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Government Finishes Internet Study -- 7 years late

djp928 writes "A study commisioned by Congress in 1998 to report on internet traffic has finally been published -- 7 years, two presidents, and one internet boom/bust later. Some of their findings include "DNS is good" and "We should probably have some more TLDs""

444 comments

  1. What a waste =( by lw54 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You've got to be kidding me.. How much did this cost us?

    1. Re:What a waste =( by shawn(at)fsu · · Score: 1

      RTFA: First sentence after headline. 1 million dollars.

      --
      500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
    2. Re:What a waste =( by Ironsides · · Score: 1

      FTA: Lawmakers had demanded the $1 million federal study, ultimately called "Signposts in Cyberspace," under a 1998 federal law, the Next Generation Internet Research Act

      $1 million is pocket change to a gov.

      --
      Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
    3. Re:What a waste =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If Al Gore would have done a better job when He invented the internet we wouldn't be in this mess.

    4. Re:What a waste =( by AyeRoxor! · · Score: 1

      You didn't RTFA, but you got frist psot. Congrats...?

    5. Re:What a waste =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ha! LOL ROFL OMFG WTF That joke never gets old. Awesome! ROFLMAO OMFG OMFG OMG OMG WTF WTF LOLOLOL |20xx0|2

    6. Re:What a waste =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i dont like you abusing Senator Frist(I can diagnose from watching video)

    7. Re:What a waste =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      FTFA

      such as moving some of the Internet's 13 key traffic-directing computers outside Washington and Los Angeles

      Er, this has happened already...

      Root name servers.

    8. Re:What a waste =( by Lord+Pillage · · Score: 2, Insightful

      $1 million is pocket change to a gov.

      I have many pennies, nickles and dimes in my pockets. It doesn't mean I'll go and buy a bunch of penny candies just because that's what they cost. I'd be more likely to put them in a jug and save them up just like a government should. Or have people forgotten that a penny saved is a penny earned?

      --
      try { Signature mysig = new CleverAttempt(); } catch(NonCleverSignatureException e) { postanyway(); }
    9. Re:What a waste =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately, to the corporations that own the government, a penny saved is not being spent on their products and as such, is a Bad Thing.

  2. The results are in: by Neil+Blender · · Score: 5, Funny

    This internet thing is just a fad.

    1. Re:The results are in: by rumblin'rabbit · · Score: 1, Funny

      Agreed. I've never been on the damn thing myself, and it hasn't hurt me any.

    2. Re:The results are in: by British · · Score: 0, Redundant

      I swear the magazine "Computer User"(free rag in the twin cities. almost nothing of merit for content) said that in one of their editorials, many moons ago.

      And it was only just a few years ago they finally gave up on their BBS listing.

    3. Re:The results are in: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Internet is a fad? You must work for DuhVry. Those d1p$#17z have been saying that for 13 years. COBOL. Now there's an economy-stimulating technology with staying power. New technology at DuhVry: transistors!

    4. Re:The results are in: by Juiblex · · Score: 2, Funny

      They've found that DNS is good?? How didn't I realize that before??? All this time remembering sites names like 66.35.250.251 and 216.239.37.99 for nothing =((

    5. Re:The results are in: by abigor · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Bah! IP addresses are just DNS for MACs. 0x2004F200696d for me!

    6. Re:The results are in: by Tribbin · · Score: 5, Funny

      We... have... agreed, ...

      That... you... are... not... orks...

      --
      If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
    7. Re:The results are in: by Short+Circuit · · Score: 1

      I doubt Apple would ever release a product with such an unpronouncable name as "0x2004F200696d"

      Ozzucks not withstanding...

    8. Re:The results are in: by xstonedogx · · Score: 4, Funny

      You're right. Make that "i0x2004F200696d".

    9. Re:The results are in: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Imaginary domains this could be something

    10. Re:The results are in: by narooze · · Score: 1

      Well, that kind of funny, the Swedish IT-minister, Ines Uusmann made that exact statement on the 12th of May in 1996.

    11. Re:The results are in: by kanna · · Score: 1

      It's more like...

      We... have... agreed ...

      That... inter... net... is... not... just... for... dorks...

    12. Re:The results are in: by Guppy06 · · Score: 1

      The last starfighter is...

  3. no more TLDs, please by suso · · Score: 4, Informative

    "We should probably have some more TLDs"

    I don't think we need any more TLDs. Especially since silly TLDs like .museum and .aero are created which are either too long, or aren't restricted in use to just museums and aerospace companies. I feel that online commerce has bent themselves on destroying the usefulness of DNS. Nearly one quarter if not more of ccTLDs can be purchased by the public and used for any purpose. What will happen when countries like Tuvalu (.tv) reach technological savyness and find that their entire TLD has been used up by TV networks, domain brokers and companies that felt they needed to register theirname.com, .net, .org, .cc, .mx, .name, .info, and .tv just in case someone actually thought of typing one of those instead.

    On top of that, some ccTLDs are being sold for crazy prices. I found one regist
    rar that was trying to sell .ro extensions for over $500/year. What?!? Why? D
    oes 'ro' mean something in the same way that 'tv' does?

    People need to learn to properly use what they have before we can move on. Unfortunately, this has rarely happened in our society and in the end sadly, money rules the day.

    1. Re:no more TLDs, please by kevin_conaway · · Score: 5, Funny

      Unfortunately, this has rarely happened in our society and in the end sadly, money rules the day.

      --
      Need better website hosting or email? Visit suso.org [suso.org] and sign up for an account. Thanks!


      Your statement is kind of ironic with a link in your sig trying to get people to sign up for your pay service.

    2. Re:no more TLDs, please by Danimoth · · Score: 2, Insightful

      From a quick google, .ro is for romania, not sure why it would be 500/year, unless its a differant currency.

      --
      No smoking sigs indoors.
    3. Re:no more TLDs, please by cmburns69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem is that nobody thinks "The company I'm looking for is an aerospace company, so I'll try name.aero". Everybody tries name.com, name.net and finally name.org (generally in that order).

      It is the classic chicken and egg problem. Until the general population knows how to use TLD's properly, companies will not start using them properly. But companies will not start using them properly until the general population knows how.

      --
      Online Starcraft RPG? At
      Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
    4. Re:no more TLDs, please by FrankSchwab · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Gotta agree. More TLDs just mean more domain names that Microsoft, Walmart, Sears, etc., have to buy up, and don't really expand the number of names available.

      Do you really expect Walmart to be happy with Walmart.com, and not also snap up Walmart.biz, Walmart.org, Walmart.biz, Walmart.us, and anything else that comes up?

      Junk the TLDs. They were a good idea that has fatally flopped in the real world.

      /frank

      --
      And the worms ate into his brain.
    5. Re:no more TLDs, please by JCY2K · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A couple new TLDs could be good. If they created a .sex domain it would make porn sights much easier to block. I agree that something like .museum is necessary but a couple that sector off specific parts of the net people want to steer their children or employees clear of would be good.

    6. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tuvalu's population is about 11,500. Even if they reach technological savvyness, their Internet address needs would still be proportional to their population: i.e. negligible. For a big country it might have been different.

    7. Re:no more TLDs, please by breon.halling · · Score: 5, Interesting
      ...countries like Tuvalu (.tv) reach technological savyness and find that their entire TLD has been used up by TV networks...

      According to Wikipedia:

      "In 2000, Tuvalu negotiated a contract leasing its Internet domain name '.tv' for $50 million in royalties over the next dozen years."

      They seemed to have profitted from having the .TV TLD, so it's not all bad.

      --
      "Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
    8. Re:no more TLDs, please by alc6379 · · Score: 1
      What will happen when countries like Tuvalu (.tv) reach technological savyness and find that their entire TLD has been used up by TV networks

      Dude, ice melting because of global warming will probably destroy Tuvalu before they get that tech-savvy:

      http://www.tuvaluislands.com/
      http://www.cambodianonline.net/earth02029.htm

      Check that second link, there. The reason why Tuvalu started selling the .tv domain name was because they know that the island isn't going to last incredibly long, and that they could get a good bit of money out of a domain name that could be really catchy.

      --
      I don't moderate anymore. Karma penalty for 90% fair mods? Can I mod that unfair?
    9. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You did the wrong google search. TLDs like .tv and .ro sell because they are wordplay in some language. You need to Google search for a language in which "ro" means sex or something.

    10. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You think Tuvalu have it bad? The cook islands are selling .co.ck domains.

    11. Re:no more TLDs, please by an_mo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      More, unlimited TLD, please. There is no technical reason why we should restrict addresses to .com, .org, etc... just free up the whole thing and let people choose the name they want to associate to their ip.

    12. Re:no more TLDs, please by suso · · Score: 1

      Yeah, a little bit. However, I'm trying hard with suso.org to get things right by generally steering people in a more informed direction and respect things like the original intent of the domain name system. There is nothing wrong with running a business. But I think there is something wrong with trying to run a business solely to make money through confusing and tricking people. Consumers can be intelligent, but I think many businesses don't give them a chance to be and would prefer to keep them uninformed or unfairly informed.

    13. Re:no more TLDs, please by pavon · · Score: 1

      I agree. One TLD that I do wish they had created from the beginning, however, is a personal website TLD, like .per, or .me, or even .ws. That is one very common type of web site that did not fit very well into any of the original TLD categories (I know .org was supposed to be the preferred one, but I am not an organization), so you ended up with people using .net, .org, and .com indiscriminately for personal web sites. Of course, introducing one now wouldn't help any, especially since the TLDs have become so diluted.

    14. Re:no more TLDs, please by dlmarti · · Score: 1

      This has always baffled me.
      Instead of bitching that the entire Internet is porn, and some how we have to stop it. Lets just require that "adult" sites use specific TLD's, that makes it trivial to block.

      The thought is that anything on an adult TLD would be allowed. If you were some giant repressed bible thumper you could just block those TLD's. End of story, get the governments off the Internet.

    15. Re:no more TLDs, please by brontus3927 · · Score: 3, Funny

      would Walmart really have to buy walmar.biz twice?

    16. Re:no more TLDs, please by JCY2K · · Score: 1

      Then there is the delightful irony that Tuvalu's own website is not on the .tv...

    17. Re:no more TLDs, please by ajs · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "I don't think we need any more TLDs. Especially since silly TLDs like .museum and .aero are created which are either too long, or aren't restricted in use to just museums and aerospace companies."

      You're restricting yourself to a view that has no technical value, and ultimately, almost no social value.

      Top level domains are meaningless. Secondary level domains are meaningless.

      They are keys into a database which is distributed around the world, and nothing more. The primary reason that we use them is that most humans can remember a string of phoneme-representing-glyphs much more easily than a string of numbers.

      It's all nice and vanity-platish for IBM to own ibm.com, but there's no real value there. People who need to know IBM's domain name would find it even if it were example.mil.

      DNS isn't a context-sensitive search engine, and as soon as people get over thinking of it that way, we'll all be quite a lot better off. In fact, I'd be happy if you were NOT allowed to own the name of your company as a domain name... it would force some thought behind the trade-offs involved (like the likelyhood that your really long domain name can actually be transcribed off of a business card without error).

    18. Re:no more TLDs, please by gorbachev · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why would anyone try .com, .aero or .net? Just enter the name in Google and you'll have your site MUCH faster.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
    19. Re:no more TLDs, please by DarthTaco · · Score: 1

      TLDs suck. All of them. They shouldn't exist. I want to be able to type "chuck's plywood emporium" instead of blahblahblah.com.

    20. Re:no more TLDs, please by Kamerynn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Exactly! Until the egg hatches, the chicken will never be born. But the chicken will never be born until the egg hatches!

    21. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      It is the classic chicken and egg problem. Until the general population knows how to use TLD's properly, companies will not start using them properly. But companies will not start using them properly until the general population knows how.

      You realize you just said the same thing twice? You have to reverse the order in which things happen, not the order of the sentence :)

      Until the general population knows how to use TLD's properly, companies will not start using them properly. But until companies start using them properly, the general population has no reason to.

      Or something like that...
    22. Re:no more TLDs, please by ejort79 · · Score: 1

      Looks like they don't any of those. .net gives a Verisign "under construction" page.

      --
      The Internet couldn't tell a good bit from a bad bit if it bit it on its naughty bits.
    23. Re:no more TLDs, please by nothings · · Score: 2, Insightful
      It is true that "a few more TLDs" is no solution. However, a lot more TLDs would probably work handily. If there are several hundred TLDs, are companies actually going to register every single one?

      It also offers a handy solution to trademark issues and disposable domain names. Why not "matrix.movie" instead of "matrixmovie.com"? Do you actually think, if this were common, people would have more trouble with the former than the latter? It seems to me that if we had a ton of TLDs, and their usage actually made sense in terms of contributing useful information, people would probably learn to use them properly. As long as we leave things as they stand--with, as you say, companies buying up every TLD version of their name--the population at large is still going to keep using ".com" on everything, because it will always work.

    24. Re:no more TLDs, please by mattspammail · · Score: 1


      Because <CTRL> + <Enter> fills in the http://www. and .com. There is no simple Firefox shortcut for .aero.
      New Firefox hotkey suggestion: a + e + r + o + <Enter>.
      </dumbhumor>

      <Insightful>
      Another thought that contributes toward your suggestion - with Google caching every site anyway, it would load faster for the prospective site visitors if they go through Google.
      </Insightful>

      --
      Now accepting PayPal donations!
    25. Re:no more TLDs, please by DAldredge · · Score: 1

      Then why are you using a .org site to make money?

    26. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your statement is kind of ironic with a link in your sig trying to get people to sign up for your pay service.

      No it isn't. Irony is the opposite. He's saying "money rules", "give some to me". That's not ironic - it's a pair of logically complementary statements.

      If he'd said "money doesn't rule", "but give some to me", that would have been ironic.

    27. Re:no more TLDs, please by Jellybob · · Score: 1

      It may just be an urban myth, but didn't they fund an entire public health system from domain name sales?

      Really... are the people likely to be more worried about getting myname.tv, or getting fixed up when someone hits them because they didn't look while crossing the road?

    28. Re:no more TLDs, please by jc42 · · Score: 1

      What will happen when countries like Tuvalu (.tv) reach technological savyness and find that their entire TLD has been used up by TV networks, ...

      Well, by then global warming will have put all but a few square meters of Tuvalu underwater.

      Seriously; here's a story about it from back in 2001. Tuvalu's government is asking other countries to accept the Tuvaluans as citizens, without much luck so far.

      I found this and other reports on the topic fairly quickly by googling for "nation flooded rising ocean". I do remember reading about it when the story first came out, but it didn't get a lot of coverage in the MSM (mainstream media).

      When their islands are finally abandoned, it's anyone's guess what will happen legally to their TLD. I'd guess that it'll be a "land grab" by various corporations, since the .tv domain has obvious commercial value.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    29. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's complaining about how money rules, thats the irony.

    30. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I found one registrar that was trying to sell .ro extensions for over $500/year. What?!? Why? Does 'ro' mean something in the same way that 'tv' does?

      Perhaps they're just ahead of the pack in recognizing supply and demand. They've realized that if "chiaroscu.ro" is registered, the internet must be nearly full.

    31. Re:no more TLDs, please by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1

      That doesn't get the government out of the internet - it just moves the enforcement to a new area - because now you'd have the problem of defining what things need to be put in the .adult category and which don't - a categorization that everyone will disagree over.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    32. Re:no more TLDs, please by NoMercy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So 3 problems I can see with DNS:

      1) ccTLD operators charging whatever they like
      2) ccTLD operators not having a default naming polity (eg .com.tv .org.tv .net.tv)
      3) Fake ccTLDs: yourname.uk.com

      Lack of TLDs is not one I would personally worry about, personally I dislike TLDs, each country should really be aiming for it's ccTLD rather than have everyone fight over who gets the yourname.com

    33. Re:no more TLDs, please by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      I agree with you and have to chuckle over the fact you are running a business on a .org
      I thought that .org was for non profits .net was for network providers like ISPs and hosting .com for commercial. .gov for government. .edu for schools.
      I can see the potential for going with location based tlds. Like verobech.fl.us.gov for a city government. Of course I would also like to see some new meta tags for things like physical address for some websites. It would make things like Google Local a lot easier to create.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    34. Re:no more TLDs, please by mattspammail · · Score: 1

      The first thing pr0n companies would do is try to bypass that restriction.

      And how would you enforce that in foreign countries? The US government (I'm using the US as the example.) can't even regulate sites within its own borders. Furthermore, many of the pr0n sites are off US soil already.

      Yours is an ideal solution on paper, but reality is a very different thing.

      --
      Now accepting PayPal donations!
    35. Re:no more TLDs, please by porcupine8 · · Score: 1

      No kidding. Since for most places you have to try nameofcompany.com, name-of-company.com, nameofco.com, name-of-co.com... Etc, etc etc... It takes forever to just guess a company's URL.

      --
      Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
    36. Re:no more TLDs, please by suso · · Score: 1

      Very interesting. I knew that Tuvalu was an island country, but didn't know it was being affected like this. I've only heard about some village in Alaska that is having a simular problem.

    37. Re:no more TLDs, please by hackstraw · · Score: 2

      Everybody tries name.com, name.net and finally name.org (generally in that order).

      Everyone I know has typed "name" in google and clicked on the first link.

      TLDs are absolutely stupid. The only ones that mean anything are .edu, .gov, and .XX for country codes, all the others are the same or just bullshit domains that spammers bought from the .biz tld.

    38. Re:no more TLDs, please by jdgeorge · · Score: 2

      It is the classic chicken and egg problem. Until the general population knows how to use TLD's properly, companies will not start using them properly. But companies will not start using them properly until the general population knows how.

      Actually, it's not a problem. Yeah, people don't know "how to use TLD's properly", but they really don't need to.

      Other people have correctly pointed out that if you can get to a site through the search engines, the URL doesn't matter. Generally, if you can't get a site through the search engines, it doesn't matter much either, because that means the links you would expect to a given site from advertisements, reviews, etc, don't exist because they weren't seeded by the domain owner.

      The real problems top level domains address are national identity and overload of the .com domain.

      Joe Schmoe doesn't want to type in the URL, ever, so it's irrelevant if regular people don't understand the meaning (or lack thereof) of the top level domains.

    39. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Especially since it makes inappropriate use of the .org TLD. It should be .com.

    40. Re:no more TLDs, please by porcupine8 · · Score: 1
      Of course, I'm sure that the few people using the web when .com and .net were standardized couldn't imagine anyone ever wanting to set up their very own web site just to talk about their love of tissue boxes and provide broken links to all their friends' and family's inane sites.

