Slashdot Mirror
Dotless Top Level Domains?
nodnarb1978 writes "As reported on Yahoo, a Dutch company called UnifiedRoot wants to offer top level domains without extensions. For instance, just typing slashdot would bring up this site, instead of slashdot.org. UnifiedRoot is careful to differentiate itself from New.net, but it seems their similar business tactics leave plenty of room for comparison. Another bone of contention is the price: UnifiedRoot wants $1000USD up front for a registration, with an additional $240 yearly renewal. With domain abandonments higher than ever, is this a solution looking for a problem? And would anybody really want to place control of entire TLDs in the hands of one private company?"
The TLD is an important piece of the identifier, IMHO.
The fact that a DNS server requires next to no bandwidth, cpu power or other facilities. Then they charge you stupid fees "per year" for the privilege...
:-)
I say make all DNS queries recursive [throw out the cache] and make the domain owners earn their money.
I wouldn't mind a slightly slower net if it meant I could piss off some grubby TLD exec
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
This sounds almost like AOL's keywords, except on an internet-wide basis. We really don't need further AOLification of the internet...Also, several browsers already tack on .com if you just type a single word into the address bar.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
I'm a small fry with a non-commercialized, free site and service that can't afford $1,000 + $240/yr.
.net/.org, etc - instead of your own .com). Imagine when someone decides to pony up the cash to completely wipe you out by taking out a rootless domain in your .com domain's name?
Big company comes in and wants to roll right over me. It's bad enough when someone takes your domain name (but under
And sure, technically you may be able to fight it in court. But if you can't afford the $1,000 + $240/yr, how the hell are you going to afford an IP / trademark lawyer and a lawsuit?
by their idea, after 10 years, if one wants to register a domain name, the only left ones will be 20 characters minimum. Some division and grouping SHOULD exist.
The dot lets you know you're talking about a website. If you see a commercial and it says "go to getfirefox.com" you know you are supposed to type that into your web browser. If people hear instead "go to getfirefox" that will require further explanation...
The large companies would die for this. Imagine you are a small startup company, or you have a website for your own personal interests. Most can't afford the $1000 startup fee, so all it takes for a large company (think M$) to overshadow your domain, is to get the same one, but without the extension.
do.what.promptcmds
What's to stop someone from buying the com domain and using the subdomains to imitate the real domains for example someone buys org and sets up the subdomain slashdot.org
I don't see how you would differentiate between slashdot.org and slashdot.org, one using a subdomain of an extensionless org TLD.
The TLDs are VERY important, since they help categorise the structure in terms of a tree and give a clear defintion of who is responsible for which subset of the tree.
.local, yet at the same time .local is reserved for use by mDNS.
Doing what they are doing could potentially screw up internal networks and cause more problems than it solves. Imagine that all your internal hosts have the prefix "internal" and another site pops up called "internal", we would then have the issue of myhost.internal being difficult to resolve. Is it inside the network or outside? I have already have seen something like this happen when internal domains use
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
What's wrong with doing a google for slashdot if the user doesn't type in the TLD? It would help out loads by being able list a companies web site even if they don't own their prefered domain name.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You do, of course, realise that those "no-dot" TLDs will be visible only by the clients of the ISPs that use the alternate DNS root. The ICANN does not include these domains into the root zone and all DNS servers use by default ICANN's root servers ( [A-M].root-servers.net )
I guess there are still a large number of companies willing to throw money into this, so the theory of stupidity-based business models being a guaranteed success is once again confirmed.
No, you are the one thinking like a technologist. Normal people need a cue that they are supposed to type something into their web browser as an internet address. "Dot com" serves as that cue (and to a lesser extent, dot org and dot net).
If normal people heard "Go to getfirefox" they would say "Where am I supposed to go to get this foxfire thing?".
Normal people don't google something as their first course of action. I do, and you probably do, but most people don't. I find most people are amazed when they email me or ask me questions and I answer them within seconds just by searching on Google or comparable search engine.
If I can go off and register http://example/ wont I also be able to set up subdomains?
http://forums.mysite/
http://chat.mysite/
and so on? Isnt this just the same as giving people the right to register their own TLDs?
"and give a clear defintion of who is responsible for which subset of the tree."
.sex and resell domains on that, a competitor may register .xxx and resell domains on that one, yet another may register .sexy and so on. Why should you restrict what top level domains there are? Why force the tree to be a Bonsai?
.travel....
You can have that with an unrestricted root, all you've got there is a Bonsai tree, where every multinational has to contort into millions of little sony.com, sony.fr, sony.net etc. domains. Restricting the number of top level domains simply makes for fewer branches, it doesn't remove the tree.
For example, a company might register
"Imagine that all your internal hosts have the prefix "internal" and another site pops up called "internal", "
Imagine your internal network is called "travel" and ICANN creates a domain
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No they wont. Provided it's setup correctly your hosts file or own DNS will return the result you want, it won't lookup the "real" one because it's already got an authoritative answer.
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Okay, but technical issues and filthy, dirty aesthetics of a borked namespace aside (and those two will stop this dead in the water), saying "www." in front of a web address is 4 syllables, vs. ".com" afterwards, which is two. Why the hell would anybody think that is an improvement? Sorry, this is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard.