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Vint Cerf Answering Questions on Top-Level Domains
penciling_in writes "Over at CircleID, Vint Cerf is taking question from the community Slashdot-style with regards to top level domains. 'As most readers are no doubt aware, when it comes to the topic of Top-Level
Domains (TLDs), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
takes center stage. From the existing .com and .net TLDs to the newly introduced and future releases, in the past years we witnessed the increasing level of discussions around Top-Level Domains painted -- ever so often -- with political, legal and technical debates. Vint Cerf, Google's VP and Chief Internet Evangelist, who has served as chairman of the board of ICANN since the November of 1999 has accepted CircleID's invitation to directly respond to your questions on the topic. This is your opportunity to have your Top-Level Domain related questions responded by Vint Cerf.'"
If .xxx will see the light of day?
1) Did you ever get ribbed for having the same name as the idiot son on Mama's Family?
2) If you were interested in acquiring a Slashdot ID like the one I've got, would you send an email to the owner's listed address with your exisiting Slashdot ID and a sample bad analogy?
Can we have www.google? Thats so much easyer to type then www.google.com
and while were at it... lets get www./
(Worst that can happen, they say no...)
There's a lot of dissatisfaction there in comment 5 of TFA...
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
is there a real use for having TLDs anymore? no one follows the current rules to any reasonable extent, and it just seems more an artificial way of creating a market sphere, such as how a .com appears more legitimate than a .net for a business regardless of its position in network services. as of now, they provide no discernable organisational structure to speak of imho...
What can we do about people like Rodona Garst and her abuse of the
Thank you.
Trolling is a art,
based on your involvement in turning the management of the internet into a bloated mess that turns on the decisions of career bureaucrats?
Software security is a very hot topic these days. Keeping up with a constant stream of security updates and patches is a tough enough job, but an added layer of risk and complexity is caused by the possibility of forged, hacked or trojaned software updates. If you can't be sure that the web site you are downloading your security patches from is 100% legitimate, how can you be sure that you aren't compromising your system every time you attempt to apply a security patch? A new TLD may be the solution
I envisage a new TLD where only approved security firms and software outfits would be allowed to register domain names. Basically any software download from one of these TLDs would be a guarantee that the patch is an official patch, and free from any potential hacks or 'pwnage'. As an example, I propose the formation of the .deb TLD. Sites able to be registered within the proposed .deb domain would maintain secure repositories of Debian packages, able to be downloaded by Debian users automatically using the apt-get tool. Users could rest assured that packages downloaded from a site in the .deb domain are fully vetted and checked and do not contain a trojan package. Similar TLDs could exist for Windows users (.vbx or .pif).
I look forward to the community's (and Vint Cerf's) comments!
How about a .wiki TLD? It's just crazy enough to work, considering the countless wikis to be found out there. Wiki Wiki Wiki!
Don't sweat the petty things. Don't pet the sweaty things. --Stephen J. Simmons
If .xxx were ever accepted, would all the existing p0rn sites be switched over to it so they'd be easier to find, er, I mean avoid?
Pretend that I am Jon Postel, still alive, and I have cornered you an the hallway at IETF.
.XXX domain.
Defend to me, on grounds that you know I (Jon Postel) would accept, the decision to kill the
Remember (and I am not reminding you, sir) that registration in that domain is not mandatory for ANYONE.
Yes, we've met (at IETF), and no, I will not tell you who I am.
--Red
Is he going to answer honestly though that's the big question?
Or give a load of buzzword mumbo-jumbo and thus avoid all the pertinent issues.
Share your Knowlege - Kung-Fu Geekery
Why not let IBM buy .IBM? Why keep holding the old .com and .net around?
Why ask Vint Cerf anything at all about the Internet today? Vint Cerf had something to do with the Internet being what it is today, but has little if anything to do with the Internet *today*, and absolutly no influence or input at all in the management of the Internet today. Asking Vint Cerf about the Internet today is like asking Henry Ford about next year's models.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Why does Antartica have a TLD?
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
Vint Cerf made great contributions to the Internet. There's no doubt about that.
A few years ago, I saw an interview where the reporter asked whether the term "Surfing the net" was based on his name. Rather than correct the reporter, he acted coy and suggested that "cerfing the net" could indeed be related to him. Geesh.
Why did ICANN permit the hijacking, i.e. Internet identity theft, of the TLDs of small and naive nation-states? .tv, .to, .cx come to mind immediately, I'm sure there are others.
IMHO, this is Rampant Imperialism of the worst kind, and is one of many factors which have caused the rest of the world to want to wrest ultimate control of the DNS from the US government.
What are you going to do about it in the future?
Are you ever going to restore the ownership of .to, .tv and .cx back to Tonga, Tuvalu and Christmas Island where they rightfully belong?
Why is it correct and proper to allow out of region servers?
There are something between several and many servers which have .nz addresses, yet are domiciled in the US.
In other words - are you ever going to clean up these messes which have happened in the past?
Why did you leave MCI just before its acquisition by Verizon was completed? What do you see the future holding for Verizon?
When considering any new TLDs, it's worth looking at how these TLDs, from ICANN's first wave of expansion, worked out.
What the hell kind of name is "Vint Cerf?"
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
Given that top level domains were initially created to give a sense of order to the internet, before user@schoolname was more the rule, it seem .com would ONLY be given to commercial groups, .net to networks, etc. I was reading RFC 1480 and it looks like even as late as 1993 a restructure of the US domain system could have been created along the lines of how foreign countries do it. bbc.co.uk would thus be a british site, and bbc.co.us could be bbc americas domain.
Instead we have a hodgepodge of international mixes.
Thus my question is, why all the chaos in how they were assigned?
Vint Cerf is still the Chair of ICANN (unless their web site is out of date). I imagine he has at least some pull in determining ICANN policy, which does affect the Internet on a day-to-day basis.
As a fellow at MCI (please correct me if I'm wrong), what was your day-to-day activity like? I grok things as far up the technological chain as network engineering, but I never had insight into the work of a visionary at MCI.
BTW, it's great to be rid of the MCI name now that we're Verizon Business, and I wish you luck at Google.
Vint, when Jon Postel passed away, you wrote:
"We've lost our North Star, but our compasses will still work if we remember Jon's wisdom and guidance."
Most people, including myself, are continually outraged by the management of the internet's governing bodies. And it seems whenever someone puts this question to you, the answer is unforthcoming and evasive.
Do you really think Jon's wisdom was remembered? I'm sorry to say, I see none of Jon Postel in the way the internet is managed. None at all.
What use are the TDLs today, considering nobody really attempts to use them correcly anymore? And if just for a self-policing namespacing, then why not allow *any* TLD, having any of them that don't resolve to one of the "big" ones (.com, .org, .net, .mil, .edu, country domains, etc) all resolve to one set of "catch all" roots. Then people could come up with whatever they.want to.use as.a.top level.domain and register them.
I want to register clownpenis.fart
Will that be possible in the coming years?
Considering that you were mostly involved with designing the underlying protocol of whats known as the "internet", do you find it annoying that most people ask you questions about DNS?
-koft
The current system of TLDs is mostly not very useful. I mean, do you organise your files by which ones were created by companies and which ones were created by non-profit organisations? Almost certainly not. It makes no sense for the internet to be organised this way.
I think a better system would be something similar to the system for newsgroups, with the domains reflecting what the subject of the site is, instead of giving useless information.
If nothing else, make it so you can register all current TLDs at once, easily, at a discounted rate.
.org, .com, etc were being correctly used. Verisign and a group of similar assholes figured out that it was profitable to provide a "click here to rent all other available domains with the same name in a different TLD button", even though doing so directly encouraged people to violate the DNS scheme.
.info and .name. Both of those suffer from severe problems. .name (obviously) has name collisions. There are many people who might want want bobsmith.name, and there is not a great way to resolve this. .info might be useful, except for the fact that they are aimed at people who want to find information about a particular thing -- and Google and similar systems are almost always a better solution to "finding information about a particular thing". Future systems may improve on Google, but I don't think that they will get worse.
That was what led to the *current* problem.
There *was* no problem when
Of the new TLDs, the only two that I've seen in significant actual use are
DNS has two useful attributes. First, reputation. I trust that Bank of America will not let someone *else* control bankofamerica.com with a similar-looking site for very long (though there's always *some* similar-looking domain, so this is of limited use -- but since certificates for SSL are granted these companies based on domain name, it's all I really have to go on, unless I actually read certificate info for every site I go to). Adding more TLDs does not make this more useful -- it just means that some people can maybe slip into bankofamerica.biz. Second, memorability. Let's say that you *double* the number of TLDs out there. That's a lot. You've just added a single bit of information to a domain name. That's a tiny fraction of a single additional letter. Thus, more TLDs doesn't help memorability much.
Now, the registrars have absolutely zero incentive to return things to sanity. They'd *love* to see people buying every entry out there. If they could sell the foobar TLD, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Why not? It's free money for them.
I'd love to be able to type in google and have it actaully go to google instead of automatically go to the first google search result for "google". Confusing example, of course, but I think you should be able to get the general idea.
Why? Google does a good job of this -- and as a matter of fact, it *does* give you Google.com.
It's not as if you need to use Google to do this -- any other system that allows similar searching would work as well, but Firefox uses Google because it's currently the best available system.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
But I fail to see in these days of global market economy why there is need for more than one commercial TLD. Sure, people will complain that there is a monopoly held by those who took 'football.com, .org, .net, .etc' and control that name. But then again, it is often in the interest of consumers to not have the extra level of tld confusion. Google IMO can quite reasonably defend their right to that name in whatever tld they want as trademarks are more global today than they ever were.
I would not want there to be an natwest.vom that i could easily typo when trying to get my online banking. I would argue that they are entitled to whatever tld they want with that title as any alternate uses would only be for trying to cream my money off in a scam.
So, you didn't get a one-word tld. Boo-hoo, but frankly, nor did a huge number of viable, profitable, well-known online sites. Hell, even slashdot had to make theirs up to some extent...slashdot wasn't in the dictionary before.
So. Get over it. Get inventive. Does the hyphen in penny-arcade.com bother you? Nor me.
Is it legal for companies like Verisign be allowed to raise the rates on yearly domain renewals? Shouldn't the cost of domain renewal and new domain purchases go down because the cost of maintaining TLDs are less (ie equipment, bandwidth, quantity of subscriberships etc.)?
In Soviet Korea, only TLDs eat old people!
IPv4 address scarcity isn't artificial; it's a real issue. IPv6 will resolve it ... if anybody can ever be convinced to deploy it. I support IPv6 on my home network and the network at work, and the only IPv6 communication I do is between the two sites. Nothing else I ever encounter supports it, either via 6to4 or native IPv6.
i xietiemeeriehohhahngukashaisaathiedoorelahsukujehe shu.com.au/, though it is in fact a legal and valid domain name.
.com, .net, and .org TLDs. In these TLDs squatting and speculation is a real problem, but that's not because of artificial value. The value of a domain is very real. That doesn't, however, mean that domains must be treated as property, and it's from there that many of the issues stem.
.au TLD space. In the .au space, if you register a .com name, you should do so with a legitimate claim to the name according to the AuDA rules. If you register a name to squat (speculating, asking money from the company whose registered business name matches the domain, using the name to badmouth them, etc), the domain will simply be removed from you and handed over. You can't buy the domain, only usage rights to it. Similarly, the .org space is limited to registered charities, non-profit organizations, and so on. The .au space is well managed and suffers few or none of the problems afflicing .com, .net, and .org . This is in no small part because in .au domains are not property that you can own.
.com, .net, and .org space. I'm personally hoping they'll just quietly die off in favour of ccTLD subdomains, but if anything the opposite appears to be happening. Too many people only understand ".com". This makes the scarcity problem worse, and does so in the very space with the worst problems. Still, what's to be done - resume the domains already "sold"?
Domain name scarcity isn't artificial either. There are an essentially infinite number of domains, but they vary in desirability, and each individual domain name is unique. Domain names are not a uniform good, and are not perfectly subsitutable. I don't know about you, but my employer (the POST Newspapers, Western Australia) wouldn't particularly want http://aik0mahhievaijeisiephootequahveiraigiemeeb
I agree that there are certainly problems with how domain names are managed, especially for the
Consider the
I see little hope of change in the
With Firefox:
Step 1: Type "google" into URL bar. Watch as www.google.com appears (thanks to a Google I Feel Lucky search).
Step 2: Right click on the search text field, and choose "Add a Keyword for this Search".
Step 3: Enter "gg" into the Keyword field in the dialog that appears (and whatever you want in the Name field).
Step 4: You can now type "gg foobar" to Google for "foobar".
Konqueror does something similar with "gg:", not "gg ".
I believe that Firefox ships default with "google" as a Google search keyword (though it's been a long time since I've done a clean installation, so I'm not sure), and I believe that "wp foobar" now does a Wikipedia search for "foobar" by default.
