Slashdot Mirror
VeriSign CEO on Commercializing the Internet
mdj writes "CNET has an interview with VeriSign CEO Stratton Scalvos, who says it's time to commercialize the internet's infrastructure and 'pull the root servers away from volunteers who run them out of a university or lab.' He admits that's going to be 'unpopular.'" Because, after all, taking the root servers away from bright, educated comp-sci longbeards who have nothing better to do than to make them run well, and putting them in the hands of MBA bean-counters who don't know what TCP/IP is, is a sure-fire way to improve reliability.
Last month Mr. Scalvos's approval rating went down to 3%. Think it will be lower this month? (vote here - bottom of page).
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
else could sum that situation up any better.
So which company are we going to hate more this week?
I think it's tied at the moment.
Has the world really become such a shitty greed-driven place or are we just in a bad streak?
So commercialization is important to you, VerySlime? Okay, watch this! /me begins to transfer all domains to GoDaddy...
Geez, talk about petty.
If we commercialize the entire infrastructure, prices will rise, and reliability will fall.. it has been proven many times; @Home, Privatized Power in California, and Alberta
If a completely commercial net were created, I can guarantee that underground sub-networks would pop up externally
He doesn't seem to give any reason for the switch other than it would add "maturity" to the internet. What the hell is "maturity" and how is commercializing the internet going to make it so?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I thought his point was to commercialize the internet, that is: make it profitable.
BOO! TERRO
Did you see his attempt at a smile in that picture? It looks like something Mr. Burns would do on the Simpsons... A painfull attempt at a smile for the first time in 70 years.
Who actually controls the internet? Who is the "ruling power"?
Who could decide to take the entire thing down?
Someone please explain to me who "owns" the internet, and how anyone could make the decision to commercialize it.
Also, theorectically couldn't we just create a secondary internet (is that what Internet 2 is?), create our own rules, and let that be that?
Would we have to follow laws like allowing a company to take the domain of their copyright on "our" internet?
A lot of questions.. excuse me.
http://use.perl.org
internet connection.
... Please let me know exactly what it is you're smoking, because I know I can get at least $200 an ounce for it on the street. You and I can split the profit 50/50.
What are you going to do when some PHB marketing genius does something stupid to increase market share and exposure... like... say... hijack unregistered domains? Oh wait... Verisign already tried that.
What a great example of why the Internet's Infrstructure should not be commercialized: Verisign's little Sitefinder stunt.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Fortunately, there is a group of professionals who have decades of sterling experience of providing instant readiness, while controlling unimaginable power. I refer, of course, to SAC, the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command.
If we can rely on them to hold the Commies in check for decades, with only minor losses to spying, I think the root servers would be safe with them. A few in Cheyenne Mountain, a few in Nebraska, Thule, Diego Garcia, and some undisclosed locations, and the internet will be safe from foreign invaders as long as our great flag flies.
A. Rightmann
Mr. Sclavos, what about de-commercializing so that more people would be willing to contribute--instead of feeling ripped off by companies like Verisign?
Builders vs Takers. Its easier to take than to make.
Maybe Verisign should build their own "commercial" network.
...a better idea would be for ICANN to take those Verisign root servers away and give them to an organization that understands important words like "public trust".
Lock in.
That's all this is. More BS for the world to become dependent on Verisign. After their recent fiascos, this is the very LAST thing we need...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It appears to me that instead of "commercializing" the internet, businesses ought to learn how to adapt to the current environment. The problem isn't that the internet isn't safe enough for businesses; the problem is that businesses don't know how to protect themselves properly in the internet.
...but at least we can read "commercialize" as "make profitable," right?
Besides, it seems that what he wants to privatize the DNS servers (as a first step, perhaps?), yet he doesn't give any justifications for why these courses of action should just be taken. Maybe he should stop some of that hand-waving that he dislikes so much and provide concrete arguments for why he wants to do what he wants to do.
What percentage of root servers that makeup the backbone of the Internet are actually runs by long-bearded education types and not corporations. This sounds more like he wants to take abilities away from universities and private entities and keep volunteers from having a voice in the Internet backbone.
Last I checked, AOL, Microsoft, and even Verisign are all Commercial companies and all of them have a piece of the Internet backbone pie, even though they may not have one of the 13 root servers. Instead of saying lets commercialize, instead he should be thinking - lets diversify. Besides, can anyonce really trust what a Verisign Root server would send you anyways?
First, they announce they're getting out of the domain registration racket. Now, they want to "commercialize the Internet."
Smells like the same sort of necrotic-tissue stench that Sun and SCO have been giving off lately.
Bowie J. Poag
Richard Clark came to us two days after taking the job following 9/11, and I told him, "There are 13 geographically dispersed data centers. You really couldn't take it out." And he said, "What if I drove a truck up to each one and blew them up at the same time?" OK, then you'd take them out. So, there's this notion of what's resilient enough and what's your recovery time.
The notion that Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group would launch a coordinated strike to take out DNS servers is totally absurd. Even if they had the ability to launch a co-ordinated bomb strike with this kind of sophistication and ingenuity (highly unlikely), I'm sure they'd go after targets that had a bit more of a visible impact.... for example, the power grid.
Because, after all, taking the root servers away from bright, educated comp-sci longbeards who have nothing better to do than to make them run well, and putting them in the hands of MBA bean-counters who don't know what TCP/IP is, is a sure-fire way to improve reliability.
Who doesn't Michael insult in that l'il editorial blip? Wow...
or did i miss the point of the previous article?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah, he's a tool, but he has a point. There are SO many people/businesses (including man ISPs) out their running servers, and routers, that have no clue how to set them up correctly and securely. And god forbid there's a PROBLEM, because they won't know how to fix it. I'm all for requiring all kind of hoops,licenses,tests and fees before you are allowed to setup your own mail server, or DNS server, or router if you are going to let your stuff be accessible by the "world". Let ONLY the people that know what they are doing onto the "internet-at-large". If you don't know what you are doing, figure it out on a private network. It's too easy for a screwed-up router or server configuration to trash ALL kinds of stuff for huge chunks of the world's internet users to let amateurs, penny-pinchers, and/or idiots run their own stuff.
Distribute them properly so there is the necessary redundancy
Now ask people to change their DNS to use your root servers instead of those old and crufty ones that keep working run by the communistic long haired educational type people.
Step back and watch the flood of traffic come to your machines because you're willing to guarantee reliability.
(later, we can discuss that us who still use the old ones just not have your address space in ours and have a nice segregation of Internets).
Oh dear, I can't decide!! They're all evil in their own special way. But now after reading the rest of that article I think VeriSign must die. They want the ICANN to become more focused on promoting "growth" and they want more people who "know how to promote products" in there rather than techies and lawyers.
Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
...he'd be correct. Just what exactly should make me want to trust his judgment; as the SiteFinder incident shows, his ability to judge what's best to do with other people's computers is more than questionable. Maybe when he can buy and build his own toys he can do as he wishes - but until then, he can shut up and play by the rules or leave and go do something "useful", like make a nonmandatory SiteFinder for the six people that actually found his "feature" useful.
The primary interest in business is profit. Many times innovation and advancements are not in the best interest of profit. Since the internet has been revolutionizing society and culture for the last 10 years, and will continue to do so at exponential rates, we don't need corporations governing such important parts of it. Imagine one day having to enter a code from under your Sprite bottle cap to access information that is otherwise not related to Coca-Cola. If this happens, the benefits are far outweighed by the negative consequences that can't even bee seen yet.
He states that the internet should be commercialized, and infers that Verisigns servers are more resiliant because they are commercial, yet he says regarding the root attack last year: "The reason the root server problem was a big one was because they were attacking the underbelly of the addressing system. Yes, we could have lived 24 to 48 hours. You could say that in that time, we can fix anything--but maybe not. Microsoft was down for four days with a much simpler denial-of-service attack. " So the company that controls 95% of the PC market was down for 4 days. The volunteers that control most of the root servers were out for several hours. Am I missing something here?
Privatization is always a good thing. If someone is making money (especially if that someone is a publically held company) the best interests of the whole are being served.
Publically held companies are driven to invest in maintenance and infrastructure when the end result is maximizing shareholder wealth. This model worked great for California utilities, and it continues to work well as we endeavor to privatize everything including jails, schools, and any other service that exists to benefit the public good.
If we didn't try to privatize everything, how could companies compete with superior service of a government monopoly?
