in such a situation.

Re:Seriously

[Znork]

"It would be interesting if instead of typing in a mispelled name......it redirected you to a google search. I wonder how it would be received if they did that."

I'm perfectly happy with them redirecting to their own site if that's what they want. If, and _only_ if, they make the service optional and ensure it doesnt interfere with DNS lookups pertaining to any other protocol than http.

Most objections arent about what they do with their changes, the objections are that they change anything at all when there are many technical assumptions about a specific behaviour. Changing this breaks a lot of things.

This functionality belongs in the browser or in an extension to DNS. Not as a sudden destructive change in the .com and .net domains.

Re:Seriously

[blibbleblobble]

"It would be interesting if instead of typing in a mispelled name......it redirected you to a google search"

That's kind of making the same assumption as Verisign, that the internet consists only of websites.

How would you like your email redirected to a google search? your IRC sessions? How would google cope with billions of SSH sessions or NTP requests per second?

The browser knows you're using HTTP, and have a human available to evaluate the results. Verisign's DNS servers don't. They only know that you have a name and you want an IP.

Re:Seriously

[geoffspear]

So you wouldn't have any problem with tyhem completely changing the DNS specification to require every lookup to include information about what protocol was going to be used to connect to the IP address returned?

What if I first visit a site using http and then ssh to the same host? Would my lookupd be forbidden from using cached information from the first lookup to return a result for the second one?

Re:Seriously

[Znork]

As long as the DNS specification is extended in a normal fashion through the IETF that would be perfectly acceptable.

As it is, DNS already has different query types for MX, NS and A records. Extending with more query types would not be technically impossible. Name caching would, of course, have to be done separately on a record type basis as an http request might not generate the same response as a ssh request (for example, for a http related request it might make sense to return multiple ip adresses to try for loadbalance and redundancy reasons, which might not make sense for ssh).

Re:Seriously

[theOnlyTPC]

You are correct. "Smooshing the layers together" was not the best choice of words for conveying my point, which was that an application layer service should not be performed at the network layer. But saying that twice in one post would have been redundant. :-)

Innovation/Corruption

[njord]

What the hell happened to the definition of innovation? It used to be that innovation was a positive change, a beneficial development. Now it is merely a smokescreen for nigh-criminal, underhanded manuevers like this Verisign ridiculousness and Microsoft's retarded defense.

It sounds like the popular meaning of "innovation" has metamorphasized to just "change". Specifically, it has been used to cover the tracks of profiteers trying to escape retribution for their foolish transgressions into privacy and user-end choices.

I hope that this term is returned to its former positive definition and that those who are responsible for its misuse realize the futility of their efforts.

njord

P.S. I wish I had some mod points - what's up with these comments? Take these flamers to the cleaners! Melisa? Learn to spell!

Innovation

[Tony-A]

from dictionary.com [emphasis added]

innovation

\In`no*va"tion\, n. [L. innovatio; cf. F. innovation.] 1. The act of innovating; introduction of something new, in customs, rites, etc. --Dryden.

2. A change effected by innovating; a change in customs; something new, and contrary to established customs, manners, or rites. --Bacon.

Why is everybody assuming that innovation is a good thing? Seems to me it is really a bad thing.

Verisign Master Plan

[fermion]

My big issue was what would this mean for typosquatting.

Sitefinder was essentially trying to make a profit of peoples typos, just like typosquatting. Typo squatting was equally innovative. I run bubba's books and register amozon.com. If I give the consumer better deals, where's the harm. Likewise, I have a licensed archive of naked people, and wonder how I can make money off it. I register disnay.com, put the pictures up for free. Again, consumers benefits because they get to look a free naked people, and when disney comes a knockin', I reluctantly give up my business for 100K.

It is true that sitefinder may be providing a service, and it is true that they have not yet put up pop up ads or links to porn sites, but if they are allowed to continue what is there to stop them?

Typosquatting probably isn't a a valid business model and clearly verisign should not be encouraging it. Unless of course part of their business model is to encourage typesquatting, transfer the domain name to victim, and then have the victim pay the registration fees into perpetuity.

"Invention" == Anything that is patented

[yerricde]

The problem with the word "invention" is that law professionals have co-opted the word to refer to a process or material composition that is the subject of patent claims.

Re:"Invention" == Anything that is patented

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really.

Remember HP's "invent" ad campaign of 2001. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/hpads/2001/index .html

I think that was a great way of distinguishing them from Dell, MSFT, etc, who were focused on innovating instead of inventing

Note to McLaughlin

[penciling_in]

How much fact and reasoning does it take?

Oh where to start

[Tacoguy]

Dear sir,

Your comment: "This is a significant test for the entire community because if the community can't find a way to introduce new services while reaching a resolution on technical matters that might arise, then the Internet infrastructure will never improve."

You must have been at an SCO "boot camp" recently. The technical community did indeed reach a resoluton to the new "service" you called "Site Finder" which messed up the infrastructure.

TG

It's not "innovation".

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of two rock solid reasons why it's not "innovation" at all.

(1) It's Verisign's job to strictly adhere to the RFCs, which they are contractually obligated to do. All innovations must adhere to the RFCs. Verisign's "innovation" doesn't.

(2) Verisign's so-called "innovation" is a poorly designed solution to the problem. Misspellings are much better handled on the client side. The browser can be configured to handle misspellings in a much more flexible way than can ever be possible by a server. (The browser can suggest MRU alternatives without HTTP lag, redirect to any URL, customize for different users, etc.) Verisign's "feature" is clearly a much weaker and less flexible design. It's not "innovation" -- it's design incompetence.

Did he miss kindergarten?

[puppetluva]

Since when did it become acceptable for adult executives of important corporations to act like children?

Not only is his argument a blatant lie, but it is a poorly constructed one founded at the logic-level of a 3rd grader who just got caught doing something obviously wrong. Even HE knows that he is being dishonest but he seems to be hoping that by using important-sounding cliches that he's read in the paper, that his company will get away with it.

At first I thought. . .well they thought they could get away with something stupid, but hopefully they'll come back to their senses and make things right. Now, I think. . . what a lot of NERVE for this brash imbecile to think that he can not only violate the public trust, but can come up with a lazier set of schoolyard lies than I'd expect from a middle-school truant-in-training.

If Verisign is run by immature imbeciles like this buffoon, they should have their charter revoked. [period] I don't want to depend on ANYONE who lacks such a basic level of respect and sense of responsibility that they can't even conduct themselves at a minimal level expected of any high-school senior.

To think: we live in a world where Dan Geer is fired for trying to protect the public trust and this subhuman dolt maintains an important post that we HAVE to rely on. Who the hell is in charge of this damn country?

Mod Parent Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod the parent down as -1 clueless.

This is not insightful. This is a fundamental error in his/her/its understanding of DNS.

A user using a WEB BROWSER might find it useful for a typo to return a page of suggestions, which is why IE does this. The parent obviously is unaware of the fact that Internet != World Wide Web, though, as the fact that other protocols rely on DNS apparently didn't occur.

What of an FTP user (using a real client, not a browser)? What use is an HTML page to them when a simple, small error code from DNS could/should tell the client that the site name did not resolve. What about a spam (See Hormel? All lower case!) filter that checks a domain's existence with DNS to detect some forged headers? These exist and they all broke thanks to Veri$ign.

Associating something like SiteFinder with a registrar/root DNS server maintainer of ANY ilk is a bad idea because it breaks DNS.

innovation ?

[bhawbaker]

if he says that stopping SiteFinder will slow down innovation.. I say they are slowing down the innovations. We could innovate Mozilla, IE, Safari, etc to automatically go to specific server on DNS errors. And sites like SiteFinder could contract with those browser owners for redirects. Guess we can't do that cuz Verisign killed that innoviation with their innotivative SiteFinder

bob

Re:innovation ?

[John Allsup]

Not only that, but the browser or even the ISP knows far more about the context of the DNS request failure. It can give a far more intelligent reply. (This is a major reason why browser related features of the internet should be implemented in the browser.)

This stuff should be handled in the browser

[geekee]

If someone wants to change their web browser to be more intelligent about bad domain names, that's fine. It's not Verisign's place, however, to force a standard, especially without the consent of the community that pays for and uses the system.

The SiteFinder Telemarketing Connection

[EnvyRAM]

Does anyone else see the parallel between Mark Mclaughlin's defense of SiteFinder and the ATA's defense in stopping the National Do-Not-Call List?

Re:The SiteFinder Telemarketing Connection

[bruns]

Also very similar to Microsoft's freedom to innovate crap.

Agh, the high road...

[thecampbeln]

You're still a fucking idiot.

Well, you're half right ;)

As for other services... really? Not that I'm a "stupid user" and have therefore not looked for such services, but save IE/MSN, there are none that I'm aware of that are built in. Oh, and in the future you could mention this as a response (as opposed to your rant) to my open question. Though I have enjoyed the flame (as well as your eloquence), kept me warm for the last 45min anyway!

Nothing else to see here, please move along...

Re:Agh, the high road...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very annoying to have to point out the same thing over and over again to all you idiots that think this was somehow good (there's been how many stories about this already?). It was in no way good, innovative, or anything else they claim it to be.

By the way, those that claim to be fucking, usually aren't.

Re:Agh, the high road...

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, those that claim to be fucking, usually aren't.

Keep telling yourself that and one day you'll feel better about jerking off.

Wow talk about feeding the trolls..

[antis0c]

Don't feed the trolls, even if they're in the Slashdot story itself!

REAL innovation.

[BlackSabbath]

The only innovation here is in the Owellian doublespeak that transforms bad into good and complaints into crimes.