If you want to have a quick search on Google Images with SafeSearch disabled (*without* having to log in -- yes, it is possible, even if Google makes it non-obvious how to do this), bookmark the following link and give it a keyword.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Vint Cerf may not be publishing many RFC nowadays, but he still wields a lot of influence in the evolution of the Internet. Apart from his presidency of ICANN, he plays a role as a kind of "father figure" in the IETF. He was influential in the debates that led to the adoption of IPv6, and occasionally provide commetary and guidance on new standards. he is also quite active in government circles, pushing for initiatives that help develop the Internet, or bring it to new frontiers. Not to mention his personal project of an "inter-planetary Internet".
I've got to think that, when purchased in bulk, it costs pennies, or perhaps tenths or even hundredths of pennies, in actual administrative costs to keep these domains registered each year.
Since costs of maintaining registration for expired domains can approach nothing, are we at risk of these re-registration companies eventually having permanent ownership of nearly every domain a person might think to register? Might it not be in the public interest to have a minimum annual registration fee per domain (say, three dollars), to help ensure that domains aren't held in perpetuity by speculators?
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Well, this isn't really a TLD question, but I expect that Mr. Cerf knows his way around a name.
Currently, the most common scheme for addressing a document is a URL, which includes the location of that document (or, more likely, the location of the most recent revision of that document) on a server. This scheme has the drawback that URLs tend to break over time as organizations shift and directory structures change. This is a problem for those compiling bibliographies, where a valid reference to the original document is important. One approach to deal with this is content-based addressing, where the address of a document is derived from a hash of the document -- this allows any available copy of the document to be located. What is your opinion on the use of content-addressable naming, such as that implemented in edonkey and gnutella? Do you feel that use of content-based addresses will become more important? If so, do you believe that such addressing will be provided through a public system like DNS or through a private system like Google?
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
As chairman of the board for ICANN over the past 6-7 years, you must have been part of the political decisions (even if only being told what ICANN should do) regarding remaining under US exclusive control after the UN summit on the topic, and subsequently the decision to not start .xxx domains.
.xxx domain issue, was the department of commerce 'helped along the way' to a resolution of the issue, (i.e. educating the public on the ease with which the new domain could be blocked as opposed to how easily these sites are accessed right now?) or did it become a grossly complicated web of meetings between reps regarding complex blocking mechanisms in browsers, thus giving Microsoft yet another thing to toot it's horn about? Or are you just standing by while the politicians hash it out?
Here's two questions then.
1. Was US control over ICANN a unilateral decision handed down to you, or was it actually discussed at board meetings?
2. When the US received such a flood of responses to the
IMHO, a ".blog" TLD makes so much more sense. There are millions of weblogs anyway, and they're only growing at an exponential rate. This categorization will also, in one fell swoop, largely alleviate the trackback link problem that so many search engines are facing, and allow spiders/bots to easily differentiate between a weblog and a regular content/news site.
I dunno. I know that you're thinking of a personal journal kept online by people, but consider that Slashdot could be considered a "blog", and that there is increasing use of corporate blogs. The DNS hierarchy is slow to adapt -- once we move to a new TLD, we're stuck with it for a while. The nature of what a blog even is, in the presence of new systems for social networking and so forth, is rapidly changing.
I'm not sure that search engines might be able to do a better job of identifying blogs than blog authors do, if there is indeed a link problem (for example, Groklaw is very different from a personal blog), then I would suggest that this is better addressed by the search engine maintainers.
For that matter, I'm not even certain that blogs are really over-weighted -- they seem to often be up-to-date and do a good job of spreading useful information.
Also, some sites are not dedicated blogs -- why stuff a blog in a different domain? I mean, sure, Verisign would love this (since they'd be able to rent additional domains), but ultimately I'm not sure that storing different content in different domains fits with the existing DNS scheme well.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Did u still have the Reverse time-capsule? I would like to send Gray's Sports Almanac 1950-2000 to my father...
This would let everyone run their own pseudo "top level domain" without stressing the global system too much. The goal here is especially that the DNS cache hit ratios would not drop dramatically because of multitude of global domains.
6 8.html
I once tried to discuss this on the DNSO mailing list, but finally could not find a right place:
"A letter hierarchy based scheme for arbitrary TLDs"
http://www.cafax.se/dnsop/maillist/2001-05/msg000
Let's first set up top level domains for all single letters a., b.,...z. Then if I want to have a name "anssi.abc." for my machine. I rewrite it (first in my head) to be "anssi.a.b.c." I go to the "c." TLD authority. I ask them, if they have already delegated the 2nd level domain "b.c.". If such domain exists, I go to its authority, and ask, if they have a domain "a.b.c." already.