Something is inherently wrong with those bearded geeks keeping the root servers running smoothly. What, are they just acting out of the kindness of their hearts? They obviously have a hidden agenda. Probably communists.
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Is it just me or does it sound like michael has an issue with Verisign? ;-)
Top 3
1. SCO - screw 'em by hijacking OSS
2. Verisign - screw 'em by hijacking the Net
3. Microsoft - screw 'em by hijacking their wallets
Microsoft is steadily slipping from the top spot and from no cause of their own doing!
Not "greater evil", rather "greater threat".
GL
The world hasn't become such a greedy place, as if overnight. It has always been this way. The world has always been a greed driven place. You are just opening your eyes to it and seeing it for what seems to be the first time.
While the commercialization of the Internet was inevitable because the Internet is a good thing and it didn't take a teccie to realize that, there's no doubt that along with the gains, much has been destroyed.
I don't think that this is a biggie though, but merely part of the cycle of things. Now that we're reaching the point where life on the Internet is distasteful owing to control by the corporate clueless, it's time to move on and build our next network.
And you know, that actually sounds interesting.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Once I grow my beard longer, I would be honored if someone called me a bright, educated, comp-sci longbeard. I wouldn't be insulted in any way. (Guess I should hurry up and finish my BSCS too while I'm growing out my beard).
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Perfect verbage. Just had to give you kudos.
Loading...
ICANN tends to do things that favor corporate ownership of the 'net. (http://icannwatch.org/topics.pl)
Don't bother asking ICANN to defend the "public trust" because more often than not they, too, are on the side of the fence that abuses it.
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
We sure as hell don't need the digital equivalent of 9/11 to convince us we need to have a better digital infrastructure.
The first time he mentioned "9/11" I thought he was trying to use unsubstantiated fear. This above quote is the second time, and now blatantly obvious. There is no equivalent of a "9/11" in digital terms. Bits are not living things. Humans are.
Take the Internet if you want. Educational institutes would probably just build something better for their personal use, all over again. This guy is one petty jackass.
There are some starving children in China that could have made use of that unused insult potential!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I mean, who controls the nameservers is less important than who tells users to contact those systems, right?
We, the IT and OSS community, route users to those systems. We set up the BIND and DJBDNS instances that make those queries. We're the guys who tell these software packages to check with *.GTLD-SERVERS.NET or *.ROOTSERVERS.COM when they don't know. Telling them to look elsewhere should be trivial.
I mean, the whole point of using a centralized domain name service is that we can trust the rootservers, and if we can't, we can use a different set of rootservers. "Commercialization" of the rootservers implies preferrential treatment based on finances. Do you trust that? If we don't like the way Verisign handles things, then we have the power to fix it. After all, what's in a nameserver?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Until thyey pass a Digital Millenium Public Networking Act which makes running or using an unofficial root server a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and being permanently banned from producing content or software to be used or deployed on any public network.
I just thought of that off the top of my head, and I'm not even a politician or a lawyer. Imagine what they could come up with.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
meep
OK, so I have a personal interest in the world of IT and technology... and I like to know how my technology is doing what it is (infact I like to know how all I interact with works - I like to learn and increase my knowledge). I also have a CFA and MBA, as well as an undergrad in economics (I like to know how economies work too).
/. is a little prejudice (most seek to justify their own existence) but please do not refer to all MBAs in a negative light... please specify BAD MBA as the fact they are incompetant to what they claim to be should be prioritised.
MBA is used as a negative reference when it shouldn't be, a good MBA graduate should be a good manager - a good manager should be interested and should want to learn about whatever they encounter, and should defer specialist knowledge to the specialist (well, this should be specialists as a range of views should be sought) to inform. A decision based like this should be clearly justified and acceptable to all that are without prejudice as they will see the rationalisation.
ALl I can see around here is BAD MBAs being commented about... now
BTW I work as a fund manager and love, really love, ripping up many managers of IT firms when they come to meet me as they often are really clueless and only ride as an intermediary between the techie and the financier.
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
How are we ever going to have well ballanced discussions on slashdot when the editors come out with such dicdely biased takes on the subject.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
I've suspected for a long time that MBA-types hold techies in contempt. Offshoring IT jobs is another symptom of this. Sclavos' comments demonstrates the utter contempt he holds for the people that built the internet -- the very same people that made him rich!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Its not even a question of who can do the job better, the internet is a tool of free information exchange first and foremost, and a commercial opurtunity secondly. You can still make cash without takling every single aspect of the net, and squeezing it dry.
As much as corps like VeriSign hate it, standards need to be enforced, and core infrastructure that everyone needs access to, technically oriented, or not, needs to stay in the hands of non-profit volunteers.
There is also the issue of their awful take on being a huge CA....
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
From the article:
Are you looking to monetize DNS lookups?
No. That base level of DNS (domain name system) response is an obligation we took on when we inherited that contract. But it would be commercially unreasonable for anyone to suggest that we shouldn't be allowed to build incremental services on top of that if they deliver value.
--
So what is next? Building ads on everyone's domains because they "deliver value"? Or maybe they should just redirect all the domains to their "site finder," because anyone looking for anything should probably just go to Verisign's ad site--they ARE the internet, right??
still a rose...
as a moron... sitefinder was "smart"? so... the telephone analogy... you dial a number... misplaces a digit... instead of a message of "number non-existant" or even a busy signal your call wold be diverted to an answering machine saying that "the dialed number is for sale"... yeah... just what I need...
... and putting them in the hands of MBA bean-counters who don't know what TCP/IP is ...
"MBA bean-counters" might be confused about "TCP", but are probably somewhat familiar with "IP" issues in patent and copyright law.
[/joking]
This is not my sig.
He seems to imply that they've spent $150m in infrastructure to run the root servers. Color me stupid, but I have trouble imagining how I could spend that much on the root servers unless I was allowed to count the $750k Sclavos salary (plus his heft options), and those of his crooked cronies, plus a new building or two. (I call them crooked because they benefitted from CSFBs shady IPO allocations) Sclavos sees a way for a single company to monopolize a market (the market of mistyped domain names), and he's in a position to try to grab it. Now he's trying to frame it as a battle between intellectuals and realistic business people, when in fact it's a battle between people who don't want a single company forcing everyone into accepting an ethically questionable service and a single money hungry jackass who realized he found an unraped portion of the Internet. The Internet raises new questions constantly, and now the question is 'what if we just installed wal-marts on every single piece of empty property'. In the real world that's a laughable concept, but on the Internet, it's actually possible, and he wants to do it.
Having the machines in the control of people who do it for the love of it is better than someone trying to profit from it. That only leeds to problems and internal agendas (ie: profit) taking over, and we all know where that would leed us.
Also, isnt the point of the internet is that it is decentralized? If one company runs THE system critical software/hardware then the whole network is suseptible to attack.
At this point in the development of the internet is it in the best interests of the world to have 1 country control it? These servers should be distributed throughout the world. Some governing body should preside over them to make sure they are running. If they need to be put in place at universities all over the world then so be it.
Decentralized is the key here.
"You're on my side and the dark side, like Lando Calrissian?" --Gimpy, Undergrads
I wrote some fake FUD on this very issue. Enjoy!
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
From the interview:
The global population deserves a commercially resilient and robust network and the supporting services underneath it; because of the way it grew up over the last 20 to 25 years, the Internet has pockets where that is not the case.
---
I'm not suggesting that any one entity own them. Like we did with ISPs (Internet service providers) that went commercial with backbone build-outs, we need to do something similar on the Internet.
And the insinuation is that:
(1) The Internet in its current state cannot be deemed "commercially resilient and robust" as a whole.
(2) The global population "deserves" a glitch-free network that has no security vulnerabilities.
His solution? Commercialize the Internet. Get it out of the hands of the academics -- they don't know first things first about running the it. Heck, we do; we invented Site Finder after all, improving the lives of millions of Internet users. Let us and other companies like us make the crucial decisions, and everything will be hunky-dory.
My response? I think we're focusing on the wrong problem here. Look at Microsoft, and how they consistently flop Windows security, and then ask yourself if we need big companies like that controlling/running the Internet. Not a pretty picture. Sure, the Internet needs to be secure, needs to scale with the times, but handing it over to a bunch of corporations is the wrong way to effect those changes.