Perhaps Verisign should patent THAT ... oh no, wait, I think there may already be prior art...

OTOH, maybe this will spur TRUE innovation by encouraging people onto alternative networks (eg Freenet).

Time to think about ...

[alexandre]

decentralizing the DNS system... or at least promoting alternatives 8)

http://www.opennic.unrated.net/ would be a good start.

Re:Time to think about ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using opennic for years except that with my ISP using transparent proxies and not using opennic it is useless for web browsing. As a result I gave up.

Re:Time to think about ...

[Rich0]

Why would transparent proxying matter?

Your PC should resolve foo.geek to an IP, open a connection to that IP, and retrieve the data. In the background the proxy intercepts your request to that IP and proxies the request.

The proxy never sees what DNS name you think the web server runs on.

Now, if the proxy is NON-TRANSPARENT this is an issue. In this event you put the proxy address in your web browser, connect to it, give it the URL, and it resolves it and retrieves it.

this is the kind of crap

[YllabianBitPipe]

this posturing (pulling some low tech trick and crying "you are against innovation" when the ruse is discovered) is the kind of business crap that gives technology a bad name. This is the sort of stuff at the level of pop up windows and spy ware on your PC. This is the sort of stuff that some Joe Average AOL user in middle america runs across and when you explain it to them, they go "Huh?" and get more scared of using the computer or the web. This is the sort of shit that is KILLING the user base and hence STIFLING adoption of technology.

Regardless Verisign got a buttload of data

[Anonymous Coward]

And now they want to data mine it:

Paid graduate internship opportunity at Verisign

Job Description - External:
The candidate should take the current status of the data mining study / research (Performed previously at VeriSign) and take it to the next level of running various data mining algorithms against VeriSign sample data. The objective is to apply the theory and algorithms to different sets of sample data of VeriSign and demonstrate the value of using data mining techniques for this data. The person will be working closely with the users in gathering the reporting requirements and research on how best these requirements can be met through the data mining methodology.

Experience -
The candidate must be very familiar and knowledgeable with the concepts and implementation of data mining techniques and methodologies. The candidate must have gone through IT or related courses and must have a very clear understanding of information systems, programming tools and languages.

Oh good

[Have Blue]

Finally something to replace all the Darl McBride jokes.

So many talk like HTTP is the only protocol...

[mckyj57]

Last time I checked, there were 569 protocols defined as well-known services on my machine. The ONLY one that could have any benefit from the Verisign land grab is HTTP.

Breaking 568 protocols to deliver a marginally useful, if at all useful, service is technical idiocy of the highest degree.

The only thing innovative about it is driving stupidity to new heights.

Hey Mark McLaughlin

[Anonymous Coward]

Go fuck yourself!

Stuff like this forces alternatives to DNS

[tjstork]

Really the whole issue has nothing to do with capitalism vs socialism as much as it has to do with putting one's hands in the cookie jar to the detriment of the entire business community.

Verisign, by stealing DNS, has done three things:

a) made dns a problem on people's minds where it wasn't before.

b) shown that anyone with the power to police dns has the power to abuse it.

c) opened the doors to other dns's and ultimately the fracture of the global internet.

The decisions to use DNS or any other naming technology is always one that is based on commercial practicality. If companies such as Verisign try and use the DNS to leverage their own services, then, why use DNS?

Got funny reply from Verisign

[bhawbaker]

I have been bugging verisign about their Term Of Use allowing me to "opt-out'.. They finally replied just now, here is portion of it:

I am writing to update you on VeriSigns Site Finder service. On Friday, October 3rd, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) directed VeriSign, Inc., to temporarily suspend service no later than 6PM PST, Saturday, October 4. VeriSign requested an extension from ICANN for 3 additional days for the shut down in order to provide the technical community time to make any necessary system changes. Unfortunately, ICANN refused this request. Accordingly, in response to this demand, VeriSign is temporarily suspending the Site Finder service as of Saturday, October 4 at 6PM PST.

Note the bold.. UMMMMMM I don't remember them giving us time to adjust to their SiteFinder!

bob

there is a point...

[zeruch]

...when an intellectual response just is futile and all you can do is raise your arms in digust and scream "what in gods name do they put in that morons cereal?" "innovation" has become the poster child of malleable semantics....the most operative part of semantics being its last two syllables.

As Inigo would put it...

[daffmeister]

McLaughlin casts the debate over sitefinder in terms of 'innovation' versus the status quo and threatens that stifling 'innovation' will lead to a weaker internet.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Site Finder or Web Finder.

[oolon]

What angers me is the assumption by him that the internet is the WWW, that is just one protocol, the DNS changes may have been find for http, but it hurt every other protocol! If people need a spell corrector for www mistyped domain names the place for that is in the browser, not in the DNS. The astonisting thing is the way he feels has the right to run it, why should Versign have the monopoly right to own the wildcard entry. If there is to be a sitefinder, I want the record auctioned off with no renewal right. ICANN says the need cash well that would give them more than enough.

James

He says

[Anonymous Coward]

"We respectfully disagree with those who, in the name of technology purity, strive to hold the Internet back"

That's funny. That's our point too.

Let's Be Honest...

[rmckeethen]

SiteFinder wasn't an 'innovation'; it was a marketing, ploy pure and simple. Verisign hoped to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals by routing domain-name typos to a site they controlled, ostensibly to then re-direct Internet users to sites and services that Verisign stands to make a buck on. MacLaughlin is insulting the collective intelligence - or, in some cases, the lack thereof - of Internet users by labeling his marketing gimmick as a service to help users resolve Internet errors. It's bullshit and it's disingenuous to call this an 'innovation' - with that logic you might as well call SPAM an 'informational opportunity' for the millions of users forced to wade through it. Get real.

ICANN pulled the plug on this little power play and I'm thankful they had the courage to do it. It's nice to see ICANN finally show a little backbone for a change. Verisign wanted to alter a fundamental part of how the Internet works - they wanted to change how the network responds to errors. ICANN correctly smacked this down. Imagine if the post office started sending malformed letters to the Direct Marketing Association: the public would be up in arms about it. Are we any more surprised that Internet users don't appreciate the same treatment? Looking at it this way underscores what so outraged ICANN but it ignores the fact that Verisign began this whole stunt when they bypassed what few Internet standards processes we do have. Did Verisign submit an RFC to suggest their change in Internet standards? Nope, not that I'm aware of. Did they address the issue with the Internet community and gain approval that way? Again, not that I'm aware of. They unilaterally decided to make the change, regardless of how the change might affect other Internet users, and that's why ICANN told them to knock it off.

Here's a thought Mr. MacLaughlin: do us all a favor next time and just ask before you decide to make a major change in Internet standards. The whole reason the Internet is useful to its users is because we cooperate, because there is a method and a process for change that everyone else follows. Internet users don't care if you make a buck on-line, but we'd rather you did so up-front instead of using (or, in this case, abusing) your privileged position as a registrar and the maintainer of the .com database. And quit crying because ICANN brought you to task for being the on-line version of a schoolyard bully. You tried, you lost, now move on and do something constructive. Oh, and stop listening to everything those guys and girls down in Marketing tell you - try listening to the techies for a change. Maybe you'll learn something.

Innovation

[dmiller]

VeriSlime's sitefinder is innovation is much the same way that the SARS virus is evolution.

Innovative? Try illegal.

[Guspaz]

They break all sorts of applications that rely on proper DNS behaviour, and typosquat EVERY domain name, and they call it innovation?

Hell, there isn't even an entry in sitefinder for every domain, (Try searching for my site, novasearch.net, on sitefinder. No hits.), so it's not even good at the task they purport it to be for!

Re:Innovative? Try illegal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Count yourself lucky. When Sitefinder is used to search for my company name, up pops a 'sponsored' link to one of our competitors.

Innovation?

[CjKing2k]

Five years ago, Microsoft defended their IE/Win32 Shell integration as an "innovation." Like SiteFinder, it caused more problems than it solved, and angered a lot of people, especially those working for the competition. I would be furious if I were an exec. for Google, but this will just come from the standpoint of a university network administrator.

My concerns about the SiteFinder:

• Who decides what pages are shown? Is it a completely objective search or are we under the cover of corporate sponsorship?
• What kind of user control do you have? So far I see three options available to me, and I could really care less about content filtering so where is everything else?
• Where are the other languages? Google supports just about every language known to mankind, living, dead, and ficticious. Why does America think it runs the world?
• How does this make the Internet stronger? So far, this move has defeated spam filters and caused other network problems.

As far as I'm concerned, this is an abuse of their administrative powers and ICANN has done the right thing for a change by putting a stop to this operation. They should revoke Verisign's power if abuse continues.

C'mon

[llzackll]

THese guys are crying Microsoft now.

"will lead to a weaker internet"

[reboot246]

Ah, come on now. The net was doing just fine before Verisign started their crap.

Pure unadulterated BULLSHIT!

That word is thrown around way too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Innovation? Disregarding RFCs, breaking the expected behaviour of the Internet, for the commercial gain of a single company is 'innovation'? That's almost as good as Microsoft's 'Freedom to Innovate' arguments... sorry... couldn't help myself there :)

Call me recalcitrant, but I think that major changes to the functionality of the Internet should have at least some technical merit to the billions of people who use it.

Stifling innovation eh?

[phorm]

threatens that stifling 'innovation'

I could make a special-toed boot specially designed for kicking people such as McLaughlin in the arse. I will of course, have features that makes it optimal for aiming directly towards that great rectal divide.

Then, when McLaughlin tries to press charges, I'll just state that my device is an innovation, and just because it damages the way he works doesn't mean it isn't useful to somebody...

