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Two New TLD's Near Approval

Iphtashu Fitz writes "The Associated Press is reporting that ICANN is nearing approval of two new top level domains: .travel and .post. The Universal Postal Union in Bern, Switzerland, wants ".post" for national postal services, local post offices, business partners and stamp collectors around the world. Private companies that provide postal services, such as Federal Express and UPS, also would be eligible. The Travel Partnership Corp., a New York-based trade group, seeks ".travel" for travel agents, airlines, bed and breakfast operators, tourism bureaus and others in the travel industry. ICANN is also considering eight other TLD's including .asia, .eu, and .jobs but they haven't progressed as far as .travel and .post. More information here."

329 comments

  1. Wow, they did it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    They come up with TLDs as useless as .museum. Bravo!

    1. Re:Wow, they did it by plover · · Score: 1, Funny

      Really. http://goatse.post just doesn't have that "ring" to it.

      --
      John
    2. Re:Wow, they did it by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Funny? Where's "+1: Dead accurate"? Seriously, who thought that .post was a peachy idea? "Why, in five years' time, I'll bet we have... a good three or four registrants!" How many postal systems are there in the world? Surely no more than 200 or so. Even at 100% saturation, this will still be a void wasteland.

      How many commercial travel operators are going to move away from the well-recognized .com TLD and into a new .travel? That sounds even lamer than .biz, and I've literally never seen one single legit business in that namespace (please don't flood me with counterexamples).

      At any rate, you'll see at least as many smartass domain names as legitimate ones in either dumb new TLD. For example:

      $ grep -E '*post$' /usr/share/dict/american-english-large
      bedpost
      c ompost
      doorpost
      fencepost
      gatepost
      goalpost
      g uidepost
      heelpost
      impost
      lamppost
      milepost
      ou tpost
      post
      repost
      ripost
      rudderpost
      signpost
      sternpost

      I for one welcome our new com.post overlords.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    3. Re:Wow, they did it by plover · · Score: 4, Funny
      Where's "+1: Dead accurate"?

      Come on, this is Slashdot. "+1: Dead accurate" would be as useless as "Papal Brand Condoms."

      --
      John
    4. Re:Wow, they did it by Ollierose · · Score: 4, Funny

      don't forget bigasa.post for the spam emailers

    5. Re:Wow, they did it by Bequita · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Why, in five years' time, I'll bet we have... a good three or four registrants!" How many postal systems are there in the world? Surely no more than 200 or so. Even at 100% saturation, this will still be a void wasteland."

      You forget, the .post TDL is open to stamp collectors too. I be that'll increase the number of registrants by oh say... one.

      (PS - Any nominees for suckers to advertise on that sole stamp collectors site?)

      --
      Yes, there are women on Slashdot. Deal with it.
    6. Re:Wow, they did it by Bequita · · Score: 1

      This should read "I bet", not "I be". My internal spellchecker must be damaged...

      --
      Yes, there are women on Slashdot. Deal with it.
    7. Re:Wow, they did it by Kenshin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, in thast case, we need:

      insightful.post
      interesting.post
      funny.post
      t roll.post
      flamebait.post

      and so on.

      --

      Does it make you happy you're so strange?

    8. Re:Wow, they did it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      That's all your /usr/share/dict has?
      $ grep -E '*post$' /usr/share/dict/web2
      barpost
      bedpost
      browpost
      compost
      dispost
      doorpost
      forepost
      gatepost
      gu idepost
      handpost
      headpost
      heelpost
      impost
      lam ppost
      mainpost
      milepost
      millpost
      outpost
      paul opost
      post
      repost
      ripost
      rudderpost
      signpost
      standpost
      stempost
      sternpost
      suppost
      telepost
      waypost
      whippost
      wingpost
      womanpost
    9. Re:Wow, they did it by Pxtl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      fuck it. Nobody follows the rules anyways. Just stop making new, stupid TLDs except one: .x .x is simple - use for "everything else". Require that any unrecognized TLDs in a URL that people enter automatically use .x as their TLD. So typing in google gets you google.x and so on. Then stop making new TLDs.

      Honestly, people don't follow the rules for .net, why do you expect any other public TLD to bother? Hell, most educational institutions outside of the USA don't have .edus either. .i .don't .really .care .about .tlds .any .more

    10. Re:Wow, they did it by dirk · · Score: 3, Funny

      For my thoughts on this issue, please head to dumbasa.post. There's lots of iCANN info there.

      --

      "Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
    11. Re:Wow, they did it by gfody · · Score: 2, Funny

      .x is for eXtreme websites

      --

      bite my glorious golden ass.
    12. Re:Wow, they did it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bagsy first.post!

    13. Re:Wow, they did it by Webmoth · · Score: 1

      don't forget bigasa.post for the spam emailers...

      I'd think dumbasa.post would be more apropos

      --
      Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
    14. Re:Wow, they did it by waynelorentz · · Score: 1

      Don't forget TV and audio post-production houses. I'm sure we'll see:

      Professional.post
      FullColor.post
      SatelliteScreen.post

    15. Re:Wow, they did it by pudknocker · · Score: 1

      Heck, most local organizations don't know. The local city goverment where I'm at uses .us instead of .gov. The schools use .org instead of .edu, and the local soccer club uses .com instead of .org. I'm betting this is the norm. More TLDs just mean more TLDs to be incorrectly used.

    16. Re:Wow, they did it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Come on, this is Slashdot. "+1: Dead accurate" would be as useless as "Papal Brand Condoms."

      This is way off topic, but it should be noted under John Paul II there is an approved use of condoms. They are used with the "New life" form of invetro fertilization where the male wears a perforated condom. It's the pope's belief that you at least tried to conceive naturally so it's not a sin if you ask a doctor to take the seed that was spent in an act of love and just put it in the right place.

      So it could be said that the Catholic Church approves the use of condoms so long as they are holy.

    17. Re:Wow, they did it by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1

      Even worse is when you end up with mycity.org, mycitypolice.org, mycityparksandrecreationdepartment.com, mycitypoliticians.gov, and so on. What's so awful about mycity.gov, police.mycity.gov, parks.mycity.gov, people.mycity.gov, and so on?

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    18. Re:Wow, they did it by stevey · · Score: 1

      How on earth did you miss first.post???

    19. Re:Wow, they did it by hobbesmaster · · Score: 2, Interesting

      One thing, .edu is reserved for post secondary education institutions so your local school district can't get a .edu TLD.

    20. Re:Wow, they did it by KCSteve · · Score: 1

      How about something useful like .movies and .radio.

    21. Re:Wow, they did it by serutan · · Score: 1

      Can't spell Y A W N with big enough letters for this one. And imagine sitting through the endless meetings it took to make this completely, UTTERLY useless decision.

    22. Re:Wow, they did it by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 1

      My company has a .biz registration we use for staging servers, so yes, it can be useful. Our http://companyname.biz is a nice, out of the way place, while http://companyname.com works nicely for the corporate presense, while the other TLDs just wouldn't be appropriate. Agreed about the uselessness of most of the other new TLDs tho..

    23. Re:Wow, they did it by Thing+1 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      What I don't understand is why TLDs are so important. I mean, it's just a mapping from a string of alphanumeric characters, to a series of 4 (or 6) bytes.

      When I heard of .info and .biz, in fact way back when I first heard of .cc, I wondered why the extension was "fixed" and why they didn't just open it up to any random string being able to be mapped?

      The answer, as far as I understand it, is the almighty dollar. They'll make a ton more money slowly releasing new TLDs than they would if they let anyone take whatever string they wanted as their domain name. Like, "mcdonalds" could be a domain, mapping to 164.109.145.147; or "me.and.my.shadow" could map to 99.99.99.99; etc.

      I know I probably just violated some RFCs up above, but why such a big honking deal?

      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
    24. Re:Wow, they did it by dj245 · · Score: 1
      How many commercial travel operators are going to move away from the well-recognized .com TLD and into a new .travel?

      They won't switch the idea is just for all the businesses to buy more domains. Wouldn't want USPS.post falling into the wrong hands you know. So theres some money. I'm sure other postal companies will follow suit.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    25. Re:Wow, they did it by Bitsy+Boffin · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's about delegation. The root servers have to hold information about every top level domain (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, .uk, .nz ......).

      If you were to allow any-old-tld, then the root servers have to do an absolutely mammoth task in serving all lookups for the TLDs.

      It is totally unscalable.

      --
      NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
    26. Re:Wow, they did it by Stanistani · · Score: 1

      We still need .porn for good and evil filtering...

    27. Re:Wow, they did it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not in Australia. All Secondary Schools have their own edu.au domains.

    28. Re:Wow, they did it by lelio98 · · Score: 1

      I personally can't wait for:

      .doggrooming

      Seriously, we need a new TLD for this industry to help restore some sanity to the chaos that the dog grooming industry has become. I mean, have you attempted to find a dog groomer in one of the other TLD's, impossible I tell you. Without a new TLD for dog grooming only, this vibrant and vital industry will suffer the same problems as many other industries that rely so heavily on the internet.

    29. Re:Wow, they did it by justzisguy · · Score: 1

      You'd have an excellent point, except .com seems to have become the dumping ground for everything on the web. How many web sites in a random google search are anything but .com?

    30. Re:Wow, they did it by ukdba · · Score: 1
    31. Re:Wow, they did it by danila · · Score: 1

      Because it's first.psot

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
    32. Re:Wow, they did it by Xoder · · Score: 1

      My former high school has a .edu domain: Bronx High School of Science

      --
      The previous sig has been removed due to /. protecting your best interests
  2. seriously. by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why isn't there a .porn?

    I think it would be nice to seperate that stuff out.

    1. Re:seriously. by mopslik · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's there, only they use ".xxx"

    2. Re:seriously. by KidHash · · Score: 3, Informative

      RTFA They're considering .xxx

    3. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny



      Why isn't there a .porn?


      What do you think .asian is going to be? What about .teens?


    4. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I call first.post

    5. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The usual reason given is "who decides what is porn?". That's bogus. Most porn merchants *want* to be clearly labelled as porn. Kids who download stuff from them have no facility to pay them. It's in the porn merchants' interests to be easily filtered out by people who want to do so. As long as it is opt-in, it will be useful. Obviously there will be people operating sites that they don't consider to be porn but others do, but that's always been true, a lot of art galleries are accused of being pornographers by fundies and the like.

    6. Re:seriously. by spirality · · Score: 0

      Why not a ".music" while we're at it.

    7. Re:seriously. by CatsupBoy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most porn merchants *want* to be clearly labelled as porn What are you talking about? Why would porn sites want to establish an easy means of blocking themselves. the more hits they get the more they get payed in adds, and also there are those ppl not looking for porn that may decide differently when they see girl on guy on sheep on grandma action.

    8. Re:seriously. by AuMatar · · Score: 2, Funny

      Because all music on the net is stolen, you damn pirate!

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    9. Re:seriously. by Fiveeight · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No-one will use the xxx domain, because two weeks after it appears, "family" groups will start hassling ISPs to block, filter and generally suppress it. At the moment they can avoid it by saying it's impractical to block stuff by address, but when it's just a matter of dropping a TLD from their DNS...

    10. Re:seriously. by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 1

      None will use it for several reasons:

      Brand name recognition: Face it, the internet really made porn a viable business for anyone. WHile the major cost used to be publishing a magazine or video, it's all cheap as hell nowadays considering you can get quite a nice setup on the internet for 1000 USD a year. These companies ae solely online and their brand often includes their TLD. For businesses with a good foothold in offline publishing, such as Playboy or Hustler, it wouldn't really matter, because their brand name is pretty much universal, both online and offline. When anyone says Playboy everyone over the age of 15 can associate with it.

      If it can see websites and afford internet, it might be a future customer: Porn sites WANT accidental visits. Suppose that 1 in every 100 accidental visitors becomes interested and joins the site. This is also why some common misspelling domains are camped by porn sites. After all, those people are there for profit, not because they want to be naked on camera for you or because it is their "mission" to bring you porn. It's a business, a very serious one with strangling competition.

    11. Re:seriously. by Iphtashu+Fitz · · Score: 1

      Exactly. A few years back a porn operator registered the domain whitehouse.com. Mozilla & Internet Explorer both defaulted to a .com domain if you didn't specify it. People wanting to visit whitehouse.gov but just entering in "whitehouse" in their browser ended up at his porn site. When IE & Mozilla got smarter and started using keyword lookups rather than blindly assuming .com he lost his major source of income for this porn site. He tried to sue Microsoft over this but was laughed out of court.