We're stagnating on this intarweb thing. The surest way to kick progress in the pants is to take what we've built and give it to the ego-laden beautiful business boys with the shiny white teeth and small peckers, show them the power switch, and tell them to have fun.
Surely, there must be something else to build, a new frontier to conquer. Why do we need to pay any attention to what these suits say? If there's an RFC that says to ignore these fools, the filter will be nearly perfect. All of the idiots will go in one direction - the direction that Verisign points to. All of the smart people that I want to talk to will go the other way - the way of a standard Internet not beholden to a single company's vision of the inside of their own colon.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I own a couple domains (don't all of us here own at least 1 or 2?). I figure if I don't have a default domain (i.e. *.x.com points to x.com), then, when someone tries to go to blah.x.com that doesn't exist, Verisign says, "Have you heard about y.com?" Because y.com paid for their name to be there. Seems to me that Verisign, without my authority, just appropriated my legally registered name and used it for their own purposes. Seems like I've got a REALLY good lawsuit. I might even have a case against y.com as well.
Now, someone could start a class-action suit when they resume SiteFinder, but wouldn't it be far more fun and costly for them, to file individual lawsuits for every domain that pops up incorrectly? Do you think Verisign is equipped to handle that many lawsuits? I think I would have a really good chance at winning, and they would have to fork some dough over to me, along with compliance to an injunction. Now sitefinder works on everything but my site.
What would Verisign sell *.ibm.com to Microsoft for? I know it wouldn't even come close to paying for the legal bills when IBM found out.
Verisign's life becomes a nightmare, and Sitefinder is no longer worth it.
Come on Verisign, reinstitute SiteFinder, I just found step #2 to profit!
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor - Albert Einstein
... for the government to take the registry away from Verisign, and give it back to some lab nerds who believe that the single most import thing in their lives is to ensure that the internet works according to standards because their single greatest fear is being /.'d. ;-)
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
And here's proof.
This is divide and conquor in action, folks. Old boy is trying to create a rift between the people who have designed and created the internet, and the average non-technical person who uses that creation.
I don't envy this guy, he has a difficult job ahead of him convincing the common man that turning the internet into a corporate battleground is a better way to run things than we already have.
Well, this decision could finally destroy the system of DNS. We have seen so many attempts from virii^wadware to abuse it. And - this might be far fetched - the http://www.ebay.com@www.evilcrackerdomain.com could also be seen as one trial.
What would the result be? Some IT people coming from a university would make the existing approaches to freenet perfect. At least, I find this outcome most likely.
Please don't misinterpret this as some kind of rant/flamebait:
Go ahead an destroy this DNS system, which has become more and more unusable (thanks to lawyers and to ICANN)..
How many long term stable internet/networking standards have been governed by commercial organisations? Hmmm... Lets see...
(The best I can think of is Netware.)
In short, the internet NEEDS basic infrastructure that is not governed by commercial interests.
In any case, who is working towards alternative naming systems?
John_Chalisque
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am not a data comm. expert, but I have always wondered if it were possible to make a 2nd internet out side of the current one. I guess a Fork, if you will. What would it take? A different set of cables and infrastructure? Could this new Internet have a EULA like:
By using Internet 1.2, you will not use unrequested pop ups on your site, blah blah blah.. Just a thought...
What, me Tweet?
More like they had a nasty shock when they discovered that they don't have as much power as they thought. The reaction of those running the root servers and their move towards circumventing Sitefinder via the BIND patch made it clear that there are still checks to the power Verisign currently wields. It's not surprising that they're advocating moves which will remove some of those checks so that they won't be as easily stopped next time.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
Wait, they're going to commercial the 'net (or at least want to)? I thought it already was commercialized!
I still remember the days of gopher and the early web (and I know many people remember long before that). Back then, most of the gov't didn't want much to do with this "new fangled thing". Boy, have things changed. Commerce is alive and well on the 'net and it gets more-so all the time. Most of the original inhabitants are still around but are getting brutalized by the various .coms that file patents based on what the .edus developed!
Where does he get this statistic? Hard to imagine since P2P Traffic on highspeed networks its been reported to take up as much as 60% of traffic pipes... While this number is a bit large... Its easy to forsee it being way higher than 1%.
He also makes mention of the people currently "specify its evolution" need to understand that its much broader but on a eariler note he confines dns traffic down to HHTP based only as he deems the rest of the traffic miniscule and irrelivant..
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Lots of interesting things could be done.
Some problems:
1. how to resolve disputes when no central authority exists
2. how to prevent hackers from destroying the integrity of the system
Thoughts?
Schedule your world with ScheduleWorld.com http://www.ScheduleWorld.com/ (Java Web Startable)
This guy really need to do some freakin research before opening his mouth.
Directly from the article:
"Ninety-nine percent of the traffic is pure HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol), and so it handles it the way it should."
Say that again?
99% of traffic on the internet is HTTP?
Um.
_NO_!
let's do a little packet scan of the traffic on my ISP's network, shall we?
Hmmm, there's about, oh say, 40% SMTP, 10% DNS lookups alone. Wait, here's some p2p packets floating in a big cloud all over the place. Hmm, what's this? Oh, that's those damn Exchange servers being bothersome with their damn polling.
Oh, and look at all the zombies. Geez, if I get one more subseven attack, I'm going to have to get a larger disk just for my firewall logs. Echo packets, ftp transfers, POP, IMAP, LDAP lookups, VPN tunnels. Yeah, that 99% HTTP traffic sure sounds like a well thought out statement.
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
but I think his conclusion is wrong. The fact that the infrastructure is held together by a free time collective might not be the best (although I can't think of any solid reason as I haven't RTFA). But if he thinks it should go over straight to private industry to reign freely he's got a couple of screws loose. What infrastructure has never been regulated by the government?
.gov I think we're better off with the longbeards anyway.
.edu's and .govs (and their related .com's) will always have a need for connectivity. There will always be a large element of non-corporate influence. Worst case, Big State U steps in.
There's a reason why: to provide uniform service to all citizens. The problem isn't in providing telephone service in NYC or the 'burbs, it's the service to BFN Montana and other rural locales. It's the same with electricity, roads, and water.
And I can't see how it's any different with connectivity. Now sure, the cable and phone companies control the last 50 feet to the wall socket, but that doesn't mean the central trunks should then just be handed off to some corp who's first decision is to cut all links crossing between the Rockies and Appalachians. Until such a guarantee can be offered by
In the end I don't think it'll be too big of a deal anyway:
What is music when you despise all sound?
That whole article is -1 flamebait.
Hmm, I'm really wondering whether or not I've heard these key words before somewhere...
(to be fair, this particular article today does not do some fond playing with the word "innovation", though)
RIGHT! It must be Mafia$oft which has constantly been mentioning that.
Given the striking similarity in corporate speak, I'm starting to wonder whether this is an attempt at preparing folks for a commercialisation of the entire internet... by Mafia$oft!
(and I'm sure funding SCO with $50 mil. by means of an intermediate capital company may help a lot, too!)
My crap, what a dirty world we're living in...
While we are at it why not commercialize air, commercialize water, commercialize every spoken and written word, commercialize music, commercialize feelings, commercialize everything. People have no right to enjoy anything unless some company owns it and can get paid for it. People are here to serve corperations not the other way around.
PS
This is sarcasm... but that's the way a lot of business people think
I think this whole thing boils down to the fact that MBA bean conter types cannot comprehend why other people are motivated by things other than making money.
They look at the DNS sytem and see a huge expoitable resource and are more concerned about how to make money off of it rather than making sure it works well.
Free Software and Open Systems run by volunteers are anathema to business types because they refuse to comprehend how someone can look at something without automatically thinking: "How couls I turn this into a pile of cash"
How?!!
By plugging in a few too many airconditioners?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
We NEED to create an internet over the existing structure to return the internet to its previous state of not being shit. Back when eBay was a reliable service, Google had a hideous logo and most websites red top to bottom with no side panels because tables were too advanced.
Forget about the design I mentioned; I'm not talking about the HTML of it. Remember the time frame - back when AT&T gave diskettes of Netscape to customers so that they would have a web browser. We can create this Internet over the existing protocol. Let's do it. Let's do it NOW.
There are enough people here to accomplish the technical feat, what is holding us back? The research has been done; we know how to get things to work all we need is the same universities to be on board with is that were before and are now.
.
This is a call to arms (and even if it is laughed at it is certainly worth a shot).
-Adam Colclough
cokelee [at] earthlink [dot] net
is the biggest crock I've seen in quite some time-- well, okay, it's on par with SCO. Are those guys working together or something? This is evil that I'm not certain even Microsoft could compete with.
Wow. Well, he's played his hand now-- but I don't forsee this actually getting him anywhere. ICANN still makes the decisions on this, and with any luck they WON'T wimp out when it comes time to stick their foot down.
Simply amazing, this whole thing-- all the greed, all the idiocy-- and it doesn't look like it's going away any time soon.
"It's not a declaration of war; it's a declaration of obvious needs for the network to mature..."
Hmm, let's see. You want to change the way the internet runs for your benefit, screw up the way that some e-mail filter systems work and basically cause chaos on the internet?
Ha. Haha. HAHAHAHA!
Kiss your company's existence goodbye, Sclavos. You have declared war on the internet by trying to take over it's operations.
You WILL NOT win.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
Read about it here.
> Who doesn't Michael insult in that l'il editorial blip?
Well, me, for starters, given that I don't have any compsci qualifications OR an MBA.
Or, to put it another way, I don't have a beard and I do know what TCP/IP is.
I agree with you except for the US nationalist part. What about a decentralized network of DNS's around the planet? Canada could have some, China could have some, etc. Let each country worry about the security of their own DNS's. You could also tailor the lookup's to each country - ex. China could return a server-not-found error for site's they believe disrupt social harmony and so on....
Shh.
"It's time to take mathematics away from volunteers who run them out of a university or lab," said a spokesperson for the Market. "It's been shown time and time again that the operation of the free market produces better evaluations than ivory-tower academics. If the Market says that two and two make five, then those carping engineers should step aside."
Following the news, the value of pi shot up to 3.815, the speed of light topped 400,000 km/second, but the fine structure constant dipped to 110.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
So he advocates the commercialization of the infrastructure of the internet?
Hmmm... Let's see:
The US electrical power grid, due to deregulation, is as shaky as a Chihauhua in heat.
The commercialization of email has now choked the users inboxes with spam.
Best use for a cattle prod: " C'mere Stratton, lemme show you somethin'..."
System works as it is, why ruin it and create the potential for commercial politics and industrial espionage?
2003-10-16 20:49:36 Verisign To Sell Network Solutions (articles,news) (rejected)
Not sure why Slashdot doesn't think this is newsworthy, but Pivotal Private Equity is buying Network Solutions from Verisign for $100 million. Pivotal Private Equity is a subsidiary of Pivotal Group, Inc., an investment company based in Phoenix AZ that is primarily focused on real estate (hotels, office buildings, etc.); clearly domain registrations have nothing to do with their business and they are purely interested in making money (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Verisign's press release is here.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
How the fuck could the Internet get any MORE commercial than it already is? Shit even /. has ads on it. It has become worse than television.
Now I have to have more ads sent my way if I mistype a URL, just fucking wonderful!
I see tremendous issues with this whole concept. Any arguments for "best interests of shareholders and company wealth" must ask themselves...where will the business end of this quantify itself? Pay per Resolution? Force a tax down American's throats by purchasing enough Senators to make a tax to impose on ISPs like the RIAA and MPAA purchased the DMCA? This stinks like mandatory insurance and 7 day old fish left out at room temperature in the summer.
If Verisign is so sure they or the corporate sector can do it better, how about showing by example rather than grab and destroy. If they really can do that much better of a job I am sure it would attract the masses, wait a second...shouldn't a bean-counting MBA know that?
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Of course the internet should be commercialised. After all, it would be "un-American" not to have profit-making corporations run everything, wouldn't it?
K
Dear Stratton Scalvos,
Pull out your checkbook, build it the way you want it, and see what happens.
Verisign, the company that just tried to pull some chicanery on people who can't type, and wreaked havoc on a lot of spam filters?
Verisign, the same company that repeatedly transfers domain name control to anyone who can use a fax machine?
Hey everyone, Stratton Scalvos says that we need to commercialize DNS servers. What do you think?
Who would run these servers? Microsoft? How about the government?
How about the oil companies?
Better yet, let's have an auction, like wireless bandwidth. Soon, we'd have foreign companies owning everything.
Hmmm. Doesn't that sound attractive.
-- No sig for you!
If I were aiming to improve reliability according to VeriSlimes standards I would first make all of my applications monolithic, then I would ignore all OOP practices and guidelines, after I was done with that I would then create one table in a rdbms to hold ALL of my data.
After fubaring all my stuff that way I would then also set my backup server on fire.
I would really have an effecient network then!
I truly hope that if VeriSlime chooses to make the internet more "effecient and reliable" that they will not get away with it. This corporation needs to go under and never come back
Those who trade in their freedom for security, deserve neither.
As long as the new admins keep the Bastards at Verisign from using wildcards...
I wonder how he would feel if the phone company changed it's infrastructure so that wrong numbers to Verisign were redirected to a compeditor. Or better yet, wrong numbers to his house were redirected to a sex shop.
_______
2B1ASK1
The rest of the world would go on with business as usual, but the US would be isolated from foreign markets.
GL
"The reason Site Finder became such a lightening rod is that it goes to the question: Are we going to be in a position to do innovation on this infrastructure, or are we going to be locked into obsolete thinking that the DNS was never intended to do anything other than what it was originally supposed to do?"
Just because you can open a beer with a gun, doesn't mean you should.
Were the New York cops who raped Abner Louima with their night-sticks being innovative too?
Sorry, it's friday.
Ok, from this day forward there will be NO more domain names.
All Internet usage will be via IP address only.
/sarcasm
The amazing thing is his argument is based on security; he asserts that commercialized root servers will be better for security. What is the evidence of that? Microsoft? He asserts that recent hacker attacks on the root servers (which took out 9 of them at once) were because they're at universities and (one of them) in the military, but offers no argument as to why commercial ownership would be better. The whole thing has the tone of, it's time to grow up and take the toys away from the little kids because they rightfully belong to us grownups, who will do better with them. His arrogance is beyond belief! And then he's got the nerve to point out that security is more important than philosophical debates about commercialization of the net. Well, duh, but the only thing he's got supporting his position is a philosophical assumption (without evidence) that commercial servers are more secure than publicly owned ones.
Hell, just use freenet.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Reliability is no reason to privatize the root servers. If he really thought that private root servers were more reliable, they could just add some privately owned ones and let the public ones continue to operate. The only reason to privatize the public servers is control. This guy must have an evil plan that he feels he'd never be able to convince the root server operators to go along with. It's the only possible reason for this suggestion. Root servers certainly aren't ever going to be profitable in their current form.
"Are we going to be locked into obsolete thinking that the DNS was never intended to do anything other than what it was originally supposed to do?"
Definitely one for the fortune file.
We, the internet community understand fully that you (verisign) are doing us a favor by maintaining root DNS servers, and that you have a right to reclaim some of that effort and cost by using the ubiquity of that favor to gain corporate value.
Therefore, because we don't want to devalue you as a company, we don't want you to do us a favor anymore. we've got some u-hauls heading to your offices that will pick up the machines and move them to Mr. Longbeard who is perfectly willing to do us the favor that we like, and is really looking forward to making anagrams out of bind zone files.
We hope you enjoy the relief of having to maintain the public service, and look forward to some most excellent crossword puzzles from Mr. Longbeard.
Remember, VeriSign is busy telling them its side of the story. We need to tell them ours!
This is perhaps the worst idea I have ever seen. The internet is fine the way it is.
Besides letting greedy corporations run our root servers, why not have them all run Windows? The TV told my Windows can do more with less.
No, but what he's talking about is the root name-servers for the Internet. That's a little more important.
Mind the Gap
I personally believe that infrastructures of any kind don't make good candidates for ownership by commercial organisations. The requirements do not match, an infrastructure is depended upon by society, it's required so that people can go about their business and not have to worry if it's going to work at all or if it'll work the same way tomorrow as it did today. More than anything else, an infrastructure must be stable to allow others to build services on it.
Examples of commercially owned infrastructures which can cause problems:
California and New York, can the deregulated UK power grid remain stable?
The UK rail network in chaos.
Pipes bursting throughout summer.
Discuss...
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Phrases like "public trust" usually just mean getting the damn thing built and established in the first place. Once that is done and it matures letting it become commercialized is fine.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
What, no "Cowboy Neal" option?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Why don't we let him commercialize our highway system as well??