Of course, I wouldn't have the power to force the masses to use such a device... but really I think that a swift-kick-in-the-arse is probably a lot more useful for many people than sitefinder ever was.

Innovation?

[frank687]

Reminds me of a certain company in Seattle. And I don't mean Starbucks!

Also, has anyone ever noticed that antimicrosoft.com takes you to Linux.com

Stifle Innovation

[FrozenDownload]

It would be a sad irony that if in the interest of the status quo we stifle innovation, because in the end all that will lead to is less investment in these important networks.

It's a shame all of us can't see we are stifling innovation. If it wasn't for verisign, we wouldn't have redone some of our programs. Think of it as an upgrade, we are providing yet another "upgrade" to our application/scripts. Thats innovative!

Bollocks... DNS != Search or Advertising Service

[DeltaV]

This is innovatation as defined by marketing 'droids...

I use DNS to match IP addresses to domain names... When I want to search for something, I'll the use the search engine of my choice.

Site Finder is like trying to use a fuel additive to change the colour of your car

Saving Face

[GerbilSocks]

Of course that idiot is going to say it's "innovation". He's trying to save face, when in fact he's made a bigger fool of himself.

It's not the sabotage I mind...

[The Gline]

...so much as the sneaky excuses.

I'm reminded, distantly, of a hoax that took place in the art world in the Sixties. A modern art exhibit was set up at a small downtown (NY) gallery, with about forty paintings, and an art critic for one of the major rags came down to check it out. He started doing this gush to the curator full of the usual ArtSpeak jargon, and then the hoax was revealed: the paintings were all the work of a two-year-old boy. There was a pause, and then the critic shifted gears as if nothing had happened and started gushing about the purity of a child's untarnished perspective!

The more I live, the more I see that people will do absolutely anything to pretend that everything is just hunky dory, even if it means being a consummate horse's ass. VeriSign are just the latest heirs to ass-dom.

Re:It's not the sabotage I mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. Are you saying the works done by the two-year-old boy aren't art? They were probably better than a lot of art out there.

Pay Us

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have to pay royalties to owners of trademarked names

Pay Us

[Anonymous Coward]

microsoft-really-sucks.com

microsoft owns the trademark microsoft and Verisign is making money off the typo so microsoft should sue verisign or verisign pay royalties.

It's that simple

He must be smoking crack!!!

[Dark Coder]

Sigh...

Anyone who has used it in the last three weeks knows that claim to be false."

Need I say that anti-spam applications, networked printers, mail forwarders and mobile IP users were hung because of these highly-modified genetic root servers?

Should I point out that Mae-West traffic actually shot up because spammers were having a wonderful and rare day for unfeterred spamming?

He must be smoking crack...

Re:He must be smoking crack!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Should I point out that Mae-West traffic actually shot up because spammers were having a wonderful and rare day for unfeterred spamming?

I hear this complaint a lot. How exactly does sitefinder enable "unfettered" spamming?

Doesn't Matter

[Jameth]

I'm not assuming that innovation is a good thing, but .museum has been doing it for longer, so it really isn't new. In fact, not only is it unoriginal, it's also rude, greedy, and generally harmful.

He said whut?

[An Onerous Coward]

Obviously, somebody is paying good money for Verisign to take the heat off SCO. I'll give you three guesses who, and the first two don't count.

The thing is, despite the absurd, self-serving nature of this "innovation," I can see how it might be useful for a browser to behave this way. This would be perfectly fine as an application-level behavior, and I'd go so far as to say I'd like to see it as an option in Mozilla. Google could have a "domain guessing" service, Verisign could have a service, Microsoft could have a service, your local floral shop could have a service, and the user could decide which one was most useful.

A few people have already mentioned this, and I'm just agreeing. What I don't agree with is breaking DNS for the sake of getting Verisign a few extra hits, then calling it "innovation." What utter crap.

Re:He said whut?

[An Onerous Coward]

Oh, forgot one thing. Did you read at the end where he pretty much implied that, if Verisign doesn't find a way to make more money off the Internet, they'll no longer be able to keep the root nameservers running effectively?

I loved that part.

Semi-topical link.

oil anyone

[phloydphreak]

If operators and businesses are discouraged from exploring the bounds of the Internet, it will mean less research and development and less investment into the network infrastructure. In short, a weaker Internet.

you are correct: historically exploration has created more development, at the cost of that which is explored. Lewis and Clark explored a free land immersed in beauty; their exploration helped to eliminate the landscapes that caused them to explore.

oil surveyors explore some of the most beautiful landscapes left on earth... to destroy them with development.

I hope that the internet is kept as pure and free as it can be in such an age of pollution and greed.

Don't like it? Protest.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like it's time for the slashdot community to head over to overture.com (or even sitefinder.verisign.com) and search for 'verisign'... then click their sponsored link.

I'm curious...

[Anonymous Coward]

...who the fuck is this numbnut and why the hell is he writing for (ostensibly) a tech rag?

I'm sure someone has already pointed out (but I'll do so again since this guy has pissed me off so much) that the problem isn't that people were being helped to find the right URL, the problem involves:
* Needlessly breaking Internet standards to do it.
* Abusing monopoly power to do it.
* Creating technical living hell for thousands of people, organizations, and protocols that rely on those Internet Standards that were broken in too many categories of ways to name, let alone count.
* ...and not giving a shit about doing so.

I have trouble imagining that this commentator is actually so stupid to overlook or fail to comprehend the technical implications of this sort of change, so I'm forced to conclude that he assumes the Internet should be run according the whims of autocratic corporate fiefdoms with every company obligated to do anything that will make it money irrespective of consequences. Or maybe he owns stock in Verisign. Or maybe he really is this dumb? I didn't see a fork sticking out of his forehead on the photo with the article, so I guess he's at least smart enough to feed himself.

So all that irritates me, but what's really really mind-bogglingly stupid about his commentary, is that he doesn't recognize that a truly innovative solution would give users pretty buttons to click on when they mistype a domain, while not breaking the rest of the goddamn 'net. This is per-application problem, not a DNS level problem. It is, furthermore, a problem that has already been solved: or perhaps the author is unfamiliar with Internet Explorer and other web browsers? (Again, I can't imagine he's actually that dumb...is he?)

So am I missing something? Or does this man have nano-levels of credibility? Does he have some sort of vested interest in SiteFinder? Please help me out because I can't figure out how someone could seemingly be smart enough to get himself published, but still be so fucking stupid.

As an aside: I hereby nominate the word innovation as the most meaningless word of the year. It has become so meaningless that it threatens to surpass even the word "like" as used by teenage girls, "'innovation' is like so like totally like meaningless!" It's misused the same way "like" is misused, by being pitched randomly in to already severely content-starved sentences to make the package more socially acceptable and to distract readers from realizing the sequences of words don't make any sense.

Re:I'm curious...

[unconfused1]

*applause*

I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

I found sitefinder to be very helpful while it was online. The thing is, it could usually figure out what the site you were going to was supposed to be (no surprise since they have the name database). I can see the arguments of the people who claim it broke name resolution...i think there needs to be a way so that something like sitefinder can still work while still reporting properly a bad lookup so that programs that need that can have it.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

This type of feature should be provided by the web browser. If a domain doesn't exist then have it search for the link on google or use a similar service to produce the same result. Maybe Verisign should release their SiteFinder as an add-on for Internet Explorer. That way anyone who wants to have their browsing habbits tracked for innovation can download it and install it as they see fit.

Re:Please Note...

[Anonymous Coward]

"It returns valid values for every query."

Including invalid queries. There's an error code for nonexistant domains for a reason.

Whatever...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just innovated all of my domains over to
another registrar.

"innovation" is a code word

[swschrad]

meaning "get your rules away from my pocketbook." didn't used to be that way, but it's the new definition.

be very afraid when the "I" word comes up.

Someone fill me in...

[Comatose51]

What's with this latent animosity towards ICANN? Yes, I'm probably too young (or too newbie) to know the story so please fill me in.

Mark McLaughlin is Right . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

At least about one thing.

Quashing SiteFinder could possibly lead to a "weaker Internet." That is, if you're one of the people who subscribes to the idea that if a thing doesn't kill you it'll make you stronger.

why not just port 80

[DunbarTheInept]

If Verisign was *Really* trying to do this the right way, they'd only redirect web hits to their site. If they had done that, everything would have been fine. But instead they redirect at a very low level , in the namespace, so you can no longer tell if a .com address is valid in software. (which is why spam went way up when Verisign did this switch - mail servers can no longer tell when a return address is a bogus hostname.)

Internet Explorer

[truesaer]

The funny thing here is that Internet Explorer already suggested alternatives for mistyped domains on their special 404 page. And their suggestions, based on my use, were usually spot on.

In contrast, sitefinder's suggestions were never even close and it broke protocols to boot. Amazing here that Microsoft could actually have come up with the right solution. I never liked their error pages, but it was only because the error number wasn't immediately obvious. If they had just added "404" or "505" in big letters I would have been happy with them.

Someone ought to tell Verisign that they didn't innovate anything. Microsoft already had this idea, and they did it way better.

Re:Internet Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are web server error numbers - if the domain name isn't found there isn't a server there to give you an error number.

Re:Internet Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. The only thing microsoft got right, was making the option removable. The verisign is manditory. I freely admit that I have terrible spelling. This terrible spelling is the reason I get "server does not exist" errors. However, I cannot easily fix these typos with verisign's system. I have to type the url all over because they have "helpfully" inserted their own url. Bloody frustrating.

