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Earthlink Offers Alternate DNS Without "Dead DNS"
Joshua Flory writes, "In response to the story about Earthlink and their version of 'Site Finder', I learned today that Earthlink has provided alternate DNS servers that will remain outside of their 'dead DNS' service. However, this is a completely unsupported service, which begs the question, WHY? Everyone can gain access to public DNS servers, or create their own. The point is that people wanted DNS servers supported by EL that do not include this dead DNS service." Sounds like it's time for Earthlink users to check out OpenDNS.com... they make it easy to turn off the bad-URL behavior.
MUDRAGISTAN (Reuters) - Islamic Clerics announced today that due to the incapacity of the islamic mind to understand the difference between an opinion and a quotation, henceforth all use of the BLOCKQUOTE tag in HTML shall be met with unyielding and divine retribution.
The BLOCKQUOTE tag, as introduced with the HTML 2.0 specification in 1994, has been used on websites throughout the world to signify that the text contained within is a quotation from an external source. However, due to an inability for islamics to grow the fuck up and understand basic communicative syntax, they now believe it is their holy right to murder anyone they want to just because one person quoted someone else within context.
This antithesis of freedom is a common theme running throughout all islamic interaction with civilised society. Rampaging islamic mobs worldwide have burned effigies of Dave Raggett, creator of HTML, alongside effigies of President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI. Police measures are now in place to put everyone who ever had a Myspace page or Geocities account into hiding.
Inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, was unavailable for comment. Which is probably just as well as we don't want to get bombed by the raghead fuckwits just for quoting him.
Who uses earthlink anymore anyway...
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
... because storing dead niggers ain't my fucking business!
I tried going the OpenDNS route. It broke the anti-spam blacklist rules I had in my Postfix config (which of course is entirely DNS-based). Using any other public DNS server it works fine.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I thought Earthlink Engineers were so amazingly intelligent that they said that their Dead DNS would only affect Web traffic.
Oh wait, no they're not. They *still* dont get what's wrong with what they're doing.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
It might raise the question, but it certainly does not beg the question.
You mean to tell me they are still in buisiness?
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
You know, pronouncing nuclear as nucular is still wrong, even if everyone does it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
OpenDNS is not a solution to this problem those with dynamic IPs, which includes most Earthlink customers (like me). By default, they do exactly the same thing Earthlink does: from their webpage: "...when we can't fix your typo we take you to a page with a set of search results." They do allow you to turn that behavior off on their prefs page, but only if you have a static IP. And I somehow doubt that there isn't a speed hit going off your ISPs own network for all your DNS queries, anyway.
The correct solution, of course, is to ditch Earthlink. Or in my case, not renew with them the next time I change my service -- unfortunately, changing now would be expensive. Until then, I'm going with Earthlink's secret, unbroken servers over OpenDNS.
If Earthlink signed a Do Not Resuscitate order, then DNR dammit! Oh wait.. nm.
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
Who knows OpenDNS? Who knows of the alternatives? You do, I do, Joe Average doesn't. Ya know, the internet and a lotta tubes...
Why do you think AOL is still in business? If people knew about their options, a lot of the large providers would go out of biz.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"which begs the question, WHY?"
i dont think that begs the question at all. Slashdot so called editors strike a gain.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Better yet, let everyone have a say.
Let's make DNS a wiki!
Have you read my journal today?
Okay. The words "Dead DNS" are in quotations. Obviously this isn't common parlance.
Can I get a definition? Please? Pretty please, with sugar on top, clean the fucking car?
:(){
If you want to make a business out of providing DNS service, fine, go ahead. But please be honest about it. OpenDNS is not open and it isn't pure DNS either. People should boycot them for that opportunistic and dishonest name alone.
Although this phrase is quite commonly misused, there is a difference between language evolution, and willful propagation of ignorance.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
In the part of Manhattan where I live, they are the only alternative to Time Warner for cable modem service. They are a bit cheaper than TW. Unfortunately TW still does all of the "last mile" stuff. I have to go through TW for the installation, billing, equipment, etc. Basically I am just paying for the Earthlink bandwidth. I assume part of my monthly fee goes to TW.
You mean George W. Bush is *wrong* about something.
Someone get me a glass of water. I think I'm going to faint and fall off of my segway!
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.
What's the business model for OpenDNS, how do they make money?
Sounds like it's time for Earthlink users to check out OpenDNS.com... they make it easy to turn off the bad-URL behavior.