      The lesson: Never underestimate people's desire to talk about themselves.

      --
      Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
    41. Re:no more TLDs, please by Tongo · · Score: 1

      Who is going to enforce the requirement that porn sites use .sex instead of .com? I hate the idea of government intervention and there really isn't any else to do it. I suppose the government could try but I doubt that they would be very successful.

    42. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://slashdot.org.without.the.dupes

      Yeah, I could get used to that.

    43. Re:no more TLDs, please by fossa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, there are too many TLDs already. If you want to fix DNS, why not fix DNS.

      Things I like about the telephone directory:

      Allows names with spaces

      Allows names with punctuation (O'Malley)

      Allows entries with identical names

      Corporations still have trademark law

      I think the only thing ".com" is good for is making it obvious that you're talking about a website.

    44. Re:no more TLDs, please by ThatsNotFunny · · Score: 1

      Why can't Tuvalu use .TU? It seems to be available...

      --
      "Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
    45. Re:no more TLDs, please by indifferent+children · · Score: 1
      What will happen when countries like Tuvalu (.tv) reach technological savyness and find that their entire TLD has been used up by TV networks,

      All 600 of the Tuvalese people will be SOL. However, once their government decides that you must have some connection to Tuvalu to get a .tv domain, you can expect to see CBS's "Survivor: Tuvalu" at survivor.tv

      --
      Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
    46. Re:no more TLDs, please by zoombat · · Score: 1

      What's actually ironic is that you're using a .org domain to host commercial business, since .org was originally for non-commercial organizations. Unless, that is, suso.org is a non-profit company; your About information was a little vague on that point. Technically I think a .net domain would be more appropriate for your current business offerings.

      Your business mission is worthwhile, I don't mean to knock that, but it is still ironic considering your usage statements.

    47. Re:no more TLDs, please by tOaOMiB · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually, it's a lot more like a Catch-22 than the Chicken and Egg as the latter is a problem of causality, while the former is dependence.

      Maybe the distinction is somewhat foggy and I'm being absurd, but Catch-22 is a good book and references to it should be increased, while the chicken and egg problem is hackneyed and overused :)

    48. Re:no more TLDs, please by joto · · Score: 1
      If they created a .sex domain it would make porn sights much easier to block.

      No. That is wishful thinking.

      If they created a .sex domain, it is possible that some porn site would use it. But certainly not every porn site. Because porn sites, just like everyone else, are not interested in getting blocked. They want to reach the widest audience possible.

      Now, you might try to argue that porn sites should be required by law to have a .sex top-level domain. But this is patently stupid. First, you have to define what constitutes a porn site. Nudity can't be it, since there are plenty of valid reasons to show naked people (medical, educational, artistic, etc...). Now, hard-core porn might be easier to define, but that leaves you with the problem of still offending a lot of people, while similarly blocking a few sites of medical, educational, artistic, etc, ... interest.

      Secondly, not every web-site contains either all porn or not porn. You may have a web-page that contains one or a few naked images of e.g. Tera Patrick (because you are a fan of her), although the majority of the content is about e.g. computer programming. Should the site have to live under the .sex TLD because of that?

      It seems to me that adding a .sex TLD would be no worse and no better than todays relatively arbitrary filtering programs, and that makes adding it relatively pointless. You might still argue that adding it is a good idea, but then the same argument can be used to add almost any other TLD, such as .food, .programming, .comic, .film, .bank, .shop, .circus, or .jew.

    49. Re:no more TLDs, please by suso · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes, more irony. Isn't it ironic.

      Anyways, we're a .org because I originally was just doing it as a hobby in my dorm room and then in my apartment. From 1997 through 2001 I wasn't making any money off of it. Only some donations and payments to keep things afloat for the benifit of the users. When I purchased suso.org back in 1999, I didn't really have any intention of making it more than a hobby in my free time, so a .org made since. Then ICANN came along with their rules for .org domains and suso.org was grandfathered in, like slashdot.org.

      Now, .net or .com would make more sense because we have incorporated into a for profit business. But unfortunately, two different domain brokers bought suso.com and suso.net at the same time that I bought suso.org and they want to sell them to us for several thousand dollars. Once we have that kind of money just floating around, we'll consider buying suso.net, but for now, its suso.org.

    50. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It may just be an urban myth, but didn't they fund an entire public health system from domain name sales?

      They probably funded a whole lot. CAI world factbook say the population is about 11,500, and very poor.

      So that money should probably make quite an impact on their public finances.

    51. Re:no more TLDs, please by Stormwatch · · Score: 1

      There is one good use for the ".ro" extension, actually...

      rome.ro

      (yes, that Romero)

    52. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you ninny, you basically said twice that until the general population knows blah blah, companies will not blah blah.

      But companies will not start blah blah, until the general population knows how should be Yet, until companies start blah blah, the general population will not know how.

    53. Re:no more TLDs, please by lazlo · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The only ones that mean anything are .edu, .gov, and .XX for country codes



      I would submit that .mil and .arpa also have meaning. Actually, very important meaning. The moral of the story is: The harder it is to get a domain name in a TLD, the more valuable that TLD is to the end user. The easier it is to get a domain in a particular TLD, the more valuable that TLD is percieved to be by its registrars.

      --
      Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
    54. Re:no more TLDs, please by Nuclear_Physicist · · Score: 1
      The problem is that nobody thinks "The company I'm looking for is an aerospace company, so I'll try name.aero". Everybody tries name.com, name.net and finally name.org (generally in that order).

      No. People do that the first couple times they're looking for a company. Then they realize that a quick google search turns up the company in the first line. No one uses the TLDs at all.

    55. Re:no more TLDs, please by dave1g · · Score: 2, Informative

      That country willingly sold off (possibly leased?)its rights to the .tv domain. Its poor population was much better served by that transaction than reserving .tv domains for its citizens.

      The market put a price on .tv. The government of Tuvalu said CHA-CHING! Everyone is happy and everyone benefits.

    56. Re:no more TLDs, please by Garion+Maki · · Score: 1

      erm... got the feeling your a bit wrong there, you just took the sentence and turned it around.

      should be:
      Untill there is a egg, there will never be a chicken. But untill there is a chicken, there will never be a egg.

      --
      All indicators show that the human race is selectively breeding itself for stupidity.
    57. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What will happen when countries like Tuvalu (.tv) reach technological savyness and find that their entire TLD has been used up by TV networks, domain brokers and companies that felt they needed to register theirname.com, .net, .org, .cc, .mx, .name, .info, and .tv just in case someone actually thought of typing one of those instead.

      Then they'll take the money they got from decades of overpriced domain registrations and buy .net domains, or wait 5 years for the current registrations to expire and refuse to renew them. It's not like someone is stealing the TLD from them -- they're selling it because they want the money and don't see a better use for the domain at this time.

    58. Re:no more TLDs, please by northcat · · Score: 1

      Exactly. Only we elite slashdotters know about these things called "search engines", everyone else just types random names in their address bars. Therefore the sole purpose of TLDs is to make searching for websites easier.

    59. Re:no more TLDs, please by jc42 · · Score: 2

      Another island nation with similar problems is the Maldives. The mean elevation there is about 2 meters. You can guess what global warming means to them. The conventional estimates are that the oceans will rise 1/2 to 1 meter during this century.

      Another interesting case is Scandinavia, which will benefit from the ocean rising. A historic problem there has been that the land is still rebounding from the melted glaciers, and rises of around 1 meter per century are about average. This means that their harbors have always been drying out, and towns on the shore have to gradually migrate downhill. There are ruins of seaports 10 km or more from the current shore. For the next century, their shorelines should be fairly stable. And as the climate warms, they'll have a longer growing season. So overall, the warming is to their benefit.

      Maybe they can invite the Tuvaluans to become Norwegian ...

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    60. Re:no more TLDs, please by kauschovar · · Score: 1

      >>> cmburns69:
      >>> Until the general population knows how to use TLD's properly, companies will not start using them properly. But companies will not start using them properly until the general population knows how.

      >> Kamerynn:
      >> Exactly! Until the egg hatches, the chicken will never be born. But the chicken will never be born until the egg hatches!

      > Garion Maki:
      > erm... got the feeling your a bit wrong there, you just took the sentence and turned it around.


      Don't worry Kamerynn, at least I got it. ;)

    61. Re:no more TLDs, please by roadrunnerro · · Score: 1

      Ha! They must have been selling you multiple lives too - a .ro domain name is 50$+VAT lifetime (cheaper if you look a little bit harder).

    62. Re:no more TLDs, please by mattdm · · Score: 1

      Do you really expect Walmart to be happy with Walmart.com, and not also snap up Walmart.biz, Walmart.org, Walmart.biz, Walmart.us, and anything else that comes up?

      That's why any arbitrary tld ought to be allowed. (There's *no* technical reason not to.) Walmart *could* buy walmart.[everypossiblecombinationofletters], but even they will run out of money eventually.

    63. Re:no more TLDs, please by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Actually - yes if they want to have it resolve via OpenNIC.

      They were using .biz before ICANN was, so they decided to keep their own registrar. walmart.biz resolves different depending on whether you use the ICANN or OpenNIC TLDs.

      Now, how many people actually use OpenNIC I couldn't say...

    64. Re:no more TLDs, please by jacksonj04 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree, too many TLDs is starting to be painful. Far from expanding the namespace, it just makes it easier to block everything .tv, .us and .ro, since they're full of crap.

      Bring back enforced registration rules!

      No, seriously. I would be happy if .com, .net and .org were all restricted to commerical, networking and non-profit respectively (no country-specific limits on these), country TLDs were restricted to the country they're intended for.

      I would be happy to use .per for a personal site if it meant that .org wasn't full of people trying to sell me domains.

      Last Fleeting Thought: Also, unicode domains are a horrible idea. Much as people may love being able to use locale-specific characters in the domains it doesn't help the rest of the world who wants to keep the internet useable.

      --
      How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
    65. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everybody tries name.com, name.net and finally name.org (generally in that order).


      Who types URLs these days?


      I think people tend to google "name", look around at the top three or four links, then get bored and read slashdot.


      But maybe that's just me.

    66. Re:no more TLDs, please by demondawn · · Score: 1

      Quite a few things, but probably most popularly the MMORPG Ragnarok Online http://ragnarokonline.com/ Since this MMORPG is a pretty big deal in Korea (and even in the US, among the anime-fan community), it's understandable that greedy people would try to extort for TLDs. Those crazy Koreans.

    67. Re:no more TLDs, please by alecks · · Score: 0

      Reprezentati!!!

    68. Re:no more TLDs, please by soliptic · · Score: 1
    69. Re:no more TLDs, please by SunFan · · Score: 1


      Yes, but they pay only half price each time.

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    70. Re:no more TLDs, please by ThisIsFred · · Score: 1

      Do you really expect Walmart to be happy with Walmart.com, and not also snap up Walmart.biz, Walmart.org, Walmart.biz, Walmart.us, and anything else that comes up?

      Yes. Walmart.us hasn't been purchased by them yet, but it appears a squatter wants $6,000 for it.

      --
      Fred

      "A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
      -RMS
    71. Re:no more TLDs, please by gotem · · Score: 2, Funny

      ok, now I only have to create a country and name it so it will have the .pron TLD. and profit!
      (no ???? step needed)

    72. Re:no more TLDs, please by Electroly · · Score: 1

      Judging by the number of spam emails I get with "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:" voluntarily prepended to the subject line, I'd say the number of porn sites that would use .sex is actually fairly substantial.

    73. Re:no more TLDs, please by tintub · · Score: 1
      It is the classic chicken and egg problem. Until the general population knows how to use TLD's properly, companies will not start using them properly. But companies will not start using them properly until the general population knows how.

      Isn't this more analogous to the classic chicken and chicken problem? A chicken and egg analogy might be that "Until the general population knows how to use TLDs properly, companies will not start using them properly. But until companies start using TLDs properly, the general population won't know how to use them properly.".

      --
      sig under construction...
    74. Re:no more TLDs, please by Psychic+Burrito · · Score: 1

      Bad idea. The TLD system adds some form of order to the internet. With "any TLD goes", pepsi will want .pepsi, toyota will want .toyota etc, and we're back at square one with one big difference: the multinational big companies don't only dominate the .com TLD, but any TLD. Currently same-named entities in different fields (different countries, or commerical vs. noncomercial) have ways to coexist. Without that, all hell breaks loose. The current TLD system is a way to bring a little bit of order into the internet, and with your suggestion, this order is all taken away with nothing gained in exchange.

    75. Re:no more TLDs, please by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1
      It may just be an urban myth, but didn't they fund an entire public health system from domain name sales? Really... are the people likely to be more worried about getting myname.tv, or getting fixed up when someone hits them because they didn't look while crossing the road?

      With only 8km of roads total, none of them paved, I don't think crossing the road is any particular danger there. But yeah, they might as well have sold off the .tv domain, seing as how they don't even have a TV station there. The place literally has nothing of value.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    76. Re:no more TLDs, please by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1
      DNS isn't a context-sensitive search engine, and as soon as people get over thinking of it that way, we'll all be quite a lot better off.

      Or, we could just slightly modify the way DNS is handled instead. It'd be fairly trivial to have the TLD administrator return a search page full of possible alternates if someone types in a name that doesn't resolve. Everyone would be happy then, right?

      heh. maybe not.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    77. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why are you even allowed on the Internet? I though they had finally banned animated piles of shit from using computers?

    78. Re:no more TLDs, please by dabigpaybackski · · Score: 1
      What will happen when countries like Tuvalu (.tv) reach technological savyness and find that their entire TLD has been used up by TV networks, domain brokers and companies that felt they needed to register theirname.com, .net, .org, .cc, .mx, .name, .info, and .tv just in case someone actually thought of typing one of those instead.

      Tuvalu's topography just barely peeks above the waves at present, so that country will probably be underwater by then. They don't need a domain, they need houseboats.

      --
      "OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
    79. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But then there will be no artificial scarcity for the scammers at Verisign to exploit! How will we ever survive?

    80. Re:no more TLDs, please by Dwonis · · Score: 1
      That's why any arbitrary tld ought to be allowed. (There's *no* technical reason not to.)

      "No technical reason"... I doubt it. Please post an analysis of the impact on the root servers.

    81. Re:no more TLDs, please by an_mo · · Score: 1

      what order? 95% of the domains end with .com; I am just proposing to remove the .com from their domain. The others can keep their .edu, .org if they wish.

    82. Re: no more TLDs, please by gidds · · Score: 1
      Also, unicode domains are a horrible idea. Much as people may love being able to use locale-specific characters in the domains it doesn't help the rest of the world who wants to keep the internet useable.

      Erm, it's the 'rest of the world' that wants to use their own characters!

      If you look at a map of the world, we native English-speakers aren't in any sort of majority... How would you like, for example, being restricted to the first 20 letters, and having to misspell your domain names to work around the rest?

      --

      Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.

    83. Re:no more TLDs, please by dtfinch · · Score: 1

      ducks lay eggs

    84. Re:no more TLDs, please by Circlotron · · Score: 1

      "Yes, there are too many TLDs already. If you want to fix DNS, why not fix DNS."
      I'm waiting for .TLA to become available ;-)

    85. Re:no more TLDs, please by Bitsy+Boffin · · Score: 1

      Which government exactly? The US doesn't OWN the internet (anymore) you know.

      --
      NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
    86. Re:no more TLDs, please by slittle · · Score: 1
      If there are several hundred TLDs, are companies actually going to register every single one?
      Yes, they would. Smaller businesses would buy the most common/relevant ones; larger businesses would just buy the whole kit and kaboodle. 1000 TLDs x $20 each = $20,000 pa. Sounds like a lot to 'the little guy' but a medium to large company would be paying quite a few employees significantly more than that every year.

      It also offers a handy solution to trademark issues and disposable domain names. Why not "matrix.movie" instead of "matrixmovie.com"?
      Which Matrix might that be? What about conflicts with more generic movie titles? Or really long ones? Is it matrix.movie, or thematrix.movie? DNS is not a search engine. Use one, or go to studio.com/movie (like it says on the advertising).

      And who is the grant arbiter of .movie? The MPAA? If ICANN wants to fund the entire Internet's infrastructure management from specialty domains, so be it, but it shouldn't be conduring up hundreds of money-printing TLDs and just go handing them over to industry consortiums for a pittance.

      You might as well just abolish TLDs entirely if you're going to go the "hundreds of TLDs" route.
      --
      Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
    87. Re:no more TLDs, please by ppanon · · Score: 1

      and so did dinosaurs.

      --
      Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
    88. Re:no more TLDs, please by adamfranco · · Score: 1

      So the chicken and the egg are in bed, quite lathered up and breathing heavily. The chicken flops on its back and says to the egg, "Well now we know which came first."

      --
      "When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
    89. Re:no more TLDs, please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think there is a World market for maybe 5 TLDs.. no wait...

    90. Re:no more TLDs, please by Pieroxy · · Score: 1

      Yet, you just prooved that this whole TLD business is not appropriate to actual 'real-world' needs. Maybe this is because of this that companies 'cheat' and register domains with the wrong TLDs.

      It is not the company's fault, but the system is not flexible enough. Proof: Even you, filled with good intentions, do it unproperly to the admitted standars and conventions.

    91. Re:no more TLDs, please by Echnin · · Score: 1

      Well, something I learned in school (I'm Norwegian) is that if global warming occurs and the polar ice caps melt, this will cause current changes that will make the Gulf stream change its course away from us, thus actually making it colder for us.

      --
      Lalala
    92. Re:no more TLDs, please by mattdm · · Score: 1

      Please post an analysis of the impact on the root servers.

      Negligable. It's not like this would increase the number of domains actually registered by orders of magnitude. Right now, the root servers basically have to deal with a flat namespace within .com/.net/.org + a few random others. If anything, encouraging diversity at that level should *help*.

  4. Well.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bitch about how long it took if you want, but it looks like they did get it right in the end.

    1. Re:Well.... by Reignking · · Score: 0

      Yes, the US taxpayers "did get it right in the end" :)

      --
      One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
  5. Typical government study... by stlhawkeye · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...after spending 10 years and 13 billion dollars of tax payer money, we are proud to announce to the US Department of Bureaucracy has determined that the Internet is:
    • Big
    • Complicated
    • Busy
    • Using Electrons
    • Full of pornography
    We won't be able to really relax our collective guard until they add unregulatable to this list.
    --
    "I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
    1. Re:Typical government study... by spellraiser · · Score: 1
      Excellent results. Spot on.

      Now on to the Internets study!

      --
      I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
    2. Re:Typical government study... by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Funny
      > We won't be able to really relax our collective guard until they add unregulatable to this list.

      "Anything that isn't nailed down is ours."
      "Anything we can pry loose, isn't nailed down."

      "Nothing is impossible to the man who doesn't have to pay for it himself."

    3. Re:Typical government study... by ZerocarboN · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's the pronography that caused the big delay.

      "Dude look, a booby!"

      "That's hot! They're paying us how much to do this?"

    4. Re:Typical government study... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
      • Full of pornography


      At least now we know what was taking them so long...

    5. Re:Typical government study... by AppyPappy · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's not their fault. The email attachment that held the study kept getting dumped in the Junk Mail folder when they sent it.

      No wait, the Internet was....busy. Yeah, that's it. That's why the study is late. They tried to send it but the Internet was running slow. They finally moved from Kermit to Zmodem and it picked up enough to send.

      --

      If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem

    6. Re:Typical government study... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like you just described a high-tech vibrator.

    7. Re:Typical government study... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      shhhh! we don't want them to realise that it isn't already regulated!

    8. Re:Typical government study... by Guppy06 · · Score: 1

      And that was just the Super Bowl!

  6. $1 million by wils0n · · Score: 5, Informative

    FTA

    "Lawmakers had demanded the $1 million federal study, ultimately called "Signposts in Cyberspace," under a 1998 federal law, the Next Generation Internet Research Act."

    1. Re:$1 million by Infinityis · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think maybe they took "next generation" a bit too literallly...

    2. Re:$1 million by arodland · · Score: 0

      Just be glad that this time your friends in the gubmint managed to produce a stupid, useless failure for only $1 million. It was that much less time spent on stupid, useless failures costing a few billion or trillion.

    3. Re:$1 million by Mysticalfruit · · Score: 2, Informative

      Firstly, you realize that the people that wrote this study are going to exclaim that they need another 7 years to revise the study so it'll be suitable.

      Secondly, I bet if you read in the study it'll say stuff like:
      "It's in our judgement that internet worms are not going to be become factors until at least 2010."

      --
      Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
    4. Re:$1 million by hackstraw · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Lawmakers had demanded the $1 million federal study, ultimately called "Signposts in Cyberspace," under a 1998 federal law, the Next Generation Internet Research Act."

      Thats a bargain. It took between $6 and $10 million to figure out Clinton got head from a fat girl.

    5. Re:$1 million by Usquebaugh · · Score: 0

      Alan Kay should revise his stastement that the best way to predict the future is to invent it, maybe to, the best way to predict the future is to wait until it happens.

    6. Re:$1 million by Bad+D.N.A. · · Score: 1

      So 100K/year. This seems to have been dispersed to a number of institutions, each with it's own overhead. Lets just say for arguments sake that the average overhead is 30% which leaves 70K/year for salary. TFA stated that there were a number of people involved in the study, again for arguments sake say 5 people = 14K/year. Say the average income for those involved is 100K/year this study represents perhaps 14% of their time or just over 1 month/year.

      And people don't understand why it took 10 years? With that level of funding I'm surprised it was published at all. I'm not going to go read the report but assuming that it's competent a 200+ page report with that level of funding sounds like a pretty good deal.

      IF it was needed is an entirely different question.

      --
      "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
    7. Re:$1 million by rainman_bc · · Score: 1, Troll

      Thats a bargain. It took between $6 and $10 million to figure out Clinton got head from a fat girl.

      And Congress seemed to care more that Clinton got head from a fat girl than they care about Bush starting a war on deceit (WMD's anyone?)

      Oh yeah, this'll get modded up and down a few times haha

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    8. Re:$1 million by kz45 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      And Congress seemed to care more that Clinton got head from a fat girl than they care about Bush starting a war on deceit (WMD's anyone?)

      well, if he wasn't so busy getting head from a fat girl, maybe we wouldn't have had 9/11.

    9. Re:$1 million by rs79 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The study was used as a tactic by the trademark lobby to impede deplyment of new tlds. "We must assess the effect on stability of the internet by doing such a thing". NTIA nodded its pointy little head and commissioned the report. You'll notice all new tlds added by ICANN todate are considered and declared "experimental". Never mind that 100 new cctlds were quietly added in the past decade.

      And now the report says "dozens of new tlds should be added each year".

      Duh. Double duh. This what Jon Postel said in 1996.

      We now return you to your regularly schedulred ICANN who will do as close to nothing as possible in the area of new tld creation as they can get away with and still pretend to represent the consensus of the Internet community.

      Saaaaaaaay, notice how many lawyers and IP guys are on the ICANN board now? Just a coincidence I'm sure, I'm certain we'll see lots of new tlds RSN.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    10. Re:$1 million by bombadillo · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Or maybe if the Republican controlled congress wasn't squandering so much time and attention over the fat girl in Clinton's Second term we wouldn't have had 911. Oh wait 911 happened under Bush. Considering that we now know that Bush was more concerned with Iraq and didn't listen to his number 1 terrorism advisor. An advisor that happened to server under 4 presidents both Republican and Democrats. It's quite clear that Bush is the one who "blew it" and not the fat girl.

    11. Re:$1 million by TIMxPx · · Score: 1

      PhD candidates research and write dissertations of 100-300 pages in 2-5 years, solo. The cost of attending a decent school is somewhere around 30K per year, including living expenses, maybe slightly more. Let's say 100K over 3 years. Seems like more than enough money and time for funding a report that's likely to be obsolete or redundant before it's finished. Of course, when funding is being appropriated, watch the researchers and scientists all line up and say how necessary and important it is.

      --
      There are 10 kinds of people in the world: That averages about 660,000,000 of each kind.
    12. Re:$1 million by jdray · · Score: 1

      TLDs? What we really need is more TLAs. Heck, RTA, it says that DNS is good. Don't we need more?

      --
      The Spoon
      Updated 6/28/2011
    13. Re:$1 million by Brandybuck · · Score: 0

      Actually, the (sub-)investigation was about lying under oath. If Clinton didn't lie about the blowjob and try to cover it up, he would have been fine.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    14. Re:$1 million by doomsayerxero · · Score: 1

      You'd think it would at least mention IPv6.

      --
      Don't screw up, don't throw up.
    15. Re:$1 million by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I'm not going into the Clinton deal, but on Iraq and WMDs. Congress isn't going to go after Bush on Iraq because Congress voted to support beating the hell out of Iraq with a B-52 for a wide variety of reasons, WMD wasn't the only one.

      It's the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq from 2002 or PUBLIC LAW 107-243--OCT. 16, 2002. Some highlights

      "Whereas in 1998 Congress concluded that Iraq's continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in "material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations" and urged the President "to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235);

      Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;

      Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;

      Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;

      Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

      Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;"

      And the big point

      "SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

      (a) AUTHORIZATION. The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to

      (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and

      (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq."

      Bush didn't start the War in Iraq on deceit, Congress laid out a list of reasons for the United States to go to war.

      http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20 021002-2.html

      http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf

    16. Re:$1 million by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mods sure are a goofy bunch. The parent is insightful and the replies are offtopic?! I guess I should meta-mod all negative numbers as unfair until you can fix this. You are twisted.

    17. Re:$1 million by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      so wheres the investigation about Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rice lying under oath?

      I guess its only worth investigation when a Democrat lies under oath, as we fully expect the Repubs to.

    18. Re:$1 million by Bob_Robertson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      John Postel was wrong. I was at the IETF BOF that discussed the issue. So was Postel. It was nice meeting him.

      The guy from Dunn and Bradstreet was correct when he said that "we" were trying to use the registry like an index.

      As other people have pointed out, CokaCola just has to buy coke.com, coke.net, coke.us, coke.biz, coke.firm, coke.soda, coke.etc.etc.etc. More top level domains does not increase the "name space", nor does it increase usability. In fact, it obfuscates.

      Indexes and portals are in increasing use all the time. A new verb has entered the language, "to google". There is in fact no reason to use a domain name at all, because someone will find your page in Google regardless of what it's called. Even at the time of the BOF, I gave the examples of Yahoo and AltaVista making domain names obsolete.

      I really thought that the success of Geocities (.com) was going to make it obvious to everyone. Instead of extra names, they had subdirectories. Numbered subdirectories and a search engine. The URL didn't relate to anything at all.

      So what was the result of that BOF, where the brightest minds came together to discuss the issue? Even Postel agreed, it would be best to reduce the number of TLDs. They have outlived their usefulness, that was based on insufficient hardware size/speed at the time. "We" already have country codes, .US, .UK &etc. to differentiate the physical top servers.

      At some point, the .earth TLD will be appended to them, but I doubt I'll have to worry about that.

      Bob-

      --
      The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
    19. Re:$1 million by flamingnight · · Score: 1

      Actually, the basis for 9/11 was set down in Operation Northwoods, and furthered in the 1970s at US military bases in Germany as military personnell were instructed to investigate ways that 100+ story buildings (changed to specify the twin towers in 1977) could be taken down with airliners. One of the proposed plans specifically included "Middle Eastern"-looking men with boxcutters.

    20. Re:$1 million by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      so wheres the investigation about Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rice lying under oath?

      The investigation about the CIAs shitty ass job of assessing the presence/threat of WMDs was released this morning. From what I heard on the radio, Bush tore them a new asshole.

    21. Re:$1 million by srleffler · · Score: 1

      There is, actually, one good reason to use a domain name. While you may typically find a page via a search engine, it's not all that uncommon for a human being to have to be able to easily remember the location of a page. For example, a person may want to verbally tell someone else where to find a useful website, or a company may want to be able to advertise the address for their website in another medium (print, radio, tv, etc.) Good luck running a billboard campaign to attract customers to your business' website, if the URL is http://z834jl.lg834.24kj5.biz

    22. Re:$1 million by Bob_Robertson · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What is so difficult about "Google or AOL Keyword: Frankincense And Murr" as opposed to "Be sure to visit our website at http://promotions.frankincenseandmurr1234.sj.ca.us "?

      You're just coming up with all the same old reasons for trying to treat a registry like an index. They are fundamentally different functions.

      "When the 'Net was small", DNS was indeed invented in order to make easily remembered names for machines. But the 'Net is not small, and continuing to try to use the registry like an index does not solve the problem. One TLD has exactly the same name-space as one hundred TLDs, they are simply harder to know which one is the right one.

      The number of actually typed URLs is decreasing. To increase complexity in a system that is already decreasing in usability is not a rational act. Making indexes better is.

      Bob-

      --
      The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
    23. Re:$1 million by BJZQ8 · · Score: 1

      He would have read it, but that report won't come out until 2009!

    24. Re:$1 million by Bad+D.N.A. · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A few points to consider

      For a PhD student to conduct research it takes not only the students salary and the associated overhead (i.e. health ins. Etc...) but also the associated professors time and his salary (and overhead) plus the equipment required to conduct the research (facility, power, computers, connections, etc...). No PhD student creates a substantial piece of work flying "solo", as you put it. There are a lot of people, infrastructure, etc.. involved to put the student in a position to conduct the research.

      Using students in a study is certainly effective but the article stated that some of the best known professionals in the field were part of this report (i.e. not students). I'm not opposed to using students for research. I employ PhD students every year for exactly this reason as they can do the job for less money that I can.

      The only point here is that 1 million spread over 10 years is nothing at all. It's way less than 1 person/year on average. Sure you could get a student to pump out his/her impression of the issue or you could outsource it to drop the costs.

      Perhaps I took your last comment wrong:

      "when funding is being appropriated, watch the researchers and scientists all line up and say how necessary and important it is:

      That is exactly how researchers and scientists get funded. If you cannot make a case that the study you want do to is "necessary and important" than you don't have a job. I happen to think that Solar Physics is "necessary and important" but there are certainly folks who think this is a waste of money. You bet... If a funding source is applicable I'll line up and make my case.

      --
      "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
    25. Re:$1 million by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's the most retarded argument I've yet heard on this subject. Maybe I could see someone arguing, albeit nearsightedly, that search engines would make domains obsolete in 1996 but...dude, where have you been for the last decade of the internet? AOL? New TLDs would solve numerous problems, not the least of which would be a simple way to filter out adult content BY OURSELVES before the ever increatingly totalitarian governments of the world use it as an excuse to DO IT FOR US. For the children of course...
      Corporations buying their own brand name in all the TLDs doesn't dilute this either. What do want? To have a dictionary resourse at coca-cola.ref? C'mon. Get a grip.

    26. Re:$1 million by srleffler · · Score: 1
      No, I'm not trying to treat a registry like an index. I'm trying to treat a URL like an address. An address provides a means of going to a previously-located resource. There is significant utility value in having addresses that are directly human-usable, without having to be stored or transferred electronically. Something like AOL keywords without the proprietary structure would work (being essentially the same as DNS with a flat namespace), but then you need a central registry that knows the name or keyword of every computer with a direct internet connection, or at least of every one that has a name. The hierarchical structure helps distribute the load of keeping a registry by allowing the second-level domain holders to manage their own third-level domain namespaces. It would be better if the intended uses of the different TLD's had been enforced from the beginning, but even without that the current naming system has some use.

      Search is not necessarily a good alternative to an address system, since success in transferring an address offline depends on the person giving the address being able to come up with a search string that will definitely retrieve the desired site. That is not always easy, especially if you are not in front of the computer. It's a lot easier to tell your friend to look for the book he wants at amazon.com than it is to tell him to search for 'amazon' and, um, 'books', and 'not river'. It gets worse if the site doesn't have a clear name like Amazon.

      Got any evidence for your claim that the number of typed URL's is decreasing? I call B.S.

    27. Re:$1 million by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Domain names are administrative boundaries. Everybody should have at least one. More TLDs mean more competition for those who do not need the same name under every TLD.

    28. Re:$1 million by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where did any of those people lie under oath?

      Do you even know what 'under oath' means?

      Furthermore, it is not necessary to be an asshat. Please integrate this into your attitude as soon as possible.

    29. Re:$1 million by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmm, "to google" is better than to have an domain assigned that you can type in. I thought Google(tm) www.google.com, was selling links at the top of results to the highest bidder. If this continues, and the only way to get to a domain, we'd have to click "Next" a dozen times until we got to the first link that wasn't sponsored. While that may be good for the investors of Google, it's not so good for people who want to use the web, I suspect.

    30. Re:$1 million by Bob_Robertson · · Score: 1

      No, I'm not trying to treat a registry like an index.

      Yes, you are. You want to use the registry so that it has something you can look things up in. You want to be able to type www.BobRobertson.com and get a page that has meaning for someone YOU call Bob Robertson. But there are lots of Bob Robertsons, and you have no way of knowing who has the .com or .firm or .name or .net or any of the other top level domains that you might think are important.

      In fact they are not important at all.

      I'm trying to treat a URL like an address.

      Then use the servers IP address. It's unique. It's already there. Any DNS information is redundant. It is, as you say, directly human-usable, without having to be stored or transferred electronically so it meets all your criteria.

      Do you use your phone book? Do you write down the numeric numbers of your friends? Funny thing, I use bookmarks and an address book too, for physical addresses, telephone numbers, and URLs. You might try it, it's very useful. It's called "Favorites" in IE, "Bookmarks" in most other web browsers.

      And browsers store a nice text description so it doesn't matter what the address is, numeric or alpha. Computers are good at remembering things like that, not all people are.

      The hierarchical structure helps distribute the load of keeping a registry...

      Good sir, we are in total agreement. You might note that I said exactly the same thing in the post you are replying to. That was the original purpose of top level domains. You also allude to the non-functional official differentiation between TLDs, which merely demonstrates why they are redundant. Adding more merely increases the redundancy.

      Nothing about reducing the number of top level domains contradicts the utility of hierarchical name space, the distributive nature of DNS, or functional, human-usable names. It simplifies.

      I've already said we have country codes, which .TV is utilizing to good effect, how many thousands more would satisfy you?

      Search is not necessarily a good alternative to an address system...

      Did you read the post you are replying to? I said, the effort put into all this top level domain redundancy would be better spent improving the indexes. And here you talk about the indexes needing improvement in order to be more usable.

      I get the impression that if you were able to step back and look at the problem dispassionately, you too would come to the same conclusion that the 40+- people at the IETF engineering BOF on "More TLDs" did: Simplify.

      Bob-

      --
      The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
    31. Re:$1 million by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
      If you narrow your search enough, you will see the desired link on the first page because there will not be any more links.

      As for link order, that is something I do not care about at all in my Google results. That is why, IMHO, paying for high rank is harmless. I would be bothered, however, if they had it where you had to pay Google to be linked at all. Some have said this is already occuring.

      --
      Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    32. Re:$1 million by jfdawes · · Score: 1

      What is so difficult about "Google or AOL Keyword: Frankincense And Murr"

      <seriously>Spelling it*</seriously>
      <ironically>Spelling it.</ironically>

      * If you want to get the correct site, you need to use the correct name. Unless of course, you like the possibility that you could sued because your web site, regardless of TLD used, is phoenetically the same as some business somewhere.

  7. New Study by klatty · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hear that they also just finished their study on electricity.

    Findings include: "AC good for long distance" and that "devices that use this new technology may sometime exist throughout a common home"

    1. Re:New Study by temojen · · Score: 1

      I thought you were going to say the presidential inquiry had determined that flying a kite in a storm is bad for your health.

    2. Re:New Study by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They also determined there weren't any WMD's in Iraq afterall...wait a minute, that really happened.

    3. Re:New Study by northcat · · Score: 1

      OMG! Oh god, I can't control my laughter. I think I'm going to crap in my pants out of sheer glee.

    4. Re:New Study by gnuman99 · · Score: 1
      AC is bad for long distance. Lots of radiation losses especially when your transmission line get to be a multiple of 1250km :) Hey, it happened! They had to build an entire new DC tranmission line after losing most of the power in the line.

      What AC is good for is powering motors (especially 3-phase) as well as its voltage can be readily changed (transformers). Very easy to produce with an alternator-type generators.

      DC is superior for power transmission, heaters (stove, etc..) as well as powering solid state circuits. Solar panels and batteries are the only easy way of producing DC power directly.

      AC->DC conversion is easy enough. DC->AC is more problematic.

  8. Late by WaldoXX · · Score: 0, Redundant

    After 7 Years is late.

    replace with your choice of Government Internet Reseach
    or Slashdot News Stories.

    1. Re:Late by govtcheez · · Score: 1

      If it was a /. story, they'd do the study again and reach the exact same results.

  9. They should have... by DaFitzMan · · Score: 4, Funny

    just asked Al Gore. He could have filled them in a lot quicker.

    1. Re:They should have... by Infinityis · · Score: 1

      Maybe, but I doubt the researchers would like that. Given the content that might be involved in internet research, I'm not surprised with how long it took these guys.

      "Really, that's interesting what she can do with ordinary household objects..."

      My question is, over the past seven years, how many times did they stay out too late working on their research?

    2. Re:They should have... by learn+fast · · Score: 1

      Which of the internets was he an expert on?

    3. Re:They should have... by ParaMarineBates · · Score: 1

      "I don't think there was any sense by the people on this committee that it would take this long," said Paul Vixie, another leading technologist who reviewed a confidential draft of the report two years ago. "But the Internet will do that to you." Because all we do is surf for pron!!!

      --
      omnia mutantur nos et mutamur in illis
    4. Re:They should have... by mattmentecky · · Score: 3, Informative

      Gah!
      Why is it anytime the 'history' of the Internet is brought up someone ALWAYS goes for the cheap Al Gore laugh!
      http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm Read.
      You are a victim of spin. I have a question: When George Bush refers to anything with 'we', such as "we invaded Iraq" should he be lambasted because he didn't technically invade anything?

    5. Re:They should have... by nate+nice · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Lighten up. It's just a joke that people like to make over and over. We all like to laugh at politicians and really, if this is all they have, big deal. This joke has just become part of pop culture. I do admit though, it doesn't take great wit to make this joke and it's sad to see professional comedians still make reference to it. So, to you: Lighten up. To Others: Get over it and give us some new material.

      --
      "If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."
    6. Re:They should have... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He invented the al gor ithm.

    7. Re:They should have... by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Gah! Why is it anytime someone brings up the Al Gore urban legend someone tries to exonerate Gore by pointing out the exact quote which is ALSO AN OBVIOUS LIE and doesn't exonerate Gore in the slightest from the incorrectness of his claim. No only can you not invent something after it already exists, you also can't "take the initiative" in "creating the legislation" that creates it either if it already exists in the first place before you got involved. I can't invent the wheel today. It's been done. I also can't start a committe that invents the wheel, nor can I start funding to have others invent the wheel. The wheel is already here.

      And the internet was already there before Gore's legislation.
      He lied.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    8. Re:They should have... by BallyHigh · · Score: 1

      Wait now ... so did Richard Gere invent gerbilling or not?

    9. Re:They should have... by jxs2151 · · Score: 1
      I personally get more of a kick now from the AlGore defenders than the actual joke.

      The inevitable Al Gore internet joke brings the inevitable Al Gore defense-whine. Can you imagine people studying our comments six hundred years from now?

    10. Re:They should have... by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1

      Demanding that people be honest is not flamebait.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    11. Re:They should have... by bombadillo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I really don't take it as a lie. He was very intstumental in getting government funding for the internet. He was lobying for the internet as early as 1984. That was pretty farsighted to see the potential back then. It was also risky as there wasn't exactly a public demand for the internet in the 80's. Thus, he was truly championing the internet out of his gut feeling of it's potential and not to pander to a particular constituency. I believe the quote was taken from a talk show. He was not on the stump and repeatedly making the claim as the conservative media would have the public believe. Like it or not the Internet could not have become what it is today with out government funding. Al Gore was a big part of getting that funding.

    12. Re:They should have... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      It isn't a lie, it's poorly written but nonetheless correct English. And, given the choice between believing Vint Cerf and you, unless you're zombified form of Jon Postel, I'll go with Cerf.

      And yes, a loose, closed, set of networks refered to informally as "Duh intraweb" existed in the very late eighties. You were generally lucky to get a UUCP connection to the email and Usenet side of it at that time. TCP/IP was run between a small set of nodes on the Arpanet, something only available to academics and the military. So, yes, that initiative Gore took through the house did actually turn something unrecognizable as today's Internet into what we see today.

    13. Re:They should have... by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 2, Funny

      You know, everyone else has gotten over the 2000 election.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
    14. Re:They should have... by nate+nice · · Score: 0

      ROFL, now that's good! See, people have already started to invent new jokes. Way to go.

      --
      "If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."
    15. Re:They should have... by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1


      And yes, a loose, closed, set of networks refered to informally as "Duh intraweb" existed in the very late eighties.

      No. It was the internet well before the "web" was just a sparkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye.

      http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/Early_D ays_Of_TCP/Timeline/index.shtml

      The thing gore started did not create the internet.
      It EXPANDED it.
      If you first built your house in the 1970's and then added an expansion to it in the 1980's, would you be correct in referring to that action as "creating the house"? No.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    16. Re:They should have... by winse · · Score: 1

      if this is flaimbait, then so is the parent ihmo

      --
      this sig is deprecated
    17. Re:They should have... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      If you first built your house in the 1970's and then added an expansion to it in the 1980's, would you be correct in referring to that action as "creating the house"? No.
      If you have a plot of land in the 1970s, and build a house on it in the eighties, would you be correct in refering to that action as "creating the house"? Er, yes.

      Sorry, but Arpanet was simply not recognizable as what we call The Internet. It was a closed network. Various groups who were to merge with the Internet in later days were actually barred from using it (Usenet, for example.) People were banned from using it for mentioning its name in public.

      The fact that the Arpanet's protocols and assigned numbers were used as the foundation for what we call The Internet today doesn't mean that the Arpanet was the same network. It wasn't.

      Arpanet supplied some of the protocols and the name. Other, unrelated, networks provided much of the rest.

    18. Re:They should have... by hawk · · Score: 1

      One of life's oddities is that both Gore and Quayle were effective senators, and the country probably would have been better off had they both stayed there.

      Gore's contributions certainly were important, even though he overstated his significance. That spending probably accelerated the spread slightly, but not dramatically.

      There were too many other pieces alreay in play. Gore's funding led to the arpanet structure becoming universal, rather than some of the other possibliities (fidnet, crosstraffic between compuserve and other timesharing services, expansion of IBM's network, . . .)

      There were already several things out there that *could* have grown int the internet; that funding picked the winner.

      hawk

    19. Re:They should have... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      When George Bush refers to anything with 'we'

      Bush is just using the royal we to refer to himself in all his enlightened glory.

    20. Re:They should have... by themoodykid · · Score: 1

      ROFL, now that's good! See, people have already started to invent new jokes. Way to go.

      I think you mean people have taken the INITIATIVE in creating new jokes.

    21. Re:They should have... by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1

      The internet of 2005 is vastly different than the internet of 1990. Therefore the internet wasn't created until the 1990's.

      When you understand why the above statement is wrong, you will understand why I think you're wrong.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    22. Re:They should have... by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
      "If you have a plot of land in the 1970s, and build a house on it in the eighties, would you be correct in refering to that action as "creating the house"? Er, yes"

      Your analogy is BAD. You are referring to creating one of many houses, and many are already created. This is not the same as Gore's claim of having created/invented THE Internet (a false claim, since it existed for years before his involvement)

      --
      Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  10. DNS is good? by vidarlo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Without DNS, domain spoofing would've been kinda impossible...

    1. Re:DNS is good? by SCPRedMage · · Score: 1

      And without it, all I'd have to do is enter a simple "66.35.250.150" to read /. everday... That's SO much simpler than DNS...

      --
      My sig can beat up your sig.
    2. Re:DNS is good? by vidarlo · · Score: 1

      ...and we'd probably have IP spoofing. But again, maybe all those AOL^H^H^Hnewcomers would've kept of the net if they had to remember IPs, and rather stuck to AOL and Compunet? One can wonder how the net had been. Maybe less of a commercial market place?

    3. Re:DNS is good? by SCPRedMage · · Score: 1

      And not nearly as usefull as it is today. I'm sorry, but do you want a big ol' book if IP addresses to pop in whenever you want to go any give sight? Sorry, buddy, but any system open to the public is going to be exploited. Period.

      --
      My sig can beat up your sig.
    4. Re:DNS is good? by damsa · · Score: 1

      The problem with domain names is that people try to guess what the web site is, so you have lots of confusion on the part of web surfers. www.whitehouse.com for example. Also another problem is that .com has become the default choice. So a person trying to reach nissan auto will try nissan.com adding to more confusion. A better method might be to have independent directories i.e. yahoo that index the same way a phone book is indexed. And have multiple companies doing it rather than have one entity controlling the .com domain.

    5. Re:DNS is good? by dk.r*nger · · Score: 1

      Without DNS, domain spoofing would've been kinda impossible...

      Yeah, but IP-spoofing would rule the day. Mwahahaha.

    6. Re:DNS is good? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apparently DNS is useful for allowing computers to re-direct your request to an appropriate computer somewhere on the internet. Too bad it uses peer to peer (p2p) as a means of sharing with other computers, what computers it's connected to (so as to allow computers to follow the shortest (or any available) path to the correct machine. When Hatch finally kills P2P because Disney paid him to, he will unwittingly include DNS. Thus, the internet will be killed off right smartly! (Internet pornography is what keeps the senator up late at night).

    7. Re:DNS is good? by jacquesm · · Score: 1

      routing tables would be *enormous*, and IPS would have to be locked to certain parties, otherwise it would be impossible to switch from one provider to another for hosting a server...

      Recall that in the 'old' days a machine had a fixed IP and stayed there pretty much forever (some university box somewhere or so), and you got a class 'C' for the asking (I had two or so back in '98 still), and those ranges where 'portable', in other words if you switched provider you could take them along with you causing all kinds of routing nightmares.

      Now all you do is change your dns entries and you're done... Easy as pie.

      So, *YES* DNS *IS* GOOD !

      without it the net as you know it would not be possible. Humans like names, not numbers. Hard enough to remember you own phone number, let alone the ips of all the websites whose url you type in to the browser.

      Try living without the DNS for a week or so and we'll talk :)

    8. Re:DNS is good? by SCPRedMage · · Score: 1

      Yes, but that would end up with multiple sites, all with the same name, from multiple directories, allowing one to register another companies name at another index, trapping people that way. Different system, same spoofing.

      --
      My sig can beat up your sig.
    9. Re:DNS is good? by damsa · · Score: 1

      Multiple sites will have different names for the same address. Directory yahoo will name the website for Ford USA, yahoo.ford or something. MSN will decide it will name it msn.fordNA, Google can name it google.32131231321, similar to how phone numbers work. Instead of depending on typing out URLs, they guess at, its better that they use a directory. How many people think http://www.aljazeera.com/ for example represents al jazeera the news organization.

    10. Re:DNS is good? by SCPRedMage · · Score: 1

      That's all well and good, but having multiple, independant directories is not only a pain in the ass to use, but then you'd be centralizing the hub of the network. One of the things about DNS is that the root DNS servers locations are (as far as I know) supposed to be secret, in order to protect them from attack. With a centralized hub like that, from a commercial company like Yahoo or Google, their locations can easily be found, and if you take even one of them out, you cripple the network. And if you don't think they'd be a target, you're sadly mistaken; any number of terrorists would give their left nut to piss off Americans like that.

      --
      My sig can beat up your sig.
    11. Re:DNS is good? by damsa · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't a yahoo or google have multiple backups in place. I dunno, I'm just thinking out loud.

    12. Re:DNS is good? by SCPRedMage · · Score: 1

      And I'm just trying to defend the concept. The concept's fine, it's the people that's fucked.

      --
      My sig can beat up your sig.
  11. more tie-ins by justforaday · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ahhh. Good to see another tie-in story...

    --
    I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
  12. Did the survey include.... by LordPhantom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    .....anything about terror orgs using the 'net?
    .....anything about how something called "broadband" would be "all the rage" in a few years?
    .....anything about what this new-fangled thing called "SPAM" is?

    Seriously, you would think that even the GOVERNMENT would be able to react more quickly than that in a tech market that changes by the month. If they planned this thing back in 1998 to take this long the planning committee and folks who approved the money should be brought up on criminal neglegance charges!

    1. Re:Did the survey include.... by dark_requiem · · Score: 1

      folks who approved the money should be brought up on criminal neglegance charges!

      Apparently you are under the assumption that the government takes responsibility for its screwups. LordPhantom, I'd like to introduce you to my good friend Reality. Reality, Lord Phantom. It appears that you two are going to have a bumpy relationship...

    2. Re:Did the survey include.... by LordPhantom · · Score: 1

      ...oh no.... this sounds suspiciously like my bout with bathtub gin.

    3. Re:Did the survey include.... by Koiu+Lpoi · · Score: 1

      Then we need to amend the constitution. I was under the impression that the government was designed to be slow (albiet, not THIS slow) on purpose.

  13. What's a TLD? by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 0, Redundant

    You mean those fake extensions to web domains like www.ihate.tv?

    Sheesh, yeah, maybe they'll encourage everyone to upgrade to 56k modems too, day late and a dollar short, while I post on the Gigabit Internet.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:What's a TLD? by The-Perl-CD-Bookshel · · Score: 4, Informative

      *sigh* A TLD is a Top Level Domain. Examples of Top Level Domains are .com .net and .org.

      --
      I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
    2. Re:What's a TLD? by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      *sigh* A TLD is a Top Level Domain.

      If you had read my post, you'd see it was using the

      Is it something like www.ihate.tv

      coding structure. In other words, .tv may be a nation-specific domain (as Tuvalu sinks beneath the waves), but it's really a TLD in practice.

      Got .net?

      [hint, that was irony too, with a triple-entendre thrown in ...]

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    3. Re:What's a TLD? by GrBear · · Score: 1

      ~ - TLD

    4. Re:What's a TLD? by JackAtCepstral · · Score: 1
      --
      Cepstral: Quality TTS for OS X, Linux, Windows
    5. Re:What's a TLD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TLD = Top Level Domain (ie. .com, .net, .org and so on)

    6. Re:What's a TLD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your cock is now 1" shorter than it was an hour ago.

    7. Re:What's a TLD? by SCPRedMage · · Score: 1

      Nation-specific domains are TLDs. By definition. So there.

      --
      My sig can beat up your sig.
  14. We should probably have some more TLDs? by Omega · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "We should probably have some more TLDs"
    Yes because we haven't dilluted the overall TLD structure enough already. It used to be that .org, .edu, .com, .net and .gov had distinct, unique purposes. Now we have .biz, .info and .name? Please, someone tell me what these new TLD's add to the overall namespace (aside from ongoing legal battles over trademarks).

    Was this study done by domain resellers?

    1. Re:We should probably have some more TLDs? by notnAP · · Score: 1
      My guess is that this group thought of TLDs in the same way people think of phone area codes (which are also getting more and more detached from their original purpose).

      Running out of available domains/phone numbers? Well then, let's just add a new TLD/area code and WHHOOOPPPAAAHHH! Problem solved.


      Just goes to show just how out of touch this group was, as if the time frame they took wasn't proof enough.

    2. Re:We should probably have some more TLDs? by hackstraw · · Score: 1

      It used to be that .org, .edu, .com, .net and .gov had distinct, unique purposes. .com means nothing. .org means not much more. .net is even more illusive than .com.

      Its still pretty much if it does not end in .com, most people will ask you a few times about your email address or URL.

      Try telling a "normal" computer user to go to slashdot.org (bad one because of the name semantics, but hang with me), odds are they will type slashdot.org slashdot.com, which will silently redirect you to slashdot.org.

      If .com and .org meant anything different (and assuming no cybersquatters), slashdot would not have ever bought slashdot.com.

      Now we have .biz, .info and .name? Please, someone tell me what these new TLD's add to the overall namespace (aside from ongoing legal battles over trademarks). .biz is 99% spammers because the names are worthless and cheap so they buy them by the alphabet soup full. Its handy because one spamassassin rule is to match a url in the .biz tld. .info is for information, duh! I've really only seen this for spam as well, so I guess its not very informational. .name is probably for someone who wants their full or last name as a .com address, and the .com is already taken, so they opt for the .name tld, and have to explain to everybody until they dump the domain why the NAME.com does not work.

      TLDs are stupid and a waste of time and 4+ characters of typing.

    3. Re:We should probably have some more TLDs? by Jugalator · · Score: 1

      I think .name can be useful for all those personal pages, but of course it's among the least used ones of today... :-P I think it's really the domain e.g. all those blogs eating up .com and .org domains could use. Just because you started a personal blog doesn't mean it's commercial or a non-profit organization. .name is exactly there for this reason. Personal pages.

      However, don't ask me what .biz and .info is for... Informal sites is usually either commercial (.com), non-profit (.org), or personal (.name) anyway... And .biz) seem just to be to expand the .com namespace a bit, but of course that idea sucked. .aero and .museum is also mysteries to me. Why exactly those?

      Anyway, it's unfortunate that TLD's aren't far more regulated...

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  15. The internet _has_ changed by Dagrush · · Score: 0, Insightful

    During the course of the study many new trends (like P2P) have been created/gained major popularity, making an up-to-date report hard to publish.

    Maybe it would have been better for them to release it in small chunks.

  16. Fewer TLDs are needed by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have a hard enough time getting people to use .net instead of .com on my email address. Too bad someone already took the .com version of my domain else I'd just have that too so people who didn't "get" it could still send me email.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    1. Re:Fewer TLDs are needed by Fjandr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We need new TLDs so that the domain speculation companies can register tens of thousands more domain names and auction them on eBay. :)

    2. Re:Fewer TLDs are needed by Luthair · · Score: 1

      I hate the morons who try and stick a www to the start of email addresses.

    3. Re:Fewer TLDs are needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Someone else didn't take the .com version of your domain, you took the .net version of THEIR domain. Notice how they paid for it and registered it before you? Thats why they have it and you don't.

    4. Re:Fewer TLDs are needed by 93,000 · · Score: 1

      . . . I'd just have that too so people who didn't "get" it could still send me . . .

      I'd do the same thing. That's exactly why new TLD's don't really give any more elbow room. They just force businesses and individuals to register three or four versions of essentially the same thing in hopes of not losing the confused.

    5. Re:Fewer TLDs are needed by slacktide · · Score: 1

      No, we need more TLDs and less morons. Problem solved.

    6. Re:Fewer TLDs are needed by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      Yea. but they still don't have a website up at that address. And it's been 4 years since I bought the domain.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    7. Re:Fewer TLDs are needed by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      I run my own mail server. I have to have some name to point to it. And sub-domains are unreliable because you never know when the TLD holder will just disappear. (go out of business, get board, whatever).

      It wasn't that hard to find a domain that was fairly unique and short and still suited me. I only registered .net at first, and then when I realized that a .com and .org would be good I tried to get those too, but someone beat me to the .com version. But they never did put any sort of site up at the .com version.