Sitefinder helped spammers

[keith73]

Perhaps Verisign is getting money from spammers for launching sitefinder. My inbox got flooded with nearly triple the amount of spam I used to get before sitefinder launched. SpamAssassin and other filters that check for valid domains were all tricked into letting the spam through.

Couple that with the violations of certain RFC's and ICANN has a great case against Verisign. I'm sure plenty of people will come out and file "friend of the court" papers backing ICANN on this.

I own over a dozen domains with them, all registered years ago, and will be moving them elsewhere. Names4Ever only charges $7 a year. hmm, $7/year or $35/year, which one should I use?

Sitefinder works for Verisign customers only???

[Alchemyst]

Did anybody notice that SiteFinder only worked for Verisign customers? I have 6 .com and .net domain names, 3 of them are registered through Verisign, and 3 others are registered through another registrar. The only sites that were "suggested" by Sitefinder were the Verisign ones.

Nice "innovation"! Promote Verisign customers only!!!!

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

Another issue....

[33degrees]

Another problem with Sitefinder, which I haven't heard anybody mention yet, is that the suggestions offered were often not the actual domain you were looking for, but various typo squatters. So how is this helping the consumer?

In bold move, OS community supports CS patent...

[im a fucking coward]

This innovation requires an immediate patent, with a minimum per seat fee of $10^6. Perhaps we should support strategic closed source patents...

innovation comes from combination

[Anonymous Coward]

using a decentralized dns system (i don't know if opennic counts, as it seems quite hierarchical) in a p2p manner, type-squatting could actually have a positive effect, but not with the current strictly hierarchical dns. time to peer your local dns ;)

Pull out his heartplug...

[EverDense]

From the article: The decisions made over the next year about Internet innovation will influence the depth by which Internet operators are encouraged to continue to invest in these networks.

Fine, FUCK OFF, see if we care.
Someone else will GLADLY take over.

You and your so called "Innovations" are not wanted here.

If this was a real innovation

[stox]

Verisign would not have foisted it upon everyone with no warning. What was going through their minds? I think they actually thought no one would make a fuss about it. Sorry, Verisign, didn't work this time.

You want innovation? Give us a choice.

[ca1v1n]

If this was really a service that everyone needs, all they need to do is inform the ISPs that they would be glad to accept DNS redirects for all invalid domains. ISPs could, even on a per-user basis, deliver the wildcard address to their users whenever an invalid lookup is made. Someone would develop software to take advantage of this, an xml schema for encoding the return data to non-browser apps would be published, software developers would implement it, and the public would demand that their ISPs support it. As long as it didn't affect me, I wouldn't care.

I'd be curious what his response to such a suggestion would be. Probably that nobody would bother and this "innovation" would go unused. And that's the point.

Right To Innovate

[Bruha]

His right to innovation ends when it kills off the effectiveness of my networks spam detection programs.

Coverage on eff.org

[Anonymous Coward]

I was suprised to see so little coverage of this issue on eff.org, so I sent the following e-mail to ask@eff.org:

Greetings.

Verisign's damage to the DNS system (called "SiteFinder") is one of the most egregious abuses of power that the Internet community has yet encountered. Although SiteFinder is currently suspended, recent comments from Verisign's officers make it clear that they intend to fight hard to resume SiteFinder in the future.

I am writing to ask EFF to elevate Verisign's abuse to high importance on the eff.org web-site.

Specifically, I ask that the eff.org web-site include an item about Verisign's abuse on the "Hot Topics" list (on the home page) and on the "To Do List" (on the Action Center page).

I urge EFF to use the eff.org web-site to deliver a loud, clear, and unambiguous message against Verisign's abuse of the Internet, and to assist the Internet community in organizing against their abuse.

Thank you for posting EFF's positive reaction to the suspension of SiteFinder on the eff.org home page (03 October 2003).

All the best,

(name / address)

here is another story..

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5087139.html?tag=n efd_top
is verisign threating that they will effect the internet?
quote
Lewis said, warning that permanently eliminating the service could have negative effects on VeriSign's health and, by extension, the broader Internet

Their corporate strategy - from latest PR Week

[heff]

There is an article in the latest PRWeek on verisign with this little blurb regarding their corporate strategy. If you ever wondered what to expect next, this would be it - It also gives you perspective on what they believe they are accomplishing.

"But Tom Galvin, VeriSign's VP of public affairs, said this is just one big misunderstanding.

"The coverage has been largely technical, expressing the fears of the technical community," said Galvin. "It hasn't focused on internet users, who we created the service for. The media is not focusing on the end user. We think they're the most important audience.

VeriSign is working with its US agency, Bite Communications, to reach out to the media.

"We're doing a lot of outreach, and explaining Site Finder as a way we are innovating and improving the user experience on the internet," said Jim Hock, Bite's director of technology policy communications. "There's a fundamental misunderstanding of what Site Finder is all about. We're educating the media that this is a debate that needs to happen."

"I think the reason the media is writing about this is that it has to do with innovation," said Galvin. "The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were the first to write about it. We're putting it in the context of the benefits to the end user.""

Re:Their corporate strategy - from latest PR Week

[vacuum_tuber]

But Tom Galvin, VeriSign's VP of public affairs, said this is just one big misunderstanding.

Yeah. Maybe Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Batista, Somoza, Pol Pot, Baby Doc Duvalier, Millajovovich, Saddam Hussein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Henry Lee Lucas, et al could have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had thought of this excuse. "It's just one big misunderstanding!"

The coverage has been largely technical, expressing the fears of the technical community.

Yeah, as in the technical community that built and that operates the Internet. Fuckwit!

The media is not focusing on the end user. We think they're the most important audience.

Great! Let's just shitcan the Internet Engineering Task Force and put all the technical issues up for public polling. Slimey shit-for-brains!

We're putting it in the context of the benefits to the end user.

Now there's a great idea! How about putting narcotics in the context of the benefits to the end user, hmmm? How about putting robbery and theft in the context of the benefits to the end user? How about rape? Let's not stop there... there's invasion, looting and pillage and genocide, not to mention forgery, fraud, etc.

VeriSlime joins SCO in putting faces to the long-alleged "corporate greed" some of us used to laugh at. "Corporate greed" used to be a pejorative of the far left, but now it has taken shape and lives in the form of VeriSlime and SCO. In real life it's far worse than anything the lefties used to complain about.

Why do we give corp. execs the time of day?

[release7]

Note: This post has been censored for your reading pleasure.

Jesus, what else is this a**hole going to say? It'd be great if they could say what's really on their mind:

"Profit is our number one motivation. F*ck the Internet, f*ck standards, f*ck all you others who get in the way of us making a profit. We are duty bound to make money for our shareholders and we aren't going to apologize for it. Now f*ck off."

Instead, we all pretend they are making valid arguments when they talk about "service to the community," "innovation," and all the other "we care" b*llsh*t they spew. The bottom line is that when anything gets in the way of the bottom line, they will f*ck their own mothers to get ahead. The sooner we realize it the better.

Re:Why do we give corp. execs the time of day?

[vacuum_tuber]

Yes. This is the New Corporatism.

Once upon a time there were no CFOs, COOs or CIOs, the President of a company was the CEO without being called "CEO," because everyone knew that the President was, by definition, the chief executive officer, and no one in their right mind would have put an MBA into a position as a "professional manager" while the MBA was completely clueless about the business or the industry. "Human Resources" didn't exist -- we had a Personnel Department that kept records, added people to payroll and removed them, kept tabs on benefits, and had no voice in anything. The top financial officer was the Treasurer or the Comptroller, also without much of a voice, since the primary financial function in a corporation, after collecting receivables, paying payables and not misplacing the remainder, is accounting -- that is, keeping track of where we have been -- essentially the view out the back window of the corporate car. A friend of mine once observed that if you drive looking out the back window, you'll end up in a ditch.

because DNS doesn't work that way.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you ask for a DNS name->address translation you don't give the service (port) you are looking for. It is strictly a hostname->number translation.

It is one of the flaws in DNS, in my opinion. AppleTalk's NBP allowed you to find a service as well as a machine.

If DNS was a service resolving protocol instead of a host one, then everyone wouldn't have to run servers on special port numbers either.

Re:because DNS doesn't work that way.

[DunbarTheInept]

When you ask for a DNS name->address translation you don't give the service (port) you are looking for.

Yet DNS *does* have a way of telling you what the e-mail server for a domain is. It does have some protocol-aware stuff built in, although I'm aware that it isn't much.

The point is this: If they can't do it for just port 80, then they have no business redirecting it to what is basically JUST a website server.

We're all commies now?

[mishehu]

Am I having a McCarthy-Era flashback here? What is the big deal even if the resistance to any corporation flexing its muscle to get you to do whatever it wants and buy whatever it wants you to is considered anti-capitalist? I thought capitalism usually took the market into consideration, and if the market resists enough, the best thing for any corporation is to immediately stop and either find a) a viable solution/compromise or b) cease and desist. It does not call for whining, and we seem to have an awful lot of whining lately. Maybe somebody needs to breastfeed all these babies (i.e. RIAA, SCO, Verisign, etc.) so they stop. And what big favor did Verisign cause me? Well, it generated at least one emergency phone call for a new client of mine, whose previous network administrator had DNS (in DHCP for the lan) pointing to SBC's DNS servers instead of to the Win2k active directory server. Thus a DNS query for _ldap_._mcs..... didn't fail for the non-existent domain and the system never fell back to WINS for resolution... thus nobody could log on.

better or easier?

[Danny Rathjens]

It is better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

I beg to differ. I think the more accurate phrase is:

It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Whether or not it is better to do so requires an ethical decision on the part of the asker.