If the domain "b.c." did exist, but the domain "a.b.c."
did not, then I register my "a.b.c." servers with the domain "b.c." authority, to set up new delegation. There should be a standard IETF rule, that single letter domains must allow delegation of any unregistered single letter subdomains!
So now I can set up names like "anssi.a.b.c." in my own name server, serving the domain "a.b.c.", registered at "b.c.". NOW I MODIFY MY RESOLVER and ask everybody to do the same, if they please! The new versions of resolvers would be standardized to TRANSLATE ALL UNRECOGNISED multi-letter TLDs into a sequence of one letter domains before the query. So "anssi.abc." will be resolved as "anssi.a.b.c.".
The classical, now existing TLDs can be handled as a special case. But now anybody is also free to set up whatever TLDs they want to!!! You greatly benefit from an updated resolver, but all resolvers will still work with the old TLDs, and old resolvers will also kind of work with the new names, but only if you translate manually, writing "anssi.a.b.c" instead of "anssi.abc".
You don't have to touch applications, but of course a Web browser might be aware of the new system, and compensate for non-upgraded resolvers. Anyway, writing HTML anchors like "anssi.a.b.c" would work also in old resolvers.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
There should be a standard IETF rule, that single letter domains must allow delegation of any unregistered single letter subdomains!
I assure you that squatters would grab anything that looks like a reasonable word within a day.
Better idea: Something where the economy of registering a domain is based on the existance of relatively few high-quality domains instead of a zillion low-quality domains.
This domain squatting problem would be no worse than today. And squatting a single mid-level letter would give you no benefit, just costs, because you would be required to allow (free) delegation of any sub-letter domains.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
In my opinion, this would be even worse than the current system. I think the DNS should provide a logical hierarchy by which sites can be organised, similar to the way newsgroups are organised. The system you are proposing would mean the DNS had essentially no logical structure to it, because anyone could create any TLD they wanted.
Essentially, I have two arguments / questions here.
My own opinion is that the DNS country codes should be adhered to without exception, and that the creation of very real wealth out of the DNS "market" is a totally amoral act. Cost recovery for sure, but what is happening at the moment is just wrong.
Blogs are a fad right now. Let's see how they're doing again in ten years.
The Lumber Cartel, local 42 (Canadian branch)
British Columbia, Canada
I think .ass has way more potential than .xxx
kissmy.ass
iamgoingtokickyour.ass
polka.ass
On second thought it's kind of lame...
I agree with you that weblogs or personal/corporate journals are still niche. However, i feel that the sheer number of weblogs (millions) warrant a TLD. Furthermore, it makes even more sense for corporations. Say, Apple decides to start corporate blogs. They could keep Apple.com as their corporate website, and host all their blogs in Apple.blog.
You have valid point that weblogs are often not dedicated. However, isn't the purpose of a TLD to provide effective categorization? Isn't the fact that weblogs are currently lacking a TLD of their own, leading to this whole mess in the first place? A few thousand weblogs would be manageable, but a few million, and going strong, will eventually lead to further erosion of the existing TLDs such as ".com", on which weblogs are currently hosted.
But the current problem is just that no one can agree on a common hierarchy, and never will. And because the dispute is global, it is difficult, and not very well handled by a monopoly of any sort, not even the U.N. (God forbid not!).
Besides, nobody actually reads or expects to read any info from relation of the sub-domain names in "namex.namey.namez".
On the other way, in my system you would be free to set up any "logical" hierarchy or hierachies you wish, and anybody could register there, if you make it your business service to provide registration to your neat and tidy logical branch of the name tree.
And one thing about squatting disputes: note that I could try to squat "coke." ("c.o.k.e."), due to possible legal challenges, but the company could just use coca.cola or coke.drink or coke.ltd or coke.adds.life or whatever. Squatting is only meaningful while the current TLDs remain a scarce, monopoly controlled resource.
Basic squats ("coke."/"c.o.k.e.") would anyway be solved exactly like now: anything can be registered, but if someone later can show a legitimate interest in the domain and if your interest is definitively squatting only, you loose it to the better owner for free. It is not a big problem today, and it would be less a problem in my system.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
I think you might have missed this reply where it's stated that .org is a catch-all and isn't specific to non-profit. Think of org standing for just "organization", not "non-profit organization".
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
The summary starts with Over at CircleID and yet more than 1/2 the posts modded up are questions directed towards Vint. You guys do realize that /. is not CircleID?? If you want him to respond to your questions, it would help to ask them in a place he will actually READ them.
I'm still waiting for the TLD for Ogres - .ogr
I somehow keep trying to get to slashdor.ogr, as if drawn by some unseen force.