Strange, it sounds to me like it's time for Earthlink users to find a new provider. I know sometimes there are very few options for broadband in an area, but last I checked there were plenty of dialup companies still competing and about.
Got Apathy?
Regardless of my ability to research the definition of "Dead DNS" on my own (and I think I actually succeeded, thanks), I thought perhaps it would be useful to save other slashdotters the effort of hammering Google's servers to figure it out, by doing the following
...
1) Post a question asking what "Dead DNS" is
2) Get a response
3) Watch that person's response get modded up
4)
5) PROFIT!
Let me guess - your fingers are broken and you couldn't look it up, either? Or were you just trying to insult me?
:(){
What about an ignorant propogation of ignorance?
I imagine that is the much more likely scenario, rather than the unlikely one: someone researches the proper use of the phrase "begging the question," then continues using it improperly, willfully.
This is what Earthlink calls their service that returns a search page for your NX domain lookups. If you read either of the blogs linked in the article, you would find that out yourself.
Paid links on the search engine that pops up when you enter a bad url.
The latter would be an informed propagation of ignorance. Well, no, it's no longer ignorance since the phrase makes much more sense in the newer usage.
Perhaps we could call it an informed, willful attempt to patch a critically broken language.
---
On the other hand I have recently come across quite a few truly tragic turns of phrase like "For all intensive purposes.", that one is everywhere--just google for it.
My wife knows someone who says "I'd just assume not" and she's been trying to decide if she should correct him--I thought was a cute fluke, nobody would actually say that! Of course then I start noticing it in other places--last night I saw "I'd just assume not" in the documentation for a linux distro (freespire).
Then there was the training video at prior company where the guy kept saying "Per Se" (or the new written version "Per Say") in the same way most people insert "and" or "Uh" while speaking. "This variable is for regulating the speed per se, this other one is for timing..."
We are now in a world where most text that actually gets read is generated by people without language training of any sort (like myself).
Just give in, trying to correct this exponentially expanding pile of errors we call the internet is just "Tilling at Windmills" (Google it)
I don't think what you're talking about is a solution -- the behavior that's not wanted by a lot of people, is the redirection to the search page, period.
I.e., what's desired is if you type in a bad address, you get a "domain name not found" error, not a search page.
Those search pages are called a "feature" to some, but to many people -- myself included -- they're just unwelcome advertising and an obnoxious waste of bandwidth.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Actually, it raises the question.
I think we need to start getting a troll: grammer nazi flag to set, i'm tired of over half of the comments being "you spelld it wrng n00b!"
I have a co-worker who saved $5 / mo. by switching his TimeWarner Road Runner account over to Earthlink. In return he was given a faster line speed on the same network (Until Time Warner increased theirs to match) and isn't charged an extra $10/mo. for not being a Time Warner Cable subscriber.
They're the only company in my area that will lease me a Time Warner line for less than what TW would charge me themselves, and I feel good by not cutting those bastards a check.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
As far as I'm concerned, these DNS servers are a fine stopgap solution until I finish switching to a new ISP.
But as for using "OpenDNS," my main objection is that I'm already paying for a DNS server with the cost of my subscription!. Why should I have to jury-rig this work-around, one that is only marginally less distasteful than earthlink-help.net, when I should be getting the Real Thing(TM) with the cost of my subscription (with support, thankyouverymuch)?
The only reason I'm still here is that my parents are using my account as well. And that will be fixed when I visit them for Thanksgiving.
Even worse, I have discovered it breaks a nice feature that I particularly like with safari (yes, I use mac os x). Safari's autocomplete feature apparently relied upon the standard dead page error and attempted to fill in the "www." and ".com", ".org", or ".net" to find a valid page. Now with earthlink's new DNS "feature", safari's auto complete won't work properly.
How many times can earthlink screw me over by one lousy, unwanted "feature"?
This is literally final!
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Years ago I tried to get Earthlink DSL service. I called and was told DSL was available at my house. My account is set up and the Earthlink person tells me they'd send me a package and then arrange for installation. Time passes and I don't receive the package. More time passes and I phone: I'm told that DSL is not available in my neighbourhood and so the package and my account was cancelled.
:P !!
When I ask if perhaps Earthlink could have contacted me to tell me this a couple weeks earlier, the person on the phone tells me (without any hint of humour or irony) that I was sent an email. I never received an email. Yes, we sent an email. To which address I ask. They sent the email telling me that I could not have Earthlink service to the free Earthilink email address they had provided with my account. Super-Genius!
That may have been the stupidest customer service experience of my life and has forever tainted my opinion of anything having to do with Earhtlink.
earthlink is dumbest!!1!