I can just see it now...
People who took a wrong turn or merely wandered from their lane would be diverted into an information kiosk where helpful personnel would tell them of many more favorable destinations than the one they were driving towards.
Every so often, all drivers would be stopped to read a billboard before continuing on their trip. People with crappy cars would have to periodically clean ads off their windshield with their windshield wipers. The trunk would be full of cookies.
Of course there could be some good points: the speed limit would be 150.4 mph to get to your house!!!
Unfortunately, you could only drive 12.8 mph when leaving it. Cable modem users would share their highway with every teenager in the neighborhood. Rich folks would have private highways and would travel 150.4 mph all the time.
Gee, i know you have to be a bit of dick-swinger to be the CEO, but this is some pretty impressive arrogance.
Seriously though, i can see his point. I can see great potential in this philosophy. For example, every time that a program crashes on my Windows XP machine, Microsoft can sell add space on that dialog that asks if i want to send an error report. When i exit a program without saving, it could say something like "This opportunity to save your data is brought to you by Purina Dog Chow". Thawte could sell fields inside the free e-mail certificates that they distribute so that every time you send a signed message the recipient will see an advertisement. Really, the possibilities are endless. It's "services" like this that make computers the valuable tools they are.
Site Finder is completely compliant to standards that have been out and published by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) for years.
...off to search for IETF Standards for domain name resolution.
Does anyone know what standards he's talking about?
I am sure many /. folks are long time Netheads (I since 1980) and are shaking heads at the huge transformation toward commercial takeover.
... time for us to set our sights higher.
It is almost a self fulfilling prophecy. Apparent "free access" to a revenue stream, whether it be a web site for commerce where customers can buy commodities or e-mail where there is a new pool of potentials (spam).
What we are seeing now is (IMHO) a lot of what I call "bubble riders" which I define as entities that watched the general public "get on the Net" and are now exploiting their position.
Network Solutions as well as SCO and RIAA and MPAA are sitting on top of this new bubble. It seems to me that the TELCOs are not in this frenzy only because all of these others are using (and paying for bandwidth)
This new bubble is a litigation frenzy as the commercial interests sword fight for position in a space that was indeed created by very principled group of individuals and groups that are working for a common good.
IPV4 is their battleground
Best
Jeff
Yesirreee, private ownership is *always* the best way to go for infrastructure. I think the interstate highway system should be turned over to a corporation, run by me, naturally, so that I can turn the whole shebang into a maze of toll roads, and put up coast-to-coast advertising. Oh, and, all those dumpy little state highways will have to be paying an annual connection fee in order to keep using the interchanges.
Seriously, I'm pretty conservative politically, but even I believe that base infrastructure needs to have easy, low-economic-friction access, should be built according to clear standards, and the standards should change *slowly* and *deliberately*.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
If Verisign doesn't like the way the Internet works, and wants to make it more product-oriented, he should go build himself his own Internet. The last thing I want is to be surrounded by "added value". Do you know what I see as "added value" Big frickin' pop-up ads, flash-ads that you can't get past, Windows 2009 with 4000 new viruses coming out each day to exploit the crap that they shovel down consumers throats in the name of "added value". It's all a crock. Yes, the Internet wouldn't be where it is without commerce, but lets face it, commerce joined the team, it didn't start it, it has no right to take it over just because it wants to rely on it more. Fuck that.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
"Ninety-nine percent of the traffic is pure HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol), and so it handles it the way it should."
I don't know where he got his numbers but I have a hard time believing that.
So, here I was wondering why VeriSign makes these horrible, actively harmful decisions. Their customers will hate them, the entire community will rise against them, people will avoid them at all costs. Then I realized that the company, like Google, must have their own set of "Core Values". Of course, Google's core value is "don't be evil". I think VeriSign's is just slightly shorter:
"Be Evil".
Once you understand the motivation, it suddenly makes sense.
Then I suggest two internets. I've already suggested this very same idea with regard to the spam problem (let there be one with spam, and one without spam, and then the spammers will have their place to speak freely).
It would be more practical to just create a new internet apart from the existing one (though "circuits" in the new one might just be tunnels in the present one). Some have said "the internet was good before the MBAs came, so we should just kick them out". Certainly it is true, but it really isn't practical to change it now; it's just way too late. What is needed is a new one.
But wait ...
We can create a "new" internet using the existing internet. If we just start a whole new set of root servers, and new top level domains, and make mail servers refuse any traffic from any addresses that don't properly validate a reverse DNS under the new name hierarchy, we would have pretty much good separation anyway, without the cost of a whole new infrastructure.
And I suggest we do this entirely with IPv6 only (starting with tunnels, migrating to raw circuits as backbones finally get IPv6 deployed). We don't actually have to use "their" root servers, so why should we.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
That's funny, I was going to go ahead and say the opposite: Let's completely decommercialize the root servers and take away Verisign's authority on .com/.net
We'd prefer ICANN to become more of a trade association that promotes the growth of the network rather than a regulatory body that seems to have a very difficult time getting anything done.
I think the last line of the interview pretty much says it all. That pesky ICANN does nothing but get in VeriSign's way, and they'd be thrilled to relegate it to some toothless trade group.
So, Stratton Sclavos says "The noise you're hearing publicly does not match the real impact of the [Sitefinder] system... ...We have asked for the data five times from anyone who has it--ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the IAB--and no one can produce data. All they can produce is these fringe stories."
Back on September 21s, Paul Twomey, president and CEO of Verisign said "As to your call for us to suspend the service, I would respectfully suggest that it would be premature to decide on any course of action until we first have had an opportunity to collect and review the available data." Well, have they seen this? It's a study that says:
The study also says:
That seems pretty clear to me. It says that 91% of the entire internet was affected, in a manner that was more costly than necessary, and not user friendly to the majority of the people that saw it. (i.e. not in their native language.)
In addition, on October 7th, Verisign released a statement that said:
48 million. So... an independant study that Verisign called for, and Verisign themselves have found that the "real impact" of Sitefinder has been tremendous. And then Stratton Scalvos has the gall to say that "no one can produce data"?!
We have MX records for email, why not have different record types for each kind of service? This would permit verisign to run there service affecting websites w/o affecting any other service. I don't know much about root dns setups, is this a useful idea? (Maybe it exists already, I will have to read the rfc).
What the CEO of Verisign sais about the rootservers is a load of crap.
a tions/
At the last Ripe meeting in Amsterdam 4 of the rootserver operators presented their plans/actions to anycast their root-server. Several of them already had done so. (F, I and K for instance)
RIPE has worked together with NLnet Labs on new DNS software, NSD, and impelemented it on the K-Root. Bill Manning is working on a new implementation for the B-root. Also on a different hardware and software base, non Intel, non Bind or NSD. The rootserver maintainers are not stumbling volunteers, but committed to a community resource.
See http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-46/present
Use Adsense for Charity
Me me!!!
</ducks>
Well....., Good then!
:)
Shh.
I have a question. Can Verisigin really do anything?
Lets assume Verisign attempts to lobby and take control of the internet. Couldn't all those colleges keep those computers up and running without connecting to the commericalized net? Actuall,y the edus might be better off walling them selves off from the commerical net.
The problem is that from a long-term standpoint, Verisign is in a lousy situation.
While it's easy for them to "innovate" and abuse their monopoly (and if the CEO can pull it off, he's doing the right thing from a business standpoint), it's also quite easy to invent and come up with a new name resolution system. This is a facinating research area, and there are a lot of possibilities.
The original DNS system was designed for a far slower network that was mostly trusted. It was designed to be fairly light weight (and originally wasn't particularly scalable).
A new naming system would be a good thesis project. Furthermore, the FSF controls the name resolution system (via glibc) on a rather large number of machines, and has a significant amount of clout in this area. (Microsoft controls most of the rest, but given that Sitefinder primarily competes with MSIE's lookup system, it's likely that they'd support such a move).
Remember Unisys, the GIF and the PNG. In the end, the silver lining was greater than the cloud caused by Unisys's abuse. There was a new, wonderful, well-designed image format available.
If Verisign's actions produce a modern, robust, featureful and secure naming system, I will have considered the whole furor well worth the cost.