      The point is, why add a bunch of TLDs when businesses and some people end up registering in 2 or 3 TLDs? Also I'm convinced that there is enough unique stuff out there for everyone, the only problem is domain squatters who want to get you to pay $200 to release some domain they got for a few bucks. Adding TLDs won't fix it, it will just allow companies that sell TLDs to make more money off normal people and squatters.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    8. Re:Fewer TLDs are needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      the only problem is domain squatters who want to get you to pay $200 to release some domain they got for a few bucks

      I'd be willing to pony up $200 bucks for a domain I wanted, its the asshat domain appraisers who claim that a random .com address is worth $2,000 I'd like to kill off. Personally I beilive its the companies that allowed the strip mining of the .com domain space for $3 a registration that has led to pollution we ave to deal with these days. If a domain cost $100 year year it would make googlebombing, phishing, and pharming a lot more expensive.

  17. so.. by Turn-X+Alphonse · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So they can investigate reasons to goto war in a couple of weeks yet to find out porn and slashdot waste alot of geeks time takes 7 years.

    Ever get the feeling the people doing the study got addicted to slashdot?

    --
    I like muppets.
    1. Re:so.. by rhild · · Score: 1

      Turn-X,
      Are you a recovering BASIC programmer? I noticed the telltale 'goto' in your post!

  18. tdl... by bird603568 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    maybe if they had a .blog for blogs, .xxx for the porn and and so on it would be much easyer than making .tk and .tv and .ro (what is that?). The .xxx would cut google time in half.

    1. Re:tdl... by sudorm · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If pr0n sites had mandatory .xxx TDL's then it would make filtering easier and save businesses money on productivity software. Probably a better idea than that Utah ISP filtering software law.

    2. Re:tdl... by zdzichu · · Score: 1

      .ro (what is that?)
      Romania. Some country in Europe (.eu).

      --
      :wq
    3. Re:tdl... by CDarklock · · Score: 1

      I've always thought a simple legal requirement to place "adult" material on a .xxx domain would make a huge difference in the ability to content filter. Then we could shut down all sorts of people who tried to skirt around it.

      And I think .ro is "read only". I don't get it either. ;)

      --
      Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
    4. Re:tdl... by ad0gg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And who would determine what is porn and what is not? Do breast implant doctors have to be in the .xxx tld if they have client before and after photos? Does photographer have to be in the .xxx tld, if they have a couple nude artworks on their sitework? Obscenity is hard enough for to be judge in America, now you going to judge it world wide?

      --

      Have you ever been to a turkish prison?

    5. Re:tdl... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Ah yes, and no site with XXX content will ever use anything other than a .xxx TLD if it is the law. Just like I never get any spam from 419ers because it is illegal...

    6. Re:tdl... by hackstraw · · Score: 1

      .xxx for the porn

      But that would be too simple and good.

      The problem is that putting porn in the .xxx tld would make the registrars accountable for selling domains, which they don't want to do. However, think about how simple filtering for kids would be?

      Also, if registrars were accountable, that would eliminate spam as well. The registrar would simply terminate their name if they did any funny business, but instead of doing any good, lets keep selling domains by the random letter until they are all full.

    7. Re:tdl... by LordPhantom · · Score: 1

      heh Then it could be goatse.xxx - a new generation of horror :)

    8. Re:tdl... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Let us be definitive, once and for all.

      If you can spank to it then it is porn.

    9. Re:tdl... by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1

      Would there a legal punishment then for someone putting up a site that should be in .xxx but isn't? For the system to work, there'd have to be. And then all you've done is shift the censorship problem to a new area - there are going to be lots of borderline topics that some people think should be .xxx that other people think should not - like perhaps a website for a pharmacy that advertises their inventory, which includes condoms and "the pill", or a support site giving advice along the lines of "hints for the teenager who's considering coming out of the closet", or medical sites that cover topics like STD's.

      Saying that all porn needs to go into .xxx simply moves the censorship to the "does it or doesn't it count as porn' argument.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    10. Re:tdl... by The+Desert+Palooka · · Score: 1

      In that case, 9/10 13yr old boys agree, Sears catalog is porn.

    11. Re:tdl... by shish · · Score: 1

      The person paying for the domain would decide where to put it, just as they do now.

      --
      I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
    12. Re:tdl... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have a point but I'll say right now that "Anal Teen Donkey Sluts" would qualify for ".xxx"

    13. Re:tdl... by hawk · · Score: 1
      Would there a legal punishment then for someone putting up a site that should be in .xxx but isn't?

      Do you really have to ask what would be cut off?

      :)

      hawk

    14. Re:tdl... by lysergic.acid · · Score: 0

      but what if i wanted to post porn on my blog? you can't use tLD's categorize websites because so many websites out there are hard to categorize.

    15. Re:tdl... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      doesn't have to be that complicated, at all...
      leave the .xxx domain open to the proud pr0nographers [e.g. larry flint, &al], and people who are specifically looking for pr0n can narrow their search down so that they don't run into funky medical proceedures, pet-store discounts, &c., in the confusion.

      make these things opt-in type of deals. if you want a .xxx tld, then just demonstrate that you are providing XXX material, and take it. if you don't want the .xxx then DON'T APPLY FOR IT.

    16. Re:tdl... by Itanshi · · Score: 1

      don't adult sites have to register to be an adult site? It's not perfect by any means, but it would work for some decent measure.

    17. Re:tdl... by SunFan · · Score: 1

      .xxx for the porn

      What about grain alcohol manufacturers?

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    18. Re:tdl... by sjames · · Score: 1

      no site with XXX content will ever use anything other than a .xxx TLD

      Yep! Just like filter software never goofs. MOST porn sites will prefer to self-identify to avoid legal problems related to minors stumbling into their site. Consider, there is no actual XXX rating, there's just X. The porn providers were so anxious to self identify that they had to say it 3 times to emphasize the point.

    19. Re:tdl... by InfallibleLies · · Score: 1

      I believe any porn site out there would jump at the chance to get a .xxx TLD. To porn sites, the more obscene, the better.

    20. Re:tdl... by gnovos · · Score: 1

      And who would determine what is porn and what is not? Do breast implant doctors have to be in the .xxx tld if they have client before and after photos?

      Why not just let the company pick? If you have a porn company, and you know the only people whp will be useful to you are adults with credit cards, then you'll love .xxx because you know that there will be filters in place to block kids and such, right?

      --
      "Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
    21. Re:tdl... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "and people who are specifically looking for pr0n can narrow their search down so that they don't run into funky medical proceedures, pet-store discounts, &c., in the confusion. "

      I dunno man.. some of those pet-store discounts turn me on somethin fierce....

    22. Re:tdl... by jasonjacks0n · · Score: 1
      And who would determine what is porn and what is not?

      You're right -- that is an extremely difficult question.

      However, if paid the large sums that such a demanding and delicate task obviously demands, I would be willing to dedicate my life to answering it. For the good of mankind and whatnot, you understand..

      ;-)

      --
      This space intentionally left blank.
  19. Conspiracy theory! by Underholdning · · Score: 4, Funny

    Coincidence? I think not!

  20. Sorry, it's my fault. by The+Lurker+King · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sorry everyone, it's my fault. You know how you get some directive from management and you just throw it on your desk and forget about it? Well, eventually it gets buried under everything else I was working and quickly forgotten about. (Didn't we just have a previous post about how 95% of software projects are late?) Anyway, I was doing some spring cleaning last week and found it.

    Again, my apologies. It won't happen again.

    1. Re:Sorry, it's my fault. by nametaken · · Score: 1


      Your fault huh? So just curious, how did you spend the million bucks on learning "DNS is like doughnuts... pretty good." :)

    2. Re:Sorry, it's my fault. by The+Lurker+King · · Score: 1

      Ummmm....I bought a lot of doughnuts for my research.

  21. Another sarcastic comment by Random+Chaos · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Another example of Government In-action

  22. Can you hear that gurgling sound? by Darren+Winsper · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's the sound of millions of dollars going down the drain!

  23. Dejavu! by Orangez · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Quote from the article: "To be honest, most people forgot it was ever going to happen" [end quote]. I'm still counting on that every time a deadline arrives...

    --
    "Never trust a computer you can not throw out of a window..."
  24. A firm grasp of the obvious. by HerbertLipschitz · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Al Gore should certainly be proud!

  25. DNS is good by Lovesquid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So basically, we had one dude getting paid $250k per year to surf pr0n and read /. all day long for 7 years, doing "research", until one day, a week ago, his supervisors remembered what he was there for and told him to report on his findings by today. So he pulled an all-nighter, cooked up "DNS is good" and "we need more TLDs", made liberal use of copy and paste, and published it.

    A perfect example of your tax dollars at work. I sure am glad we aren't spending it on education or space exploration or something useful.

    1. Re:DNS is good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now that you mention it, that's exactly how I did it.

    2. Re:DNS is good by nurb432 · · Score: 1

      More like 25 people paid 10K a year with no clear direction on what to do.

      So they floundered around for a while..

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    3. Re:DNS is good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was once on a project like that. But I was only able to stretch it out for 6 months of doing nothing before they realized I was there. It was in the commercial sector though.

    4. Re:DNS is good by Lovesquid · · Score: 1

      It's not really far off from my current government job. About once a day my boss peeks in and says "how's it going", and then vanishes. At one tenth the salary, I must admit, but still...

    5. Re:DNS is good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh, that's not entirely accurate. Someone's boss got paid the $1 million dollars for the report and figured out how to appropriate the money for themselves. When the man from the Government finally came along to get the report this boss simply tapped some lowly intern to pull that all-nighter and write up 200 pages on the state of the Internet. Now they will sell copies of the report to the public at $40 each in a lame attempt to either make a profit or prove there were losses incurred so the missing $1 million can be written off the books. The surprising thing is the reccomendation that the folks who take care of the root servers should remain responsible for them. A stroke of literary genius and good sense!

      In other news an intern is missing...

    6. Re:DNS is good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      So he pulled an all-nighter, cooked up [simple weasle words and obvious "insights"], made liberal use of copy and paste, and published it.

      come on... like you've never done it. :p

    7. Re:DNS is good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      $250k per year for 7 years is $1.75 million...

      Thank God you're not running the government. :)

    8. Re:DNS is good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      6 months - I managed a year and a half... I even had a Dilbert cartoon as my desktop wallpaper with the caption "I did nothing today and still got paid!"

      The joys of being part of an corporate aquisition IT transition team :)

    9. Re:DNS is good by Lovesquid · · Score: 1

      I am actually, or at least a small part of it ... scary, eh?

  26. This is potentially very good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does this mean the US now has a whole bunch of tech-savvy congressmen running around Capitol Hill?

    I could see it taking a bunch of newbies, who are already busy with congressional duties, this long to figure out the internet; and a good, solid understanding of things such as DNS and TLDs sure can't hurt anything. Maybe they'll gain some perspective on issues like P2P and what have you.

  27. Just to give folks a idea of the time... by feloneous+cat · · Score: 1

    When they STARTED the report:

    1998: The iMac is introduced. I go ho-hum, my wife goes "I WANT ONE!" Steve Jobs is proclaimed to be next to God in design and everyone starts knocking off iMac colors.

    Today: iPod is what is hip. It is expected to exceed Mac in the next year or so. Steve Jobs is proclaimed to be reviving the music industry (which thinks it is God).

    So I wonder how current the info is in the report?

    --
    IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
  28. It did not take 7 years - they completed the study by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just because a government commissioned a study on a certain year doesn't mean it takes place on that same year.

    The United States has Iraq, Iran, Syria, China, the EU, The UN, The Environment, Social Security and Jobs to worry about before a bottom of the heap internet study is to be conducted.

  29. What I really want to know.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How long before /. dupes this story?

    Will that also take 7 years?

    1. Re:What I really want to know.... by Lispy · · Score: 1

      Not before it's even older news, that's for sure. ;)

  30. Where is the Grace Commission when you need them? by slackadmin · · Score: 1

    I smell $436 hammers and $640 toilet seats...You can't be bothered with wasting your money, that is the Government's job.

    --
    Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. - Isaac Asimov
  31. Here's another study 7 years to late... by RiotXIX · · Score: 1

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4396457. stm
    Yes, I know it's slightly offtopic, but interesting, no?

    --
    "You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
    1. Re:Here's another study 7 years to late... by RiotXIX · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Wow, a typo ('too' not 'to') and offtopic, and replying to the wrong parent (should have been to "Typical government study...")!! Looks like I'm burning through my karma today...

      --
      "You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
    2. Re:Here's another study 7 years to late... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      My cynicism is in full force after reading this news item today.

      Step 1: Claim there's WMD in Iraq.
      Step 2: In the face of the rest of the world disagreeing with you, invade.
      Step 3: When no WMD are found, launch an investigation into your intelligence.
      Step 4: Investigation demands that spy agencies are unified and should have more power.

      It's almost the perfect plan. You get to invade with no real reason (excepting the spin machine's claims of 'freedom and democracy') while simultaneously conglomerating power at home. 9/11 was the excuse used to create the DHS, Iraq gets to be the excuse used to create a new TLA.

      ps: were this fark, someone would be all over me immediately pointing out how the rest of the world agreed that Iraq had WMD based on pre-war intel. i just wish more people would pay attention to the stories about *british* intelligence participating in black-intel, fabricating the Iraq-Niger connection.

      pps: yes, i missed Step 6: Profit!

    3. Re:Here's another study 7 years to late... by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 1

      and my favorite quote from here:

      "Robb and Silberman agreed they had found no evidence that senior administration officials had sought to change the prewar intelligence in Iraq, possibly for political gain."

      Well DUH...they got EXACTLY what they wanted/asked for, why would they CHANGE anything in the intelligence reports?


      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
  32. DNS is good! by Canordis · · Score: 2, Funny

    This reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon. Dilbert writes a memo, made up of three points:

    1 Oxygen is good.
    2 Competition is bad.
    3 I like jelly.

    And then the pointy-haired boss would tell him to take out the part about competition...
    Is Dilbert working for the US gov't?

    --
    I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
    1. Re:DNS is good! by wanderingstan · · Score: 1

      well, actually it was Jell-O...but no matter. :)

  33. What I want to know... by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 2, Funny

    What I want to know, does it say that Al Gore invented it?

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
    1. Re:What I want to know... by tadd · · Score: 1

      seeing as he never said that... at least not in context

      --
      [what?]
  34. Uh, just a thought... by feloneous+cat · · Score: 0, Redundant

    But it is costing us $100 million / DAY with this war in Iraq.

    Frankly, this is probably the CHEAPEST thing Congress has done!

    --
    IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
  35. The most needed TLD by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 5, Interesting
    We should probably have some more TLDs

    The TLD we all need most of all: .sux

    A place where no coropration is ever allowed to register their own trademark!

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
    1. Re:The most needed TLD by lw54 · · Score: 1

      How about .tux!

    2. Re:The most needed TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      haha, a good laugh. thank you, sir.

    3. Re:The most needed TLD by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 1
      How about .tux!

      That's the place where Microsoft is never allowed to register their trademark!

      --
      "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
    4. Re:The most needed TLD by garett_spencley · · Score: 2, Funny

      There are a few incorporated pornography companies that I'm sure would come up for many productive uses of .sux :)

  36. In other news by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Funny
    After a 15 year study, NASA confirms Douglas Adams' ground breaking insight:
    Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space...
    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    1. Re:In other news by Mindee · · Score: 1

      Talking of Adams, this reminds me of how long Deep Thought used to calculate the 'answer'. Now we need another Government survey to find out what the answer means, and why it took a year=P

    2. Re:In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not only that, but it's hard to find a place to park!

  37. The Study Is NOT Late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The study was not late- it was STARTED in 1998. If anyone took the time to read it, the published research plan offers the study as an ongoing project, and research will continue even after these findings have been published. This type of academic work will likely go on for decades, progressing as does the internet (although I believe the US gov. is the wrong people to be conducting such a study.)

  38. Wrong topic by Lispy · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    This should be part of "It's funny, laugh!".

  39. Obligatory SNL commercial by mattmentecky · · Score: 5, Funny

    The "need for more TLDs" reminds me of an old SNL fake commercial:

    [Scene of father helping son ride a bicycle for the first time, then, cut to the living room of their house]

    Father: Trust, an important part of building a family, and an important part of building his future. That's why I rely on Dillon/Edwards and Company. For nearly a century, investors on Wall Street have trusted Dillon and Edwards with their financial future. And now all of the resources from America's oldest investment firm are available on-line. [Father is at the computer as the website appears, along with web address] Dillon and Edwards on the Internet, at www.clownpenis.fart. A lot of investment companies rushed onto the Internet, but Dillon and Edwards took their time. Sure, when they were ready, there was one web address left, but it's one you can count on.

    Announcer #1: For mutual funds, count on...

    Announcer #2: ...clownpenis.fart.

    Announcer #1: Online brokerage...

    Announcer #2: ...clownpenis.fart.

    Announcer #1: Retirement and tuition planning...

    Announcer #2: ...clownpenis.fart.

    [Caption: Dillon/Edwards Investments-www.clownpenis.fart]

    Announcer #1: Dillon and Edwards Investments...

    Announcer #2: ...at www.clownpenis.fart.

    1. Re:Obligatory SNL commercial by The+Real+Nem · · Score: 1

      Sadly it seems that www.clownpenis.com, www.clownpenis.net and www.clownpenis.org have all been registered. (What does it take to get a decent domain name these days?) Maybe we really do need a .fart TLD...

  40. Government computer info by cwapface · · Score: 0

    I just finished Air Force computer training, and you would be surprised at what is still included. We were taught extensive knowledge of ISA and VLB architecture, with exactly zero mention of usb 2.0 or firewire. And this was from a class that was last updated in Jan 2005

  41. The real findings of the study. by lupinstel · · Score: 1, Funny

    After 7 years the learned that 90% of internet traffic was caused by dancing baby and hampster websites.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
  42. Re:It did not take 7 years - they completed the st by nate+nice · · Score: 0, Troll

    "The United States has Iraq, Iran, Syria, China, the EU, The UN, The Environment, Social Security and Jobs to worry about before a bottom of the heap internet study is to be conducted."

    Bomb them, get ready to bomb them, bomb them later, exploit them, screw them, ignore them, piss on it, destroy it and down play it. So, lets study the Net!

    --
    "If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."
  43. decentralization by gatrox · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It also recommended those traffic-directing computers continue to be operated by volunteers, organizations and corporations around the world rather than governments.
    This seems to be an important conclusion of the study, which the summary failed to mention...

  44. They found..... by varmittang · · Score: 0, Redundant

    DNS GOOOOD...Spam BAAAAD.

    --
    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
    12345
    -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
    1. Re:They found..... by superpulpsicle · · Score: 2, Funny

      If it wasn't for porn, they'd have an answer in 1 year.

    2. Re:They found..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      DNS GOOOOD...Spam BAAAAD.
      Parent got modded "Redundant". Define: irony.
  45. How about replacing internet1 ? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2, Interesting

    TCP/IP was designed to be reduant incase of a nuclear war. It was never meant to be secure or high performance.

    I think a new secure (non drm) and multimedia and fiber optic friendly replacement is needed. Also application level protocals could use some new standards as well.

    For example Email is a problem that both phishers and spammers are taking advantage of. I heard about Dmail as a replacement for SMTP and Pop3.

    I am thinking perhaps several levels of security servers similiar to dns servers producing encryption keys and authenticating phisher scams (maybe a legit business could get a unique key) and email addresses would be nice. Its also too easy to spoof an IP address. Maybe security in a new DNS model that hands out keys would be nice too.

    However Internet2 which is being experimented with has its own set of problems. Internet2 mainly deals with IPV6. IPv6 supposed to be a little bit better but spammers and phishers could change their IP addresses by the hour to prevent being caught and being filtered out. We need a better replacement that is more secure and allows better application level embedding for external protocals.

    If I were a politician I would do this just and have Darpa and a few companies and academics invest in a newer architecture.

    More router friendly support would be nice too to deal with bandwith allocation for different kinds of services like VOIP and UDP media streaming.

    1. Re:How about replacing internet1 ? by kneeless · · Score: 2, Informative
      TCP/IP was designed to be reduant incase of a nuclear war. It was never meant to be secure or high performance.

      Are you joking? TCP was designed to be redundant for data intregity, not nuclear war you bozo. And in many cases (such as high data loss situations, wireless) TCP outperforms UDP because of the window and it's confirmation. UDP only has a checksum, when it doesn't get the same info, it resends; TCP is smarter.
    2. Re:How about replacing internet1 ? by Lovesquid · · Score: 1

      Austin: There are 2 things that scare me, and one of them is nuclear war.

      Basil: What's the other?

      Austin: Excuse me?

      Basil: What's the other thing that scares you?

      Austin: Carnies. Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands.

    3. Re:How about replacing internet1 ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... the preceding announcement was brought to you by the Disney Corporation(tm). The Disney Corporation(tm), where "all your ideas, hard work and children are belong to us"(tm).

    4. Re:How about replacing internet1 ? by burns210 · · Score: 1

      I would say:

      *Move clients(Linux, Mac, Windows, Unix, Switches, Routers, etc, etc) to a more scalable/aggressive TCP due to larger bandwidth being available with broadband users(this makes computer better tap internet connections they have available more quickly).

      *Keep moving to IPv6 in the background/backbone and use DNS to hide the ugly addresses to end users. IPv6 will make random scans of hosts more difficult(theoretically) and it requires IPSEC on all connections for better authentication.

      *Create more root DNS servers hosted by universities, the government, and/or interested businesses. Diversity is a good thing.

      *Encourage companies to use(and sell) standards compliant tools and products. Such as the latest CSS2, XHTML, etc.

      *Get rid of web-accessible default passwords for machines/appliances as quickly as possible. A first-login password change would be a start. Having virtually every switch, router and popular server appliance having a default (and sometimes unremovable) password setup is just scary.

      As for spam. I think ISPs being more careful on who rogue servers they accept email from(enough to block zombie machines, not enough to block small time webmasters from hosting their own email server), and server AND client side spam filtering will fix the problem. Spam filters, white/black lists, etc can cut over 99% of spam out, even in heavy traffic environments. I don't think spam blocking needs to be a protocol or even a standard, just a common practice.

      Now, if we could get email protocols that better authenticated to proper domains(spoofing and such) then we might have a something.

  46. 95% of all government studies... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ... ah nevermind, too easy.

  47. Two presidents later? by ChipMonk · · Score: 1

    If this was commissioned in 1998, during Bill Clinton's perj^H^H^H^Hpresidency, and then concluded during GWB's perj^H^H^H^Hpresidency...

    Was someone the Perj^H^H^H^HPresident in between them?

    1. Re:Two presidents later? by jc42 · · Score: 1

      Heh. Maybe they were counting Al Gore as the other president, since he was the one who got the most votes in 2000. ;-)

      Too bad he was such a lazy bum, and delegated the entire job to Dubya.

      Oh, well; they say that one part of being a good manager is knowing how to delegate authority and responsibility to others. At least Al doesn't have to take the blame for Iraq.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    2. Re:Two presidents later? by djp928 · · Score: 1

      Bill Clinton + GWB = 2 Presidents

      -- Dave

    3. Re:Two presidents later? by EEBaum · · Score: 1

      Martin Sheen, perhaps?

      --
      -- I prefer the term "karma escort."
    4. Re:Two presidents later? by EEBaum · · Score: 1

      Bill Clinton + GWB = 2 Presidents

      "two presidents later" grammatically implies that there were three total, the one you started with, and two that came later than it. "one president later" would be the appropriate quote.

      --
      -- I prefer the term "karma escort."
    5. Re:Two presidents later? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes kang or kodos i dont realy remeber
      i just remeber voting for the other guy

    6. Re:Two presidents later? by Koiu+Lpoi · · Score: 1

      Yes, actually. I don't know if you caught it, but Cheney, after watching Donald Trump, fired Bush.

  48. Because Gore tried to take credit for it!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Quoth Gore:

    "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

    Al Gore claims to have "[taken] the initiative". Not any initiative, not anyone else, but he took the initiative. If that's not claiming to invent the internet, then nothing is.

    Try to debunk it all you want. Heck, there's even a Flat Earth Society you can join.

    But the fact is, Gore did try to claim credit for the creation of the internet.

    1. Re:Because Gore tried to take credit for it!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      taking _the_ initiative is always ambiguous. it's just a phrase that no longer means what the literal components suggest it means.

    2. Re:Because Gore tried to take credit for it!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Al Gore claims to have "[taken] the initiative".
      Damn right. There was an initiative in Congress to create the Internet. Al Gore was the one who took it through Congress and got it passed.

      People who understand English can generally understand that.

      But the fact is, Gore did try to claim credit for the creation of the internet.
      Usted habla español? Francais? Sprechen Sie Deutsches?
  49. The study is done! by Rorschach1 · · Score: 1

    Now if only someone would invent a way to quickly disseminate the information to those who need it...

  50. I'm impressed! by bdbolton · · Score: 1

    The government spent 7 years on a project and _only_ used 1 million dollars. That's very frugal by government standards.

  51. Re:perfect! by Lord+Bitman · · Score: 1

    now define "porn" in such a way that everyone is happy and both satisfies those who want to block things and wont interfere with mixed-content sites.

    and how would that really help google without a seperate .xxx-oral, .xxx-anal, .xxx-asian, .xxx-scat, .xxx-bdsm, etc, etc, and all combinations of them? And is Anal a subcatagory of Interratial or is Interratial a subcatagory of Anal?

    Have you ever actually looked for porn on the internet? I suspect not. Who the fuck wants porn, any porn, it doesnt matter what is thrown at me, to the extent that making a seperate "porn" tld would help google in any way at all?

    See, this is why I work with databases. These are complex information sets :)

    --
    -- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
  52. The Speed of Light by Lord+Grey · · Score: 1
    A sentence or two past that one in Hitchhiker's Guide is (IMO) one of the funniest quotes in the entire series:
    Even light, which travels so fast that it takes most races thousands of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between the stars.
    That still makes me laugh.
    --
    // Beyond Here Lie Dragons
  53. Re:The Study Is NOT Late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The article says it was started in 1998 and supposed to be finished in 9 months. How is that not late?

  54. .ro domains by Redlof · · Score: 1

    I know that John Romero uses .ro for his rome.ro site. I like the idea of better domain name orginization, but exceptions should be made for puns.

  55. Intenet time vs. Government time by alispguru · · Score: 1

    What more needs to be said?

    --

    To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
  56. Re:Where is the Grace Commission when you need the by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I smell ...$640 toilet seats...

    Do they smell better than the cheaper ones? The cheap ones stink.

    Sorry, couldn't resist.

  57. Internet died yesterday? by DagNasty420 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I know this is off topic, but I've been searching the web since it happened hoping for a news article. Last night at about 1 AM eastern the gaming server I was in died, XFire (gaming chat) died, AIM died, and my web sites which were on 1and1.com servers were down, yet google and tons of other servers worked fine. I know it wasn't my connection because the aim servers went completely down for about a minute, as well as the xfire servers because I signed back on as soon as it all came back up and noone else on my buddy list was on out of the 12 or so that was on before it happened. i asked them all and they said they got disconnected. They all live in different states and have different ISPs. I checked my modem logs and nothing had happened with my connection. I went back to the game server and everyone said it "crashed" not realized what I had realized. Something weird happened, and I'm curious as to what it was. Oh, and the game server was in Texas.

  58. A TLD for every person? by Cee · · Score: 1

    We should probably have some more TLDs

    I take this opportunity to do a shameless repost from my blog (sundae.se).. It's mostly just a random thought, and would probably not work in real life. But still an intersting idea, I think. (By the way, there seem to be other people having some similar ideas.) Ok, here goes:

    I'm having an idea about how to get an almost endless resource of domain names available on the internet. I'm pretty sure I read something similar on Slashdot, but I lost the reference a long time ago.

    Anyway, the idea is to allow anyone to register a top level domain (like .com, .net, .se) - but you can't use it directly. So whenever a top level domain is created, you have to register a second level domain (like sundae.se) under it to make use of it. Also, it's free for everyone to make use of the newly created top level domain. This system would allow people and companies to share the same second level domain to a much larger degree than now. Just like people have the same surnames, but have different street addresses, which makes them distinguishable. One example would be: apple.rec, apple.comp, apple.fruit.

    However, this system also opens up a door for scammers and other not-so-nice people, because it's easy to get confused about if the domain really belongs to the company it claims to do. And we don't want people to get tricked into fake online banking sites, do we? Some kind of certificate (which you would get when registering your domain) integrated with the DNS would maybe solve this problem. The browser could then compare the certificate with the one on the web server and display the results quite visible, for every address the user visits. Also, some kind of machine learning technology could be used to monitor the certificates and warn the user if something is wrong. To discourage the use of disposable, throw away domains (that would make spammers really happy), there would still have be some kind of fee to register a domain.

  59. Busywork by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

    Maybe this study's long gestation is what has kept the US Federal government off our backs so much for so long. Now the floodgates can open - call for Orrin (the Moron) Hatch on Line 1.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:Busywork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Still blowing smoke up the asses of people that mistake your cruft for informative I see. Grow up and get a life. The almost 50 post-a-day lifestyle is very over-rated.

  60. and soon they'll complete the video game study by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    with results like "advocates shooting people, dogs, and ducks with a lightgun and possibly leading to school shootings" and "advocates jumping on turtles and kicking them at other things and people".

  61. Well then... by rogabean · · Score: 1

    Let me be the first person to congratulate them!

    [insert random sarcasm here]

    --
    "why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
  62. WHY is this a government thing? by Ulrich+Hobelmann · · Score: 1

    The government has no right to waste taxpayers' money on a needless study. People have the right to communicate freely, and the internet is just a voluntary network (consisting of individuals and network carriers) to provide a communication medium.

    There is no reason at all for the goverment to study anything about internet traffic. If that's considered interesting, then some research lab should do that, or a student for their whatever thesis.

    Once again I'm happy not to be a US citizen (the other reason would be that stupid war). But I think Europe is just as bad.

    I encourage everyone to write to their 1998 congressmen and ask them why they voted for this stupid thing.

  63. ...and the report won't even be available online by AllTheGoodNamesWereT · · Score: 1

    According to the National Academies press release announcing the report, they won't be making it available on the Web. Printed copies will be available for sale for $40. So not only will it be out of date at the time it is released, it will also be inaccessible to most of the peopele who might be interested!

  64. This is how it went: by Tribbin · · Score: 1

    (Back in 1998)

    expert 1: DNS is ok.
    expert 2: DNS sucks, it's not gonna last 7 years.
    expert 1: Wanna bet?

    --
    If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
  65. Funny you should mention that... by minkie · · Score: 1

    This goes well with "IT: 95% of IT Projects Not Delivered On Time" reported earlier today.

  66. Government in Action by Scott7477 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A conclusion one might draw from the article is that one can only study things that don't change:)...Seriously, though.
    The main problem that this incident shows to me is how difficult it is to kill a government program of any kind once it has been started. Since the study was driven by an act of Congress, it would have taken another bill passed through the entire legislative process to kill the study. Since the people contracted to do the study and the congressmen of whatever state the study was done in had every incentive to keep the thing going, some other group would have had to notice and start a push to get rid of this.
    Since it was a small budget item buried in the massive federal budget, nobody noticed it. If it had been noticed and some representative had brought the issue up in the House, the reps from the state involved would have thrown a fit. So it sticks around.
    It's important to know that once something is authorized by Congress, it is budgeted for every year unless it is specifically killed in a budget bill.
    In Bush's last budget request, the administration included a list of small programs like this one that they wanted to kill. Of course, every single item on the list had reps saying how critical it was to keep the funding.
    Maybe we should be spending a little more time looking at what the government is actually doing rather than talking about tinfoil hats and berating George Lucas.

    Cheers...

    --
    "Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
  67. Good use for that domain cash by Hoi+Polloi · · Score: 1

    Instead of emigrating Tuvalu should use the $50 mill or so that they got for their .tv domain to buy rocks and dirt from other countries.

    --
    It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
    1. Re:Good use for that domain cash by MenTaLguY · · Score: 1

      Factoring in shipping costs, $50 mil won't buy very much rocks and dirt.

      --

      DNA just wants to be free...
  68. Obligatory Simpsons Quote by lbmouse · · Score: 1

    They sound about as bright as Homer:
    "Hmm, they have the internet on computers now."

  69. Re: And the report concludes..... by rjelks · · Score: 1

    1. Start a business with an "e" in front of the name.
    2. Get lots of people to invest,
    3. ?????
    4. Profit!

    The stock market did what??...Nevermind

  70. Right on! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Finished before the deadline. What do you mean, 95% IT projects don't finish on time? Psh, with 4 years to spare, this puppy came in way early. Nice job Gov't IT.

  71. SLD's by lcam · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe it would make sense to start promoting SLD's (Second Level Domains) So, boeing could get boeing.aero.com Embraer (a brazilian company who manufactures planes) may get embraer.aero.com as well as embraer.com.br. A person who hacks may get 3v1l7w1n.hacker.net And TV broadcasters can get HBO.tv.com and get a refund for the 50 m paid to Tuvalu. And everyone can be happy appending a ".com" to everything.

    1. Re:SLD's by jacquesm · · Score: 1

      great idea, give these dudes a call:

      Registrant:
      Aero.com
      14881 East Hills Dr.
      San Jose, CA 95127
      US

      Domain Name: AERO.COM

      Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
      Voloshin, Paul info@AERO.COM
      Aero.Com
      14881 E HILLS DR
      SAN JOSE, CA 95127-2521
      US
      408-923-6500 fax: 408-923-7500

      I'm sure Boeing, Embraer and Airbus will fall all over themselves to make that happen...

    2. Re:SLD's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you really mean SLD's or did you really mean to type STD's? Imagine the url: www.really-bad-drip.cure ? Be careful where what you plug that input device!

  72. I would have modd'ed that troll by Rooked_One · · Score: 1

    but then we would have gotten into the whole orc vs troll thing in warcraft, and we all know nightelfs rule.

    1. Re:I would have modd'ed that troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Blizz trolls are just twisted elves anyway.

  73. The Internet will do that to you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "When it started, it seemed important; then it faded completely from sight."

    So, is that when they discovered porn?

    It took them 7 years to see all the porn online. No wonder they asked for more TLD's...

  74. In other news by Potatomasher · · Score: 1

    An independant commission started under president Reagan, whose purpose was to supply recommendations for the amount of memory governments computers should have, just wrapped up their investigation saying: "64k ought to be enough for everyone".

    --
    A million monkeys and this is the best sig they could come up with...
  75. Re: And the report concludes..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    lmfao

    that was dumb but the ???? -> profit make me almost spit out my coffee laughing.

  76. Don't you mean "typical government"? by lxt · · Score: 1

    You know, if you just remove "Using Electrons", you'd have the typical government - Big, Complicated, Busy, and full of pornography.

  77. The report by Florian+Weimer · · Score: 1

    Read the only version at Signposts in Cyberspace. There's an interesting section on Verisign's Site Finder service.

  78. No, YOU have been spun. by AtariAmarok · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "You are a victim of spin"

    No, you are. This is one of the worse Snopes articles, as it tries to gloss over these important facts:

    Gore did claim to be the one to bring the Internet into being while in Congress. He used the word "Create". "Invent" means the same thing in this context.

    Gore's claim was incorrect: the Internet had already existed, and was called the Internet for a few years before he was in Congress.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:No, YOU have been spun. by IPFreely · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Damn straight.

      And John Kennedy had nothing to do with putting a man on the moon. After all he didn't invent any rockets. Rockets existed before him. He didn't pilot the rockets. He didn't make space suits. He didn't leave his foot prints on the moon. He did NOTHING.

      Well, except he put the political pressure together on all the right agencies to get moving. .... And he made sure the necessary money was appropriated for it. ... and he guided other political groups, Congress and private industry to work together on the matter. Nothing significant really.

      And it turns out that these are all the same things that Gore did for the internet. Parts existed prior to Gore, but he's the one who put together the political support and money to take it to the next level and bring it public. Without him it might have remained a research project for another 5-10 years. Until someone else "invented" it, maybe someone more politically favorable to you.

      --
      There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
    2. Re:No, YOU have been spun. by bombadillo · · Score: 1

      Actually the article does cover those two things. Looks like you were a victim of not researching both sides of the story...

      Gore did claim to be the one to bring the Internet into being while in Congress. He used the word "Create". "Invent" means the same thing in this context.

      FROM TFA: To those who say the words "create" and "invent" mean the same thing: If they mean the same thing, then why have the media overwhelmingly and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he "invented" the Internet when he never used that word?

      Gore's claim was incorrect: the Internet had already existed, and was called the Internet for a few years before he was in Congress

      FROM TFA: today's Internet came into being well before Gore's first term in Congress began in 1977

    3. Re:No, YOU have been spun. by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
      "To those who say the words "create" and "invent" mean the same thing then why have the media overwhelmingly..."