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Have you tried adding food coloring? Simple solution, and may affect the quality, but it's worth a shot.
I could care less. ;)
It either exists, or it does not exist. If it doesn't exist, the only correct answer is NXDOMAIN. Anything else is some protocol other than DNS. There is no DEAD_DOMAIN_REDIRECT_TO_AD answer defined in the protocol. If the domain is not in the TLD servers, any answer but NXDOMAIN is a lie.
That includes when it comes from OpenDNS nameservers, which is just another service that lies to you about DNS query results.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Yeah so what? Its the same difference.
=)
I can see this is a take-off on the Pope's quotation.
To get even, right off the bat, they shot a nun in the back in Somalia, while she was working at a hospital taking care of muslim kids.
The Pope was right. But, when dealing with people like that, he has to say he is sorry, and hope for the best.
Oh, btw, a few old churches were torched, one nearly 200 years old.
These are not rumors, these things happened. Strange how stories like this come around when a war gets underway.
But, a war against who? and where? No "Berlin" or "Tokyo" here.
What's wrong with "I'd just assume not" ? I agree it's inelegant, but it doesn't seem to be the same class of error as "For all intensive purposes". I'd actually genuinely interested.
You can't win a fight.
Yawn. I'll just continue using my local DNS recursor/resolver. That way I don't even have to think what my ISP is doing with their DNS servers.
Who else is running BIND 9 on their home network?
Pinging 4.2.2.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 4.2.2.1: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=246
Reply from 4.2.2.1: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=246
Reply from 4.2.2.1: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=246
Reply from 4.2.2.1: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=246
P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
what about our own 9/11 stories... we are killing ourselves or not.... just abusing other nations/religions and not realizing that our regulation bodies are imposing on them what they not want and intruding in their own business ....
huh!!!
The phrase is "I'd just as soon not".
Carpe Daemon
"The Pope was right. But, when dealing with people like that, he has to say he is sorry, and hope for the best."
The Catholic church has been responsible for two millennia of torture, murder, intolerance, war, and disease. The pope himself was a Hitler Youth and head of the inquisition. Sorry, but the guy has no authority or credibility to make statements about the morality of anybody or anything.
I'd just assume not is simply a misunderstanding of "I'd just as soon not". "I'd just assume not" means nothing.
At first I thought it could be used as a really bizarre way of saying "I'd rather not assume", but It's always used in the context of "I'd just as soon not", so I can pretty much guarantee it's a simple misunderstanding.
If it were an awkward way to say "I'd rather not assume", you would expect it to be used in cases involving assumptions such as "He could be out with another girl, but I'd just assume not". Instead it's used in cases where assumption has nothing to do with it--"Everyone else is cheating on their wives, but I'd just as soon not!"
This could lead to some serious misunderstanding actually: If you changed that last example add a little "assuming":
"Everyone else may be cheating on their wives, but I'd just ? not!"
That statement COULD read either way, but it would have a different meaning--
?=as soon: I'd rather not cheat on my wife even though I believe it a popular practice.
?=assume: Now we are giving the "Cheaters" the benefit of a doubt--they COULD be cheating on their wives, but I'll assume they aren't (in this case you are saying nothing of your own marriage).
If you search for this phrase, I think you will find it used as in the "as soon" example and never the second (potentially valid but awkward) example leading us to believe that they have just misheard the original phrase spoken in correct context.
Hey, this brings up a second aspect of my original post. What if the existence of the internet is bringing out things that have been festering hidden in family lines for generations.
A mom speaks a phrase she read to her daughter "I'd just as soon", the daughter never took to reading and mishears "I'd just assume", then teaches it to her kids that way. The kids will take it as fact and it will propagate through generations.
If one of the descendants was into reading books, they might learn better and break the chain for their descendants. Then the internet comes around and all these little fractures of the English language come together at once and make some giant language mashup.
There are many times I'd assumed a phrase was something then after reading it in a few books found out I was wrong (song lyrics are notorious for this).
The generations leading up to the internet saw a sharp decline in vocabulary and literacy because people changed reading for TV, so I'm sure this happened a lot.
makes sense.
Ah! I understand now. Thanks. No, I'd never use it in place of "I'd just as soon not". Sorr, I imagined it being used in the following scentence:
"Does debian always come with a 2.6 kernel?"
"I'd just assume not"
As in, in general, I would make a negative assumption on the general condition that had been queried.
But I see what you mean! crazy!
You can't win a fight.