May we never see th
We'd prefer ICANN to become more of a trade association that promotes the growth of the network rather than a regulatory body - Of course you would, as those 'trade assosciates' would have commercial interests on the line. 'Hey, if someone mis-spells a domain, they get a search page. We could sell advertising space, search placement, etc. Anyone disagree with this idea?' Riiiight...
How do we build a commercial business with ground rules that seem to shift based on personal agenda and emotion versus any particular logical data set? - Of course, that 'particular logical data set' = 'profit!' When 'agendas' and 'emotions' express things such as 'This network should be free of censorship, free of centralized control,' then yes, they ARE anathema to corporate profit philosophies.
Are we going to be in a position to do innovation on this infrastructure, or are we going to be locked into obsolete thinking that the DNS was never intended to do anything other than what it was originally supposed to do? - Getting into evolutionary dead-ends is generally a Bad Thing, yes. However, most 'innovation' I hear discussed is for the benefit of corporate interests, rather than improvements of underlying functionality.
A few years ago, there was the talk of making 'Internet 2', making a completely new infrastructure to replace backbones, etc. It would be 'the way of the future,' where we could have 'content on demand,' 'accurate, real-time tele-conferencing,' etc, etc, ad infinitum. Well, after blowing smoke out of their collective a$$es for a time, they've realized the costs and effort involved (back then fiber was being laid down like mad, with no end in sight, so the infrastructure for it would 'just be there'). The talk of a 'second Internet' created/operated/controlled by corporations has dwindled to a trickle. Now, the corporate effort is focusing more and more on the existing Internet. The 'content providers' (MPAA, RIAA), the infrastructure owners (ie. Sprint), 500 lb. gorillas such as Verisign, are now all focusing on the existing Internet, and the 'evolution' and 'innovation' they want are to make the existing Internet into the corporate Utopia that the 'Internet 2' was supposed to be. And it's only going to continue getting worse...
That base level of DNS (domain name system) response is an obligation we took on when we inherited that contract. But it would be commercially unreasonable for anyone to suggest that we shouldn't be allowed to build incremental services on top of that if they deliver value. - 'Embrace and extend,' as it were... But how much over-head would all these 'features' entail? For example, the following gem: The funny thing about digital security is that we've lived in a world where we only knew someone was attacking us when they hit our firewalls. It's time to evolve that world so that we get the information that an attack is coming before it hits our front door. What the hell?!? So what do you have, 'notification' packets sent before the 'real' packets?? Do you delay the 'real' packets to give enough time between the 'notification' and 'real'? "But we don't know that data's coming until it actually gets here." No shit, really?!?
And this is the type of person who's a role model for how 'commercialization' of the Internet is going to work... Yeah, I see great things coming, let me tell ya.........
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
Say that is the worst case scenario. What would happen? I believe you would see the beginning of an underground public internet. This revolution can't be stopped. Geeks just get outraged when the MBA's step in to pillage. They always will.
-Nuke the moon
Not to mention neither myself nor many other MBA's do much 'bean counting' which would be handled by better specialized accountant CPAs. Besides, bean counting is a real skill, and as everyone knows, MBAs posess no such tangible abilities.
That said, I agree commercializing the DNS and the rest of the net would be a bad idea, it would be like privatizing the FCC. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some heavily animated Powerpoint slides to create for my presentation on reorganizing paradigms.
People do business on it every day. Help me out here, I'm confused deeply.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
It's those "volunteers" that keep greedy sneaky business fsckers like VeriSlime in check and keep the internet running. Otherwise, we'd be paying on a per byte per foot basis by now.
W0000, so I do. This is how I envision the future systems working; Every country runs it's own DNS root server, which is hooked into a distributed system across all the countries with their own domain names. Each server can only register domain names unique to that country, for instance, www.slashdot.usa or www.slashdot.uk etc. .Com's should then become www.slashdot.com.usa whereas if I'm in america, and I type in www.slashdot.com, it'll automatically take me to www.slashdot.com.usa and if I'm in the uk it'll take me to www.slashdot.com.uk. Persay that in www.slashdot.com.bz was not registered, then the server will request a wildcard for all www.slashdot.com's and at the software level give the user a selection. .gov's are handled the exact same way.
.Nets are given only to ISP's(includes hosting providers, e-mail providers, telco's, connection services, voip, etc), standards bodies (such as icann.net), etc. www.slashdot.net would have to be an ISP or something to have the .net, and would have to register with a UN body to get the domain name. .Org's would work the same way, only non-for-profit organizations would be able to have .org names.
Likewise, each country gets an even cut of IPv6 addresses to give out to it's citizens (should be so many we'll never even need to get nitpicky about them, then again, they said that about ipv4 so I dunno). This may make it easier for countries to block spam from others and to make others play nice with the connections or they lose it. The randomness of IP's and DNS entries is one of the internets great strengths and great weaknesses, but having an ordered system is going to be necissary for the future.
Aside from that, I smell a P2P DNS system based on a system such as kazaa coming up relativally soon. Preferably with a voting system like slashdot's, automatic and free registration, automatic and free voting to take down a site or buisness who's abusive off of the DNS system. So, for example, if netster has hijacked www.slashdto.com, we can vote to have their lisence revoked for cybersquatting and get their registies deleted off of the internet if enough registered people vote.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
It must be open-mic night at the VeriSign Comedy Club ...
*New* most evil company? Heheh, you don't know Verisign very well, do you? :-)
Ask any current or former DNS admin at an ISP (myself, for example) about the two-headed Verisign-Network Solutions monster and you've doubtless get a response filled with invective and something pretty near outright hatred. OK, it probably will be outright hatred.
There's a reason why competing registrars are so popular that has nothing to do with the merits of those registrars.
In the pantheon of companies most-hated by IT people, SCO is the newcomer. Verisign-NetSol has for years been at a level only surpassed (and not always) by Microsoft.
Society would be 10 billion times better if money wasn't the driving force in our lives. And we know its true, cos of Star Trek :)
Dave Bell
When and if this happens, the great thing about the 'net is we can start our own DNS service. Sure there have been failed DNS alternatives in the past, but that was before someone tried to grap the existing DNS system.
If they block port 53, run it on port 80.
And I'm on it right now. Basically it's a high-bandwidth network between universities and research institutions. I've downloaded Linux ISOs at hundreds of megs/second (without bittorent), but that's about all it's done for me. But for people who want to colaborate with large sets of data it's great. It was never ment for the average person.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The cultural divide and the Internet's future |CNET.com
.com. I am almost certain that it is the former.
Below are comments I have on an interview with the CEO of Verislime. The greater issue here is that of people poisoning standards for their own short term gain. This guy is either a cynical liar or incompetent to be in charge of the root DNS for
After a couple of weeks on the hot seat, VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos is turning up the fire on his company's severest critics.
His definition of "standards-compliant" is a cynical and deceptive one. Sure, the SiteFinder is complying with the standard, in that it is returning well formatted packets. However the content of those packets are lies. They are lying by saying that domains exist when they do not, in order to fool web browsers into loading the commercial content that Verisign wants to get to web surfers.
It is analogous to saying that if I put a detour sign in the middle of the freeway to direct traffic to my shopping mall, that I am obeying the traffic sign protocols.
The comment about "ninety-nine percent of the traffic is pure HTTP" is a shorthand way to sum up why it is not possible to communicate with Verisign's executives, and why they must be stopped and soon. Within that short phrase there is a huge and perhaps insurmountable issue as to how Verisign thinks the Internet protocols should work.
Because it wouldn't matter if one hundred percent of the traffic on the internet were HTTP, it still is not a reason to break DNS in order to insert advertising. The "service" they claim to be providing should be provided by the browsers, giving everyone a chance to implement their own solution to the problem of mistyped domain names. Then many possible solutions to this issue can be innovated. By breaking DNS to lie about the existence of domain names, they actually prevent anybody else from providing any solution. This is the exact opposite of innovation. And they are smart people at Verisign, they clearly and obviously know all this, and yet they are lying to every one about it. Mr Sclavos is spinning
There's an old saying that fits here: "Dance with the one that brung ya." If Verisign thinks they can do a better job managing the Internet, let them go out and design Internet II and see who wants to play by their rules. That wouldn't work, because the original Internet would still be here, and its principal virtue of free exchange of information between consenting parties will always beat one-sided conversations like television, movies, music, and Mintel. The only way they can get people to join their new network is to destroy the existing Internet as we know it.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
That's exactly right. People/groups in leadership positions have this peculiar tendency to lobby eveybody else to vest more power in them. This is always accompanied by noble-sounding promises that they alone can make everybody else safe, secure, and better off.