    12. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Isn't that a *good* thing? You would have some ISPs that drop .xxx from their dns as a selling point to their intended market, and you would have some ISPs that don't drop .xxx from their dns as a selling point to their intended market. Heck, you probably would have ISPs that offer packages/configurations to either drop or include .xxx from particular dns servers. I certainly hope this isn't a rehash of the old "I have the right to shove porn down everybody's throat" argument.

    13. Re:seriously. by strictfoo · · Score: 1

      and .hax0r

      --
      I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
    14. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what about
      .teensThatAreReallyMiddleAgedWomenWithShitTonsOf Makup ??

    15. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Actually it is named after Whitehouse, a British smut mag produced by somebody popularly known as The Slug (forget his real name), which is in turn, insultingly/humorously named after the late but still well-known (over here) moral crusader Mary Whitehouse.

      Yes, the truth can be complex...

    16. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.metallica.mp3/ would be good.

    17. Re:seriously. by Carewolf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The problem is no sane porn vendor is going to move from a generally accesable .com domain to an easily censored like .xxx

      You know, free market and all..

    18. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would porn sites want to establish an easy means of blocking themselves. the more hits they get the more they get payed in adds

      Only if they get paid per impression. It's my understanding that the revenue from ads comes exclusively from referral fees when people sign up (i.e. we're back to somebody paying for something, only once removed).

      Hits that don't result in a payment are a waste of bandwidth. The business model is that you see something you like and you sign up. The free stuff is a loss-leader so people click on the ads to sign up. People unable or unwilling to pay lose pornographers money. As I said, it's in their interests to have those people not visit at all.

    19. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      How is allowing .xxx to be resolved "shoving porn down everybody's throat"?

      FWIW, how long do you think companies will stick to using .xxx if "pro-Family" (read: repressed conservative fascist) groups successfully lobby ISPs to not resolve that TLD?

    20. Re:seriously. by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 2
      The problem is no sane porn vendor is going to move from a generally accesable .com domain to an easily censored like .xxx

      Simple, write legislation to ban pornographic sites unless they're in .xxx. If they don't comply then sue them or bring them up on criminal charges like child endangerment.

    21. Re:seriously. by spirality · · Score: 1

      or .troll

    22. Re:seriously. by Fiveeight · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's sad that I can't tell if you're joking, or running for office.

    23. Re:seriously. by tverbeek · · Score: 1
      Why isn't there a .porn? I think it would be nice to seperate that stuff out.

      Because it would never accomplish that. All the creation of .porn or .xxx would accomplish is a messy land-grab as smut merchants rushed to register the new domains... while keeping their .com and .net and .org(y) domains in place. They'd have no incentive to shut them down, and there'd be no legal authority that could force them to. So you'd get a brief bit of profit for the registrars, then the internet would get back to business as usual, completely unchanged, except with one more variant of hornysluts.* to keep track of.

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    24. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why has this been modded funny? .xxx domains were considered by ICANN.

      Try a Google search for xxx tld to find out about them. Searching for site:xxx shows that no sites have been indexed (when search for along with other terms such as +a or +the) and only have their root included in Google.

      Here (http://www.icann.org/tlds/report/report-iiib1c-09 nov00.htm) is a report on the .xxx TLD suggestions as well as a suggestion for a .kids domain (both of which were rejected at the time).

    25. Re:seriously. by EzInKy · · Score: 1

      Simple, write legislation to ban pornographic sites unless they're in .xxx.

      Yes, we'll get the UN to start working on it right away. I mean it's not like the Security Council has enough real life problems to deal with.


      If they don't comply then sue them or bring them up on criminal charges like child endangerment.


      Like a parent who doesn't restrict their children from playing in the middle of the highway, if you have children and are not restricting what sites they can visit then it you who is endangering them, not the purveyors of porn.

      --
      Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    26. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It obviously shouldnt be blocked by ISPs, there isnt anything illegal on those sites. The tld should be blocked at home or maybe for that specific home by the isp.

    27. Re:seriously. by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1
      Simple, write legislation to ban pornographic sites unless they're in .xxx.

      Uh huh. In what country are you going to pass this legislation?

      If they don't comply then sue them or bring them up on criminal charges like child endangerment.

      Ignoring the fact that porn sites don't lurk outside schoolyards waiting for the bell to ring so they can disgorge bestiality and BDSM pics at the feet of schoolchildren and really shouldn't bear the burden of protecting everyone else's children from (cough)parents responsibility(cough), how do you propose the government of a country that has criminalized non-.xxx porn sites prosecute the unknown operators of a web site in (for example) the Cayman Islands?

      More stupid rules are not the answer.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    28. Re:seriously. by 1u3hr · · Score: 1
      It's in the porn merchants' interests to be easily filtered out

      Rubbish. They DON'T want to be easily filtered out, because they'd be filtered upstream from the consumer; ISPs woudl be almost obliged to do so by default unless you asked (or paid more likely) to have the block taken off, thus violating your privacy.

      If porn merchants want to be filterd out, why do they buy up all those deceptive domain names, or recently expired ones, or make link farms to catch searches for almost any product you might be looking for?

    29. Re:seriously. by kephunk · · Score: 2, Funny

      I reckon .cum would be way better than .xxx or .porn

    30. Re:seriously. by bhtooefr · · Score: 1

      And THAT, my friends, is why .cum should be the pr0n TLD. If my hands are misaligned on the keyboard, I might just type .cum instead of .com. (It's happened to me that I'll get misaligned, but I'm still typing other stuff correctly on other rows with the misaligned hand)

    31. Re:seriously. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Like a parent who doesn't restrict their children from playing in the middle of the highway, if you have children and are not restricting what sites they can visit then it you who is endangering them, not the purveyors of porn.

      But I AM restricting what sites they can visit. I would just drop the .xxx zone. The problem is all these pornographic sites are spread all over in tons of different zones for no reason. If I was running a legitimate ponr site I certainly wouldn't want children viewing it so I'd be more than happy to comply with putting my domain in a restricted zone.

      In case you haven't realized lately, the Internet is a sewer of filthy content. My children can walk outside my door without finding hordes of naked animal-fucking midgets outside and I expect the same of the Internet. Confine the animal-fucking midgets to seedy areas of town.

    32. Re:seriously. by EzInKy · · Score: 1

      In case you haven't realized lately, the Internet is a sewer of filthy content. My children can walk outside my door without finding hordes of naked animal-fucking midgets outside and I expect the same of the Internet. Confine the animal-fucking midgets to seedy areas of town.

      You know, there are many countries were a person can walk outside and not see a woman without a headscarf, but on the internet there are hordes of them. Should bare headed women also be confined to the "seedy" areas of town?

      --
      Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  3. Nonsense by vasqzr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    .asia and .eu aren't going as far as .post?

    Do post offices need their own TLD?

    Come on!

    You can tell who's the driving force behind todays Internet standards

    1. Re:Nonsense by Muda69 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm going to register www.first.post as soon as it's available......

    2. Re:Nonsense by SoTuA · · Score: 1
      You can tell who's the driving force behind todays Internet standards

      Those pesky post offices!

      (BTW, first.post, steve.jobs... :D)

    3. Re:Nonsense by arose · · Score: 2

      And write "I FAIL IT" in big led letters on the page if it's no the first registered .post domain.

      --
      Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
    4. Re:Nonsense by bleckywelcky · · Score: 1


      Morons?

    5. Re:Nonsense by Cade144 · · Score: 1

      You know, "steve.jobs" was the first thing I thought of when I read this item. I am truly surprised that no other /.ter thought of it before you.

      Congrats, I guess.

  4. What about .whore? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For people who sell their bodies for cash? What about them, huh? Did you ever stop to think about them?

    1. Re:What about .whore? by tokenhillbilly · · Score: 1

      Shouldn't they be covered under .biz or .com?

    2. Re:What about .whore? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oooh! I want to register http://karma.whore/ and CNAME that to my slashdot user profile!

    3. Re:What about .whore? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      shouldn't they be under .iq instead...

    4. Re:What about .whore? by Chundra · · Score: 1

      .cum maybe?

  5. Right. by jbarr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ".COM" was supposed to be for commercial companies and businesses. ".ORG" was supposed to be for non-profit organizations. ".NET" was supposed to be for networks and ISP's.

    Like this will be controlled any better?

    --
    My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
    1. Re:Right. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Well the problem is .COM .ORG .NET often are pritty confusing. Lets take a comerical ISP like AOL. Well they are comerical so .COM works for them, but they are an ISP so .NET works for them too. There are also a lot of governemt agencies with .org to their name where it should be .GOV. What we need is to redo all the DNS name and force them to chose one or the other.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Right. by AssProphet · · Score: 1

      so what about sites with content like "pictures of my stupid friends" and "badger badger"

      seeing how these type of things don't fall into the categories .com .org .net according to your descriptions.

      Is there a top level distinction for this kind of stuff?

    3. Re:Right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I completely agree. It's not going to work out.

      They should keep it very simple, or else just forget TLDs and let people/organisations/companies have what the heck ever they want there.

      Even the country domains are a mess. Well, UK is doing fine with the "extra" domain (as in .gov.uk and co.uk), ditto with Taiwan, but in Finland (where I live) it's a spaghetti of .fi chaoticly mixed up with the others: A.com may be in Finnish while B.fi is in English, C.net is a shop targeting local Finnish customers while D.fi is intended for tourists, and so on.

      Outside .mil and .gov and maybe .edu, TLDs stopped making any sense (conveying any real info) years ago.

      Just free them all. Or at least make an effort at designing a coherent larger system of them, not silly patchwork add-ons like .post and .travel. Have a few philosophers and semioticians in the team to figure the grand categories out...

      BTW, if it was free, /. could register .slashdot. H-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slashdot-dot-slashdot-sl ash-comments-dot-p-l, now that rolls off the tongue.

    4. Re:Right. by MP3Chuck · · Score: 3, Funny

      .omgwtfbbq?

    5. Re:Right. by Ctrl-Z · · Score: 1

      Well they are comerical [sic] so .COM works for them, but they are an ISP so .NET works for them too.

      So, they should use .com for the commercial part of their business and .net for the network part of their business.

      There are also a lot of governemt agencies with .org to their name where it should be .GOV.

      Could you give an example of a US government agency that uses .org insteead of .gov?

      --
      www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
    6. Re:Right. by Gentlewhisper · · Score: 1

      Yes. .per for personal sites, but it never caught on.

    7. Re:Right. by kiwi_james · · Score: 1

      Here in NZ you can get a .gen.nz domain name.

      Where "gen" stands for "general" stuff (or more precisely "Individuals and other organisations not covered elsewhere"). The purpose being that anyone with a personal website can set themselves up correctly.

      Of course this is country specific to nz, and not a TLD, but I guess it's a step in the right direction.

      Of course when you say your email address is someone@somewhere.gen.nz most people haven't heard of it and get confused - '.jen, .gem...huh? Surely he meant .co.nz - I'll send it to that...'

      I guess it might be better off going for .geek.nz instead.

    8. Re:Right. by DJCF · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not sure how this is managed by the DNS Servers, or if this is managed by the top-level Networks or what but... In the UK there is a .me.uk which fulfils an identical function. I think .me.uk sounds slightly err strange, and would deffinately prefer .per, or .per.uk . From http://www.me.uk/, The .me.uk domain was introduced to fill a gap in the UK domain space for individuals to have an identity on the internet. With .co.uk for commercial, and .org.uk for non profit organtsations, there was not real place for individuals to have their own identity. Individuals can now get their own .me.uk domain, e.g. you could have fredbloggs.me.uk and so have email me@fredbloggs.me.uk and web space at www.fredblogs.me.uk and so on. The domains are available on a first come first served basis. If you are lucky, you may be able to get your surname, e.g. smith.me.uk which would allow your whole family to have subdomains and email address at no extra cost - e.g. www.john.smith.me.uk and john@smith.me.uk .

    9. Re:Right. by eht · · Score: 1

      I have a .com instead of a .gov right here for you www.eht.com so that's close, it's a website for a town in NJ in the US, and still the wrong name, it really should be eht.nj.gov or eht.nj.us or something similar, not a .com if it followed the "rules".

