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Verisign's SiteFinder - An Engineer's View
ixs writes "CircleID has an interesting article by David Monosov about Verisign's plans to reintroduce Sitefinder.
The article presents the thesis that the Internet engineering community is partly to blame for Verisign's ability to mess with the .com and .net root zones. According to the author we spend too much time with our systems and not enough with politics. The writeup was previously posted to NANOG and received a favorable response from Paul Vixie."
According to the author we spend too much time with our systems and not enough with politics.
No shit, Sherlock. That's why we're engineers.
Mike
Verisign put a DNS wildcard in to sell their search service and generally piss off the world.
We put in a bind patch to prevent DNS wildcarding on top level domains.
We don't need to play brain-dead political games with these losers. It's our internet, not theirs. We have the right to totally ignore any and all of ICANN's setup and use our own DNS servers without notice and without asking for their permission.
Slashdot should Slashdot Washington DC. Let's stick with what we do best!
Countries and corporations are both run by people whose primary job is politics. It is extremely difficult to go up against these people without becoming one of them.
Not many engineers want to become politicians, even if it means fighting for something they value. They want to do their job, which is designing stuff.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
http://web.archive.org/web/20000818212505/www.iii
"There will be up to one-hundred-fifty (150) new iTLDs allocated to as many as fifty (50) new registries, with no more than one half (1/2) in the same country, created in 1996, and chartered to operate for up to five years.":a .org/lists/newdom/current/0518.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20000818221119/www.iii
Tell me what was wrong with this again?
Oh, I see, it's CSPAN I should be watching, not CPAN. Obviously a typo...
Does CSPAN support regexes?
You need to install an RTFM interface.
I mean, if they can get away with this, what's to stop them from doing things like shutting out other registrars, etc?
.com and .net registry was setup and honoured all existing third level domains.
We are. There is only a minor edit to resolv.conf between having a monopoly and having nothing.
ICANN could be forced to revoke verisigns status if an alternate
What Verisign will learn is that the kid has already gone outside into the world and cannot be kept under thumb.
Also, does anyone remember, speak of the devil, Microsoft's viewpoint on this? They essentially do the same thing on the lower level with default browsers for their search engine. Any insight?
Let's keep in mind that patents are in place to keep lawyers employed and keep them litigating. -CatGrep
Sometimes I misspell URLs and I actually *like* having a service that attempts to find the site I'm looking for.
No problem, just set your browser to send you to a search engine of your choice when you get a 404. If your browser doesn't do that bug the developers.
DNS wildcarding isn't the way to this. It breaks other stuff.
Another thing is that the way they implement this SiteFinder is breaking other stuff on the net. Internet is more than just Web, you know.
And it certainly did not help that they ran an SMTP server aswell. God knows what it collected before it dropped the connection, and the server was also RFC ignorant with programmed responses.
I was tempted to mod you a troll, but figured all the answers you would get would be quite informative on the issue.
This is a pet peeve of mine. When a site can't resolve, it is an nxdomain. A 404 is when the requested file on a web server doesn't exist. Please stop calling an nxdomain a 404.
I agree that the tech community has traditionally been averse to playing politics, and this is evidenced in many areas. Nowhere is this more poignant than in the issue of SPAM, which is now more of a political than a technical issue. The tech community needs to form a hardcore lobbying group to force the Federal Authorities to do their job and prioritize the prosecution of spammers and other groups who are stealing, breaking into and destroying resources. The ineffectiveness of anti-spam efforts nowadays is the perfect testimonial to the much-needed aggressive politicking the tech community needs to do to solve this problem.
On the other hand, the business community is also being too political and not technical enough. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of businesses do not have secure networks and related policies and 99% of the larger operations are not fully-exploiting the technology available to them.
Likewise, the mainstream business community is excessively political and seems to have had the common sense, as well as technical insight, sucked out of a majority of their business models. The whole "dot bomb" implosion was the result of too many companies relying exclusively on hype and politics to drive their business model.
While the tech community can stand to be more political, I think the mainstream business community even more desperately needs to get technical.
