Example.com Has Changed

An anonymous reader writes "The familiar example.com domain, reserved for private testing, has been updated. Visiting the domain in a web browser no longer displays any content; instead, visitors are redirected to an explanatory page on IANA's website at iana.org/domains/example/. Other example domains such as example.net are also affected. Is this a bad change? Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?"

Comments

For documentation purposes

[Anonymous Coward]

The domains are designed to be used as examples in free text, not to be visited. Not to be pinged, scraped, tracerouted or anything else that involved actually accessing them via the Internet.

So how does "Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?" make any sense?

Re:For documentation purposes

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the big difference would be for ISPs and anyone else running DNS servers that redirect failed lookups to their own pages, this would no longer be useful as a test to see if your dns server will actually return NXDOMAIN for anything.

Re:For documentation purposes

[Dynedain]

Example.com at least isn't a change in that scenario because it used to resolve to a specific server. Now that it resolves with a redirect, I don't see much difference at the DNS layer.

Re:For documentation purposes

[maxwell demon]

Just use a TLD of invalid for that, like example.invalid.

Re:For documentation purposes

[russotto]

I suppose the big difference would be for ISPs and anyone else running DNS servers that redirect failed lookups to their own pages, this would no longer be useful as a test to see if your dns server will actually return NXDOMAIN for anything.

The example.com domain hasn't returned NXDOMAIN for a long time (if ever). It had a valid IP address with a webserver hosting a static page. Now instead of that static page it has a redirect. If you want an NXDOMAIN, try "example.invalid" (or anything else dot invalid).

Re:For documentation purposes

[Anonymous Coward]

So how does "Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?" make any sense?

Posted by timothy on Sun Jan 30, '11 01:25 PM

Re:For documentation purposes

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience it's not uncommon to use the example domains for test data like dummy emails and such, and in example configurations.
That way you won't accidentally send out mail to random domains.

Re:For documentation purposes

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't make sense, but it's probably a requirement that most inane non-issue articles be posted with a leading question that stirs up discussion where little is needed and controversy where none exists.

Re:For documentation purposes

[freedumb2000]

I've always been under the impression that it is fine to use anon@example.com as a fake email address for sites that require my to enter an email address to prevent spamming real mail servers.

Re:For documentation purposes

[Tenareth]

The entire push to use example.com (which I always thought was pretty dumb) was because foo.com or bar.com might actually exist and do something, therefore if your point is valid, the entire point of example.com is invalid.

Re:For documentation purposes

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to be honest - I forgot they were there and everyone I asked had forgotten that they existed too... So I doubt it will be a widespread problem...

Re:For documentation purposes

[camperdave]

The domains are designed to be used as examples in free text, not to be visited. Not to be pinged, scraped, tracerouted or anything else that involved actually accessing them via the Internet.

So how does "Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?" make any sense?

There's never been any prohibition against pinging, scraping, or tracerouting to it or otherwise trying to access. Example.com has long resolved to a page explaining its purpose. I fail to see the story here.

Re:For documentation purposes

[Anonymous Coward]

I used example.com in a book I wrote to illustrate doing HTTP stuff through a telnet connection. This obsoletes that part of my book which is mildly annoying.

Re:For documentation purposes

[Phydaux]

It could break a program if a moron has programmed their application to check for internet connectivity by looking for a 200 OK response from example.com.

There are plenty of idiots who do stuff like this, whether it's using a "reserved for future use" byte in a file header for their own personal program or some unspecified quirk in an API that later gets changed/fixed.

It really wouldn't surprise me if a few programs broke, because there are just too many idiots for someone not to have done something stupid.

Re:For documentation purposes

[ggeens]

I suppose the big difference would be for ISPs and anyone else running DNS servers that redirect failed lookups to their own pages, this would no longer be useful as a test to see if your dns server will actually return NXDOMAIN for anything.

You can use a.com (or any other single letter) for that.

Re:For documentation purposes

[Anonymous Coward]

The domains are designed to be used as examples in free text, not to be visited. Not to be pinged, scraped, tracerouted or anything else that involved actually accessing them via the Internet.

This is not true.

The domain are designed to be used as examples in free text, and, THEREFORE, also to be pinged, scraped, tracerouted and anything else that involves actually accessing them via the Internet.

I don't see any major problems with the redirect, but thinking these widely published sites should not be accessed is incorrect and against their original intent.

Re:For documentation purposes

[mmontour]

You can use a.com (or any other single letter) for that.

x.com disagrees. Use the ".invalid" TLD.