      Who cares? I'm just evaluating whether or not the paraphase of him saying he invented it is correct. It appears to be correct (the meanings are close enough), but using the word "invent" in an exact quote of Mr. Gore is incorrect. However the media spins it is another story.

      "FROM TFA: today's Internet came into being well before Gore's first term in Congress began in 1977"

      That is buried in there, isn't it? Yet, I've seen TFA used as support for the claim that Gore really did create the Internet.

      --
      Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    4. Re:No, YOU have been spun. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ..."In a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

      Taken in context, the sentence, despite some initial ambiguity, means that as a congressman Gore promoted the system we enjoy today, not that he could patent the science, though that's how the quotation has been manipulated. Hence the disingenuous substitution of "inventing" for the actual language."...

    5. Re:No, YOU have been spun. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No it wasn't. Something called Arpanet was informally refered to as "The Internet" before any initiatives were taken through Congress. But if you think Arpanet and the Internet as we know it today are more than one being the foundation for the other, then you're an even bigger idiot than your choice of an Atari ST over the Amiga would credit you as being.

    6. Re:No, YOU have been spun. by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
      "No it wasn't"

      Study some Internet history. Look at the FAQ. The Snopes article even refers to it being created before Gore was involved. Logically, if something was created before someone says it was created, then the "says" is false. Simple matter of the timing of events.

      --
      Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  79. Just another lawsuit by BancBoy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Then NBC would have to sue the guys that squat on clownpenis.fart once the domain is available. And yes, I did say "squat on clownpenis." Better post this anonymousl...whoops.

    --
    [UID-HeinzIntel]
  80. Don't blame the bureaucrats, blame Congress by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    At the bottom of the article:

    "U.S. government didn't open its wallet as promised to pay for the study until 2001"

    That's how it works here in Washington. First, Congress passes a law authorizing a program. But until it passes a spending bill to appropriate money for the program, nothing happens.

    Somone in the Commerce committee writes a bill authorizing the study and gets it passed. But getting the members of the Appropriations subcommittee and full committee to include funding for the study in the annual Commerce appropriations bill is a different thing entirely.

    There are thousands of discretionary programs that either never get funded or are underfunded, so they basically just never happen.

  81. The fundamental unit of computer logic by lildogie · · Score: 1

    The unit of computer logic, the alogorithm, is named after former U.S. Vice President, Al Gore, who is the inventor of the Internet.

  82. make it voluntary by Heisenbug · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is a great point, and I'd hate to see .xxx legally required, but that doesn't make it useless. It simply becomes an easy flag that says "I would prefer that whoever you consider to be minors not have access to this material." The vast majority of porn sites aren't interested in underage users anyway, I bet -- they don't have credit cards and they cause trouble if the parents find out. Are there any problems with xxx as a voluntary tool?

    I guess the only one that comes to mind for me is that not every "adult only" site would want to be associated with hard core pornography, which is what xxx more typically means. What are the alternatives, given that long TLDs suck? .res[tricted]? .adult? .old? I kind of like that one ...

  83. uh oh... by Cap'n+Steve · · Score: 0

    "And I think .ro is "read only". I don't get it either. ;)"

    Shit! I've been allowing write access to my .com for years then. Wait . . . .coms are executable, too! Oh, my host is going to be pissed.

  84. mod parent -1, worst pun ever by MustardMan · · Score: 1

    n/t

  85. New DNS system implemented by CardiganKiller · · Score: 2, Funny

    After much careful thought and consideration, the government has decided to instate a new domain system represented by numbers instead of characters. The reason for this is that characters are much more difficult to organize into a hierarchy. The new DNS system implements a series of four 3-digit numbers seperated by '.'s. One official was quoted as saying, "We're trying to make the system more like the telephone numbering scheme, which has been around for decades, and which everyone is quite familiar with." Each DNS capable machine will include a "contacts" list similar to a cell phone that links the associated DNS number with a name specified by the user.

  86. .terrorist domain name by ModernDayRasputin · · Score: 1

    I was discussing this report with former Secratary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge. He told me that he had been pussing for a .terrorist TLD for two years. He wants all terrorist web sites to have this domain extension. Al Queda is strongly opposed.

  87. A mistake more than a lie by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    While the statement is incorrect, it would be more fair to call it a mistake than some sort of diabolical lie.

    "He was very intstumental in getting government funding for the internet."

    Yes, but at the time he did this, the Internet was in place. He helped it along. He did not create it.

    "He was not on the stump and repeatedly making the claim as the conservative media would have the public believe"

    I have seen reference to it in many sites. Not once have I seen conservative media say that he said it many times. Or even more than once. Usually, the reader is pointed to the one instance of the CNN interview.

    "Like it or not the Internet could not have become what it is today with out government funding. Al Gore was a big part of getting that funding."

    You can say the same thing about Henry Ford, sort of. However this does not mean that Ford brought the automobile into existence.

    Summary

    Gore did a lot for the Internet

    Yet, he did not create it.

    When he said he did, it was not a true statement.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:A mistake more than a lie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Yes, but at the time he did this, the Internet was in place. He helped it along. He did not create it.
      Not in 1984 there wasn't. Arpanet, yes. But nothing we'd recognize as the Internet today.

      I don't want to get too heated about this, clearly the thread originator was making a light joke, but inevitably someone's quoted the actual inventors of the Internet as saying that Gore wasn't lying when he said he pushed through the Internet creation initiative through Congress, and inevitably those who (a) do not understand the comment (it was badly worded) and (b) have no idea of the history of thing are weighing in saying Vint Cerf, of all people, doesn't know who did what.

      Until the very late eighties and early nineties, there were a number of networks that had loose communications with one another but were, nonetheless, identifiably seperate. There was the informal UUCP network, which arguably is the closest thing to a direct ideological precursor of the Internet, an open network based on cooperation from its participants. There was the Arpanet, the network from which the modern Internet got its protocols, initial seeding values and groups, and the "Internet" name, but which was essentially closed to all but a privileged group of academics and the military. There was BITNET and other organized networks which existed primarily because of the closed nature of the Arpanet and the unattractive phone-based store and forward technology of the UUCP network.

      What we call the Internet today is the merger of these networks, the opening up of the Arpanet, the replacement of UUCP with TCP/IP based alternatives to run the same systems and communication paths.

      Quite simply, if you had been around in 1984, you wouldn't have found an Internet Service Provider because they didn't exist. You couldn't have founded an ISP, because you'd have not, legally, been able to peer with the Arpanet. (How closed was the Arpanet? Jerry Pournelle was banned from using it in the late eighties after a sequence of events that started with him mentioning its existance in one of his Byte columns. That's how closed it was.)

      Quite simply, what we know as The Internet did not exist in the eighties. It took legislation to open up the Arpanet, and cooperation from numerous groups to get the various networks, commercial and non-commercial, to join with it to create what we see today.

      Who took that initiative, that funding, the set of government mandates etc necessary, through Congress? Vint Cerf says it was Al Gore.

    2. Re:A mistake more than a lie by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
      "Not in 1984 there wasn't. Arpanet, yes. But nothing we'd recognize as the Internet today"

      The Internet existed and the name Internet was used for it in the early 1970s, before Gore got involved. It's history. You cannot change it. Even the Snopes article says this.

      "But nothing we'd recognize as the Internet today."

      Why is this even worth mentioning? The Internet today hardly resembles what it was when Mr. Gore LEFT Congress. It evolves. I've got a bucketfull of spam and mp3 files that I can send you to show evidence of big change even after Gore's involvement :)

      "Quite simply, if you had been around in 1984, you wouldn't have found an Internet Service Provider because they didn't exist"

      So? Inventing the ISP company is not the same as inventing the Internet. To use this in support of Gore's untrue claim, we can say that those who invented the air conditioner invented the automobile!

      We get your point. Gore helped change the Internet. But he did not create it.

      "Quite simply, what we know as The Internet did not exist in the eighties"

      Certainly it existed before that: in the early 1970s. It has evolved over time, including with help from Gore. This evolution does not change these facts.

      "Who took that initiative, that funding, the set of government mandates etc necessary, through Congress? Vint Cerf says it was Al Gore."

      The same Vint Cerf who has been quoted saying that Gore did not create the Internet....

      --
      Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  88. .terrorist domain name by ModernDayRasputin · · Score: 1

    I was discussing this report with former Secratary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge. He told me that he had been pussing for a .terrorist TLD for two years. He wants all terrorist web sites to have this domain extension. Al Queda is strongly opposed.

  89. It had to be said by timothykaine · · Score: 0

    I personally would like to welcome our new... wait... these assholes already ARE our overlords. :(

  90. Re:It did not take 7 years - they completed the st by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    "Hey, have you done that survey yet?"

    "Not yet Sir, George asked me to invade Iraq. Can I start it in a few months?"

    "Well, ok. Don't forget you also have to fix global warming this week."

    "It's ok, George said that wasn't important right now."

  91. "2 presidents later"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If this was finished in 1999, would you say it was finished "1 president later"?

  92. Bah! by Adapt+or+Die · · Score: 1

    I was hoping for George, and all I got was freakin' John.

  93. Bad analogies by AtariAmarok · · Score: 2, Insightful
    "And John Kennedy had nothing to do with putting a man on the moon"

    Kennedy did launch the Apollo program, actually. But the reason yout analogy is BAD is because the Internet existed before Gore claimed he created it. We did not put a man on the moon before Kennedy started Apollo. A matter of order of events that you are forgetting.

    "And it turns out that these are all the same things that Gore did for the internet. Parts existed prior to Gore"

    It existed, and it was called the Internet. Others created it before he was involved. Yes, we know he helped improve it greatly....after it was created by others.

    "he's the one who put together the political support and money to take it to the next level and bring it public."

    So? We all know that. However, this information of him helping it grow after the fact of its creation does not make his claim of "took the initiative in creating the Internet" any more true. There is an actual historic timeline here, and you seem to be ignoring that some events took place before others.

    "Without him it might have remained a research project for another 5-10 years. Until someone else "invented" it, maybe someone more politically favorable to you."

    Look at the history of the Internet and get back with us. It was "invented" before Gore, so "without him" it STILL would have been invented. The actual order of events, again. If event A occurs before event B, event A still occurs even if event B never did.

    "Until someone else "invented" it, maybe someone more politically favorable to you."

    So it is a matter of bias to you? It isn't to me. I'm just seeing whether his statement was true or not.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:Bad analogies by IPFreely · · Score: 1
      Yo, chill. Don't take my word for it. After all, I'm noone.

      Would you be more convenced if Vint Cerf said it?

      --
      There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
    2. Re:Bad analogies by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      But the reason yout analogy is BAD is because the Internet existed before Gore claimed he created it.

      It did not exist as a network owned by companies who made money from others pating to access it. It was still largly a government entity. He got the government out of the Internet. The Internet was created from government funds, then handed off to the private sector. He was involved in the handoff. Without him, there would be no open Internet that we know and love. There would be a government owned and run network that looked much different.

  94. someone claiming Gore invented it. by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1

    Please see this posting in Slashdot for an example of someone claiming that Gore really did create the Internet. These kind of claims are rather common.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  95. But too late for Al by hawk · · Score: 1
    Just think, had this come out on time, he could have *proved* that he invented it . . .

    :)

    hawk

  96. It's not always possible. by hawk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wanted eyry.com, but it had been snatched up as a four letter dictionary word by speculators. The same for eyry.net, so I ended up with eyry.org.

    The same thing, but worse, happened with dochawk. Within days of my my first query for dochawk.com, it was parked. So I checked for dochawk.net, and it went. I took dochawk.org immedeiately on checking.

    Given the timing, I can't believe that anything happened other than someone monitoring the lookups and snatching domains . . .

    But at least we're posting this on slashdot.com :)

    hawk

    1. Re:It's not always possible. by notanatheist · · Score: 1

      Errr... would you believe I got my .com in one shot? Actually, I only thought about 2 or 3 names and I'm happy with what I ended up with.

    2. Re:It's not always possible. by hawk · · Score: 1

      If I'd been sure that I would actually buy it, I could have had it the first day.

      There really wasn't a substitute for "eyry" for me, though there are other spellings. But that's the one that I've used for years (an eyry [eyrie, aerie] is the nesting place of hawks and other raptors).

      And given the nature of the site (economic and legal commentary), there reaally wasn't a close second for "dochawk", either

      hawk, aka dochawk

  97. more than just .com by The+Monster · · Score: 1

    I happen to work for a company that has .com (where most people who have heard of us would go looking for us) but my email address is @.net
    I always make a point of stressing that last part because otherwise my email would never get to me. On the gripping hand, maybe that would be a good thing....

    --

    [100% ISO 646 Compliant]
    SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.

  98. Did you read it? by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    Did you even read the Vint Cerf article? It is not very good support for the idea that Gore really did create the Internet. Cerf devotes much attention to the work he did in helping the Internet evolve. Why even waste time on that: we all agree he did it and it was very important?

    However, Cerf does not agree that Gore created the Internet. In fact, Cerf's wording "Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet" speaks to it existing before Gore got involved with it. Cerf's wording also implies that Gore's statement was not true (Gore just did not really mean to say it that way).

    Elsewhere, Cerf says "Our work on the Internet started in 1973". This is about 4 years before Gore got into Congress. He helped expand it. He helped get others involved. Yeah, Gore helped fund it. He helped open it. He helped sell it. But the creation part? Someone else took that initiative....

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:Did you read it? by IPFreely · · Score: 1
      Dude, you're a lost cause. You ignore snopes and Cerf. You completely ignore the credit given, and nit pick semantics until you find one little detail you can slam.

      It sounds like you're getting really hung up on the word "create". Is that all you're really pissed about? There's a lot more to the word "create" that does not mean invent. I mean, noone creates anything if you claim that all atoms existed before whatever we form them into.

      But I have one little nit of my own to pick. It wasn't called the "Internet" back then. As late as the mid 80's there were various distinct networks, like ARPANET, BITNET, UUNET. There was nothing with the name "Internet". So if all you care about is the name, then you're wrong. If it's about putting the various parts together, then it happened in the 80' or later, with Gores help. Either way, you're wrong about it being there before Gore.

      --
      There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
    2. Re:Did you read it? by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
      "You ignore snopes and Cerf"

      Snopes acknowledges that it was created before Gore got involved. I quoted Cerf's words on the matter.

      "It sounds like you're getting really hung up on the word "create". "

      I thought the issue was whether or not a claim of "create" was correct or not?

      "There's a lot more to the word "create" that does not mean invent."

      You are weaseling now....

      "But I have one little nit of my own to pick. It wasn't called the "Internet" back then"

      That would be a good nit to pick if it existed. However, the name "Internet" was used for it in by 1974.... still before Gore's involvement. See below.

      "Either way, you're wrong about it being there before Gore"

      And you accuse me of ignoring Cerf and Snopes: both of them say it was there before Gore.

      Seeing as how you ignore your own sources, here is another: "The History of the Internet and Web."

      Please see this part: "1974 May Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn publish 'A Protocol for Packet Network Internetworking', which established the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). This is also the first time the term Internet was used. "

      --
      Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    3. Re:Did you read it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How does "internetworking" translate to internet? Seems like a standard word + a prefix.

      Are you implying that networking acutally means the process of "working" a physical "net"? Or that this is the first occurence of "Inter"?

      I also take issue with your use of weaseling. Perhaps if there were only a tiny difference you might be on to something, but you are not. For every example of "create" implying "invent" you could come up with 100 counterexamples. Every time you type a comment like that you "create" stupidity, but you certainly did not invent it.

      The only way to get from "create" to such a use use of "invent" is by willfully misinterpreting. It is easy to choose to hear what you want, especially if it casts someone you don't like in a bad way.

      Perhaps it is also hard to admit that you buy into the right wing spin (and yes it is just that), or that you are unable to admit your mistakes? Why do you have so much invested in this? I am sure there are very real issues with politicians truly lying that you could take up, but then you might have to look at who you profess to agree with. :) This is for you from me : "Even Bill O'Reily is right sometimes". See, I can do it, you can too!

      Thank god Gore championed the internet when no one else saw it for what it was. Without his guidance it really might have taken much longer, and possibly ended up much worse. If he hadn't protected it and ensured funding at all points, it certainaly would have withered on the vine, and you would have no way to exercize your rhetoric in public.

      - Not worth registering an account for.

  99. Welfare for a couple of suites... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    who are probably friends or relatives of the politicians who awarded the 'study'.

  100. Taken in context by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    "Taken in context, the sentence, despite some initial ambiguity, means that as a congressman Gore promoted the system "

    You are changing the sentence to fit your argument. Gore really said he created it. He did not say he promoted it.

    "though that's how the quotation has been manipulated"

    That is exactly what you did when you wiped the "create" word out and replaced it with "promote".

    "Hence the disingenuous substitution of "inventing" for the actual language.""

    How is this disingenous? When used this way, the word means the same thing. It is much less disingenous than your use of "promote" to mean "create".

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  101. If it was a /. story... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If it were a /. story they'd release it again next week and the editors wouldn't notice.
    The summary would be pasted from the article and claim it was bleeding edge.

  102. an even bigger idiot by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    "then you're an even bigger idiot than your choice of an Atari ST over the Amiga would credit you as being.

    No, you could not be more wrong. I did not choose the Atari ST. I chose the Atari 400 over the Amiga!

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  103. Re:The Study Is NOT Late by OldCrasher · · Score: 1

    It's not late if you consider it a software project; It's merely suffering from feature creap.

  104. Slashdot needs a new feature... by bsandersen · · Score: 1

    Stupid arguments 4 years old or older should also be below my threshold, regardless of moderator point assignments.

    Now that would be be a feature I could really use. This would be an excellent test case.

    -- Scott

  105. Who's Steven Crocker? by Bob9113 · · Score: 1

    Added Steven Crocker, a respected Internet pioneer: "It shouldn't have taken that long."

    Who the hell is Steven Crocker, and who did he blow to get this ridiculously out-of-place one line yawner crammed into the middle of this article? "It shouldn't have taken that long." Well now that is some poignant and inspiring commentary there, respected Internet pioneer Crocker. How about something on the price of oil? "It's pretty high." Thanks.

  106. Re:The Study Is NOT Late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll just save it on my 486 and the fabric of time will be preserved.

  107. its worse for .org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People look at me strange because I have a really old email from a public freenet. So I am always saying "Its .org, not .com!" but they still send it to .com anyways.

  108. TLDs I'd like to see by Phroggy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    .movie .radio .stock

    Every movie has a web site, but there's no way you could possibly guess the URL to most of them. If there were a restricted .movie TLD, studios could register the title of the movie under that TLD. Sure, there'd be a few conflicts, but it wouldn't be that bad.