Sometimes I misspell URLs and I actually *like* having a service that attempts to find the site I'm looking for.
That's not an accurate requirement.
- Sometimes - when? I assume when you type it in your browser, you are not speaking email here?
- having a service - well, more like having something, you dont really bother what it is as long as it works, dont you?
So your requirement becomes : When I misspell an URL in my browser, I like it when something attempts to find the site I'm looking for.Fine with everyone. There is such a feature in IE, and this is the right place for such a feature to be.
Why we are against SiteFinder (and if you had read Slashdot before you would know this) :
You simply cant. Not even with cookies or so, as there is no such thing for DNS. But you can opt-out if the same service is implemented in your browser. (change browser/deactivate feature)
AND you will get a wrong message : "recipient not known" instead of "server not know".
It may annoy you, but you can adapt quickly. But there is also software that needs DNS lookup to function properly (most prominently, spam filter). And software doesnt adapt itself, it has to be rewritten, thus generating costs in various other companies. If SF was an opt-in service that would be less problematic, so that only software that wants to use this feature had to be rewritten, but this isnt the case.
It is written : "when the domain does not exists, you return a does not exist message". But suddenly Verisign decides to return "it's Verisign".
Like the idea? Then get IE, misuse google for it, or hack mozilla/write a RFE. But SF is A Bad Thing (TM).
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
Sometimes I misspell URLs and I actually *like* having a service that attempts to find the site I'm looking for.
Hey, good point! You can't type, so we should break the internet and one of the few effective anti-spam techniques, so that you don't have to retype "www.hot-mokney-porn.com".
By the way, I'm a fat slob with a heart condition, but I can't keep my fat ass out of McDonalds, inhaling lard-burger after lard-burger. I'd actually like a service that shut down all McDonalds and inconvenienced everybody else who can manage to control their compulsion to have evry meal at McDonalds.
By the way, I'm an alky; I jus' can't stay awy from dat ol' demon rum. Howsabout we Prohibit all alcohol, jus' 'cause I can't figure out how to stop after two drinks?
By the way, I get really afraid of Ay-rabs, and I don't understand why anybody would mind being on camera 24/7 unless they had something to hide. Can we tear up the Fourth Amedment and let John Ashcroft read your mail and tap your phones in order to give me a spurious sense of security?
I mean, that would be really convenient to me if we could do these things. I don't care how it would inconvenience you, becuase I, just like Verisign, am in the business of offloading my costs onto the community, in order to increase the personal profits I keep all to myself.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Engineer has an idea. Engineer implements the idea. Engineer is happy. Engineer's peers are happy. Non-engineer picks it up and uses it to get a lot of money, tarnishing the original idea in the process. All engineers are outraged.
The article states that engineers should be more aware of politics. That's bull.
An engineer that takes politics into account will accomplish nothing, because he is battling windmills. Trying to protect your inventions against corporate meddling is impossible. The problem is that those who invent simply do not have the power to enforce the "right" use of their invention. Being aware that that power lies with people who are mainly interested in squeezing money out of ideas will only make you despressed.
And there are reasons that this is the way it is. The two main ones are (1) the innovators are the grease-monkeys of the corporate and political worlds; and (2) the fact that innovations can generate money is the catalyst that allows engineers to innovate.
These two reasons lead to three possible solutions for the described situation.
Solution 1: More engineers become politicians, thereby gaining influence on law-making and getting the ability to bend the laws to idealistic purposes. Unfortunately, engineers (just as scientists and artists) do not want to be politicians. It's a frustrating job, especially if you are idealistic. If someone is only interested in money and power, it can be a fulfilling job, but I don't expect idealistic law-making from such a person.
Solution 2: Engineers refuse to work for corporations and develop their ideas for themselves. Unfortunately, this will mean that they do not have the funding to work on their interesting ideas, and even if they succeed, a big corporation will notice them and run away with them.
Solution 3: Engineers do not create inventions that can be or need to be exploited for money. Translated: Engineers won't innovate at all.
Conclusion: All three solutions won't work in practice. Since that is a depressing thought, perhaps you better not read this comment.
Too late.