      And yes towns are government agencies.

    10. Re:Right. by legirons · · Score: 2, Informative

      Is it just my imagination, or have all the useful applications of new TLDs been completely ignored by those considering them?

      Problem: Lots of people are losing lots of money from websites posing as banks. Banks all use .com domains, which can be bought by the general public for $15. Gee, I wonder if we'll ever find a solution to this horrible problem?

      Problem: Tens of companies can legitimately own trademarks on a word, but they're in different areas of business, or different countries. There's only one .com domain for them all to fight over. Looks like someone completely missed the usefulness of acme.music, acme.oil, acme.travel, acme.computer domains. Or in a context we recognise, apple.computer and apple.music

      Of course, we don't want to look too hard for fear of finding the real problem. One company making a lot of money out of the two scarce domains. One company in charge of allocating new domains. I'm glad those companies are so separate, democratic, and independant...

    11. Re:Right. by krunchyfrog · · Score: 1

      .usa could have been useful ;)

      --
      printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
      -- myself
    12. Re:Right. by waynelorentz · · Score: 1

      CityOfChicago.Org would be better as CityOfChicago.gov

    13. Re:Right. by gregmac · · Score: 1

      Maybe we should propose .crap

      --
      Speak before you think
    14. Re:Right. by dubious9 · · Score: 1

      www.moneyfactory.com

      mint.us.gov just didn't have a ring to it I guess. On that note why is it that it's army.mil and not army.mil.us or army.us.mil? What if other countries want a military home page?

      --
      Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
    15. Re:Right. by vrmlguy · · Score: 1

      Obviously, AOL needs a .aol TLD. Let's all get on that right away.

      --
      Nothing for 6-digit uids?
    16. Re:Right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oops forgot the change the header to "Not .org but should be .gov". Damn small preview button. Can't ever find it.

    17. Re:Right. by Trepalium · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't chicago.il.us be even better? It's more geographical!

      --
      I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
    18. Re:Right. by ThJ · · Score: 1

      In Norway, we use mil.no. For communes (administrative regions of Norway), we have the kommune.no tree. For high schools we have vgs.no (Videregående Skole). There are also regional domains for each province/county, and priv.no for individuals, but I never see anyone use those.

    19. Re:Right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Håll käften. Vi skiter fullständigt i vad ni leker med i Norge.

    20. Re:Right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jævla tjuvsvenske.

    21. Re:Right. by Bob+Uhl · · Score: 1

      It would be even better as chicago.il.us.

    22. Re:Right. by Bob+Uhl · · Score: 1

      For the same reason that .gov is US, .com is US and so on. The non-country-specific TLAs are assumed to be in the US, due to the fact that the net was developed here.

  6. .post?? by Gothmolly · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'll register the first.post domain.

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
    1. Re:.post?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      diggity diggity diggity!!

  7. so some slashdotter will register by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Funny

    first.post

    1. Re:so some slashdotter will register by artemis67 · · Score: 1

      Can .grits be far behind?

    2. Re:so some slashdotter will register by Tmack · · Score: 1
      ...and probably F*ck.eu

      tm

      --
      Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
    3. Re:so some slashdotter will register by anticypher · · Score: 1

      The asterisk is not allowed.

      I've already got first dibs on fuck.eu. I put in a bid to the commission to run the .eu TLD back in 2001, but they've passed the decision back to ICANNt before going ahead with awarding the contracts.

      In all probability there will be some strict guidelines that will be the least unpalatable to everone in Brussels. That translates to "an unworkable mess of rules that some scum will exploit, some big businesses will abuse, and will lock out most reasonable requests". Cynical, moi?

      the AC
      also wanting ilove.eu, ihate.eu, fuckthe.eu, fork.eu, me.eu, notme.eu, etc

      --
      Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
  8. http://will.travel !!! by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 1

    I want will.travel. So I can IRC from have.mac.wil.travel !!!

  9. They forgot one... by gik · · Score: 4, Funny

    .ENOUGHALREADY

    --
    ZERO
    1. Re:They forgot one... by arose · · Score: 1

      I want .dot!

      --
      Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
  10. This is insanity! We need fewer TLD's, not more! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's all a scam by registrars to make us spend more money.

  11. TLDs are BS by hackstraw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many does somone or a comany need to buy to "avoid" ambiguity. I mean every slashdot is taken except slashdot.name, and it kills me that slashdot.com gets any hits for the website slashdot.org. Slashdot used to not even redirect or give you a bozo message for accessing slashdot.com, it just threw the contents of slahdot.org at you.

    What are the points of TLDs? I thought they were to avoid ambiguity, yet they promote it. Remember the whitehouse.com vs. whitehouse.gov thing? How about the current suprnova.org vs. suprnova.com and suprnova.net? The USPS can't figure out if they are a .gov or a .com. Same with the US Marines. Are they a .mil or a .com. Keep in mind that .com is supposed to be for commercial stuff. I guess the military is the biggest business in the US, but thats another post.

    How many "normal" people know more than the .com domain?

    I go on these rants from time to time, and I feel as though I'm in the vast minority of people that see no purpose of TLDs, but can anyone give one example of their utility? I have found one guy on the net that agrees with me and the /.er that pointed me out to that page, but otherwise they keep making more of them and making them longer and more silly.

    Now, the only useful thing for TLDs is to separate countries. Why? Because countries have different languages and currencies. I get pissed when I do a google search for something and end up at a brittish site. I have nothing against the brits, but its stupid for me to look at buying a $10 trinket from there. Its not too common, but I've ended up at UK .com sites and was not happy. /rant

    1. Re:TLDs are BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Its not too common, but I've ended up at UK .com sites and was not happy. /rant


      Perhaps if all the US sites used .us, then you wouldn't have such a problem.

    2. Re:TLDs are BS by cryptochrome · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously. They should just go non-tld and be done with it. That way, companies and orgs won't have to register a half dozen sites just to redirect them to one.

      --

      ---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?

    3. Re:TLDs are BS by Moby+Cock · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe american sites should adopt .us and we can get rid of all amibiguity. There will be amazon.com.us, amazon.ca, amazon.co.uk. Then everybody will know where the heck they are looking.

    4. Re:TLDs are BS by The+Queen · · Score: 1

      How many "normal" people know more than the .com domain?

      Indeed. You think everybody and their mom is online, but still, every day, more folks are getting "the internet" without knowing a thing about it. Once you show them how the address bar works, they try everything ".com" by default. The only saving grace is search engines, namely Google.

      I'm waiting for the big shakedown when TLDs die off, and the search engines all merge (face it, who uses anything besides Google anymore? Even their image search has blown AltaVista's away) and we can find anything and go anywhere without ever having to mess with dot-*.

      Oh wait, that was Star Trek.

      --

      The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
    5. Re:TLDs are BS by hackstraw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Maybe american sites should adopt .us and we can get rid of all amibiguity. There will be amazon.com.us, amazon.ca, amazon.co.uk. Then everybody will know where the heck they are looking.

      I agree. I believe that all domains, even those in the US, should end in .us.

    6. Re:TLDs are BS by Moby+Cock · · Score: 1

      I believe that all domains, even those in the US, should end in .us.

      What would be the point in that? Are you suggesting that domains in Canada and France (for example) should end with .us? I hope you mean that only sites in the US should be using .us

    7. Re:TLDs are BS by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 1
      Same with the US Marines. Are they a .mil or a .com

      They are actually a bit of both. The marines themselves are a purely military organization that fall under the navy. However, because of name recognition, they also registered marines.com for easy access. I don't know how .mil sites are distributed or regulated, considering it's an internal US army issue, but I know of several military units and bases with their own sites, but without .com presence on the internet. Why? Because the units themselves nor the bases need to recruit people.

      Most people think of the USMC as "the marines" and thus will search for marines. .mil is also pretty much unknown to the general public. I know, it's a bit of a vague situation, but as a branch which handles it's own recruitment, it's well served with a more 'public' presence online. It also seperated the internally orientated info from the externally orientated info such as recruitment info.

    8. Re:TLDs are BS by hackstraw · · Score: 1

      me: I believe that all domains, even those in the US, should end in .us.

      Moby Cock: What would be the point in that? Are you suggesting that domains in Canada and France (for example) should end with .us? I hope you mean that only sites in the US should be using .us


      Oops. Thats what I meant.

    9. Re:TLDs are BS by alext · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Naturally we sympathise with your unfortunate experience in obtaining some foreign web sites in your Google searches. I understand that the rest of the world occasionally experiences US web sites being returned in their results, if that's any consolation.

      Regarding TLDs, I think the distinction you may be groping for is that between a naming authority and a subject area.

      Countries are quite good at being authorities, but non-governmental authorities are possible too. ICANN comes to mind, and it's possible to imagine the UN, ISO etc. in this role, as well as new amateur and commercial groups yet to be identified.

      The bottom line is that the world will never agree which site http://www.kitchenappliances should resolve to, let alone www.truth or www.beauty.

      The solution is not more divisions by subject but more groups making the subjective divisions.

    10. Re:TLDs are BS by LiquidMind · · Score: 1

      Parent pretty much summed it up: We use .mil as our own internal site (you can search directives, orders, units, etc). The .com version isn't used by anyone of us since (like the parent stated) it's just a recruiting tool. Marines.com makes a whole lot more sense for civilians than .mil (IMHO).
      and most units do have their own site that falls under usmc.mil (like www.pendleton.usmc.mil).

      --
      This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
    11. Re:TLDs are BS by pipingguy · · Score: 1


      Just an aside on Brad Templeton - he's the founder of rec.humor.funny and does other stuff, too.

    12. Re:TLDs are BS by gregmac · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They should just go non-tld and be done with it. That way, companies and orgs won't have to register a half dozen sites just to redirect them to one.

      It's nice to be able to print "mybusiness.com" on something and have people know it's a website. "http://www.mybusiness.com" CAN look ok, but for a lot of things, design-wise, it's nicer to drop the 'technical' stuff.

      It's also easier to tell people things.. the "dot com" tells them it's a website. As an example, "Look us up, mybusiness dot com" vs "Look us up, AOL keyword mybusiness". (or "web address")

      --
      Speak before you think
    13. Re:TLDs are BS by rjstanford · · Score: 1

      How many does somone or a comany need to buy to "avoid" ambiguity. I mean every slashdot is taken except slashdot.name, and it kills me that slashdot.com gets any hits for the website slashdot.org. Slashdot used to not even redirect or give you a bozo message for accessing slashdot.com, it just threw the contents of slahdot.org at you.

      Actually its convenient for me - if I'm lazy, I just do slashdot[CTRL-ENTER]. I can never remember the shortcuts for .org, .net, .etc...

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
    14. Re:TLDs are BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gosh, I kinda thought the way you had it the first time around was pretty funny. Now I'm just saddened and hurt by the whole experience.

    15. Re:TLDs are BS by soliptic · · Score: 1
      I've ended up at UK .com sites and was not happy.

      You seem to be implying that all .com sites should rightfully be American; any non-American site should use a country-specific TLD instead.

      Care to explain yourself?

    16. Re:TLDs are BS by mstefanus · · Score: 1

      I agree. I believe that all domains, even those in the US, should end in .us.

      http://All.your.base.belong.to.us

    17. Re:TLDs are BS by sasha328 · · Score: 1

      In Australia, to get a .com.au domain name you need to be a "registered" business or the owner of a trademark. If the same is applied to .com TLD(non-mommercial entities should not use it), then most of the problems would disappear. Also, like someone else suggested, maybe American companies if they start using the .us TLD, it will free up a lot of space.
      Another problem I have with these new TLD is their naming. They are too "English". Come on, travel is an English word; so is name, biz, museum. To me it appears to be not fair. The original TLD were sot of "common" to most the western languages.

    18. Re:TLDs are BS by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

      I COMPLETELY agree. First, the rant: DNS names are designed to give an administrator-friendly label for an IP address (or other network-related record). Domains are there to define an administrative scope within DNS. The top-level domains are there to define, very broadly, some different types of administrative scopes within DNS. The original designations seemed very logical.

      DNS DOMAINS ARE NOT FUCKING CONTENT LABELS. DNS IS NOT A FUCKING INTERNET KEYWORD.

      Now, with the rant portion of my post concluded, here's the reality:

      There is no unique, persistent "keyword-style" web site lookup mechanism on the Internet. All attempts to create one have been plagued with litigation, jurisidicational, and cross-industry trademark ambiguity problems. The best we have is DNS, and something needs to fill that role. ICANN seems to think that continuing to warp DNS is the best way to do that.