Re:For documentation purposes

[Cramer]

bar.com has existed for a very long time. The owner used to read every email coming in to foo@bar.com, but gave it up long ago -- "The internet has no sense of humor."

Re:For documentation purposes

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use OpenDNS, any string will return a result.

you might have bigger problem

[JonySuede]

If your application is so broken that it depends on the behavior of exemple.com to be correct, you have a bigger problems than this.

Re:you might have bigger problem

[statusbar]

The problem is that now example.com is going to be slashdotted, and all examples in history will be broken! Hmm except the examples of slashdotting, I guess. We will have to come up with other examples.

Re:you might have bigger problem

[klapaucjusz]

The test suite of Darcs needs a domain that doesn't exist. It used to use example.com for that purpose, which now fails:

Sat Jan 29 16:18:53 CET 2011 Ganesh Sittampalam
* switch test to use a URL we can make sure will fail
Seems like the behaviour of http://example.com/ changed to start serving
pages at all URLs...

Re:you might have bigger problem

[Anonymous Coward]

If your application is so broken that it depends on the behavior of exemple.com to be correct, you have a bigger problems than this.

exemple.com works as expected.

Re:you might have bigger problem

[Bogtha]

Then that was a bug in Darcs. example.com was never a guarantee that any particular URL served from that domain would fail. Also note that they said that the URL would fail. That is not the same as the domain not existing. example.com has existed for years and years. Presumably they were appending a random string to http://example.com/ and hoping to get a 404. If the test suite was expecting example.com to not exist, then it never would have worked in the first place.

Re:you might have bigger problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats a very broken thing to do...

If you need a dns entry that doesn't exist, pick one that you are authoritative for and make sure it doesn't exist. If you own example.com, use invalid.example.com as your test case and make sure you never create a valid entry for it.

Anything else could change at the whim of whoever is authoritative for it.

Re:you might have bigger problem

[JonySuede]

god damm typo !

Re:you might have bigger problem

[klapaucjusz]

If you need a dns entry that doesn't exist, pick one that you are authoritative for and make sure it doesn't exist.

That's exactly what they did:

-not darcs get http://example.com/foo
+not darcs get http://darcs.net/nonexistent

Re:you might have bigger problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The test suite of Darcs needs a domain that doesn't exist. It used to use example.com for that purpose, which now fails:

Sat Jan 29 16:18:53 CET 2011 Ganesh Sittampalam

    * switch test to use a URL we can make sure will fail

    Seems like the behaviour of http://example.com/ changed to start serving

    pages at all URLs...

".example" is recommended for use in documentation or as examples.
".invalid" is intended for use in online construction of domain names that are sure to be invalid and which it is obvious at a glance are invalid.

Guess they should read the rfc.

Re:you might have bigger problem

[Culture20]

".example" is recommended for use in documentation or as examples.
".invalid" is intended for use in online construction of domain names that are sure to be invalid and which it is obvious at a glance are invalid.

Guess they should read the rfc.

RFC 2606 Reserved Top Level DNS Names June 1999 ...
3. Reserved Example Second Level Domain Names


The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) also currently has the
following second level domain names reserved which can be used as
examples.

example.com
example.net
example.org

Re:you might have bigger problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a website page and not DNS. Should be something like "foobar.darcs.net"

Re:you might have bigger problem

[atisss]

Try http://example.invalid.com/

Re:you might have bigger problem

[Just Some Guy]

Ditto everything you said. That's made especially ridiculous by the fact that the project owns their own domain, darcs.net, and could have just as easily used http://darcs.net/doesnotexist and configured their server to make sure it always returned a 404. Basically, they were using an undocumented third-party web service that returned 404s in response to a request and counting on the perpetual existence of that service. That's just goofy.

No

[OverlordQ]

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com

HTTP/1.0 302 Found
Location: http://www.iana.org/domains/example/
Server: BigIP
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 0

If that breaks your program, you're doing it wrong.

Re:No

[TheRaven64]

It won't break your program, but it might break your example. I've seen HTTP tutorials that show using telnet to connect to example.com, and getting a response. Now the response is different, so anyone who tries the example will see a redirect instead of a content reply.

It's not a serious problem, but it may cause a small amount of confusion for a tiny group of people.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

They're doing it wrong.

example.com is reserved as a placeholder for a domain name. It could just as well not resolve at all (and that is an actual possibility if traffic to that domain ever becomes a problem). The point of it is to have a domain name that can safely be used in documentation and sample configurations without the risk of someone registering the name and putting up a porn site or whatever (and also to avoid the possibility that a chosen name is an actual in-use domain name and example configurations end up sending that domain much unwanted traffic).