Re:better or easier?

[0x0d0a]

Or a decision on whether the short-term benefit of the toy is worth the medium term benefit of sleeping on the couch.

Re:better or easier?

[dickens]

Yes, easier.

I refer to this as "Hopper's Law". A nod to the late Adm. Grace Hopper from whom I first heard this.

It cost $100 million per Verisign root server?

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

"VeriSign's two root servers withstood the attack, in large part because we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to fortify them and have hired the very best people to run them."

Those are some real expensive PCs they got there.

Re:It cost $100 million per Verisign root server?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're so expensive because they bought them second hand from themselves...

Innovation?

[dtfinch]

Internet Explorer has had that feature for years, as well as many other browsers. What they tried to do is knock all other site finders out of service, regardless of user preference.

farting in public

[octa]

Sure, there is no law that can stop a monkey to fart in public while wearing a Verisign tshirt but, there is a big posibility that the police will take you in for an related issue (as indecent exposure/obscene act or such...). Sure, you can get an expensive lawyer that will defent your right to free speech and such... Sure, you may even win the case. BUT, for most of of the common sense humans you are just a piece of garbage... So, go ahead ,open the Yellow Pages at the lawyers section...

Sell 'em twice Verisign

[wessorh]

Doubt many of you have herd of WLS, its VeriSigns new service to sell your domain again. Yep, all registered domains get to be resold, and if you loose your domain it automaticly goes to the fella who purchased the WLS (backorder) on your domain.

Now don't you want to thank VeriSlime for their Internet innovation.

"Vocal minority"?

[LordBrutish]

For this vocal minority, resentment lingers at the very fact that the Internet is used for commercial purpose, which ignores the fact that it's a critical part of our economy.

Yeah, why WOULD it matter that the "vocal minority" got upset about you hijacking the entire internet? We're just the ones who BUILT it, you ass.

Re:"Vocal minority"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, all that SPAM is so critical to our economy it's not funny. L O LZ DUDES

Where'd the money go?

[YouHaveSnail]

According to this article, VeriSign spent millions of dollars to develop SiteFinder.

What I'd like to know is this: what exactly did they spend all that money on? For a cool two million, you can pay 20 really smart people $100,000 each for a year's worth of labor. It's hard to imagine that it really took that much manpower to redirect requests for non-existant domains to their web page.

I'd guess that they'll spend a few million bucks on lawyers if they decide to try to push SiteFinder past ICANN. But I just can't believe that 20 very expensive man-years went into developing their "product."

Re:Where'd the money go?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the executives' pay.

1.8 million dollars for the exectives and $200,00 for 2 manyears of programmers' time.

Perhaps Mr. McLaughlin is right?

[out of control]

Mark McLaughlin may be right.

Perhaps the internet as we know it does need some innovation. It really is so sad to see it in its current state of disarray. (I really thought they were going to clean the internet last April 1st; and I logged off for that 24 hour period, because I could tell it needed some cleaning). Perhaps if enough of us had logged off they would have cleaned SCO from the internet? But NO! some selfish people stayed logged on, and SCO is still here. (Take heed interdroids.. please log off next Apr. 1st... perhaps they will clean the net of intervangelists such as Mr. McLaughlin. Didn't you guys get that email or what??).

Now, just in case Mark is in fact correct in his assertions that the internet is in need of innovation? I would suggest that VeriSign has had their kick at the cat, and ICANN should wildcard mistyped URL's to a different TLD each month, but exclude VeriSign for the first 36 months.

What do you think Mark? Is that innovative enough for you? Perhaps when a user types verisign.com a random link generator could take that user to a pr0n site just for shits and giggles? Innovative enough yet Marky?

Sheesh..........

Are Mark and Darl dating? or do they just have the same dealer?

The more "innovation", the less invention!

[0x0d0a]

There WAS advance notice.

I'm dubious. I read one of the very first, if not the first, announcements on NANOG, and it was after-the-fact (or approximately at-the-fact). There was certainly not the at *least* six months of warning that would be necessary for a change like this.

Also, has anyone noticed that Verisign and Microsoft, two of the largest tech companies that play the nastiest and are the *worst* at coming out with new tech (actually, to be honest, I don't know Verisign's history well enough to know whether they're historically like this or not) are the ones that *constantly* claim that any interference with their operations would "stifle innovation"?

I don't see Google pulling the "stifle innovation" card. Google's research lab comes out with exciting, helpful, interesting things on a regular basis. I don't see Apple pulling the "stifle innovation" card -- and while Apple may not be the tech luminary that it once was, it still comes out with decent and out-of-the-ordinary products. The only people claiming that their "innovation" is at risk are those who *aren't* innovating.

Re:The more "innovation", the less invention!

[mwood]

"The only people claiming that their "innovation" is at risk are those who *aren't* innovating."

Ha, there's even a proverb: "those who talk about it the most, do it the least."

Re:The more "innovation", the less invention!

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people claiming that their "innovation" is at risk are those who *aren't* innovating.

That's because when they say innovation they mean exploitation.

Re:The more "innovation", the less invention!

[fishbowl]

If we were talking about it on slashdot weeks before it rolled, I just can't buy that it came as a surprise to anyone. Anybody who claims it was a surprise was just being irresponsible.

ICANN shares some guilt here, and should share the consequences.

Innovation - perhaps . . .

[meatspray]

I don't think that the concept of sitefinder was a bad one. Sure if you end up at a 404, preforming a like name comparison might be a nice touch. The problem with site finder is that it was forced upon the population in an automatic way, changing the rules of how things work without consulting the people that have to abide by those rules. Instead of handling this at a network level it should be handled at an application level. Perhaps a checkbox in a drilldown menu in your web browser that says consult sitefinder on site not found errors.

Change and innovation are generally a good things even if their only usefull purpose is to teach you what not to change.

Re:Innovation - perhaps . . .

[Todd Knarr]

First problem: you assume that HTTP is the only protocol. It's not. What works for HTTP with a human being royally screws things up for a piece of hardware trying to do SNMP.

Second, your checkbox wouldn't work. The way Sitefinder works is by eliminating "site not found" errors. Since your browser would never see a "site not found" error, it'd never check whether to consult anything else.

Re:Innovation - perhaps . . .

[meatspray]

No no, you misunderstand my position. I'm saying that it was concievably useful, but only for HTTP. And that if they really want it to work and not be marginally painfull to the community in general, they should work something out with the browser vendors to optiionally allow 404 to send user to the search rather than just error. That's why I said it should happen at an "application level"(web browser) not a "network level"(dns) perhaps you missed that part or took it as an OSI statement (though it really doesn't fit that way). I'm basically saying they went about it wrong, not that everyone else should adapt.

The biggest impact I say was in mail host lookups for basic spam filtering. It was difficult with the *.com to tell if an address was coming from a legit source.

Forget "Utter Crap", he is a monumental ass

[tugrul]

At first I didn't read the article, figuring that it was just a longer sappier version of the summary posted here. The summary does it no fucking justice.

More likely, ICANN caved under the pressure from some in the Internet community for whom this is a technology-religion issue about whether the Internet should be used for these purposes.

For this vocal minority, resentment lingers at the very fact that the Internet is used for commercial purpose, which ignores the fact that it's a critical part of our economy.

At this moment the veins in my forehead are bulging, and I'm envisioning a fate for this man pulled out of Crichton's Congo.

Apparently this gigantic ass doesn't realize that we are the critical people that make it function as a critical part of our economy. It also happens to be the fucking critical part of putting food on our plates. Somebody needs to get this through his thick head before the next time he hops into his 6 figure car heading back to his 7 figure house.

This unforgivable libel needs to be answered on the pages of news.com, and I think we should be petitioning to get this guy canned. He is not of the moral character I want near the big red button of the Internet.

I need to go cool off...

Re:Forget "Utter Crap", he is a monumental ass

[azzy]

> He is not of the moral character I want near the big red button of the Internet.

I don't mind if he's near this.

Re:Forget "Utter Crap", he is a monumental ass

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure HE knows Sitefinder fucked up a lot of things. He knows it pissed off a lot of people. He doesn't give a flying fuck. Same thing with SCO - they don't care how much money they cost people, how many lawsuits they loose, how many people hate them. Their making lots of noise, and the people in the stock market, who for the most part don't really know much about the companies they 're trading in, see a company making lots of noise, and that obviously means they're onto something very profitable, and up goes the P/E.

Newspeak

[McNally]

McLaughlin casts the debate over sitefinder in terms of 'innovation' versus the status quo and threatens that stifling 'innovation' will lead to a weaker internet."

Hmmm.. Let me see if I've got this straight: not letting companies unilaterally violate, for their own advantage, established internet practices and protocols that everyone depends on will lead to a weaker Internet? Doubleplusgood one, Mark!

AHA!

[Kakemann]

McBride... McDonalds... MC Hammer... And now, McLaughlin.

Do you approve of the job Verisign's CEO is doing?

[ahi]

Do you approve of the job Verisign's CEO is doing?

Don't forget to submit your opinion in the forbes.com online poll.

:)

can somebody explain what progs were screwed...

[Anonymous Coward]

by this? or is this spin for the case against verisign. personally i dont see how this was a bad thing. besides the lame assertion that "this breaks the fundamental rule behind the internet" or some jibberish like that. how was this a bad thing, how did it have a negative effect on anything. in this internet day where everyone and their grandmother has an internet connection isnt something like this an obvious advance? she is always mis-typing urls, if theres a service that can show her to the correct one based on what she did type in whats wrong with that?