      A proper solution might entail a "proper" directory mapping real-world names to DNS domains (and letting SRV records do the rest). Then we can throw all of the intellectual property issues and the full weight of America's mighty litigation tendencies onto this directory service and keep it out of DNS. The directory service itself could be architected across geopolitical boundaries and thus tailor its regional scope/namespace to whatever country's laws happen to be in effect there (much like others' suggestions of eliminating the generic TLDs entirely in favor of ccTLDs). A directory like X.500 or LDAP, in conjunction with a country's trademark/service mark scheme, could offer users a guaranteed way to persistently and uniquely identify a mark's owner or an organization by name on the Internet. It would even allow for multiple organizations with the same name (as is allowed in the US for companies of different industries), which is impossible with DNS (and another whopping reason why DNS is unsuitable for this role). There remain some usability issues with an approach like this, though, so maybe that's why no one's figured out a way to make it work and take off.

      But once DNS is taken out of the picture here, it can revert to being a simple host label and none of these stupid TLDs will matter. But that isn't going to happen any time soon. DNS will continue to be (ab)used as a content label and an Internet keyword, so long as there are companies willing to pay to keep/make it that way and so long as there are organizations out there willing to put those interests ahead of others.

    19. Re:TLDs are BS by daraf · · Score: 1

      actually, the Marines (and all other services) have their recruiting website on the more-recognized .com and their general news on .mil

    20. Re:TLDs are BS by eclectro · · Score: 1

      Seriously. They should just go non-tld and be done with it.

      Yes, but then ICANN would have no way to support their crack habits.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    21. Re:TLDs are BS by julesh · · Score: 1

      In Australia, to get a .com.au domain name you need to be a "registered" business or the owner of a trademark. If the same is applied to .com TLD(non-mommercial entities should not use it), then most of the problems would disappear.

      Unfortunately, there are many countries around the world where it is legal, in fact perhaps mandatory for some kinds of businesses, not to be an incorporated company, which precludes registration of this kind. For instance, in Britain, firms of solicitors are not allowed to be incorporated -- they trade as sole traders or partnerships, for which there is no registration process.

    22. Re:TLDs are BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We invented the Internet, bitch. We can use whatever TLDs we damn well please, so STFU and go back to your two-letter country domain.

    23. Re:TLDs are BS by orasio · · Score: 1

      I have a .com domain, thank you very much.
      And people outside of the US don't usually think that .com or .org means "from the US".
      In Uruguay, we register our own .com or .org for international sites, or for cheap sites (cheaper reg) and .com.uy & .org.uy for institutional sites, and local entities.

    24. Re:TLDs are BS by sasha328 · · Score: 1

      Actually, a "registered" business is not the same as an incorporated company. You could be a "sole trader" or a home business, all you will need (if you wish) is to register a business name. In Australia this makes business transactions using your personal name and your business name synonimous. It also helps protect your business name (at least in your state).

  12. How about a .sucker TLD by Le+Marteau · · Score: 1

    ... for all those dipsticks who insist on gobbling up every variation of their thing every time a new TLD comes out.

    --
    Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
  13. Why? by stubob · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why continue to confuse people with MORE tlds? Since .org, .com, (ok, .edu and .mil are still pretty well maintained) and .net are basically used interchangable anyway, what benefit are we going to receive from being able to go to www.usps.com versus www.usps.post? This seems like it give more opportunities for domain squatting and lawsuits over similar sites. I wonder if the owners of the the previous domains will get first crack at the new ones anyway, rendering the whole thing pointless and just a big money grab for icann. Oh, wait, I think I just made my own point.

    --
    Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
    1. Re:Why? by erick99 · · Score: 1

      SlashDot: Proud home of the strawman argument.

      --
      http://www.busyweather.com/
  14. What happened to .xxx? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perhaps it's no longer a favourite TLD after the 'wardrobe malfunction'?

  15. 2 more by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1

    What about .scam and .spam?

    --
    Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    1. Re:2 more by DocSnyder · · Score: 4, Funny
      What about .scam and .spam?

      .info and .biz exist.

  16. .eu exists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    .eu is already on its way. Only Europe's slow bureaucracy is the cause that it is still not live.

    1. Re:.eu exists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The EU needs only to jack up the VAT a few points to get this particular snag resolved. I thought we all learned by now that oppressive taxation solves all of the world's problems.

  17. Another fine screwup. by NoMoreNicksLeft · · Score: 1

    If anything and everything can be a TLD, why have them at all? Sure, domain names are cheap in the com/net/org space, but only now that they've deforested the entire namespace. Oops, did I say deforest? I meant *clear-cut*. Hmm, even that's not strong enough, strip-mined maybe?

    You know, we don't have to put up with this crap, don't you? We could just build our own internet, and avoid commercializing it...

  18. .TLD's .for .all! by killermookie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    .So .are .we .planning .on .adding .as .many .specific .TLDs .as .possible .to .confuse .us .even .more? .How .the .hell .do .travel .agents .get .their .own .freaking .domain?!

    1. Re:.TLD's .for .all! by great+throwdini · · Score: 1

      Wow. Nice (non-deliberate) page-widener (at least for Safari) ... good to see soupy markup like the following (inserted by slash, I assume):

      <nobr> <wbr></nobr>

      ...and there's no escaping it with a score of 4! :p

    2. Re:.TLD's .for .all! by knodi · · Score: 1

      You listed .as twice. I'm beginning to think your list of suggested new TLDs was just typed off the top of your head, with no thought to appropriateness or practicality.

      What would you file under .domain? and .TLD is meta-confusing!

      Your stupid suggestions aside, I propose a new .spam domain, and all spammers would have to use it. Then I could block it all! Muahahaha!

      --
      Austin is more fun than Dallas.
    3. Re:.TLD's .for .all! by hundalz · · Score: 1

      Hey, I guess it's time for .geek to come out as well, or even .linux, .bsd, .whatever, .pr0n, .h4x0r ....

      On that matter, are there more Linux users than travel agents worldwide? Why have a different group for travel agents? Why stop there? What about a special one for the kebab shop round the corner? Just a wonder...

  19. Value of non .com/net/org/national TLDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is exactly the relative value of these new TLDs, as compared to the most common TLDs? ( .com, .net and .org, coupled with national ones like .nl, .co.uk, .au, etc ) I mean, I think most of us know just how respected any .biz or .info domain is, as most of those domains are used by spammers, scammers and other pond scum. Therefore, if my business' primary adress would be a .biz I'd instantly lose a lot of credibility online, simply because of the TLD. Of course, other TLDs host their fair share of crap as well, but the signal-to-noise-ratio is quite terrible on .biz and .info ...

    1. Re:Value of non .com/net/org/national TLDs? by FecesFlingingRhesus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Considering the viability of companies such as hotels.com and expedia.com, I would say that .travel has a serious hand to play in the online travel wars and I believe that it will be huge when they do come out. So much so that it may be as credible as the .com space, when it comes to travel; not to mention, that everyone is looking to get a good domain in the travel industry. I do have some experience in this arena, as I was a partner in an online travel related company called Orlando.com. We latter sold to hotels.com / HRN for a good sum of money. All in all, our success was mainly based on the fact that Google scores the sole name Orlando in the domain name relatively high on the list when searching for Orlando. We where litterly making millions without spending a cent on advertising; if you where to combine that with the .travel extension which I believe Google would probably categorize high for travel related goods, you may very well be able to surpass the .com names. In all I would love to own a name like Orlando.travel as I think it is just as viable as Orlando.com if not more so. Not to mention hotels.travel but you would surly be doing battle with HRN / hotels.com as they are litigation hounds.

  20. Only on /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why isn't there a .porn?

    And from TFA:

    The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, in advancing the applications for postal services and the travel industry, said they were still considering eight other proposals including ".asia," ".jobs," and ".xxx."

    Only on /. can a poster who clearly didn't RTFA be modded +5 "Insightful" within 1 minute...

    Yes, I must be new here...

    1. Re:Only on /. by nitrocloud · · Score: 0

      If the stills be with you, we'd have a moonshine.xxx :D

      --
      Karma: Good, or bust!
  21. I call dibs on... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    SaturdayEvening.post

  22. Just for SCO by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 0, Troll

    .litigiousb@$t@rds

    --
    Drill baby drill - on Mars
  23. Re:http://will.travel !!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like that old Duke movie "have.gun.will.travel"?

  24. ala /. by dirvish · · Score: 2, Funny

    What about .slash or .dot?

    1. Re:ala /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      h t t p colon slash slash slash dot dot dot Has a nice ring to it.

    2. Re:ala /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Couldn't the Goatse man use the ".colon" TLD?

  25. Why don't the Swiss... by jdunlevy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... just introduce their own .post.ch ?

    1. Re:Why don't the Swiss... by cocotoni · · Score: 1
      Why because this is not Swiss post proposing a worldwide TLD .post. It's the UPU - Universal Postal Union that is just located in Bern, which also happens to be in Switzerland.

      This is as if you said that US is oposing the war in Iraq, because UN, located in New York, US, is oposing it.

      UPU is an international organization that coordinates the work between posts. They, for example, govern the compensation between post organizations when sending international mail (did you know that the postage is originally intended for the post organization actually delivering the mail, not the one accepting it?)

      And yeah, post.ch already exists.

    2. Re:Why don't the Swiss... by jdunlevy · · Score: 1

      But if the the UPU wants national post office domains to be identified w/ .post , why wouldn't .post.ch -- and post.us, post.ru, post.cn, etc. be just as good? If .post were the TLD, presumably there'd have to be differentiation at a lower level like: .ch.post, us.post, etc; which seems *more* complicated that simply adding a .post below current country TLDs.

  26. .mov TLD for movies by ddkilzer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why doesn't the movie industry get ".mov" approved for movie web sites? Some of the domainnames they're using for movies these days are just stupid.

    1. Re:.mov TLD for movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because Apple would slap them with a lawsuit so fast their collective heads would spin.

    2. Re:.mov TLD for movies by to+be+a+troll · · Score: 5, Funny

      cause Windows would try to open it in Quicktime for windows...it would be really annoying

      --
      ~slashdot are my only freinds ):
    3. Re:.mov TLD for movies by keiferb · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but the MPAA would never allow it... their bots would just see the domains as illegal files being offered for download and generate a flurry of lovely DMCA-invoking C&D letters.

    4. Re:.mov TLD for movies by hackstraw · · Score: 1

      Why doesn't the movie industry get ".mov" approved for movie web sites? Some of the domainnames they're using for movies these days are just stupid.

      All of the people close to the issue are busy converting all of the television stuff over to the .tv domain.

      Be patient. One TLD at a time.

    5. Re:.mov TLD for movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They don't need a domain for movies at all; they have one for the studio. What's wrong with http://www.universalstudios.com/movies/whatever/? or maybe http://whatever.universalstudios.com/?

    6. Re:.mov TLD for movies by cortana · · Score: 1

      Because that makes far too much sense, and is far too inline with how DNS is supposed to be used.

    7. Re:.mov TLD for movies by Anppa · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, it already executes .com, so what's new?

      --
      I, for one, mod down lame stereotypical jokes.
    8. Re:.mov TLD for movies by Hogwash+McFly · · Score: 1

      While I agree that movie studios gobbling up domain names for every single throwaway movie (hey, why don't we create a new domain for each Slashdot article that nobody will visit in a years time?) isn't too great, it's kind of hard to remember the URL for a deeply nested page when it's flashed on screen for 1.5 seconds at the end of a movie trailer.

      Of course I know that if I need to find out more about a film I can hit IMDB and other sites, but I'm thinking more about Joe Sixpack and Jane Boxwine who want to find out more about the horror flick using their AOL intrawebs. It makes sense from the studios POV.

      --
      Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
    9. Re:.mov TLD for movies by statixz · · Score: 1

      .com is a DOS executable extention.

      But Windows does not attempt to run it everytime you visit 'google.com'

  27. really creative by k-zed · · Score: 0

    as if .info in itself wasn't stupid enough... (but .asia and especially .eu are reasonable in my opinion)

    --
    we discovered a new way to think.
  28. What percentage of people... by PornMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    in Asia use the word Asia?