But whether it's a politician, an agency, a corporation, or an unabashed dictator, it always turns out to be all about the payoff for the leader, whether they are in it for power, money, or both.
When some ass says "I must have increased authority, because your (or the fictional "our") security is at stake" - that's your cue to run whoever it is out of town.
Are we going to be in a position to do innovation on this infrastructure, or are we going to be locked into obsolete thinking that the DNS was never intended to do anything other than what it was originally supposed to do?
Does this not strike anyone else as the reason WHY technologies fail? "Yes, that bicycle there was built for one, but it can handle 14!!!! Jesus, the last thing DNS needs is feature bloat!!
You are all fartheads.
We'd prefer ICANN to become more of a trade association that promotes the growth of the network rather than a regulatory body that seems to have a very difficult time getting anything done.
Yes and he wants ICANN to leave them alone too.
What he really wants to do is outsource the root servers to India. Yeah that sounds so much more stable.
-------------------------------------
Technically, we are beyond survival.
At the end talking about ICANN... "What you don't have are a lot of people who understand how to build products and promote markets."
Just what we need. Marketers on board making decisions...
"Can we make the text blue or something? Our research shows people searching like the color blue"
IMO the "WiFi Cloud" is the next revolution in information technologies. There have been only a few, and each time they have shaken the establishment to its roots.
First there was the invention of writing. It made it possible to, for the first time, record information permanently and in a verifiable manner. Count your sheep and have the auditor sign off on it. Fraud reduction and inventory control in the same document.
This was all well and good for the longest time. But the Powers-That-Be locked-up information by effectively encrypting it: keeping the church liturgy in Latin. It was not accessible to the common man.
Then came the invention of the printing press. What an uproar! Suddenly information "wanted to be free" -- tracts and booklets and books and magazines all exploded onto the scene, utterly destroying the lockhold the P-T-B had on it.
Again, things stayed like that for a good long time. The P-T-B again locked up information by copyright, by purchasing controls, by obscurity, and by costs. It became difficult, or at least legally hazardous, to access some information, and expensive to distribute it.
The Internet revolution leveled the field, and once again brought the P-T-Bs to their knees. Information broke free of their bonds once again.
Undoubtedly we will see the P-T-Bs cripple this freedom. It's simply not in their best economic nor power interests to let us commoners share information cheaply or easily. Knowledge is power and money.
I think we'll see wireless networks become the next revolution in information-sharing. When these devices become ubiquitous and fast, the cost of passing-along information from point-to-point will be so cheap as to be free. I've a WiFi router in my house -- what would I care if someone else were to send their data through it? No skin off my ass.
My hope is that some form of "WiFi clouds" becomes the form of information sharing that the Powers-That-Be can not, at last, control and limit to their sole benefit.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
First of all, let's quit ragging on the MBAs. The vast majority of them have souls, and do useful work. In fact, a friend of mine is an MBA who advises venture capitalists on what technology not to waste their money on. He's was Civil Engineer with his PEng and nearly ten years experience, before going back for his MBA.
Now, on to the matter at hand. The libertarian ideal of an underground internet. Lovely, wonderful, and utterly unlikely. There will be _some_ people who build something like it, but they'll be a tiny number compared to the internet population.
Understand that people are fundamentally lazy, and have a nearly infinite capacity for pain delivered in slowly increasing increments. Muck with redirects now, then withdraw them, then reinstate them in certain rare cases. Increase them gradually, and in a year nobody will have noticed that every typo they make sends them to advertising.
It won't work. Not enough to make any difference.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Seriously, what would happen if a company "enron-ed" What happens then? At least with the root servers in the public trust, aka a University, you can be sure that they will be around for a while. But if you start handing them out, then commercial entities can start to capitalize on them.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Yes, insuring that the root servers are well spread across the continents makes sense. Latency is one reason.
you know what? let them run sitefinder again, they'll find that when doing that, it'll be impossible to stop a ddos attack without blocking the service off from everyone.
.com and .net domains and anything else verisign has privy to.
verisign is run by idiots who dont know how the internet works at all, they come up with stupid reasoning because they assume the internet is just like television.
well, it isnt.
these are the people who only think with greed and not common sense, these are the types of people who bring humanity down a few steps every time they think.
example:
Dark ages. - result of the catholic church wanting total control over everyone in europe through supression.
Middle east - Islam idealists wanting to keep everything in the stone age to supress people and bending their wills.
these are two examples of why we need to stop listening to people in power who make judgements based on their own greedy selfish whims in the quest of control and power because they doom the evolution of humanity when people are stupid enough to go with it, sadly, people do and its those people who deserve it, however , the smart, individualists who think for themselves and wnat the human race to advance are hurt, and attacked because they're scary and evil people.
to say that people are afraid of change is a broad generalization, there are those who want change, want newer technology and those who want to keep things the way they are/were.
sadly, stupidity wins all.
however, we can just boycott
the other registrars are just going to become richer from this. and verisign will rot in the same pit with enron and sco, and eventually microsoft.
Finally, someone with a good idea!
But seriously, this attitude of "now that the Internet has value, it's time for someone responsible to take over," is a huge slap in the face to all those who, with great effort and vision, actually brought the thing into existence.
And his assertion that he's not declaring war is totally disingenuous. Here's my imaginary conversation with Sclavos.
Me: Hello.
Sclavos: [Stepping on my foot.] Hi.
M: Whoah! Careful there.
S: What?
M: You stepped on my foot.
S: [Spits in my face.] You're a little too sensitive.
M: Yuck! What the hell was that for?
S: What do you mean? I'm providing a service.
M: You're service is to be a total d--?
S: [Pokes me in the eye.]
M: Augh!
S: 99% of people are happy with what I'm doing.[Punches me in the face.]
M: [Falls down.] You're hurting me!
S: You're looking at this the wrong way, it's because you have an agenda.[Kicks me in the ribs.]
M: Ow! Fuck you! An agenda?! What the..!?
S: It's because I represent a commercial interest, isn't it? Jeez, it's like a religion with you people.[Kicks me in the head.]
M: NO! It's because you're doing something wro--!
S: [Stomp!] Oh, come ON! There's no harm in what I'm doing, my experts say so! [Kick!]
M: [Gurgle]
S: You have to [Kick!] allow [Kick!] innovation, [Stomp!] or things [Kick!] will stagnate.
Squeeze every buck out of the entire world.
How about a 1 dollar useage tax for everyone that ever gets online.. or pay per use DNS lookups..
Sure.. lets make a quick buck. To hell with stablity or expansion...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I just read the interview, and it is clear that the guy is out of his depth. He does not understand (does not want to understand) that the web standards are there for a reason. He does not want to understand that infrastructure and business logic must be in seperate tiers. This guy would make a bad software architect. This is the kind of guy who would put all his logic into JSPs including DB calls (excuse my J2EE metaphor.)
Some suits will support this dude, but it should be made clear to the management of large corporations and many applications that their businesses depend upon rely on the established web standards. If it ain't broke, don't fix it? This guy has a different attitude - if it ain't making as much money as possible, it's broke, the hell with the rest of the world.
You can't handle the truth.
I dont care I will still use the universities root servers. They can fragment DNS thats fine with me then we can get back the internet we once knew. It will be like this what root server internet you on? Oh, I am using MITs root server. Cool I am using Verisign's, but I can only find like 2 web pages.
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
Ok boys, get out the guns and ammo.
Time for a posse to gather round the servers and protect them from the blood sucking vampires that come to feed on the life forces of the honest by sapping away everything that is good, fair and free.
Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!!
I think it's about time for name servers to become P2P, or perhaps something like bit torrent. That was the original goal anyways! If one node goes down, the whole thing won't go down. Thoughts?
"Do or do not. There is no try." -- Master Yoda (Half man, half muppet)
It is very interesting. Here is the above link with no cut&paste necessary.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I don't know what the numbers are, but this must be wrong! How about email (SMTP, POP, IMAP, etc.)? Telnet? FTP? SSH? just to name a few, but especially email traffic must be huge.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
People are not on internet for businesses, they're (when they're windows machines work for once) on the internet for eachother.
A commercial internet will die the same way all the others have (compuserve comes to mind).
Glad to know these people want others like them to play a stronger role in running the Internet, truly it does.