Re:No

[snowgirl]

I was a little peeved by the Keep-Alive: yes

If all you're doing is a redirect, it's like... why would you leave the connection open? "Dude, go here... and um... stick around for a bit, I just want to make sure you don't have anything else to ask about..."

Re:No

[smellotron]

I was a little peeved by the Keep-Alive: yes

Doesn't seem to be an issue for me:

telnet www.example.com 80
GET / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.0 302 Found
Location: http://www.iana.org/domains/example/
Server: BigIP
Connection: close
Content-Length: 0

Connection to host lost.

Maybe the client was requesting a keep-alive, as all modern browsers expect to do? Or maybe it's an HTTP/1.0 vs. /1.1 difference.

Re:No

[snowgirl]

Maybe the client was requesting a keep-alive, as all modern browsers expect to do? Or maybe it's an HTTP/1.0 vs. /1.1 difference.

Yes, HTTP/1.1 automatically assumes keep-alive is desired, while HTTP/1.0 makes the opposite assumption.

Of course, HTTP/1.1 also requires a Server: entry for all requests as well...

Re:No

[Migala77]

I was a little peeved by the Keep-Alive: yes

If all you're doing is a redirect, it's like... why would you leave the connection open? "Dude, go here... and um... stick around for a bit, I just want to make sure you don't have anything else to ask about..."

In that case, don't ever look how http://bit.ly/ redirects.

Re:No

[mysidia]

It won't break your program, but it might break your example. I've seen HTTP tutorials that show using telnet to connect to example.com, and getting a response.

Then they have not understood RFC 2606.

These names are reserved for use as example domains in documentation.

If there is any page at those addresses, then it is a coincidence. There is no assurance that IANA will provide these domains as resolvable in any form. The domains are reserved, that doesn't indicate the name will (or will not) resolve.

Re:No

[ArthurDA]

These names are reserved for use as example domains in documentation.

In my opinion, the words that should have been bold are "in documentation"... :-)

Re:No

[AmiMoJo]

To be honest if they can't figure out why their traceroute output is different to the tutorial that uses a specific domain then it's probably better that hey give up there and then.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone was a n00b once.

Some people learn by using examples and modifying to see what happens, that happens to be the way most hackers break systems.

The underlying assumption is that you have some standard base that you know works and u build / modify from there, if the base doesn't work there is no guarantee that anything else will.

Re:No

[Kalriath]

You mean a "Host:" header right? I believe that's actually optional too.

Re:No

[snowgirl]

You mean a "Host:" header right? I believe that's actually optional too.

Ah yes, you're right, it is the Host field, although it is not optional, it is mandatory (from http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html Section 14.23)

A client MUST include a Host header field in all HTTP/1.1 request messages . If the requested URI does not include an Internet host name for the service being requested, then the Host header field MUST be given with an empty value. An HTTP/1.1 proxy MUST ensure that any request message it forwards does contain an appropriate Host header field that identifies the service being requested by the proxy. All Internet-based HTTP/1.1 servers MUST respond with a 400 (Bad Request) status code to any HTTP/1.1 request message which lacks a Host header field.

Re:No

[dgatwood]

The problem comes when that documentation comes in the form of a web page. I'm expecting to have serious problems because of this change.

In particular, anyone maintaining HTML versions of OS manual pages can no longer usefully run automated link checkers on them because every man page that mentions "http://www.example.com" anywhere in it is going to contain "broken" links because of the redirect.

Not cool.

Re:No

[mysidia]

automated link checkers on them because every man page that mentions "http://www.example.com" anywhere in it is going to contain "broken" links because of the redirect.

If you have a link to www.example.com then it is by definition a broken link.

You should never link to example.com.

It is perfectly fine to mention the domain name in the text of documentation while using it as an example (that's what it is for in the first place); that mention should not be hyperlinked to example.com however.

Translation: fix the documentation. Type it as a non-link (plaintext domain name).

Re:No

[dgatwood]

The problem is that for any *good* translation of man pages to HTML, you'll need to autodetect links in the text. Same goes for pretty printers that start with any text-based format. In the modern Internet, there is simply no place for URLs that aren't links.

So what you're saying is that everyone should have to add a special case workaround for one single broken website. Uh uh. Not gonna happen.