If there were a TLD for ogres, at least the slashdot ogres - or moderators - would at last have recognition.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
No, no, no! That's not what TLDs are for. If you insist on identifying a blog by URL, you can use the subdomain space for that (you you'd get blog.yourdomain.com). Same goes for a wiki, just like FTP servers, mail servers, etc. have always been identified.
.us TLD. The only way to keep domain guessing doable is to keep the number of TLDs limited, which is why proposals like .biz and .travel are such bad ideas.
TLDs are either national identifiers or topical groups (com, org). The second use is an aberration caused by American domains omitting the
There are millions of small businesses with local constituencies. How hard would it be to have 50 (or 51) new TLDs in the form USAK, USAL, USAR,...USVT? I would definitely sign up for USTX, although I would like some way to indicate my city as well. Google has already made an attempt to cater to these folks. BTW, if such a new scheme is implemented, it would be nice to have them restricted to people and businesses that actually have some physical address in the given region.
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
The second use is an aberration caused by American domains omitting the .us TLD
.. different,
.co.us domain, then let us stop taking registrations for .com (yup, no new .com domains). Then, slowly start cancelling .com domains, and replace them (for free?) with the appropriate .co. instead. At a stroke that would get rid of the 'everyone must have the .com' TLD for their site, no matter where they live in the world, and would allow better (sure, not perfect, but nothing is) country resolution.
.co.uk and I'd get uk shops. None of them would want to pollute the namespace by using .co.jp say 'cos they'd just be stupid (and lose uk customers) unless they sold in Japan too.
.com for global or multinational organisations (pepsi.com, microsoft.com, ibm.com for example). and not allow it to be sold to just anyone (or.. buy a hundred .co.XX domains, get a .com free)
God yes! Here's an idea that is a bit
Lets make a new
In the uk, for example, if I wanted a shop selling stuff, I just need to filter out all but
Maybe we could then keep
There is a minimum fee of around $7/domain/year. Apparently a "parked" domain can make over $7/year in ad revenue, so that's why companies are registering them like crazy.
or.. buy a hundred .co.XX domains, get a .com free
trouble with that kind of idea is it wouldn't be an organisational nightmare. pretty much every cctld is handled by a different body!
also afaict most countries just give names direct under thier cctld and don't bother with a second level.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
But .BIZ is Great! 101% of the names in .BIZ belong to people that I have no interest in talking to, so any email that even contains a .BIZ URL can go straight to the spam-bucket. The only exception I've found is whois.biz, which is quasi-useful if I feel like hunting down a .biz spammer.
.MUSEUM is the only gTLD which seems to have done any design experiments in alternative ways to run a TLD besides simple hierarchies. It's not super-exciting, but it's at least something, and ICANN's policies about non-refundable $50,000 fee to apply for a gTLD mean that there won't be much experimentation possible.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The Anon Coward parent article hits the nail pretty much on the head - there are people down there, even though they're mostly government-funded scientific expedition bases, as opposed to the native population, who care about fish, leopard seals, beer, and World Domination. The more practical answer is probably that they had an ISO Country Code (AQ) already assigned back when the Domain Name Gods decided that ccTLDs should use ISO country codes.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For a non-refundable $50K donation to ICANN, you can get them to evaluate your business plan for .OGR - you're not allowed to troll them for free...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As far as your policy proposal goes, though, the different country code TLDs have radically different policies on locality and the mood of the ccTLD administrators, which aren't necessarily government-controlled
There have been other proposals for geographically-based addressing, with DNS hierarchies that correspond to lat/long locations. IMHO, the ones I've seen are mostly not ready for prime time, and it would be much better for them to start with a 2LD instead of a TLD while they experiment with their applications and usage models. While I disapprove of ICANN's $50K non-refundable fee for applying for a TLD, it does cut down on the riff-raff.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Here's a Google search that ought to answer your question. There is a fair bit of scientific research being done in and around Antarctica.
My other body is also not wearing any.
You, comrade, have insulted the honour of Sri Lankan airlines. I do not envy your fate.
My other body is also not wearing any.
Hi, Vint - You probably won't see this, because TFA says you're taking "Slashdot-style" input on CircleID, not "input on Slashdot" :-) I didn't actually see any way to rate comments or chain replies together, but CircleID is a smaller and better-behaved community so that may work.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So unless the US government is the government of the world (insert joke here) shouldn't .mil and .gov become .mil.us and .gov.us? It just seems time to make the switch.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST