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George W. Bush buys anti-Bush names
Quite a number of people have written over the last few days, alerting us to the fact that it appears that presidential candidate George W. Bush, has bought up over 200 Internet Domain Names. The article on Zdnet says that people wanted to put a website up at www.bushsucks.com, but Bush bought that, and more such as bushsucks.net, bushsucks.org, and even bushblows.com Huh-I guess it's a way of having a clue. Sort of.
Buying internet domain names is also a form of freedom. Just because these anti-Bush people weren't smart enough to buy the domains first, doesn't mean Bush shouldn't be allowed to do so.
As an American, I lost ALOT of faith in my country.
I dont like how we arm militias of 3rd world countrys so we can help take over their gov
I dont like how we police the world.
I dont like how the politicians arent in it to better the country, but to better there own careers.
I dont like our over-agressive capitolism-But capitolism is a great thing, if done correctly and fairly.
They say if you dont like it, you can leave
Well, I don't like it-I can't change it, so im moving to canada.
Just my $0.02
PS: If you are going to whine and cry about spelling/grammar errors, save the bandwidth and forget reminding me how terrible I am.
Your comments are just stupid.
Settle down, no need to get frustrated.
It's a free market economy. If Bush is smart enough to buy up those names before some anti-bush person does, then more power to him.
Smart? For doing what, letting the bushsucks websites find another name, that is smart? That is a lame attempt.
Yeah, free market, I buy out your company have them fire you, buy out the every company you could work for and have them deny you a job even as janator, and then when you're wife has to leave you because you can't afford to be with her, then I will take her, or give her to a friend.
Hey!!!! Its a free market. I can buy anything with enough money, even if it is not for sale. If your wife is beautiful enough I can imagine many other rich men trying to do the same thing, we may even poll our money together just to get our turn with her.
Let someone use their geocities account to post bad things against Bush, it just won't be as easy for people to find it.
Exactly, its not how bush did it (buying up a lot of obvious bushsucks site names), its what it says in his actions.... "You can dislike me, but you wont be able to scream loud enough about it".
Sure money is power, but it isn't ethics, morals, or responsibility. Sure guns give you sense of power, but they also don't give you those things, and Colorado is a good example of abuse of that kind of power. Abuse of money is another thing, personly I think it was a dumb thing he did, not only a waste of money, but also a bad message to send out to everyone.
Either you don't live in the US (and thus don't really understand our country), or you do but really have no clue of how "free speech" and "market economy" go together.
All right lets not be lame, I'm not saying he is not free to buy them, just like I am free to shoot you there is nothing "real" holding me back, but there are and should be moral and ethical problems with this. You should know the diffrence.
If I was a Democrat, I wouldn't list that as a reference to some negative thing used against Bush.
Of course not, but there are people who would be interested, just like their are people who are interested in clintonsucks sites, and the rest of the anti sites, its just human nature to look at the bad side of something, as well as the good sides. And GB obviously know this, but he his solution is not to discuss anything its to buy everything out.
Actually your comments leave me speachless. I've never heard such a warped point of view.
OK, then try to explain why he bought them with out getting close to my "warped point of view".
They also suggest that you "protect your internet .net, .com, and .org version of your domain name. Isn't that a blatant violation of what .org and .net were supposed to be for?
brand name" by buying up the
This is slightly off topic: I just want to remind everyone to register to vote, read up on the issues, and vote. This crap does affect you and don't be turned off by the negative advertizing which is used by both sides and which is designed to disgust people into not voting. Geeks and other independent minded people are easily turned off by this stuff. Don't get fooled, find a reason to vote and do it.
Although he did register 200 domain names, making Network Solutions, even richer, he did not pick up all anti-bush names. Boycottbush.com is still open.. Network Solutions must like this new idea, and hopes even more organizations follow it...
I've always believed that there should be strict rules for buying domain names:
1. You must be some kind of an official organization
2. There should be a certain number of individual computers uniquely connected to it (no virtual hosting crap)
3. ONLY ONE domain per organization
4. That name must say who you are
Domain names were never intended to be used by everly little clown that wants a web site. They were intended to identify networks and to give organizations their own namespace.
I like Bush, but this is kinda stupid. Maybe I'll vote for Alan Keyes like I did last time.
If Bush buys bushsucks.com, he should be required to actually use it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
It doesn't matter. A president's job has little to do with technical matters. If you think Gore hasn't a clue (he actually has the ability to borrow a clue; one wishes he would remind himself of that sometimes), then Bush would be an even bigger joke. Like his father (a man I really like, BTW -- except as a politician), George W just wants to be president; the only relevant details he has worked on so far is fund-raising and focus groups. Policies are not so worked-out at this time, i.e., they're for sale to the highest bidder, be it a special interest group or a corporation. He's ahead in the polls right now, but if the press scrutinizes his past business deals (e.g. Harken Energy, and the Texas Rangers baseball team), the voters will see that he made a lot of money from his surname and the fact that his dad was (at various times) the DCI (head of the CIA), vice president, and president. Of course, the voters may ignore all that and vote for the guy anyway; I'm sure he and his handlers will have worked out explanations and alibis for everything, or Double U wouldn't have run for prez. Are top politicians in Sweden this bad? Many top American politicians are; Bush is in the 90th percentile, with plenty of company.