Re:No

[mysidia]

The problem is that for any *good* translation of man pages to HTML, you'll need to autodetect links in the text. Same goes for pretty printers that start with any text-based format. In the modern Internet, there is simply no place for URLs that aren't links.

If you decide to use an 'autodetection' tool or 'pretty printer', then you have to live with false positives, or fix your pretty printer to not recognize them, by special casing or suitable rules.

Just.because.you.have.some.words.with.a.few.dots.in.between.them.does.not.mean.it.is.actually.a.link.period.even.if.it.ends.with.com.

Re:No

[dgatwood]

No, but you'll be hard pressed to find a good example that starts with 'http://' (other than the string "http://" by itself) that is not a working URL. In case you've never worked with a proper URL detector, good ones don't normally have detectable false positive rates. At least in OS manual pages, the only false positives I've seen in the past year or so have been due to things like commas or periods at the ends of the URLs. However, a URL detector for HTML generation can query these variant URLs during content generation and look for a 200 response, making those edge cases a nonissue.

Other than that, every broken link I've seen has either been A. content that used to be there and has gone away or B. a URL with a typographical error in it. I have never once even seen a detection problem that required blacklisting a specific URL.

More to the point, this rather defeats the purpose of using example.com in documentation from my perspective. If every single example is going to result in broken link errors from link checkers, we can't use that domain in the documentation, period. And that's unfortunate.

Re:No

[mysidia]

I have never once even seen a detection problem that required blacklisting a specific URL.

Now you have.

Re:No

[dgatwood]

It's not a detection problem. The URL is being detected correctly, and it's a properly formed URL, so no, I haven't seen anything that legitimately needs to be blacklisted.

When a man page contains a URL, that URL is expected to be a valid URL, not a redirect. Thus, every man page that contains http://www.example.com/ should be considered buggy, and those pages should be changed to use a different, valid URL. From my perspective, it's as simple as that.

And that was my whole point. This change completely breaks the use of the domain in documentation as an example, making it no longer serve its intended purpose..

Re:No

[mysidia]

When a man page contains a URL, that URL is expected to be a valid URL, not a redirect.

First of all, this is wrong.

When a man page contains an EXAMPLE URL, it is intended as an example address for explanatory purposes, not a valid link to be followed.

Second of all, a URL to a redirect is still a valid link. A redirect is not an error.

No, it won't.

[Anonymous Coward]

To answer your question.

Re:really?

[Captain Spam]

It may not matter very much, but it definitely is "news for nerds", in that nerds are the only one who would even notice. They never said it was "news for nerds && stuff that matters".

IANA

[captain_dope_pants]

They are not a what ?

Re:IANA

[Anonymous Coward]

I Am Not Anything

Re:IANA

[sirlatrom]

That's a bit like the other day when I accidentally my new server

Re:IANA

[definate]

The whole server?

Re:IANA

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that's bad? I accidentally the whole thing! THE WHOLE THING!!!

Re:IANA

[Anynomous Coward]

I Am Not Anonymous

Re:IANA

[ladybugfi]

I Am Not Anonymous?

Re:IANA

[naich]

They are not a website. Did you not even read the summary? Christ.

Re:IANA

[wideBlueSkies]

IANA
Are
Not
(an)
Authority

Re:really?

[BatGnat]

I don't know, it is pretty Earth shattering news.

I don't think i will be able to sleep at work today because of it....

In other news...

[Chelloveck]

The meta-syntactic variable 'foo' now redirects to 'bar'. Please update your placeholders accordingly.

Example please.

[gstrickler]

Please provide an example of how it should work.

Re:Example please.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com The one that everyone actually uses to test.

Re:Example please.

[Anonymous Coward]

• Correct usage:
  Telnet can be used to connect to an SMTP server by giving the port number 25 as a second parameter. For example: telnet example.com 25 (Replace example.com with the fully qualified domain name of the mail server that you want to connect to.)
• Incorrect usage:
  To see how telnet can be used to connect to an SMTP server, enter telnet example.com 25.

Re:really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you're likely to be the only one to care, yes.

Re:really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is. I'm a nerd and never knew that example.com etc.. were reserved by iana, I thought it was interesting.
Furthermore unlike MOST slashdot summaries, it wasn't ridiculously sensationalistic and misleading.

what

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you guys drunk ?

Hm. How about tempuri.org

[Cyberax]

Microsoft has been using http://tempuri.org/ as a default namespace in webservices. So far it worked pretty good.

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[simplypeachy]

Alternatively you could use http://example.com/ instead of making up your own stuff which serves no purpose whatsoever.

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has been using http://tempuri.org/ as a default namespace in webservices. So far it worked pretty good.

But not anymore, now it is Slashdotted...

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[iluvcapra]

Jamies-Mac:~ jamie$ telnet tempuri.org 80
Trying 207.46.197.32...
Connected to tempuri.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Cache-Control: private
Content-Length: 23
Content-Type: text/html
Location: http://www.microsoft.com/
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSCRTQCBT=OOMFGMHCDGHHDMPJLACINBJP; path=/
P3P: CP='ALL IND DSP COR ADM CONo CUR CUSo IVAo IVDo PSA PSD TAI TELo OUR SAMo CNT COM INT NAV ONL PHY PRE PUR UNI'
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE7
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 21:10:50 GMT
Connection: close

<!--TOOLBAR_EXEMPT-->
Connection closed by foreign host.

This particular placeholder seems highly vendor-dependent to me.

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? It's just a placeholder.

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[Richard_at_work]

No purpose whatsoever? I disagree - by using their own domain they can ensure completely the function of the uri used, rather than relying on third parties providing continuous availability, and they can also place some information at the uri regarding the usage of the uri within the required context.

I think thats three very useful purposes.

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[Captain Spam]

Microsoft has been using http://tempuri.org/ as a default namespace in webservices. So far it worked pretty good.

Let me know when they use tempura instead. That'd be a more interesting example.

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[simplypeachy]

I would trust IANA to ensure the continued availability of the RFC 2606 to the extent that I would not worry about it being pulled. I'd say that since any user that sees $tempuri is testing and/or using the documentation at the time, then they don't need any extra information from $tempuri - it's not there to document - rather as a placeholder for the tester. However, I do agree your points both have merit :-)

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[Cyberax]

There was a nice page explaining that "tempuri" is a name for a placeholder. But we've Slashdotted it :)

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[Anonymous Coward]

1. It's a domain, not a URI
2. It's a URL, not a URI
3. It's not temporary if the example persists
4. You probably don't want to be following microsoft's lead when it comes to The Internet and standards

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[Ash-Fox]

This particular placeholder seems highly vendor-dependent to me.

Maybe you've never heard of something called 'virtual hosting' which pretty much all 'vendors' support these days?

$ telnet tempuri.org 80
Trying 207.46.197.32...
Connected to tempuri.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1
HOST: tempuri.org

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 4578
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Location: http://tempuri.org/Default.htm
Last-Modified: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 05:29:52 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
ETag: "62d168a0e539c21:0"
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
P3P: CP='ALL IND DSP COR ADM CONo CUR CUSo IVAo IVDo PSA PSD TAI TELo OUR SAMo CNT COM INT NAV ONL PHY PRE PUR UNI'
X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE7
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 01:55:20 GMT
Connection: close

<!-- TOOLBAR_EXEMPT -->

<html>

<head>

<link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" href="Service1.asmx?disco"/>

<style type="text/css">

BODY { color: #000000; background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; }
#content { margin-left: 30px; font-size: .70em; padding-bottom: 2em; }
A:link { color: #336699; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; }
A:visited { color: #6699cc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; }
A:active { color: #336699; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; }
A:hover { color: cc3300; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; }
P { color: #000000; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; font-family: Verdana; }
pre { background-color: #e5e5cc; padding: 5px; font-family: Courier New; font-size: x-small; margin-top: -5px; border: 1px #f0f0e0 solid; }
td { color: #000000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: .7em; }
h2 { font-size: 1.5em; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-top: 1px solid #003366; margin-left: -15px; color: #003366; }
h3 { font-size: 1.1em; color: #000000; margin-left: -15px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; }
ul, ol { margin-top: 10px; margin-left: 20px; }
li { margin-top: 10px; color: #000000; }
font.value { color: darkblue; font: bold; }
font.key { color: darkgreen; font: bold; }
.heading1 { color: #ffffff; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 26px; font-weight: normal; background-color: #003366; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: -30px; padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 15px; width: 105%; }
.button { background-color: #dcdcdc; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 1em; border-top: #cccccc 1px solid; border-bottom: #666666 1px solid; border-left: #cccccc 1px solid; border-right: #666666 1px solid; }
.frmheader { color: #000000; background: #dcdcdc; font-family: Verdana; font-size: .7em; font-weight: normal; border-bottom: 1px solid #dcdcdc; padding-top: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; }
.frmtext { font-family: Verdana; font-si

Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org

[hardboiled.tequila]

Dude, I went to http://www.tempura.org/ and it didn't have anything to do with Microsoft.

internet broken

[voot]

damn, i was using a hash of the page's contents in my custom password hashing function, going to have to update it for the new page now.

As long as purple.com continues to be purple.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I make fake links to everything while mocking up websites, everything goes to that site. It's pure awesome. (Made slightly more awesome a couple years ago when they updated the purpleness of the purple.)

Re:As long as purple.com continues to be purple.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god, I think I'm losing my sanity. Reality is slipping through my fingers. A frontpage story on /. about some site with non-standardised content changing content is supposed to break things. Then some purple site which just begs the question: what the fuck? I'm starting to hyperventilate. Better lie down and touch the ground, to make sure I'm still here, that I'm not freaking out!

Re:As long as purple.com continues to be purple.

[adamofgreyskull]

Purple.com is not for sale

We do use purple.com. We understand that those who are not technically inclined nor in the know may not see that. That's ok. We don't think any less of those who don't know our personal business.

You obviously must not be "technically inclined" or "in the know". :)

Re:really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please hand over your geek card and leave this instant.

Why does it resolve at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was reserved for documentation. Should it really be available to be visited at all?

Who's askin'?

[macraig]

Is this a bad change? Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?

Who's askin'? The IANA, or some dude wearing nothing but underwear and a threadbare tinfoil hat?

Re:Who's askin'?

[blueZ3]

Well, it's a /. "editor" so I'm guessing B) "some dude wearing nothing but underwear and a threadbare tinfoil hat?" (shudders at the mental image)

This is a test

[yelvington]

If you're confused by this, you shouldn't be allowed to use any technology more complex than a spoon.

Re:This is a test

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're confused by this, you shouldn't be allowed to use any technology more complex than a spoon.

What about a spork, or is that just a little to technical ...

Oh!

[fluor2]

So that's why Microsoft invented http://contoso.com/

Redirects always cause problems

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to go far to find a redirect or page move that causes all sorts of problems. Try searching forums on HP products; if a poster refers to HP's official documentation and the link is more than 3 months old it's simply gone. HP isn't the only one, but their support is the most glaringly awful.

Is the IANA really so poor that they can't afford a VM running apache on bsd in order to appropriately handle these requests?

Re:Redirects always cause problems

[mysidia]

Is the IANA really so poor that they can't afford a VM running apache on bsd in order to appropriately handle these requests?

You're forgetting that the IANA function is something that the US government contracts ICANN to perform. The less money they spend, the greater the contracter (ICANN)'s $$$.

I love it.

[Short Circuit]

I'm half-tempted to set up a Gentoo VM and set CFLAGS="-Dfoo=bar" in make.conf.

Put ads on to raise money-and end IANA domain fee

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

They should put ads on the site and use that to eliminate the IANA domain fee.

My two uses remain undisturbed

[X86Daddy]

Example.com/.net/.org has been extremely valuable over the years for documentation purposes... I remember people who didn't know about this picking some random idea of a website, and occasionally running into the porn or satire running on whitehouse.com and whitehouse.org. Good times.

My even more frequent use of those domains will also not suffer from this: shitware websites who want my email address for no valid reason. "Enter your email to download the driver for our hardware you purchased." That kind of thing. WebEx sessions... like I really want spam from them too. They get an @example.com email address. And not I nor anyone else gets spammed by the bastards. :-)

Re:My two uses remain undisturbed

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always used the e-mail address dont@bother.us :-)

Screw This

[incubbus13]

That was my favorite homepage. If it's changed I'm done with the internet. I quit. I hope they didn't update it and fruck up the navigation and look like other sites have done recently...

K.

Re:Put ads on to raise money-and end IANA domain f

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no domain fee paid to IANA. The fee is paid to ICANN, which has a no fee contract to run the IANA.

Could've Asked!

[cjb110]

As the original RFC doesn't mention anything about what should happen if you went to example.com, I'd have thought the professional thing to do would be ask!

Release a statement, let people put some pros/cons...hell a surveymonkey would have been enough.

we can use

[hishammuteb]

we can use ex.com ^^

Re:Put ads on to raise money-and end IANA domain f

[Anonymous Coward]

Worst suggestion. Ever.

Example.com is insecure!

[hardaker]

I suspect a hostile take over. They should have installed a https server so we'd know the redirect wasn't part of a nefarious plot.