- Robin 'Roblimo' Miller
There may only be 13 ip addresses for root servers, but there are more than 13 machines and 13 locations for them. The F root server, run by the ISC, is using anycast. There are multiple machines located in or near major exchange points all with the same IP address.
Check it out:
http://f.root-servers.org/
Using bgp export rules, they allow for failover to remote servers in the event that the local server goes down. A ddos attack will have to work extra hard to take down all the f root servers, since they could not easily attack all of the servers without using owned machines all around the globe.
This guy is full of shit. Verisign does not innovate.
He really doesn't answer the questions adequately and I also think he's muddling up several key issues.
Is he saying that commercialising the Internet will lead to enhanced security?
Is he saying there is a need for greater security in general?
Is he decrying the fact that the technical community is blocking "innovation" over some "cultural divide"?
Whatever point he's trying to make, he fails to establish reasonable grounds to substantiate any of these three points.
Commercialisation does not necessarily lead to enhanced security (ala. Microsoft) nor does it ensure the development of innovation. I would argue that commercialisation, particularly if it's within the wrong hands, would lead to an eventual suppression of ideas that threaten enterprise (alternate fuel engines being a prime example).
My favorite quote is:
"The one thing I'd question is there doesn't seem to be a process to effectively combat the claims and accusations and the rest. "
I read that as "We want to defend ourselves but really, we have no defence against our critics because practically everything they're saying is true." Fact is, there is *nothing* that ICANN have stated against them is refutable. So of course they have no defence!
I think he's just having a whinge because he didn't get his way with SiteFinder. Still, it would have been a more interesting article if he substantiated any of his bullshit claims with REAL evidence.
Fine.
Is it possible that other caching DNS servers could also redirect traffic from the Site Finder service to their own Site-Finder-like service? Couldn't AOL, MSN, Earthlink -- any ISP for that matter -- just set their caching DNS server to redirect from Verisign's Site Finder to their own search page? Assuming Verisign restores Site Finder, I would love to see that they are unable to make money from it, because every DNS server that sits between users and the Verisign servers redirects the Site Finder IP address.
<sarcasm>Come to think of it, that would be really innovative of AOL and MSN. And it would be good for users.</sarcasm>
We all know that these companies make their way by keeping others from doing things, now we know why. When you count beans for a living, you start to think they have value, that you own them and that you might not want to share with others because there just are not enough to go around. Bring me back AtHome and a real peering internet. I'm sick of how these assholes are making the net look like broadcast TV.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Probably this refers to a system of allowing things like DOS attack detection and back-propagation along routers, so that DOS attacks can be stopped closer to/at the source(s), rather than at the destination, which is a real idea--not necessarily a good one (I'm not really up on the details of such a system), but it's idea that's out there, so he's not just spewing total gibberish.
Star Trek sucks!!! Star Trek practices a HIGHLY hierarchial system, which means it is strongly elitist (possibly more elitist than capitalism). It is based on military strcuture (militaries suck). Ever notice how the commanders have more power/say/perks/benefits than say the engineers, or the doctors, or others. I would hate to be part of the Federation in Star Trek. It is a terrible econopolitical structure... having said that, some of the other minor "races"/tribes/aliens are more utopian and I wouldn't mind joining them. If I can't find any of those minor aliens, then there is always something like Vulcans :)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
This all started with the Axis of Evil speech by George Bush. I just think that Stratton Scalvos (CEO of Verislime)and Darl McBride (CEO of SCO) really believe that if people are dumb enough to believe Bush and that there are WMD's in Iraq, then they're dumb enough to believe Verislime and SCO propaganda... so without delay, here is the...
Internet's Axis of Evil:
1. Other root servers
Verisign should control all root servers because we can't leave these open to several private and public organizations for security reasons. Someone could blow up all 13 of them with a truck bomb at the SAME TIME!
2. Linux
We have huge government contacts with Microsoft because they run 95% of all computers in the whole world. I just have to patch all of my machines everyday and they promise I'll be ok. Linux is for hobbyists, nerds and Microsoft playa haters. How can the contribution of a few million people working on Linux for nothing do any more than Microsoft? They pay their people to write the best, most secure software code in the world.
3. IBM
We thought they were on our side, well they were back in the days, but they have defected to the dark side. Don't they understand that arbitrarily negating a contract (like SCO did) is just business and they shouldn't take it personally. That's what they deserve for taking in those open source freaks. IBM and Linux stole SCO's code... they should just take SCO's word for it. I'll think I'll invest millions in SCO because they obviously found a way to make money from all those Linux freeloaders. Why are all the SCO execs cashing in their stocks while I put money into their company??
Are people really this stupid not to realize what's going on?
How can people who barely speak the English language get elected into office (...speaking of Bush and Arnold)!
If Clinton were in office, all mistyped websites would be redirected to http://www.whitehouse.com
Why do I have a manager at work that has no damn clue what I do!?
Are all people destined for great responsiblity supposed to be this damn stupid?
I'm going to go bang my head for a while, drink a beer and try to kill some brain cells, so I too can aspire to be in great positions of power and financial prosperity.
though in this case THERE ISN'T EVEN A PROBLEM, for christ's sake.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
They demanded authority to control the root servers, they got it, we who own domains are paying directly. What the hell are we getting for our money?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Die, Verisign. Die.
That's why I'm a big fan of nanotech. Just imagine: nanobots can theoretically reassembe molecules; this means that we can get food/shelter for cheap. Additionally, money might cease to be useful; you could get everything for practically nothing.
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
He mentioned that during the recent ddos attacks on the DNS root servers, 9 of the 13 went down. He was using that as evidence for his argument that internet infrastructure should be commercialized...
Well, if you ask me, that fact only suggests that a better name resolution system is needed, not that the entire infrastructure needs to be commercial. DNS was the only thing affected, it just so happens that DNS is fairly important. I think we should fix DNS instead of doing things that are tangent to the real problem.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
We don't have to use their root servers.
They don't seem to understand that.
And that, in my opinion, is a good thing.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
new protocol with user determinable root servers ? We've all seen the technical and administrative expertise of the current ahhh ummm gathering of people. The companies need to realize that for the most part the reason they want on is because of all the people, drive away the people and what good is the net for comercial use ? The net is like quicksilver, the harder you squeeze the more it slips from your fingers...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If one chooses a low-profile lifestyle, when the inevitable crash part of economic cycles comes around there's less injury falling off the bottom rung of the "social ladder." Morality has nothing to do with this. Every choice has an outcome. Be prepared to live with the outcome of your choices and your life will always be simpler.
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
What Salvos can't withstand is the allure of greed.
coffee time!
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
Unfortunately, what I see happening is either hand-waving that it's not as bad as you think it is or the other side that says, "Well, there are privacy concerns, and we don't want this all in the hands of government." There's a balance point, and I'm tired of polarized arguments instead of some kind of level of cooperation between the public, private and academic segments, which we ask: What is the right balance point here?
Obviously, as a business person he thinks that the commercial way is the best. but that doesn't mean he is evil. every individual thinks that his groups way is the best solution to any problem. bureaucrats do, academics do, priests do, communists do (did) and so on.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
The interet2 is not "more bandwidth" it's "lots of bandwidth between universities". Like I said, the only thing I was ever able to use it for was Linux ISOs. There are no movies or anything like that on it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You had a good post going until this last sentence. Age of the glorification of greed? I suppose the years, months, and days before the fall of the Bastille were just pleasant compared to today's inequities. People traded ox carts (SUVs today if you factor in inflation) for tulips in the 16th century Netherlands. How is today different from any other day, good or bad?
The problem isn't these myopic fools spouting off some nonsense. These people will be there five thousand years from now saying the same shit that Irving Fisher said before the Great Crash of 1929. "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
The problem is that some corporations are too large as to act immune to the markets they exist in. Verisign, being one of a growing number of monopolies, can call a press conference together tomorrow to announce the world is indeed flat, and there's little anybody can do to affect them where it matters: their bottom line. Sigh. But this doesn't herald the glorification of greed.
To me this sounds like VeriSign is trying to strip ICANN of it's power as well as forever remain in control of the root servers by commercially branding them their own. Right now icann is the only thing standing between them and doing whatever they want. I think this is strike 3 for verislime. Icann should strip them of the root server duties and hand the job over to another company or a group of elected people who won't try and take over the world.