Re:Do you approve of the job Verisign's CEO is doi

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL To say the least he has a very unfavorable rating currently.

Currently

[Kris_J]

The bio forgot a "currently":

Mark McLaughlin is senior vice president and deputy general manager of VeriSign's Naming and Directory Services Division, which is currently responsible for running the Internet's .com and .net system.

If they keep up this crap, check back in a week.

Moved domains...

[Ratface]

The SiteFinder fiasco was the final impetus for me to remove my last couple of domains from NetSol's hands to a more internet friendly domain registrar. Apart from saving me money in the process I'm pleased I finally got off my ass and voted with my wallet!

Squatting

[Jesus IS the Devil]

Exactly how is the sitefinder service any different than some domain name squatter using a commonly misspelled version of a domain name for commercial gain?

Verisign puts up ads on these misspelled domains, and will probably in the future start charging people for placement in certain domain name variations. This is EXACTLY domain name squatting.

Re:Squatting

[vacuum_tuber]

Jesus IS the Devil wrote:

Exactly how is the sitefinder service any different than some domain name squatter using a commonly misspelled version of a domain name for commercial gain?

In terms of how the Internet works, the two are vastly different. A domain squatter or parker actually pays for and registers a domain. What the domain owner puts up there is nobody else's business, and it affects nothing else on the Internet. What Verisign did was to return false DNS responses for nonexistent domains as if all those domains existed and were located at the IP address of their SiteFinder Web server. That action introduced a massive falsehood into the domain name space of .COM and .NET.

Morons sitting at Web browsers are not the only things on the Internet that make use of DNS. Lots of non-Web processes also use DNS, and most of them depend partially or completely on accurate replies to DNS queries. That's what the talk of things being "broken" by Verisign's action is all about.

Why no pazzaz ?

[Alain Williams]

Normally when a company comes out with a new service they splash announcements all over the place for some weeks in advance. Verisign didn't do this. Why not ? Did they have event the tinyest bit of doubt that not everyone would be over enthused with their innovation?

You often learn more by not looking at what people do as to how they do it.

Innovation in infrastructure

[hwilker]

Writes McLaughlin:

By not being afraid to test and try new things, a network was created that now serves as the foundation for commerce and communications.

[...] [T]he reality is the Internet itself, the infrastructure that serves as the foundation, has not significantly benefited from innovation.

He neglects to say that in almost all cases, innovation concerning vital infrastructure had better be deployed and tested in a lab environment, not in the wild as in the SiteFinder case. This goes before all contractual, legal, practical and commercial questions.

There has to be a good bricks-and-mortar analogy for this -- I just can't find it!

Re:Mark should...

[Anonymous Coward]

what makes you think he didn't already?

Sounds like...

[Anonymous Coward]

he's just read Microsoft's newbie manual.

1) If it's crap and people whine about it, call it an innovation.

2) If people moan about the innovation, tell them it's the way forward, and that they're impeding progress.

3) Accuse them of not wanting to go forward. This takes the blame away from the crap change and places the blame on the accuser.

DNS Innovation

[pe1chl]

While I think that sitefinder is the wrong way to innovate (it caused me problems as well), I do think that DNS needs some innovation.

The hierarchical model of DNS names was invented by techies, for reasons known and understood by techies. Today, the Internet is used by people on the street, and they do not understand (or want to spend effort to understand) this hierarchical model.
They just see a name like "company.com" as a reference to that company, and do not know why the .com part is there and it sometimes is .org or .net or .countrycode or whatever.

The first apparent failure of the hierarchical model has been that everyone registers productnames, advertisement slogans, and whatever you can imagine as a second-level domain under .com or a country code. This has never been the intention. Registrations on the second level should have been limited.

Now that extra top-level domains appear, this failure is only multiplied. Every business that already registered a name now also registers (or should register) a .biz domain with the same name. Or with the same 100 names they already held.

It is very clear that this hierarchical structure does not work in the real world.
DNS needs an innovation to remove this dotted-name system and replace it by something more intuitive, and less prone to abusive registration of many names referring to the same thing.

Finding a form that this should take is of course quite a challenge. It goes beyond a silly innovation like registering a wildcard domain.

insulting

[mabu]

I'm sorry but I don't think a story like this deserves to be recognized in any remotely respective manner. Statements like Verisign's ridiculous diatribe over the nobility and innovation exhibited in their blatant a**f*ck of the online community are insulting to the intelligence of anyone who can walk upright and think for themselves.

What is with our society? Are we going to turn the other cheek when corporations so cavalierly violate our sensibilities? We have biased news networks trying to copyright the term, "Fair and Balanced"; we have corporations controlling what is and isn't a "scandal"; we have blatant violations of the law ignored in favor of sensationalized triviality. Things are getting out of hand. What Verisign did was 100% wrong as well as a violation of their agreement to provide services. It's about time we terminated the existence of the totally limp-dicked organization called ICANN and not let corporations railroad over the Internet and then tell us it's "Innovation."

ICANN should be dissolved. Verisign should have its contract to manage the TLDs immediately revoked. A new, non-politicized organization with balls should be formed. And the TLD services should be put up for public bid. The reign of arrogant incompetence and exploitation that was born out of NSI needs to be terminated!

Sitefinder sidewinder

[indianseason]

This is probably not of much use now...

127.0.0.1 sitefinder.verisign.com

in your hosts file should handle this neatly. It won't give you a DNS resolution error, but atleast it will stop going to sitefinder.

For those running a webserver on the same machine, I would suggest using some other non-existent IP address ;-)

what about .nu and .museum?

[jedicat]

those have had wildcarded DNS for years now. sitefinder's nothing new.

Innovate browsers not DNS...

[davidcj]

For some users, I can see where Verisign's sitefinder might be helpful. But thats not the point. When you make a drastic change to a fundamental Internet service, such as the change Verisign made to DNS with the introduction of their Sitefinder service, it can and did have an adverse affect on the Internet (as several other /.ers have pointed out). Verisign argues that they were trying to innovate, help people. The bottom line is that while there service may have helped some people with fat fingers, Verisign took it upon themselves to modify a fundamental service of the Internet without going through the proper channels (ICANN). I think innovation can be a good thing, but in doing so a company such as Verisign should not be able to make changes that could potentially have an adverse affect on the entire Internet. If you want to innovate, I say innovate browsers, that is, leave the autosearch features in the browsers, and give the users more autosearch options. Personally, if I mistype a domain name or type a nonexistent domain, I like to see some kind of error message. I think by default, all browsers should return an error message. For those people who have trouble typing correct the URLs, let them change their browser configuration to do an autosearch.

SiteFinder is not used....

[Barnoid]

from the article: "More than 20 million times a day, Internet users receive an error message when they mistype a domain name"
and "Thus far, people have used these tools more than 40 million times to get where they want to go."

Sitefinder was online between 9/15 and 10/04, i.e. 19 days. 19 * 20 million is 380 million, so about 90% of all users don't use Sitefinder. That's not just us, that probably also includes my mom ;-)

(Yes, I know...not really accurate, but who cares!)

Mark my words

[vjzuylen]

I see a disturbing trend starting here. Mark my words: you're gonna hear more of this kind of talk from companies in the future. Terms like "anti-capitalist" and "techno-religious" will become buzzwords used by corporate bigwigs to marginalize criticism from people who fully understand the consequences. The ultimate goal will be to get Capitol Hill to think the same way - that such people are fringe groups, conspiracy nuts, unworthy of serious attention. And yes, you may call me paranoid. Just make sure others don't call YOU that without your consent.

Site Finder in Internet...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is as much of innovation as fifth leg in a mare.

Re:Site Finder in Internet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know, that a stallion with his penis fully extended is said to be "five-legged"? So actually, fifth leg IN a mare... you know what I mean...

Re:hmmmm - nonsense

[bit01]

Nonsense, it's not the least bit extraneous.

M$ is forever going on about it's bullshit "right to innovate". Commenting on how another similarly parasitic company is trying the same lie is entirely appropriate.

--

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.

It's equally wrong that an intellectual property creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.

Academics vs Business

[ch-chuck]

This is getting to be an age old argument pitting the ethics of academics, scholars, programmers, developers and scientists against the needs of businessfolk, stockholders, accountants and salespeople - these are two different conflicting views of what is 'right' and 'good' and as long as the former need to find jobs to pay the bills the later will usually win out. Cf Microsoft, et al.

Innovation to an academic means advancing the state of the art - Innovation to a businessguy means a new gimmick or trick for making lots of dough.

I was just watching a tribut to Gary Kildall, who stated that it was not 'right' for an os company to own the applications, and envisioned a competitive environment of many companies - of course others didn't see it that way and won complete control.

How, exactly, is this innovative?

[werdna]

Varisign is free to provide a web service, such as sitefinder, which can provide web-enabled answers to queries for a web site. Our problem is that they did this by forcing every client performing a DNS search to suffer as a result.

If varisign's functionality is desired, and they do it better than anybody else, no doubt, it will be used. They can make the service available without breaking DNS and, heck, they can even set up a parallel DNS2 if they think innovation is required.

But they are presently playing with a public trust. It is not for them to decide how DNS works, but rather to implement and execute it in accordance with Internet standards. If they want to innovate by changing standards, they know how to write an RFC.

Prices are limited by ICANN

[Fzz]

VeriSign can't arbitrarily raise their resgistry prices. See Verisign's contract with ICANN, section 22, and also Appendix G.

Anyone who prevents white collar theft

[Baki]

Nowadays is called an anti-capitalism.

Apparently broad groups of criminals think they have a capitalistic right to grab money (at the cost of others), i.e. steal. This is a perversion of the capitalistic system.

Not unique, adheres to standard, does break things

[MacFreek]

First, this "innovation" is not unique: though the fuss is much bigger with the .com and .net domains, VeriSign correctly claims they are not the only one to deplay top-level zone wildcards.: .cc .cx .mp .museum .nu .ph .pw .td .tk and .ws do so as well.

The slashdot article suggest that a standard was broken. It is not, and the editorial does not mention it. For the record, the Internet Architecture Board wrote:

"We must emphasize that, technically, this was a legitimate use of wildcard records that did not in any way violate the DNS specifications themselves. One of our main points here is that simply complying with the letter of the protocol specification is not sufficient to ensure the operational stability of the applications which depend on the DNS: there are protocol features which simply are not safe to use in some circumstances." -- IAB Commentary: Architectural Concerns on the use of DNS Wildcards

Last, contrary to what VeriSign claims, it DOES break (parts) of the Internet. See all examples mentioned in the IAB advisory above. For example, consider what happens if you type "myprinter.mydoman.com" instead of "myprinter.mydomain.com" in your CUPS configuration. Without the wildcard, you get a simple message that you made a typo. With the wildcard, you have a hell of a job finding out why you can't connect to your printer.

Arg!

[John.Thompson]

Did I miss something, or did McLaughlin manage to avoid discussing any of the issues ICANN raised in their demand to take down Sitefinder? Instead, he just gives a tiresome "ad hominem" attack on ICANN and its motives. As if that's supposed to build sympathy for his cause...

So innovations are a good thing ?

[gedeco]

Someone told a citizen of Hiroshima the atomic bom was an innovation...

More proof?

[dipipanone]

Hmm. Let me see...

According to Verisign, Sitefinder is dying. People opposed to innovation are stifling it.

According to this post, Sitefinder runs on BSD.

Clearly this is more evidence of BSD's demise? If they'd hosted Sitefinder on a Windows 2003 server, today Sitefinder be growing by 30% a day, returning an extra third of our inaccurate URLs as paid advertisements for Viagra and porn.

Obligatory

[Luigi30]

All your domain are belong to VeriSign!

Easy Money

[Goo.cc]

What I find sad is Verisign's inability to just manage the .Com and .Net domains without messing up. Why can't they simply do the job they were contracted to do, which includes following defined standards, and shut the fuck up? It should be easy money but obviously, their greed is getting in the way.

M$ does this

[Karem Lore]

With its Internet Explorer, if it doesn't find anything it goes to MSN Search. Isn't this the same, and if so, can the ICANN get onto M$ too please...

Re:M$ does this

[AveryT]

Nobody forced you to use IE.

Verisign took away the ability of browser-makers to devise innovative ways to handle non-existent addresses on the client side and the ability of users to choose between them through their choice of a browser.

Doesn't sound much like innovation to me.

Block the site

[Karem Lore]

Just block the site. This will have the effect that Verisign will not have the "hits" needed to support the site and in the end it will close...

No, no, no, No, NO! Baka!

[Jerk City Troll]

their autosearch solution was innovative* (* not sure if it was their idea). Without changing how the internet fundamentally works, they chose to render a failed DNS lookup as something more friendly and functional than a limited, rather useless OK popup.

They took something that worked to a well-established specification that's been around for decades and broke it. That is not good nor is it innovative.

But don't take my word for it. I will defer to this guy to elaborate and this guy to explain how stuff broke.

As many people have mentioned, you do not alter the functionality of core, Internet functionality in the global domain at the behest of some fools from marketing. If you want to make a change to how things work, propose a change or start your own network. Don't fuck with a service that billions of people use and depend on.

Oh, that's OK then

[jsebrech]

It's innovative! That makes everything alright. After all, if I want to rob the local 7/11 and not get a friendly visit from the men in blue all I need to do is rob it butt-naked, because that way I'm innovating the storerobbing business. Right?

OKay, come take my crack pipe away...

[Jerk City Troll]

I'm sorry... never mind me. For some reason, in my haste, I looked at your post and thought you were defending Verisign's nonsense. :-)

Please confiscate my crack pipe and I promise it'll never happen again.

Innovative or not, it's still annoying.

[PsychoSlashDot]

How is this any different from the phone company deciding that any time I accidentally dial a number that's no longer in service, they guess what number I really wanted, and connect me to that instead. Heck, if nobody's home at this new number, I might not ever find out it's wrong... just like automated e-mail servers don't know incoming spam domains are wrong with Sitefinder in place. Meh.

I just thought of an even better innovation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't VeriSign do something for reverse lookups?
They just need to figure out a way to make every IP that doesn't resolve to a DNS otherwise, resolve to sitefinder.verisign.com

That'd be some real innovation, yeah. Real useful, you know, because, um, people always want to know what DNS something has, and.. yeah. What would people ever do without their DNSes?!!!
(If they use my fine idea, they owe me 500,000,000 in small, used bills. Leave it by the dumpster.)

A virus writer can also be innovative...

[Kjella]

Being innovative is not a defense for doing bad things, they're not at all mutually exclusive.

Kjella

Sitefinder makes mistakes...some innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had a number of correct urls get redirected to the Sitefinder search, and it shows the exact same URL (traffic jam on internet).

In addition it redirects a link from a company from another page on their site to the Sitefinder. (VIA)

So instead of getting an error because the internet is choked up at some server, you get a redirect saying that page never exhisted!

They didn't warn me.

[Medievalist]

While I agree with much of what you've said, I have to disagree that "there WAS advance notice".

If you shout your plans into a hole in the ground, that does not comprise advance notice. And since Verisign clearly can't tell assholes from holes in the ground, telling ICANN is... oh never mind.

I have been a DNS admin for well over a decade (I have a 3-character NIC handle) and they sure as hell didn't send me any advance notice!

Re:They didn't warn me.

[fishbowl]

If we were talking about it on slashdot long before it went online, then ICANN had time to file a TRO. I personally don't believe VS should be operating today. I think that a truly authoritative handling of this situation would have involved a complete termination of the contract, and an entirely new administration would be running the root servers today. I actually think this could have happened BEFORE letting VS go ahead with their plan. The mere suggestion of it was enough to sound the alarms and cause immediate, and harsh action.

Why did ICANN have to reveal how weak they are by waiting for the deal to go down, and then, reluctantly take a limp, ineffective action?

They could be ending the contract and asking for billions in civil damages today, but instead, Verisign is being rewarded for their actions, and they are still in a position to commit even more violations in the future.

Re:They didn't warn me.

[rifter]

While I agree with much of what you've said, I have to disagree that "there WAS advance notice".

If you shout your plans into a hole in the ground, that does not comprise advance notice. And since Verisign clearly can't tell assholes from holes in the ground, telling ICANN is... oh never mind.

I have been a DNS admin for well over a decade (I have a 3-character NIC handle) and they sure as hell didn't send me any advance notice!

What if your plans are on display at the planning office in the basement, in a locked filing cabinet located in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'?

Re:They didn't warn me.

[ScrewMaster]

Well, then it's okay, of course.

Criminal

[oldstrat]

I would expect VeriSwine to call it 'innovation'.
I wouldn't expect anyone at the registrar to call it what it really is, vandalism and theft.
Vandalism in that they broke the net, things no longer worked the way they were designed to and caused probably 10's of thousands of manhours worldwide just trying to cope.

Theft in that they did not pay for all the unregistered domains they highjacked to sitefinder.

I'm furious as hell and have mailed (not emailed) various authorities requesting an evaluation of both ICANN and Virisign, with a view to replacing both.

What I'd reeaaaly like to do

[zedenne]

Unfortunately I'm currently an IE drone [because I unfortunately support applications that require it:-(].

However the fact that I can't find a way to do the following is driving me onto something else.

How complex would it be in Mozilla to add a configurable regex processor on the address input?

I mean, I have never, ever required to go to an address with a comma in it. So why can't I tell the browser to always swap them for '.'.

The same goes for things like .. and .comm.

Of course I'd like this to be set up by me, rather than some dodgy microsoft default.

So. Any ideas on how complex this would be to add to Mozilla?

I don't want verisign's override, or the annoying MSN search option.

what people are forgetting

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing I don't see anyone saying, notably McLaughlin, is that users who mistype a URL don't need sitefinder; they already know where they're going. For that reason alone McLaughlin's characterization of SiteFinder as a service to users is way off.

Ha Ha

[chaoticset]

Anyone who has used it in the last three weeks knows that claim to be false. More likely, ICANN caved under the pressure from some in the Internet community for whom this is a technology-religion issue about whether the Internet should be used for these purposes.

Wrong. Plenty of the programmers who've used it over the past three weeks said it was broke. I trust them completely on this, because they're smarter than me. I'd be willing to bet money that they're smarter than you, and I don't think there's a doubt in anybody's head that they've got more integrity concerning this. The simple reality is that ICANN listened to them and decided to smack you down. You deserved it. End of story.

Slime around somewhere else...

If the admins are uhappy...

[Anonymous Coward]

they find ways to make sure the users are none to pleased either.

Retaliate

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Verisign has practiced numerous unfair and deceptive business practices. Perhaps all those who have been affected should write the Better Business Bureau (or equivalent;).

Bush Presidency About As Legitimate as Clinton's

[Anonymous Coward]

was Re: In other news

even if Bush honestly won, without falsifying election results, then he _still_ only won by a small margin. Instead of acting like a candidate who'd squeaked by on the barest of margins, he acts like his views are supported by all Americans, and does whatever-the-fuck he wants to. As a president elected with 50% of the populace behind him, he was not elected to serve only those 50%, but all 100%... to not even pay lip service to the other half is insulting not just to them, but to the process itself.

1992: Bill Clinton won 43.0% of the popular vote

1996: Bill Clinton won 49.2% of the popular vote

2000: George Bush won 47.9% of the popular vote (Al Gore won 48.4%)

source: Federal Election Commission

Blocked Verisign

[Anonymous Coward]

I have blocked various Verisign IP addresses, host names, domains and IP blocks that seem to have anything to do with their revenue stream.

I'm a consultant and have done this now on various firewalls, DNS's and web surfing control software programs at various sized networks/corporations.

How's that for innovation? >:)

If this is real innovation...

[SmackCrackandPot]

... I'm patenting the concept of having telephone calls that reach non-existant numbers redirected to telemarketers.

Re:Please Note...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Including invalid queries. There's an error code for nonexistant domains for a reason."

No, it doesn't return the wildcard value for invalid queries. If it's an invalid query, it'll return the FormErr rcode (1). (Note: a misspelled domain name is not invalid. It might not be what you were looking for, but it's still valid.)

My point is, the DNS protocol is not broken by wildcards. People might not like wildcards, but they're a valid part of DNS.

Some assumptions about what's returned and when it's returned are broken, but that doesn't mean that the DNS protocol (as stated in the blurb about this story) is broken by wildcards. Breaking such an important assumption without warning is another issue, but still, the DNS protocol is not broken.

I know this is probably going to be modded down to flamebait just like my previous post was because I don't follow the party line about "everything Site Finder does is wrong and terribly broken!!", but if you're going to criticise VeriSign for Site Finder, at least make valid points.

Google sucks these days

[autopr0n]

Has anyone else noticed that google sucks these days? I mean, the other day I did a search for "Makefile syntax" and the first result was a message board post asking a question. Alltheweb returned the makefile manual.

Re:Google sucks these days

[geoffspear]

If I wanted the Makefile manual, I'd search for "Makefile manual", click on "I'm feeling lucky", and then RTFM.

Re:Google sucks these days

[mwood]

I dunno, if I wanted the reference on makefiles I'd enter 'man make'.

If I hear the term 'innovation' .....

[forgetful_ca]

just one more time used to defend one of these greed/power based moves, I may go mad. Thank you M$ and Bill for the exponential rise in the abuse of this word. Bastards.

So what you are saying

[autopr0n]

You say the medical system in the US is 'the best', and then you give an anicdote about how it sucks?

Sounds like someone needs to brush up on their retoric skills.

Earth to Mark McLaughlin

[Grizzlysmit]

you are:

1. a troll
2. an idiot
3. about as inovative as my Arse
4. A Criminal
5. A Spammer

Well what else can I say, Verishites move is messing up the standard behaviour of the net, and thereby costing people and companies money, (my work had to waste time and money, istalling and configing patches to get around stuff Verishite had broken with Shite Finder), the whole thing is Greed not inovation, and just another form of spam.

I didn't want to see there adverts I wanted to see the site I meant to type, Verishite's forcing there crap down my throat is a violation of my free will, and act hateful to a God who refuses to force the free will of even those who spit in his face.

Re:Earth to Mark McLaughlin

[Grizzlysmit]

sorry about the grammar and spelling + coherence I'm not well just now, but what I said is still correct and valid

ICANN... Therefore I Can't (do anything about it)?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't ICANN, after ample warning to the internet at large (especially those using Verisign DNS), announce that verisign's dns will no longer be propogated, and stop it from propagating, in effect, cutting the cancer out of the loop, if they insist on forcing this down people's throats?

It seems like if it is a big enough issue, a court injunction could be issued.

I think they have already acted irresponsibly enough to warrant a complete "disownment" with regards to DNS.

Just my HO. Before flaming, I have no idea how the internet DNS Hierarchy is set up these days. I am only a lowly developer. I know how to get a dns lookup, but not how the current architecture works and the sordid details on who's servers are really controlling things.

l8,
AC

McLaughing....

[JamesP]

this is not funny!!!

Your company now stinks as bad as SCO. And I'm sure it will be treated the same.

Shifts in the language

[Angst Badger]

At the going rate, fifty years from now, the meaning of "innovation" will have shifted from its current meaning to "an unimaginative and unethical marketing tactic".

Now, if you'll pardon me, I've got to go write a Pac Man clone in which the power pellets are square and blue.

Re:Do you approve of the job Verisign's CEO is doi

[Simple-Simmian]

92% negative rating currently. More of you should vote this clown into the toilet.

Arnold?

[Arker]

Aw, come on, vote for RAW. You know you want to.

like Hijacking, Computer Viruses, Identity Theft

[o-D'oh]

As an Innovation, it's right up there with Hijacking, Computer Viruses and Identity Theft.

In Internet Explorer, I don't like the "search from address bar". I don't want MSN to review every URL mistake I make. So I turn it off! I also have the option to change search engine, I think. Address bar search is on by default and it invokes MSN by default. I guess the developer of the Greatest Web Browser in the World, the People's Choice, deserves that perk. I'm not screaming murder about it because I can turn off "search from address bar" on every computer I use. (Though I feel bad about the exploitation of the simple users who trust the address-bar search to help them, even as it exploits them.)

But HOW DO I TURN OFF SITE FINDER? I can't turn it off. That is why I find SiteFinder BEYOND UNACCEPTABLE. Verisign has made itself the enemy. I will block and oppose SiteFinder every way I can, and so will everyone else. On my firewalls I will block their IP addresses. The more traffic I block from accessing this unfair fraudulent contract-breaching SiteFinder, the better. The SiteFinder Innovation is so well-loved that ISPs blocked it. They know it's wrong.

It's bad enough that Verisign always sees every errant domain name that gets passed to DNS lookup. With SiteFinder they get to see the entire URL as well. (Bad requests for .html .htm .asp etc. brought up the SiteFinder. Bad requests for .jpg .jpeg .gif etc. got back 404 pages, from domains that don't exist.)

By what right does Verisign's paid advertising server get traffic from every unregistered domain? Why Verisign? Why not somewhere else? Verisign has the ability to grab that traffic. Very sad that they chose to do it. It was a power play, a money grab pure and simple. Verisign manages a database. That is their job. If there is to be some kind of helper for resolving errant domain names, it should be agreed upon IN ADVANCE. It should have fairness or equal access or nearly-equal access. (Not so clear how to do that. A browser configuration is the only precedent. (And that product placement was Grabbed as well...))

SiteFinder is really just typo-squatting in the extreme. Effectively Verisign bulk-registered 36^20= 1.3*10^31 names to themselves. At $6 a year, who gets the 8.0*10^31 DOLLARS for these registrations? I guess Verisign could just write themselves a check for $80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 every year. Then there would zero domain names available -- Verisign could then ration out domain names any way they see fit -- they can auction each name to the highest bidder. A whole new kind of scalping -- since, after all, they OWN the database.

Everyone who owns a website has an objection to SiteFinder. Verisign is squatting on EVERY un-registered variation of EVERY domain name. So the Verisign typo-squatting encourages companies to try to register all their typos to prevent Site Finder bypasses -- more direct money for Verisign.

Domain names are an addressing scheme. SiteFinder is an abuse of that scheme. Everyone who understands what Verisign has done (us vocal minority) knows that SiteFinder is a violation of a trust.

McLaughlin sidesteps all of the real issues and raises a smokescreen of non-issues. I'm not opposing innovation. I'm not opposing commercial use of the Internet. Verisign has no right to do what they did. Their Innovation inspires ISPs to innovate ways of blocking it out. Verisign's ability to impose itself does not give it the right to impose. DNS is a monopoly and also the foundation of the WWW. SiteFinder was always possible. If implemented it is a new monopoly. Don't confuse Amazon's success, due to millions of people typing in A-M-A-Z-O-N one letter at a time and clicking links that uniquely address that corner of the WWW, with the imposed monopoly of SiteFinder. No one will ever type in SiteFinder or ever

Why trust theives?

[instarx]

No one seems to have considered that what Verisign did was theft of thousands of unassigned domain names. These domains are a valuable commodity that Verisign was entrusted to administer, not the property of Verisign. For them to post their own revenue-producing messages every time an unassigned domain was typed was illegal co-opting of these domains without paying a dime for them. I can't get free domains, you can't get free domains - so why does Verisign think they should get free domains?

My domain is coming up for renewal as well - I think I will switch my registration from Verisign AND WRITE THEM A LETTER TELLING THEM WHY.

It's bad enough when you do a typo

[robin147]

It's bad enough when you do a typo and get the wrong site, but the situation is, as I see it now, a former monopoly holder is losing the business war from competition where competition has been introduced.

Now they attempt to hijack xxx million sets of eyeballs daily just because they have the ability. They happen to occupy the position as final authority for a big segment of the Internet.

It Is/Was An ABUSE of AUTHORITY and nothing else, and ICANN was correct in asking them to cease and desist.

Veri$ign should forget about trying to hijack eyeballs, and get back to the nuts & bolts of customer service and marketing.

DNS redirects aren't innovative... even I do it!

[macraig]

There's nothing at all "innovative" about redirecting DNS requests for selfish purposes. I've been doing it for years at home using DNSKong and a hosts file. Maybe I should patent the process?

DNS redirects aren't innovative... even I do it!

[macraig]

There's nothing at all "innovative" about redirecting DNS requests for selfish or nefarious purposes. I've been doing it myself for years, even at home, using DNSKong or a hosts file. I even do an analog of that with HTTP requests, grabbing certain URLs before they reach the browser and trans-mogrifying them. Maybe I should patent the process?