    A TLD in English for people who by and large don't speak English (Yeah, go on and tell me about India, Hong Kong, and Singapore... then look at how many others don't) seems pretty friggin' silly. .eu, on the other hand, would be understood by most people in the EU.

    Except maybe the French, who might think it's short for Etats-Unis, of course.

    1. Re:What percentage of people... by Moby+Cock · · Score: 1

      Europe in French is: "Europe". They could probably figure what .eu was for.

    2. Re:What percentage of people... by PornMaster · · Score: 1

      Yes, that was a joke. Though if .eu is meant to represent the European Union, there would once again the case where French and English acronyms are opposite - l'Union Europeen.

    3. Re:What percentage of people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What percentage of people ... in Asia use the word Asia?

      I can't find the "asia" kanji key on my keyboard...

    4. Re:What percentage of people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but most French have heard Jacques Delors touting (pre-Maastricht ratification referendum) "ze future benefits of zi EEE-YOOOO" (if you think Jean Chrétien's accent is bad, well. Delors (and tons of others, Barrot's being the most recent addition) are in a quite different league).

    5. Re:What percentage of people... by marcansoft · · Score: 1

      Kinda like spanish - Union Europea, but the US is usually written EE.UU. (Estados Unidos; double because of the plural form.)

      BTW, Europe in Spanish is Europa.

    6. Re:What percentage of people... by b1t+r0t · · Score: 1

      I'd like to see a .tx TLD for Texas. After all, it used to be its own soverign nation!

      --

      --
      "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
      "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
    7. Re:What percentage of people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You see, the thing about sovereign-ity is that it's sovereign. You've been given sovereignty.

    8. Re:What percentage of people... by legojenn · · Score: 1
      I'd like to see a .tx TLD for Texas. After all, it used to be its own soverign nation!

      That seems fair enough, afterall California has one. I bought a .ca domain just in case I move there.

      --
      I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
  29. This is bullpucky. by InThane · · Score: 5, Insightful

    (This is not a troll - I'm absolutely serious about this.)

    We should abolish all non-national TLDs. Each company could then register under its own national domain, or if local, under the state, county, or city sub-domain. This would deal nicely with the sovereignty issues that crop up all the time - if you're in the .us domain, U.S. content laws (and only U.S. content laws) apply to you. If you're in .au, only Australian content laws apply to you. If a foriegn state doesn't like what other countries are putting up, they can block access to those domains.

    This is all IMO, of course.

    --
    InThane
    1. Re:This is bullpucky. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I seriously hope you're not modded troll for this. It's not a half bad suggestion. If nothing else, it would eliminate the "bulletproof off-shore hosting" bullshit the scammers and spammers rely on. If they've got a .us (or .anythingwithreallaws) suffix, you can be pretty sure a scam site will get whacked hard. If they've got a .kr or .cn or .hk or .anywherethatdoesbulletproofhosting suffix you pretty much know it's spam and can delete it without bothering to read it.

    2. Re:This is bullpucky. by Anita+Coney · · Score: 1

      That makes no sense. It'd streamline the process, practically eliminate litigation, and will eventually put lawyers out of work. As a lawyer I'm strongly against your approach.

      --
      If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
    3. Re:This is bullpucky. by lukestuts · · Score: 1

      We should abolish all non-national TLDs

      Let me be the first to declare the People's Republic of Goatse!

    4. Re:This is bullpucky. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That will just make it more expensive for legitimate people to get a non-spam-blocked domain, and unscrupulous people who sell off a .us, say of a defunct company, can make more money.

      Unless a classification scheme is controlled by we the people, it won't be used in the interested of we the people.

    5. Re:This is bullpucky. by DJCF · · Score: 1

      I actually think this is a VERY VERY good idea.

    6. Re:This is bullpucky. by mobby_6kl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sorry, but I find this stupid. This won't solve anything. What if a company or organization wants to do business with people in more countires? Do you suggest Microsoft should register 100+ domains? Oh I see they have a lot of money so yes they should, so what about Wikipedia? Sourceforge?

      Laws can now be applied based on where the site is hosted, base them on domain names and you can have [insert something evil] hosted right in the US, but with .cn domain!

      The internet is supposed to be free, if a foriegn state doesn't like what other countries are putting up, they can go fuck themselves.

    7. Re:This is bullpucky. by Ralph+Yarro · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What if a company or organization wants to do business with people in more countires? Do you suggest Microsoft should register 100+ domains?

      They can if they want but they don't have to. There's no reason why a .us domain, for example, shouldn't be browsable from pretty much everywhere just like it is at present.

      For most organizations dealing in multiple countries, the cost of a website per country is insignificant compared to the other regulatory (and likely marketing) costs per country. For others such as wikipedia, if that would be dificult then pick one country and register a domain there. What's the problem?

      The internet is supposed to be free

      Who supposes it to be free? If by 'free' they mean unregulated or beyond the reach of giovernments then their supposition is wrong.

      --

      The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
    8. Re:This is bullpucky. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you suggest Microsoft should register 100+ domains? Oh I see they have a lot of money so yes they should, so what about Wikipedia? Sourceforge?

      100+ web sites! OMG that's like $1,000 per year!

    9. Re:This is bullpucky. by ajs · · Score: 1

      In replying to you, I started falling into all of the traps I was trying to describe.... sigh... let me start over:

      There's no problem with .us until you start to need sales.eu.ibm.ny.us which makes absolutely no sense.

      Geographical location is a terrible way to locate things on the Net, and political location is only a hair better in most circumstances, and MUCH worse in some (if I'm in Kashmir, do I get an Indian or Pakistani domain? Depends on who I want to have hate me, I guess)!

      There's no right solution. The only way you can approach correct is to have as many TLDs as there are ways of managing the process of giving domains out.

      Don't believe me? Well, here's another way to look at it. Each domain is a hash key. That's really all it is. Go look up the research that's been done on hashing over the years and you'll find that when you're trying to hash complex data, the best way to do it is to have multiple sets of indicies (you'll recognize this from SQL databases). All we're doing here is indexing based on different sets of keys. You can index by (country, state, entity_name) or by (profit_status, entity_name) or by any combinaiton of identifiers you want. There's even meta-identifiers that are managed by search engines (Google's "ad words" for example), but they don't work so well for more programatic access like email.

      Don't make the mistake of limiting yourself to one indexing scheme... anyone who has worked on a large, complex database can tell you that that ends up convoluting your data beyond all recognition (as you attempt to optimize data to match access modes instead of the other way around).

    10. Re:This is bullpucky. by Tim+C · · Score: 1

      What if a company or organization wants to do business with people in more countires? Do you suggest Microsoft should register 100+ domains? Oh I see they have a lot of money so yes they should, so what about Wikipedia? Sourceforge?

      Why would I (living in the UK) not be able to browse sourceforge.us or wikipedia.us? Why would I not be able to buy stuff from microsoft.us or ibm.us, selecting a delivery/billing address in the UK?

    11. Re:This is bullpucky. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think there is already such a place - Christmas Island. It is the country who'se .cc is .cx . Thanks to whoever put up www.goatse.cx , I now always associate Christmas Island with Goatse. You've ruined an entire .cc for me.

    12. Re:This is bullpucky. by mobby_6kl · · Score: 1

      >There's no reason why a .us domain, for example, shouldn't be browsable from pretty much everywhere just like it is at present.

      Ok, but then what's the point? Most sites will have .us domain instead of .com like they do now, and I still fail to see any benefits here.

      >Who supposes it to be free?

      We, the peoples, users of interent ;)

      >If by 'free' they mean unregulated or beyond the reach of giovernments then their supposition is wrong.

      I probably didn't say that clear enough, but my idea is that making it too easy to control would result in government messign with everything; however I didn't say (or didn't want to say) to completley get rid of any laws, child porn is bad, mkay.

      Or it again won't solve anything, for example there was a case with Yahoo having some nazi stuff on their auctions and the French government getting pissed about that and ordering Yahoo to stop selling that or prevent ppl from France getting there. Now this would seem to be easy, just remove the nazi stuff from .fr, but the problem is that .us is still accesable! Again, what's the point?

      And no, I didn't say that there shouldn't be any laws/regulations, but as little as possible, without making it too easy.

    13. Re:This is bullpucky. by Lost+Race · · Score: 1
      There is a certain air of cluelessness in the parent post about the purpose and nature of the domain name system. DNS is just a distributed database system associating names with data such as IP addresses, text, encryption keys, or other names. The authoritative domain name server for each zone can delegate authority of sub-zones to other servers. The root zone (".") delegates authority of TLDs to the various GTLD servers and country domain servers. Most of those servers are operated by autonomous entities with their own rules for organization and content of their DNS zones. That's really as far as it goes.

      If the authority for, say, the "gr" ccTLD wants to sell domain names to non-Greek entities, such as American companies, they are free to do so. If an American company breaks some of the "gr" authority's rules, the authority's only recourse is to delete the ".gr" domain name. The American company is hardly putting itself under Greek jurisdiction as a result -- in no way is it subject to fines or other punitive action beyond loss of the domain name.

      There is simply no feasible way to enforce a strong assocation between domain names and geographic location, nor is there any compelling reason to try. If some country domain authority were to craft a clever contract that somehow manages to ensnare all clients into the legal system of that country, or were to place onerous restrictions on what domain names are available or who can get them, then people would simply avoid that TLD and get domains in more liberal zones instead. As long as my ".cx" or ".tv" or ".nl" or whatever domain name resolves to my IP address it'll work for me no matter where I or my servers happen to be located.

      Legal jurisdiction is more properly associated with personal, corporate, or server location than with some arbitrary name encoding.

  30. Re:Only on /. way OT, but... by hackstraw · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Only on /. can a poster who clearly didn't RTFA be modded +5 "Insightful" within 1 minute...

    Yes, I must be new here...

    Get an account, people rarely comment to the Anonymous Coward.

    I personally believe that there should be a delay between when an article is posted and when ppl can start flooding posts. What I see is that there are about 10 or so threads at the top of each post. garcia is usually the first or second :) and there are semi-related threads under those threads from the people that posted early, got modded early, yet didn't think about what they wrote and usually didn't read the article (they didn't have time).

    And then there are many small threads below the "hot" ones.

    Maybe we need a checkbox when submitting a post "Yes, I RTFA" or "No, I didn't RTFA", and a comment modifyer for those (not) reading the articles, and a mod -1 didn't RTFA because the content is obviously there.

    Just my thoughts.

  31. why not... by FnordPerfect · · Score: 5, Insightful

    imho, .film would have been a more reasonable addition.

    For each and every blockbuster movie a website pops up that is called something like foobar-themovie.com, foobar.com, foobar-film.com, etc.
    Would be nice to have all the official websites collected under one TLD.

    1. Re:why not... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, it is spelled http://www.fubar-themovie.com/

      And, BTW, it was a great movie.

      Giv'er!!!!!!

    2. Re:why not... by legirons · · Score: 1

      "For each and every blockbuster movie a website pops up that is called something like foobar-themovie.com, foobar.com, foobar-film.com, etc. Would be nice to have all the official websites collected under one TLD."

      A libertarian might say the market is in a position to offer foobar.imdb.com or foobar2004.imdb.com. It's a definitive independant source anyway, why not make it the domain?

    3. Re:why not... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1
      I have to disagree. Since all films are made by somebody, why not put them under the creator's own domain (like nextchristmasmovie.universalstudios.com, junkwithteengirls.sonypictures.com, etc.)?

      If I created something pretty cool that was going to generate a lot of hits, I certainly wouldn't mind making it obvious that it's one of my company's products: "Hey, kewlgame.honeypot.net is pretty slick! Maybe I'll wander up one level to honeypot.net to see what else they host!"

      Unless, that is, that they're so cynical about their own products that they don't really want to be associated with them on a long-term basis...

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    4. Re:why not... by Drakonian · · Score: 1

      You mean FUBAR the movie right? Just give'r!

      --
      Random is the New Order.
  32. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  33. Re:http://will.travel !!! by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 1

    exactly!

  34. How long... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ..until we have allowed the replication alt.* usenet heirarchy in DNS?

    I'm waiting for .flonk.flonk.flonk to become a TLD...

    1. Re:How long... by arose · · Score: 1

      We already have that, it's called .com and like alt. connects all the shit that doesn't have a separate place :-D.

      --
      Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
  35. Seconded by jfengel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you were registering a new domain foo, and foo.com were taken, what exactly do you get for yourself by registering it as foo.biz? Or foo.us? You risk having your mail sent over to foo.com anyway, because that's what people know.

    I have no idea what the Belgium post office thinks it can accomplish with the .post TLD. If they think they can get people's minds to believe "Oh, that's a postal facility, I'll check under .post first", well, maybe they're right, but I wouldn't bet on it.

    I concur that geographic names have some use; it would perhaps have been better never to have introduced .com and for most of those current .coms to be .us. The language differences are useful; I expect amazon.de to speak German and to mail cheaply to addresses in Germany. The .com TLD should perhaps be reserved for the truly multinational site that directs you to your country/language specific sites. So perhaps it really should be amazon.us instead, but it's too late now.

    At this point whenever I see companies with irregular TLDs, I think of them as second-rate. Often those TLDs are cheaper, and so the companies seem shady or fly-by-night (especially if they're trying to save a measly five bucks on makealotofcashlegally.biz). If you have a name and you can't get .com, get a new name.

    Actually, I myself use a personal .net address which I've owned since the days when .net had a meaning, but if I had it all to do over again I'd grab a .com instead. I wonder how much mail I've lost to people sending it to the .com equivalent. If it were a business I'd change the name, but it's just me.

    1. Re:Seconded by jsebrech · · Score: 2, Funny

      I have no idea what the Belgium post office thinks it can accomplish with the .post TLD. If they think they can get people's minds to believe "Oh, that's a postal facility, I'll check under .post first", well, maybe they're right, but I wouldn't bet on it.

      The belgian post office's website is known simply as www.post.be. But now that they can scoop up www.be.post, I'm sure their site will be much, much easier to find.

      This .post domain is only reinforcing the idea in my mind that icann should be spelt icant.

    2. Re:Seconded by hackstraw · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you were registering a new domain foo, and foo.com were taken, what exactly do you get for yourself by registering it as foo.biz?

      The .biz thing is funny. SpamAssassin has a rule to give points towards a mail being spam if it meantions a .biz domain.

      I havn't seen a false positive yet.

    3. Re:Seconded by Eccles · · Score: 1

      If you were registering a new domain foo, and foo.com were taken, what exactly do you get for yourself by registering it as foo.biz? Or foo.us? You risk having your mail sent over to foo.com anyway, because that's what people know.

      Not to mention the folks at foo.com will sue you for violating their trademark, and take the domain anyway, thus not expanding the useful namespace one bit. But.... more money for the registrars!

      --
      Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
    4. Re:Seconded by thogard · · Score: 1

      I know of one company that has a .biz that is legit. I did mention to them that I'm just about erady to nuke all email that even mentions .biz and they might want to consider a new domain name.

      I welcome the new top domains. It means more rules for my spam filters.

    5. Re:Seconded by Hogwash+McFly · · Score: 1

      "I'll check under .post first"

      In SOVIET RUSSIA...

      Ah, forget it.

      --
      Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
    6. Re:Seconded by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bern != belgium

      Bern is a city in Switzerland (as stated in the article). Belgium is a country.

  36. IPv6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who needs domain names anyway?
    IPv6 addresses are where it's at!

  37. And what does this have to do with ICANN's job? by karl.auerbach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ICANN's job is to do "technical coordination" in order to promote the "stability" of the internet.

    One has to have a really crazed imagination or warped sense of humor to believe that ICANN's criteria for selecting new Top Level Domains has anything whatsoever to do with technology or the ability of the net to deliver packets or respond quickly and accurately to DNS queries.

    ICANN has become little more than a mouthpiece for certain well healed industrial segments; the public interest, as well as the public itself, has been ejected from ICANN's policymaking and policies.

    ICANN is fighting to keep its job from going to the ITU. ICANN's arguments are pretty weak when one considers that ICANN is not doing the job that it was constructed to do but is instead simply the willing handmaiden of small, short-sighted, self-interested groups.

    1. Re:And what does this have to do with ICANN's job? by jdreed1024 · · Score: 1
      ICANN has become little more than a mouthpiece for certain well healed industrial segments; the public interest, as well as the public itself, has been ejected from ICANN's policymaking and policies.

      What's sad is it's not just ICANN. It's any organization that used to work for the people and now either ignores or flat out harms the public interest. s/ICANN/FCC/; and your statement is still true.

      --
      There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
    2. Re:And what does this have to do with ICANN's job? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      s/well healed/well-heeled/

  38. Does anyone else see... by Sensible+Clod · · Score: 1

    jobs haven't progressed as far as travel and post

    It just looked weird...

    Okay, I'll shut up.

    --

    The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
  39. You're forgetting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    .afr for Africa...

  40. .hell by The_DOD_player · · Score: 1

    sounds quite nice.

    Think about it..

    microsoft.hell
    bush2004.hell

  41. hey! by krunchyfrog · · Score: 1

    Where's my .porn? common!

    --
    printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
    -- myself
  42. Finally! by GillBates0 · · Score: 1
    More power to .tldspeek!!

    .ve.re .bizi .no.ws .il .post .mo.re .la.tr

    MUHWAAHAAHAA!! l33tspeak, meet the power of .tldspeek.

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  43. I have an idea! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about we abolish all TLD's and instead use .tld?

    :)

  44. Dear original poster: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  45. Limits of Hierarchies by MetalNoise · · Score: 1

    The c2.com wiki has an interesting page about trying to classify things into hierarchies. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LimitsOfHierarchies

  46. Didn't .hack get registered? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Last time I checked, this TLD comes with 4 video games and bundled cartoons.

  47. Great yet another spammer TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so now we get .asia, yet another spammer TLD. And whats to stop all those .travel domains from spamming us with travel offer's. Hopefully the government will run the .post TLD and crack down on its domains..

  48. more! by tomee · · Score: 1

    i recommend .oven, for all companies that make ovens and also for things to make in ovens, like pizza.oven. also, .mountain, so that you know where to look for websites of mountains. .elvis would also be handy, for, uh, elvis fans i guess. with those three, all possible needs should be covered.

  49. I know what domain I want by Ctrl-Z · · Score: 0, Redundant

    first.post!

    --
    www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
  50. What happened to ICANN's other uselss TLDs? by British · · Score: 1

    I remember the slashdot article a while back they were considering other equally useless and trivial TLDs like .museum. Yeah, like we have thousands of museum websites on the Internet just dying for that TLD.

    Hey! Let's have .diner! I mean, there are thousands of diners needing their own TLD! Sure, you can't order coffee & a slice of pie on the Internet, but wow woudln't that be useful!

    At least with .biz that's useful in universally blocking it(spammers).

  51. Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    Please find the RFC that states that. Until then, I'll quote RFC 1591:

    COM - This domain is intended for commercial entities, that is
    companies. This domain has grown very large and there is
    concern about the administrative load and system performance if
    the current growth pattern is continued. Consideration is
    being taken to subdivide the COM domain and only allow future
    commercial registrations in the subdomains.

    NET - This domain is intended to hold only the computers of network
    providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers, the
    administrative computers, and the network node computers. The
    customers of the network provider would have domain names of
    their own (not in the NET TLD).

    ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for
    organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non-
    government organizations may fit here.


    Please note:

    ORG is for "miscellaneous organizations", NOT non-profits. The idea of .org being for non-profits is some sort of wierd meme that everyone believes, for no particular reason.

    NET is for "only the computers of network providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers", NOT ISPs.

    1. Re:Wrong by LordLucless · · Score: 1

      ORG is for "miscellaneous organizations", NOT non-profits. The idea of .org being for non-profits is some sort of wierd meme that everyone believes, for no particular reason.

      Actually, the reason I believe it is because in order to register .org.au, you must be a registered non-profit organisation. In fact, in Australia, it is impossible for an individual to own a domain name. You have to enter an ABN (Australian Business Number) or a non-profit organisation number on the form.

      I realize that .org.au is not .org, but it still goes to prove that reality is not always RFC-compliant.

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
    2. Re:Wrong by brakk · · Score: 1

      ORG is for "miscellaneous organizations", NOT non-profits. The idea of .org being for non-profits is some sort of wierd meme that everyone believes, for no particular reason

      Well, generally, for-profit organizations are called "businesses" (ie commercial).

  52. Priorities? by curne · · Score: 1

    I don't get it. To me, .eu and .asia make much more sense then .travel. Am I being biased because I am european? Or is it just that ICAAN does not consider it very important since they feel .us is all anybody important will ever need?

    --
    All interpreted languages are abstractions over Lisp
    1. Re:Priorities? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you can't compare .us to .eu or .asia. eu and asia are continents... there is no .northamerica. but I am pretty sure that there is a tld for the country that you live in... no? and to top it all off, if you would have rtfa or even read the blurb it's the SWISS that want the .post tld. take a geography lesson.

    2. Re:Priorities? by alex_ware · · Score: 1

      Lets just scrap the use of tld's for american based companies (or wherever) and make them use .co.us. The same should go for .gov tld's should be international like un.gov nato.gov not whitehouse.gov give em a year to move and redirect to national domaian year after just kill them off at the DNS. [Slashdot will have to become less us centrtic to avoid being slashdot.org.us]

      --
      If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
    3. Re:Priorities? by BrotherOfLocke · · Score: 1
      Lets just scrap the use of tld's for american based companies (or wherever) and make them use .co.us

      Except for that fact that US research funded the creation of the Internet. Today it has gone global, but its roots are still in american soil. For historical reason this brings a few perks, one of them being a few years ahead of Europe when it comes to administrative isues.

      Besides, out of thirteen root name servers, only three are situated outside the US, and only two in Europe. Maybe the Net not quite as global as most europeans would like to believe.

    4. Re:Priorities? by alex_ware · · Score: 1

      I'm not aiming at US companies I want ALL companies or organisations that offer there service worldwide to stop using worldwide tld's but use their national alternative so if you guys want never ending amounts of pointless tlds they will bekept .us.
      I know the net is worldwide but these companies ARE NOT!

      --
      If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
  53. TLDs only exist to make money for registrars by poopie · · Score: 1, Insightful

    We don't need more TLDs. Having hundreds of TLDs is just dumb. Exactly how many do we have now? It's got to be about 200 TLDs already. ... and short is good when we talk about DNS names. 2 or 3 character TLDs make sense. Why should we use any 4+ character TLDs?

    We're just creating more "names" to sell. The only people who really benefit are the registrars

    1. Re:TLDs only exist to make money for registrars by Surt · · Score: 1

      Well, and the people who can't get their preferred name in the existing TLD's.

      There's a word I'd really like as my domain name, but it's taken in all the existing domains, and I keep getting beaten to it in the new domains.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  54. DUMP ALL DOMAINS NOW! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who invented this fascist crap any way? .bozos

    DUMP ALL DOMAINS NOW!

  55. Pretty cool... by erroneus · · Score: 1

    With all the trademark battles going on over the use and misuse of names on the internet, I think having more descriptive domain classifications as part of the TLD system is a pretty fair answer. ...now if only they could come up with a way to enforce proper TLD usage and qualification. And as another poster wrote, there should be a .adult or .porn or something quite obvious like that and FORCE pornogaphers to use those TLDs exclusively. It would aid greatly in filtering out content I don't want to see... or do want to see... I don't want to restrict what they do or say so much, but I want to restrict what gets in my way.

  56. Re:What happened to ICANN's other uselss TLDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...you can't order coffee & a slice of pie on the Internet

    Here's your coffee and pie.

  57. Yeah by Safety+Cap · · Score: 1

    So what do you do about multinationals?

    --
    Yeah, right.
    1. Re:Yeah by Damek · · Score: 1

      Abolish them?

      Or they get the TLD for the country in which they were originally founded.

      Or they get the TLD for the country in which their headquarters reside.

      Or they get TLDs for the countries in which they are incorporated.

      So many acceptable solutions!

    2. Re:Yeah by Ralph+Yarro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So what do you do about multinationals?

      You don't do anything about them.

      If, say, IBM wants to have a .us website then they have to operate that website in accordance with US laws. If they also want to have a .fr and a .uk web site then they'll have to operate those in accordance with French and British laws. And so on.

      Just like at the moment IBM's American subsidiaries have to be operated in accordance with American laws and its French and British subsidiaries have to be operated in accordance with French and British laws.

      --

      The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
  58. TLDs Considered Harmful by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am personally not much of a fan of TLDs. In my experience, they just lead to confusion. Most domains are registered under .tld, so that's where people will look, even if they should technically be somewhere else. This is also how domains are registered (compare georgewbush.com and georgewbush.org). Outside the US it's even worse - sites often have the country TLD, but sometimes a gTLD. To avoid confusion, some sites are accessible through multiple TLDs.

    So, if TLDs are not being respected, why have them at all? Some have tried me that it organizes the namespace hierarchically, thus distributing the load. I don't think it helps a lot, if most people go for the .com anyway. The only people who benefit are those who profit from more domain registrations.

    My proposal? Change the system so that top level domains can be directly registered. E.g. Google would get just Google, with no .com or anything. While we're at it, we might as well get rid of the ass-backwards naming, e.g. google/www/search rather than www.google.com/search. Companies that actually use the TLDs to select sites in different countries could still do so; instead of google.de and google.co.uk they would get google/de and google/uk.

    And one more pet peeve of mine: we could add support for IP-IP encapsulation. That way, if your server is hosted between a NAT box, you can just instruct clients to route the packet to your internal IP via the NAT box. Of course, the client and the NAT box would have to support it as well...

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    1. Re:TLDs Considered Harmful by Gentlewhisper · · Score: 1

      It will never work out.

      If that's the case the namespace will be extremely small, so what will happen to preexisting collisions like redcross.com & redcross.org (for instance)? Nah, it will never happen.

      Just thinking about the problems make my mind boogle

      Besides new TLDs = money to be made for ICANN

    2. Re:TLDs Considered Harmful by alext · · Score: 1

      Absolutely! As a WASP I find other people's interpretations of "George W Bush" frankly bizarre.

      Surely in such cases there's a way to ensure that the concept of "georgewbush" equates to my appreciation and understanding of it? At the very least, I and my friends should be allowed to outbid rival interpretations, right?.I mean, free speech and all that.

      Basically, there is only one true way, and, as luck would have it, it's my way. Thanks for listening!

  59. Gotta register first.post... by Briareos · · Score: 1

    Game over, man. No other domain name can even come close to this... *eg*

    np: Slicker - Straight Mess (We All Have A Plan)

    --

    "I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole

  60. Specialty TLDs aren't a bad thing by bacchusrx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, the point is that it won't be as simple to register a .post as it has been to register a .com.

    This is already the case with several gTLDs, such as .coop and .pro (namespaces for co-operatives and "professionals", respectively).

    For instance, in order to qualify for a .coop, registrants have to submit to a lengthy verification process to ensure that they are, in fact, eligible co-operatives or co-operative service organizations. Similar restrictions exist for .pro and .museum.

    Unlike .biz, for instance, these new specialty TLDs probably won't lead to a rush of companies registering yet another foomatic.* for their DNS warchests, as happens with .com/.net/.org, if for no other reason than most of those companies (including, thankfully, professional domain squatters) are generally ineligible for registration in the specialty TLDs anyway.

    (Actually, maybe such a mad rush didn't happen for .biz, either, but that's less due to the fact that anyone could register in it -- which has lead to squatting in .biz -- and more due to the fact that it's retarded. IMHO. ;))

    More importantly, specialty TLDs provide an opportunity for eligible individuals and organizations to actually use their own name. An accounting firm by the name of McDonald & McDonald, for instance, might actually get to use mcdonalds.pro ;)

    Done right, these new TLDs are part of the solution to the artificial scarcity of the .com/net/org namespace. I don't see how they add to the problem.

    --
    Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
    1. Re:Specialty TLDs aren't a bad thing by kisielk · · Score: 1

      Just for fun, I tried a large professional organization: www.ieee.pro

      Got an ad for Viagra. Good to see these TLD's are working well :)

    2. Re:Specialty TLDs aren't a bad thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do a virus/spyware check, that doesn't even resolve here.

  61. I like the idea of more descriptive TLDs by jzarling · · Score: 1

    I like the idea of more descriptive TLDs. But .travel? .museum, thats to much typing for the average American.

    IMHO, a TLD of no more than 3 letters is best. It lends itself to a format that people have become comfortable with.

    Now, why doesn't ICANN make the TLDs ".sex", or ".xxx" available.

    --
    It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
  62. And for anyone wanting to travel to the US these by TCaM · · Score: 1

    we are introducing .bodycavitysearch.

  63. Security? by bostonhobbit · · Score: 1

    Has there been a proposal for .bank or .trusted TDLs? These TDLs would not be handed out willy nilly. This could help prevent phishing scams... fleet-<scam/>.bank would never be issued. User education would (and should) still play a major role but this could help mitigate the problem.

  64. .google by MrKahuna · · Score: 0

    Just create .google and be done with it. Most people just google anyway. Think of how many people say "What's an address bar".

  65. Puns by atomm1024 · · Score: 2, Funny

    At least this provides the opportunity for more silly domain puns. Maybe, if it's as unregulated as .com, .net, and all those other general hierarchies, it'll even be abused by newspapers -- think washington.post, newyork.post, etc.

    Actually, that would make for nicer URLs, but it's just not right...

    In all seriousness, maybe there should be a legally-regulated .adult or .porn or .xxx TLD. If pr0n sites were required to use those, or at least any new ones, it would make blocking access by children vastly easier. The browser or blocking software can just check the URL. ... On the other hand, I would like to see ICRA ratings more widely adopted and supported. There's more flexibility.

    But still make a .porn TLD. That would also make things a lot easier for people searching for porn.

    While I'm throwing around domain-name ideas in a post that will probably be moderated -1 Silly And Rambling anyway, how about a .secx TLD. Then all the se.cx sites can move there, and finally, the .cx TLD shall be free to be a home for domains of legitimate relevance to, or located in, Christmas Island. If there are any, which there probably aren't.

    Also, we need a .slash TLD, just so someone can get orgdot.slash, and create an Elgoog-style mirror of Slashdot. (Of course, it will probably end up being taken over by trolls from the American Association of White Female Women, the mirror GNAA...)

    --
    Signature.
    1. Re:Puns by mlk · · Score: 1

      Should the AAWF be the Forgin Disjoint Group Of While Females.

      --
      Wow, I should not post when knackered.
    2. Re:Puns by alex_ware · · Score: 1

      and a first.post domain to ship our trolls to

      --
      If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
  66. But..... by oO+Peeping+Tom+Oo · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    That would only increade the amount of people posting "Nothing to see here, move along" :p

  67. steve.jobs by Mark+Gordon · · Score: 1

    ...will be where they list job openings at Apple and Pixar?

  68. Don't be such a pretentious prick! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    It should be .movie

    .film... meh.

    It is recorded on film, it is a movie.

    1. Re:Don't be such a pretentious prick! by Hogwash+McFly · · Score: 1

      He could just be a Brit like me, though I'm not sure if that actually invalidates the 'pretentious prick' part :)

      If you want to get all technical, use the phrase 'motion picture'.

      --
      Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
  69. For the same reason... by Kjella · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...you have extremely popular social rags, nobody reads them, but everybody knows what's written in them. Add 2+2. I suspect the ratio of puritans to "covert" porn surfers is such that

    a) Porn sites would lose customers because some people would "publicly" have to use a clean ISP but would really like to have smut.
    b) Porn-incompatible ISPs would lose customers (but oh no not because the competition offers porn, no uh they just had the better offer, that's just coincidental).

    And, if nothing else, I suspect these domains would become another "register the .net .org .com .biz etc. etc. so noone else can take them" domain.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    1. Re:For the same reason... by joeljkp · · Score: 1

      Adding the .xxx domain may also allow ISPs to go the way of PPV cable and satellite - they would charge an extra monthly fee for access. That would quickly put an end to the number of .xxx domains.

      --
      WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
  70. The first .jobs domain? by Webmoth · · Score: 1

    Who do you think will be the first to register a .jobs domain? The sometimes esteemed, sometimes maligned figurehead of the Apple empire? Yes, that's right folks, you will soon be able to send email to steve.jobs@steve.jobs

    --
    Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
  71. Re:NEW TLD: .goatse by plover · · Score: 1, Funny
    microsoft.goatse

    Y'know, I'm really sure I don't want to know where that's going to go today.

    --
    John
  72. Oh My God. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IMO, this is getting out of hand.

    How many fucking domain names do we really need??

    How long until we see .porn and .spam!

  73. Does any of this matter anyhow? by b1t+r0t · · Score: 1

    Once the Interplanetary Internet gets going, we're all going to be moved to the .earth TLD anyhow.

    --

    --
    "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
    "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
  74. Does sneaker-net count? by vrmlguy · · Score: 1

    If so, I want "vrmlguy.post".

    --
    Nothing for 6-digit uids?
    1. Re:Does sneaker-net count? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shut up, idiot. You're not funny.

  75. Well google's stock will be going up. by Gldm · · Score: 1

    More confusion = more google searching to find what the hell you're looking for.

    Though I'm getting really sick of searching for something and then finding a scam searchengine page that justs list thousands of random combinations of words as links.

    --

    Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!

  76. This is getting stupid by linuxbitch · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Someone really needs to regulate ICANN as they're getting more and more stupid with their decisions. I thought they were a responsible organisation, I looked up to them when they pulled their weight with Verisign. Now, they're almost as bad.

    Even before ICANN started added redundant TLDs the TLD system wasn't right. Why should the US government have .gov when every other country has to stick their own TLD after their own government address (gov.uk, gov.ac, etc.), why should America be the King of the Internet?

    In a perfect world the only TLDs that should exist are the country codes for country specific websites, then .com, .org and .net for sites with worldwide interest. Everything else is COMPLETLY and UTTERLY REDUNDANT.

    1. Re:This is getting stupid by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 1

      The US owns the Internet because all 13 Internet backbone computers are in the US. No matter what way you look at it, those bastages own the whole damned thing.

      --

      ---
      ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
  77. Somebody hurry up and register by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    TheWashington.post!

  78. .jobs? by Dachannien · · Score: 1

    Blow Temps and the Hand Employment Agency are going to have to act fast if they want to make sure they get their new .jobs domain.

    1. Re:.jobs? by ln+-sf+head+ass · · Score: 1

      And the Pacific Rim is a hot employment market, I hear, as well.

  79. They already do that by Apotsy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Hell, if you go to a lot of multinational companies' websites, the first thing they do is find out what country you are in. Canon, JVC, Sony all have prominent links on their front pages for various nation-specific versions of their home pages, all hosted on nation-specific servers. Eliminating top level domains would just elminiate that step, as people would just type in the correct country as part of the domain.

    Everyone is too used to doing it the old way, though, so I doubt it would ever happen.

  80. why do we need top level domains at all? by Khashishi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    couldn't it just be www.google or http://slashdot?

    1. Re:why do we need top level domains at all? by cr@ckwhore · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I'm with you man ... and the few other posters that have mentioned it. Except for the TLD mafia (ICANN), there isn't any real purpose served by TLDs in the modern internet. Let's get rid of this useless crap already!!

      --
      Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
  81. Which doesn't really solve the DNS naming issue... by Kjella · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...as names are non-unique. The intent of TLDs is to expand the namespace (as opposed to no TLDs, like just "ibm" instead of "ibm.com"). Take apple. How many would want to register a hash involving apple? Apple computers? Apple music? Apple (fruit) producers/suppliers/distributors? TLDs are an attempt to make these coexist peacefully, as people would understand apple.computers, apple.music and apple.farm are different businesses.

    Your suggestion is just begging for a service like the linkfarms for google. Register hashes on countless variations of combinations of words to send people to the wrong site. Instead of a few, you now have near endless combinations to worry about. The problem is not the hierarchy, it never was. Sure it's imperfect, but it is marginal.

    The real problme is that there are too many companies, organizations, societys, individuals and whatnot that want to have a short domain, and there's only that many to go around. In order for your solution to work, all must really have one unique "entity name", and then you're back to a non-TLD solution. Otherwise, squatters will register "entity name" + other keywords.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  82. .ham by drwho · · Score: 1

    there should be a tld for ham radio operators. just callsign.ham, i.e. w1aw.ham

    Hams are already registered, so all the big whois mess wouldn't be a big problem.

    Don't let anything other than a callsign be in it. So no nastyness about coke.ham and lawyers involved.

  83. .travel? God damn by VonGuard · · Score: 1

    Geez, first they get .aero, then .travel...

    Fucking aerospace industry.

