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McLaughlin Defends Site Finder As 'Innovation'
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."
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.
Let someone else "innovate"; someone not trusted to serve the .com/.net root zones without biased interest in the outcome of how it works.
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.
Rank Presidents by th
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
myselfmusic
... in the form that we have recently come to know it.
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.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
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)
... 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...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
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.
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.) .com registrars as an added bonus.
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
I just innovated 4 of my domains over to
another registrar.
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
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?
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
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.
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.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
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.
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"You keep using that word. I believe it does not mean what you think it does." -- The Princess Bride
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.
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.
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.
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
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.
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.
.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.
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
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
' 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.
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>
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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.
Why is everybody assuming that innovation is a good thing? Seems to me it is really a bad thing.
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.
... fine. Some people might even pay for it. But what they did was utterly irresponsible for a company in their position.
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
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
decentralizing the DNS system... or at least promoting alternatives 8)
http://www.opennic.unrated.net/ would be a good start.
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.
You can change IE's default to Google with this
I mainly use Mozilla and I use the Google toolbar from here.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
VeriSlime's sitefinder is innovation is much the same way that the SARS virus is evolution.
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!
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.
...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.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
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.
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...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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.
May we never see th
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...
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).
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
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.