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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.
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.
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.
I have Earthlink, sad as it is. I chose it when I got cable because I had them for Sprint DSL and their news servers were very good for free. Then they changed them and they suck now. I'd change to roadrunner, but every change I make is a 2 week interruption in service no matter what change I make, so I refuse to change anything.
I almost made that mistake of using OpenDNS as well. I used Level 3's servers instead.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
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.
Better yet, let everyone have a say.
Let's make DNS a wiki!
Have you read my journal today?
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.
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?
:(){
FYI, a few weeks back, David Ulevitch blogged that this is no longer a problem.
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."
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.
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