    See my latest journal entry for some TLD's worth instating.

    --
    Don't Crease the Weasel!
  84. How does .eu related to ICANN? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm wondering since I thought EURid was supposed to take care for that TLD? Can anybody elaborate on this issue?

    European Union on the issue

  85. Mr. Huge Ego by spartan · · Score: 3, Funny

    So now Steve Jobs needs his own TLD?

  86. No, .biz sucks harder by spike2131 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That sounds even lamer than .biz .travel is bad, but no way its lamer than .biz. Travel at least is a word, and could go well with some website names, like, say, Hawaiian.travel.... .biz, on the other hand, has no excuse. Its not even a word, just some crap some idiot made up trying to sound hip in the late '90s.

    I do agree with your observation, though - I too have never seen a legit business in the .biz namespace.

    --
    SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
    1. Re:No, .biz sucks harder by jonadab · · Score: 1

      > I do agree with your observation, though - I too have never seen a legit
      > business in the .biz namespace.

      Some legit businessess register theirname.biz *in addition* to theirname.com
      (and sometimes also theirname.org and theirname.net), but they always use the .com domain as their primary domain, the one that they advertise and so forth.

      I agree that .biz is more lame than .travel, because .biz is *exactly*
      redundant with .com, having mutual 100% overlap in terms of what logically
      belongs in them; whereas, .travel is redundant, but at least it's only a
      subset and therefore arguably more specialized or something, albeit still
      pointless and lame.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  87. .spatula by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I propose .spatula, for all those in the business of selling spatulas.

  88. .geek by jedkiwi · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wake me up when there is a .geek domain.

    1. Re:.geek by HoppQ · · Score: 1

      Well, time to wake up then and look at OpenNIC's TLDs, which do include .geek. Unfortunately, OpenNIC doesn't seem to be working that well at the moment, so maybe you can go back to sleep after all.

      --
      My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
  89. .med by ewg · · Score: 3, Informative

    I nominate .med, for hosptials and other non-profit medical institutions.

    --
    org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
    1. Re:.med by ballpoint · · Score: 1

      I nominate .me, for everything related to my narcissistic self.

      --
      Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
  90. More silliness by SillyWilly · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In the UK it's currently possible to register .co.uk and .me.uk, there are others (.ltd.uk and .biz.uk etc) but those are the main two. We then have random crap like police.uk nhs.uk. Why not just open up the top level and let me register something.uk????

    --
    Online & Feelin' Fine
    1. Re:More silliness by alex_ware · · Score: 1

      Which is because the .uk domain is controlled (in part) by the government, so they could tell nominet to release .bank.uk only to registered banks so no-one could have loyds-tsb.bank .uk to phish lloyds-tsb.co.uk or various other misspellings.

      --
      If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
  91. Abolish TLDs by Pseudonymus+Bosch · · Score: 1

    I saw in Slashdot a proposal to abolish TLDs and make the rootservers work on the last letters or something.

    If an organization would want separate sites for countries, they could have www.nz.redcross, mail.uk.redcross, etc.

    --
    __
    Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
    GW Bu
  92. List of TLDs... by Animaether · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is there a comprehensive list of :
    - Currently active TLDs (be it cc, g, s or otherwise)
    - Deprecated TLDs
    - Proposed TLDs
    ?

    I've got one myself ( http://www.pointzero.nl/dump/domains.xml - don't complain about non-validation, it's only for quick data-reading ), which I already see I need to edit some ( thanks, wikipedia ) - but can't quite seem to find any other comprehensive list in existance to bring it up to current affairs.

    Oh, and any blatant errors in the xml's data ? Feel free to point them out :)

  93. Federal deficit solution #1: by quarkscat · · Score: 1

    Set up a new TLD called . Organizations
    desiring such a TLD would not pay an annual fee,
    but instead pay $00.05/Connection/Mbyte/Minute.

    Result:
    Total funding of SS and Medicare benefits through
    2178 AD. Ability to provide universal health
    care to every citizen. Total Bush Iraq War and
    Reconstruction funding paid for. Revised the
    tax code to 10% flat income tax.

  94. Re:What happened to ICANN's other uselss TLDs? by Hogwash+McFly · · Score: 1

    It's just not the same without the bitter, middle aged waitress named Flo offering you a refill.

    --
    Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
  95. CC TLDs by cjellibebi · · Score: 1
    I think that .cc domains should be used for websites for specific areas, organisations and governmental thingamajigs in a country, or a town, etc. eg. www.londontransport.co.uk, www.whitehouse.gov.us, www.uva.ac.nl, etc. TLDs should be used for things that are not bounded to a country eg. multi-national companies, organisations, networks, etc. Individuals who want their own internet-address can chose if they want to be associated with a country, or be part of the global network. There are cases for ambiguity where it is debatable if an organisation really is multi-national, but in those cases, making the wrong decision on whether or not to get a .cc TLD does not matter. What I'm against is .cc TLDs being abused for something that's not country related just so they can create interestingly-named websites, eg. the .tv domain of Tuvavlu is being used for TV stations. Even greater abuses are countries like Columbia selling a uk.co domain for when the .co.uk domain is already taken.

    Incidentally, the reason why the .us domain is hardly used in the USA is because when the Internet was first set up, it wasn't envisioned that it would expand outside the USA, so universities, etc, ended up with the edu TLD whereas in all other contries, they end up with their .cc TLD, so because the USA invented the Internet first, they like to flaunt this fact by shying away from using the .us TLD. A similar thing happened with postage stamps. These were invented in the UK, and nowardays, the UK is the only country that does not mention the country's name on the stamp.

  96. Selling thin air by Jesus+IS+the+Devil · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The only thing these guys are selling is thin air. There are already about 100+ tlds out there (random guess). Why we need more is beyond me.

    But of course, these guys are charging people up the a$$ for merely managing dns servers. Don't fall for the hype. Your domain will NOT BE WORTH ANYTHING unless you have a .com/net/org!!!!

    Plus, imagine trying to build a business on a non-dot-com domain. Your traffic will just leak to the dot-com version, giving your competitor free advertising.

    This is getting really lame. In 1998 when CORE was gonna release all those tlds (which never came about) it was sort of interesting. Now it's just the same old same old.

    Trust me folks. DOT COM is where the action's at.

    --

    eTrade SUCKS
  97. Following rules for .net by King_TJ · · Score: 1

    Good point! I remember years ago, one of our local ISPs registered under .org (they claimed it was an accident, but a little quick searching revealed someone else owned their domain name of choice with .net on the end - so go figure).

    Anyway, at that time, I wondered why the registrar wouldn't just deny their application upon seeing they obviously weren't some type of non-profit organization? I guess if the people granting the domain registrations don't even make any attempt to enforce the "rules", you can't expect people registering to obey them either.

    Hey - makes you wonder how easy it'd be to register some fake .gov sites and parody real ones?

  98. Who needs them! by Snaller · · Score: 1

    It isn't better for a company (or whatever) to use such a thing for its site url; it's worse. When i try to guess a domain name i try com or the country if i know it, and that's it. I'm not going to try a list of those weird names.

    --
    If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
  99. Google? by GoulDuck · · Score: 0

    What about Google, don't you use that?

    1. Re:Google? by Snaller · · Score: 1

      By that logic, no domain name needs to make sense. Microsoft could just have a site called www.qwe76123.com :o)

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
  100. another .aero by Tom · · Score: 1

    or .biz or .pro - i.e. yet another useless TLD (YAUTLD ?).

    I would really, really, really want to have ICANN's criteria on which TLDs to approve and which ones not to be made public. They are either well above my level, or just as I figure - totally crazy with the deciding factor somewhere in the "whoever paid for the nicest hotel" area.

    Guess it's time for another attempt to convince my ISP to adapt ORSC and put an end to this nonsense.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  101. More bad neighborhoods by Animats · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You'd think they'd learn. Remember ".biz"? Makes South Central LA look like a good neighborhood. Most "businesses" in .biz seem to be somewhere between marginal and illegal.

  102. only usefull with restrictions by spectrokid · · Score: 1

    The only usefull TLD's will be those with a strongly restricted membership. Say .bank where the registrars verify that only real banks can get to it. This could help to prevent phishing scams.

    --

    10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then

    1. Re:only usefull with restrictions by pe1chl · · Score: 1

      The first thing that occurs to me is that they announce all these domains "for a specific purpose". .post "for national post agencies" .travel "for travel agencies" etc.

      This is like the system as it was originally setup. .com "for companies", .org "for organizations" etc.
      In practice this has turned out to be completely unworkable, and has resulted in a total mess where just everything is accepted and registered.

      What makes them think that new TLDs will be so much better to manage than the existing ones?
      I expect that registration will be open for everyone, or it will be like that after one year of discussion about registrations. So Steve Jobs can register steve.jobs without using it for anything job-related, first.post is registered by some lamer from /. etc.

      And most important: all those registering a new domain will already have 1000 of them in the existing namespace, and the few newcomers will "just in case" also register something in .com or .org or .whatever.

      So all in all it just increases the confusion and the overall mess.

  103. .eu domain by julesh · · Score: 1

    What happens if ICANN don't approve the '.eu' domain? The EU, along with EURid, the company designated to manage the domain, have already announced that registrations will be available from October 2005. The EU has actually passed a directive, mandating that the domain _will_ come into existance. As one of the world's most powerful political organisations, I was just wondering what steps they would take to ensure this happened if ICANN happened to disagree...? :)

  104. The Internet is a .com world--Here is Exhibit A... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The (in)famous Control-Enter shortcut in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

    Too lazy/busy to type http://www.google.com/ in the URL edit box?

    No problem, just type google and press Control-Enter to do the same thing.

    Saves 16 keystrokes.

    If you are like me, you have your browser homepage set to it and the site is only a mouseclick away.

    This should prove to all that on the Internet, there is .com *first* and then there is everything else.

    This rapacious preoccupation with commerce at its most fundamental level with the leading Internet webbrowser has led to the overcommercialization of the Internet as evident with the leading search engine, Google, 'spamdexed' with millions and millions of 'Buy Me!' webpages; the overabunance of unwanted electronic communications in all its forms (collectivly spam); and the efforts put forth by members of the 'digital underground' to defraud Netizens with deliberately misleading 'phishing' websites or compromise their computer systems with malicious software.

    Even with all these problems, I find the Internet to be a valuable tool for research and study--I just have to work harder to steer clear of all the e-commerce when doing so.

    As said by others in this thread, only the domain name registrars will really benefit from the additional TLDs.

    To most everyone else, the new TLDs are a waste of time, energy, money and keystrokes.

  105. Next step for ICANN: Make TLD's out of usenet grps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, we're getting .post et. al, why not take the usenet newsgroups and make TLDs out of them? Seriously, these additional TLDs are just worthless. At this point we don't need any more TLDs. The description should be either in the domain or the prefix...

  106. Re:Which doesn't really solve the DNS naming issue by ajs · · Score: 1

    You keep refering to "your solution" as if I'd posed one. All I said was that you need to have a proliferation of TLDs to mix things up, but that there's no right solution

    Short domains aren't the problem either. I can get a REALLY short domain if I want (well, I already have one, but I could easily get another). The problem is that marketing droids have this illogical fear of someone buying up foo.com when they hold foo.pl even though I don't know of anyone who has ever been hurt by such an arangement.

    We'll learn to grow up and get over it.

  107. *seconds the motion* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've been saying this for years - it should also relax the tld-inside-a-tld problem. (technically, you're not supposed to have a .com.au, which is why the uk uses co.uk, ac.uk, etc.)

  108. Steve should be happy by KayakFun · · Score: 1


    After all, he's got .jobs (http://steve.jobs)

    and Linus, Scott and Bill did not get their .torvalds, .mcnealy, and .gates

  109. Re:Only on /. way OT, but... by timster · · Score: 1

    Complaints about moderation are always offtopic. We've all heard it all before. It's old and we don't care -- metamod deals with the abusers well enough.

    Focus on the discussion. The silly numbers are just not that big of a deal.

    --
    I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
  110. Trademarks don't need to be registered by orasio · · Score: 1

    The world is not passible of central organization.

    1. Re:Trademarks don't need to be registered by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

      If I understand you correctly, that was exactly my point. X.500, for example, is hierarchical, typically along geopolitical boundaries. Therefore, you can set up whatever naming scheme you want specific to your local customs, laws and regulations.