    Every radio and television station is assigned call letters by the FCC (well, the station chooses, but the FCC actually assigns it). Stations usually also choose a name that they use for marketing, usually related to their call letters somehow. There would be quite a bit of overlap if radio stations could register their chosen marketing name under the .radio TLD, but registering their call letters seems like a pretty good idea to me (many already have with .com anyway, but there's really not much consistency here).

    I'm not sure if .stock is the best choice here, but it'd be nice to be able to enter a company's ticker symbol and get their web site. For example, mot.com and hpq.com are owned by those companies, but again this isn't standardized. I'd expect this TLD to be used mostly for redirects to a more attractive domain name (notice how www.mot.com redirects to www.motorola.com).

    Again, these TLDs would be useless if they weren't carefully restricted, but if usage became common enough that you could expect the domains to be registered, it would probably be pretty useful.

    --
    $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
    $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
    1. Re:TLDs I'd like to see by srleffler · · Score: 1

      This makes a lot of sense, which means it will never happen.

    2. Re:TLDs I'd like to see by Phroggy · · Score: 1

      Agreed. Oh well, it was a nice thought.

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  109. don't complain by chicago_scott · · Score: 1

    Don't complain. The more time the government spends studying the Internet the less time they spend doing stuff to the Internet.

    That's a good thing.

  110. Wow that's convenient by thelastguardian · · Score: 0

    The government does a study on "The current and next generation on internet". The Academy agreed, and what did they do?

    Wait 6 1/2 years, see how the "next gen" internet turns out, and just google online and copy down the past history of internet from stone age to 1998. Then they just see how the internet marched on from 1998, copy down the "history", and add "I predict that 'history' will happen".

    Wish I could do something like that-

    Teacher: Ok kids hand in your paragraph on Your Future.
    Me: OK just wait a sec.
    Teacher: OK

    SIX YEARS LATER

    Me: Here Mr. teacher
    Teacher: Wow you are absolutely correct
    Me: Can I have my A now?

    Bullshit

  111. Bang paths by hawk · · Score: 1

    Those weren't the old days.

    We used to have to specify a complete path from our machine to the recipient. SOmething like:

    To: someschool|devax|ibmsite|john@destination

    (or did john go at the beginning? It *has* been a while . . .)

    If memory serves, tehre were two usenet groups dedicated to finding paths to people (If they could see your post, it gave them the return path).

    hawk

    1. Re:Bang paths by jacquesm · · Score: 1

      hehe, yes, there's that too :)

      totally slipped my mind, as did those funny fidonet addresses.

      This stuff really has evolved. If the rest of the world would evolve at the speed of the net we'd probably be able to fully appreciate one of DNA's characters in the guide that evolves so fast by the time it has reached for the tea it no longer can drink it.

      Makes you wonder though if we've reached a point where that progress will slow down a bit, IPV6 seems to be stalled indefinitely wrt large scale deployment, and some other technologies that were supposed to supplant older ones are not deployed as much as was expected (XML'ized html for instance).

      we sure live in interesting times !

  112. My only question is... by cmacb · · Score: 1

    (as is almost always the case when the government releases a study on anything)

    Where can I go to get a refund?

  113. One alternative solution... by jd · · Score: 1
    Simply ban anyone from owning more than one second-level domain name. If you want multiple names, run your own nameserver and have as many as you like.


    For example, it's not unusual for companies to give every product they ever produce not only their own domain name, but a domain name in each of the top-level domains (for trademark reasons). Firstly, that defeats the whole point of having a top-level domain system. You might as well scrap it completely and cut the clutter. Secondly, it makes it hard to name anything sensibly unless you're either rich enough or fast enough to grab control first.


    With most people using search engines, bookmarks and other alternate naming/identifying schemes that have nothing to do with DNS at all, it might be better to just eliminate the system altogether. It is not unusual for people to steal domains by faxing the registrar a request to move the name to someone else's control. Many domains have inaccurate or blatantly bogus registration information. As a method of providing control and accountability, it is useless in its current form.


    Besides, it might force Internet companies to actually sell something meaningful.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  114. where did he get his quotes? by Kaptain+Kruton · · Score: 1

    Where did he get the quotes "DNS is good" and "We should probably have some more TLDs?" I did not see those in the article he posted. If he read the report, why does he not provide a link to the report? The report has 283 pages of conclusions. If it just came out, how did he read all of that and then post the quotes?

    -Kruton

  115. Create = invent by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    "The only way to get from "create" to such a use use of "invent" is by willfully misinterpreting"

    No, it is by looking at what the word means. The two mean the same thing in this context of Mr. Gore's quotes.

    "It is easy to choose to hear what you want, especially if it casts someone you don't like in a bad way."

    "Invent" is correct in paraphrasing. Either way, Mr. Gore's statement is just not correct.

    "Every time you type a comment like that you "create" stupidity, but you certainly did not invent it."

    That is a bad analogy. He said he created THE internet: which is one single entity (GWB's "Internets" claim to the contrary)

    "Perhaps it is also hard to admit that you buy into the right wing spin (and yes it is just that)"

    Why admit something that is not true at all? Why even mention some political wing's editorializing at all? It detracts from the facts. You are injecting wing politics into it. It is but a red herring. My sources for the facts are places like "History of the Internet and Web", and CNN's web site. I have no idea what Fox News and Rush Limbaugh exactly say about it, as I do not care. Let Gore speak for Gore: and his exact quote is found on CNN's site. The "right wing" is not relevant in this whatsoever, and can be factored out. It goes without saying that when GWB lies, the left wing will make more hay out of it than the right wing. Just as the right wing made more hay of Gore's false statement than the left wing did. Ignore the spin: go to Gore's real quote.

    "This is for you from me : "Even Bill O'Reily is right sometimes""

    Now that is a falaful thing to say!

    "or that you are unable to admit your mistakes?"

    Sure I've made mistakes. However, that is also a red herring. It does not make Mr. Gore's statement any less untrue that others have made mistakes and said untrue statements.

    GWB's "internets" quotes is just as bad as Gore's. However, you are not defending an untrue statement here,so no controversy.

    "I am sure there are very real issues with politicians truly lying that you could take up"

    This is one of those. However, I prefer to believe that Al Gore misspoke, and that his statement was not an intent to lie. Regardless of intent, the statement is not historically correct and not worth defending.

    "Thank god Gore championed the internet when no one else saw it for what it was"

    I certainly agree, and have acknowledged his great role time and again in different ways. However, that does not make his false statement that he "created it" while in Congress any more true. Gore's not perfect. Let us live with the fact that he slipped up making this statement. It looks pretty bad to twist the facts to try and make misstatement appear true.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:Create = invent by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      "Invent" is correct in paraphrasing.

      So "She invented life" referring to a woman giving birth would be correct parapfrasing as well? Would it then be ok to assume that the meaning was that all life before was created at the same time? So, saying "She created a new life" you are saying the same thing as "She is God and all life was invented by her and only her."

      Nah. I think you are just purposefully taking the most improbable interpretation because it makes someone you don't like appear stupid.

    2. Re:Create = invent by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
      "So "She invented life" referring to a woman giving birth would be correct parapfrasing as well? "

      Sometimes, invent is not correct in paraphrasing. For some reason, "invent" is never used for life forms. It is often used for technologies. Also, this is yet another bad analogy (creating one of many vs creating something for the first time. The latter is like inventing). You are missing it in two different ways.

      "Nah. I think you are just purposefully taking the most improbable interpretation because it makes someone you don't like appear stupid"

      No, it doesn't make Gore look stupid. He even admitted he misspoke later. He would only look like an idiot if he insisted that the phony statement was true. It does shine a negative light on those who alter words beyond meaning to justify a false statement that never can be true.

      --
      Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    3. Re:Create = invent by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      He even admitted he misspoke later.

      Only because of the pedantic assholes that didn't take the obvious meaning of his statements, and instead intentionally pretend that he was claiming something that is obviously not possible.

    4. Re:Create = invent by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
      "Only because of the pedantic assholes that didn't take the obvious meaning of his statements"

      The obvious meaning of his statement was that he created something that someone else had actually created before he was on the scene. Read the statement. You can't get anything else out of it. The meaning is blatantly obvious.

      "and instead intentionally pretend that he was claiming something that is obviously not possible."

      He did claim something that was not possible, given the actual years of Gore's actions in Congress and actual years of Internet creation. There is no pretending necessary. He said he made the thing. Read his statement. It is only "pretending" when you get pedantic and either:

      Insist that he really did invent the Internet (usually using as justification the help he did after it was invented.)

      Insist that he never said he created it, by taking Gore's actual quote and changing it to look better (replace the word "Create" with "Promote"), or insist that Gore's quote was really made up by right-wingers.

      --
      Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    5. Re:Create = invent by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      You can't get anything else out of it.

      I do. So you are wrong. Live with it. Not everyone agrees with your opinion.

  116. Thank gawd for radio! by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    "From what I heard on the radio, Bush tore them a new asshole."

    I bet the horrible wet ripping sound of this happening was pretty bad with just sound. I'm glad I don't have to see this on TV. It would probably look too much like goatse.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  117. Obligatory by earthbound+kid · · Score: 1

    I beat the internet.

    The last guy was hard.

  118. at least it came our before by KaiSeun · · Score: 0

    Things like Duke Nukem Forever...

  119. They forgot one finding... by Goonie · · Score: 1

    People should wear more hats...

    --

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
  120. I was there by krital · · Score: 1

    And listened to the presentations. Although this study took a very long time, they had some good findings. The person who posted this review to Taco had obviously not read the report, focusing instead on the more obvious aspects. One of the most important parts of this report was their recommendation that the DNS be policed /not/ by the government but by a private industry, especially considering that the Department of Commerce is in a special role in governing ICANN. Additionally, they recommend against ICANN becoming bogged down by politics, focusing exclusively on the running of the DNS.

    --
    -- K
  121. It doesn't have to be this way by niven · · Score: 1

    My domain is .org, the .net is an ISP, the .com is some comercial thing: as IT SHOULD BE.
    It can work, it's just some domain grabber who spoil everybody's fun...

    --
    It only hurts when you survive
  122. And... by Patrick+Mannion · · Score: 0

    Who recieved this report. I think it landed on Bush's desk and he just went... "What's thisss?" and then tossed in the Democrat garbage pile.

    --
    In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
  123. Oh yeah? by Sheepdot · · Score: 1

    Well, they still beat Duke Nukem Forever.

  124. Tactics of Debate by IPFreely · · Score: 1
    Tactics of debate:

    1. When presented with a large set of expert testemony and facts, completely ignore those aspects of the facts that do not support you. Don't acknowledge them. Pretend they don't exist.

    2. Search the testemony for the occasional awkward phrase or incomplete coverage. Intentionally interpret these as explicit admissions that the information behind them is false or incomplete. (when they most likely are just the authors incomplete coverage of solid inforamtion). It's a semantic search. You are looking for words, not meaning.

    3. Change the definition of words to use a definition different than what the author meant, partucularly if such redefinition makes the original sentence false. Then accuse the author of lying.

    There are two approaches to debate:
    1. Try to establish the truth.
    2. Try to win the arguement.

    One does not necessarlily lead to the other. They are not equal.

    The tactics describred above are typically used to win an arguement, but rarely have any benefit in identifying the truth. These are also the main tactics you are using in this thread. They only show that you are not interested in the truth, but rather in either protecting your disapproval or Gore or protecting your own arrogance.

    Here goes:
    1. Create != Invent. I can create a computer by buying parts and assembling them. I do not invent a computer. It is a distinct difference in definition that can only be missed if you intentionally want to misinterpret it. Gore can create the internet by bringing together the time, money and mandate to assemble the people, projects together that make up the internet. That is creation. It is not invention and Gore never said it was. That was done by some dumbass who was intentionally trying to take him down.
    2. Internet != internetworking. Internet is a proper noun, the name of the large network of computers based around TCP/IP and the root name servers. "internetworkig" as used in your quote is a verb describing a method of connecting and communicating between computers. They share some letters and some spelling but they are not the same. The proper noun "Internet" did not appear until the late 80's/early 90's.
    3. Cerf's essay is a strong endorsement of Gores participation. Don't ignore it, Understand it. It's all there. (unless you are just not interested in learning.)

    So if you wish to continue to misinterpret an redefine all the words and meaning in this thread, go right ahead, but you've already lost all credibility.

    --
    There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
  125. Government is not efficient. by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 1
    Government is known for being somewhat inefficient when it comes to doing something.

    In fact, government should have a motto... Let's see, I think I know the perfect one:

    Government. Where do you want to go today?
    Yeah... That's about right.
  126. So this proves we should replace ICANN w/UN? by scotty1024 · · Score: 1

    So does this prove we should replace ICANN with the UN in order to halt progress in the Internet's development?

    Or does it prove that if we replace ICANN with the UN that I need to go polish up on writing UN grant proposals?

    I wonder if we have any more Al Gore "I invented the Internet" brand pork still waiting to be served up?

  127. You are calling Gore a liar... by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    1. When presented with a large set of expert testemony and facts, completely ignore those aspects of the facts that do not support you. Don't acknowledge them. Pretend they don't exist.

    Thanks. That is exactly what you did in your use of the Cerf quotation. You ignored the parts that showed your case to be wrong. I read and used it all. Most of it, however, lauds Gore for what he did to help the Internet long after others created it. It is kind off-topic. "2. Search the testemony for the occasional awkward phrase or incomplete coverage." You probably did this too. Not sure where!

    "3. Change the definition of words to use a definition different than what the author meant"

    That is exactly what you do when you change the definition of "Create" to something other than create.

    There are two approaches to debate: 1. Try to establish the truth. 2. Try to win the arguement.

    In this, I am using the first. My sources are Gore's actual quote on CNN and rock-solid histories of the Internet that show when things actually occured. Please see the summary at the end. Whether or not I win, who cares. Hopefully, someday you will look at the sequence of events.

    "These are also the main tactics you are using in this thread."

    The first set of tactics sure fits what you did, especially in the Cerf quotations.

    "They only show that you are not interested in the truth"

    If I wasn't interested in the truth, why do I insist on referring to actual words and actual chronologies? The Internet was created before Gore was in Congress. We all know this is true. Yet. you insist it is not. It appears you are not interested in the truth. Do your homework. Find out when Gore first got to Congress.

    but rather in either protecting your disapproval or Gore or protecting your own arrogance.

    It is not arrogance to have the knowledge of certain historical facts which you insist on ignorance of. I do not have "disapproval" of Gore for this incorrect statement. Gore admitted he misspoke. He's a sensibie guy Many misspeak during interviews. The ones I have disapproval of are the ones who for no good reason are insisting that Gore's admitted error is true. In effect, you are calling Gore a liar for insisting that his interview stumble is factual when Gore admitted it was a simple mistake.

    "1. Create != Invent. I can create a computer by buying parts and assembling them."

    Depends on the context. If you say "you create The Computer", this means that you created the first one, Invent means the same in such a context. Is your analogy intentionally false? Gore did not say that he "created an internet".

    It is a distinct difference in definition that can only be missed if you intentionally want to misinterpret it."

    I wonder what explains your getting the analogy so wrong.

    Gore can create the internet by bringing together the time....

    Yet, he didn't. He got there too late: others had already done this before. It is a matter of historical record that the Internet was created and named as such before Gore was in Congress.

    "It is not invention and Gore never said it was."

    Yet, in his mistatement, it is. Regardless of who did it when, creating the Internet is invention. "Invention" is always an appropriate word for creating an entire new technology.

    "That was done by some dumbass who was intentionally trying to take him down. "

    Gore was the only one talking during the CNN interview. The statement was his alone. Looks like you are calling him a dumbass. I don't think he is. Or do you think that Wolf Blitzer is a diabolical fiend who sandbagged him?

    "2. Internet != internetworking."

    It is not chopped liver, either. This is a bogus argument. Who equated them? Not Gore, not me.

    Next.... "Internet is a proper noun, the name of the large network of computers based around TCP/IP and the root name ser

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  128. Yout pating by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    "It did not exist as a network owned by companies who made money from others pating to access it."

    So, while he did not create it, he altered its business model? That would be relevant, if his actual CNN quote referred to this.

    ...[list of good things he did for the Internet]...

    Yes, he did great things to help the Net grow!!! Who is arguing that he didn't? But this all happened after others created it.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  129. We need .pr0n.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It'd make it easier to know where to find goodies. ;)

  130. AOL.COM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since it's AOL dot COM then everything must be dot COM. right?

  131. Here's an analysis by Froomkin · · Score: 1
    See the commentary at ICANNWatch.org.

    It begins:

    The most important conclusion in the report is that it lays to rest, once and for all, any lingering technical controversies about the addition of new top-level domains.
    The Committee did not find any purely technical reasons that the root name servers could not provide the same level of response with a much larger root zone file. Indeed, the ability of the .com name servers to respond to billions of queries a day against the .com zone file, with over 20 million entries, is a demonstration of the technical capacity that could be applied to the root zone, if necessary.
    The only technical arguments put forward against new TLDs suggested that it was necessary to limit the rate of addition. The committee agreed that the acceptable rate is tens of TLDs - which means anywhere from 20 to 90 per period. The committee thus arrived at the following conclusion:
    Considering technical and operational performance alone, the addition of tens of gTLDs per year for several years would pose minimal risk to the stability of the root.
    Old hands in the DNS wars will immediately be reminded of two pieces of ancient history: First, that Jon Postel himself proposed adding 50 new TLDs per year to the root. Second, that in all the years of its operation, ICANN - - which claims to be a technical coordination body (when that suits it) - - and which is single-handedly responsible for the current artificial cap on new TLDs never once dared commission a study of what would be technologically safe...perhaps because it feared the answer.
    --

    I have a blog.

  132. I shall. by Druegan · · Score: 1
    And who would determine what is porn and what is not?

    I will be the final arbitrator of what is pr0n.

    I will only charge the world $50k US per year for this job.

    The standard will be "Do I find some of the content erotic enough to save to my hard disk?"

    Oh well...

    I can dream, can't I?

  133. Yeah. Let's get the Dems to waste more money! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let's get the lefties to waste more money! I wonder if we can get Ted Kennedy to come out and take a stand on wasting more money, growing big government... to tell us exactly what we already knew!

    What a waste. It's like the TV weather reporters. Actually, the TV weather people are right 50% of the time.

  134. USA is a great place but obviously not our gov. by DemonREA · · Score: 1

    7 years thats on time right? I mean its USA.

    --
    One day.