Oh. Did I forget my RANT tags again? Moderators: I have no problem with this being reduced to a -1 score :)
--
--
=8^
Oh Bush is pretty savvy on technical matters. We've been having problems with our mail server for a while, but George came over and fixed it.
His brother Jeb, OTOH, kept trying to jam the ethernet cable into the phone jack.... Don't ask Jeb Bush to help with anything technical.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I agree with you about the childishness, but if I was looking for an anti- website, I'd go to sucks.com. I'd be hoping for some actually reasonable objections to that person. I think that often I'd be able to find them (though I haven't tried that sort of thing in a while). Maybe I'm just naive, though.
Cheers,
Perrin.
-Perrin.
Now I want you to go in that bag and find my lightsaber. It's the one that says bad mother-fscker on it.
Heh, I don't think this is really an attack on free speech. He wants to make it harder to find anti-Bush web sites. That will make it a little harder. I think it's a pretty smart move. And it makes me laugh too. Way to go, George.
Cheers,
Perrin.
-Perrin.
Now I want you to go in that bag and find my lightsaber. It's the one that says bad mother-fscker on it.
So George buys up some insulting domain names. But first of all, it's not hard to come up with new domain names like that -- bushstinks, etc. Secondly, who would really use these domain names? Even fruity Al "I invented the Internet" Gore isn't so childish that he'd be interested in using them for his own sites. So what did Bush really gain by this?
Ok, I'm not a big politician fan, but after seeing some of Al Gore's comments, it's refreshing to see someone has some forsight. I think it's hilarious and cool. I also think that it's ashame to see all the negative comments. can't we all just get al... .. arrrrgggghh.
Awesome!
You will definitely have time to register and be processed. If your state has a motor voter law, then just go to the DMV and do something to your driver's license. The voter registration forms are printed on the back of most other paperwork so it's really easy to do both at the same time.
If your state doesn't have a motor voter law, look up your town's electorial commission in the phone book, phone them for instructions on registering and just do it.
I live in Cambridge, MA, and there are voter registration tables at street fairs and a lot of other public events. It's not exactly a normal town, since there's more registered Libertarians than Republicans in it, but even less activist towns have to let you register if you can prove:
1. citizenship
2. residence in the town
3. that you have no felony convictions
The domains sucks.com and rules.com are not being used for this sort of purpose. sucks.com exhibits a "coming soon" sign, and rules.com seems to have been snaffled by a speculator/hosting company.
If I owned these domains I would be selling subdomains, and making lotsa dosh! I shudder to think of the money geeks would pay to get domains like microsoft.sucks.com, or linux.rules.com. People would probably play ~internic rates for subdomains there, IMHO....
Besides, it be much more fun to tease those who only sorta get the tech, but exploiting holes in their knowledge....
... and today's pet project has
This idea isn't new. The Scientologists forced the original Cult Awareness Network to fold, via specious litigation (Scientology doesn't care about winning lawsuits, they just want to bankrupt their opponents), and then set up camp themselves as the Cult Awareness Network. So now, if you try to get information about cults via the CAN, you're actually getting information from a cult.
That was about three years ago.
Erm, my heart bleeds for all the poor flame artists who will find it marginally harder to throw personal insults at someone because they disagree with his politics. Um, not.
I'd have to say that buying domains instead of sending threatening letters is a definite improvement.
On that note, I highly recommend Project Vote Smart < http://www.vote-smart.org/>.
This non-partisan site has lots of detailed info on all the candidates and so forth, including issues responses and recent voting history. That is, if they've been a Congressman, it lists how they voted on various bills.. very good solid data. (Could use more info on those bills, though.)
Anyway, this is the quickest way to check out tons of solid facts about various candidates.
Alot of people/companies buy alot of domain names that are related to them, or can be used against them. At $35 it's an inexpensive way to protect yourself. It would be a story if he DIDN'T reg the names.
Apple owns 100's of domain names to point to thier website, Nike owns around 500 I belive, and I'm sure there are alot of others who own that amount of domain names.
And I'll be damned, look where www.microsfot.org takes me too.....
...to have people that click on the URL www.bushsucks.com redirected to his original homepage? Isn't that kind of like admitting that he, in fact, sucks? Just a thought.
-----BEGIN ANNOYING SIG BLOCK-----
Evan
rooooar
I thought that the supreme court ruled 'domain sitting' illegal? What a law abiding netizen.
Jaq
Bush registers a bunch of domain names, Proctor and Gamble (?) registers another huge number, etc... And we wonder why we're running out of domain names. It's like giving a class C to every AOL user.
I would suggest a good rule for domain name registration authorities is that a company can have its domain name renewal denied if it hasn't made use of the name. If all a name does is point to a "Coming soon" or "Buy this domain" page for a year, then we should return it to the pile and let someone else have a go at it. Ditto when someone has a bunch of domain names point to the same page.
Bush isn't doing anything wrong, but he's still being a jerk by buying something just to keep someone else from having it. We should work for rules that stop this sort of land-grab behavior.
If he can't put up content on every domain name, and not just link them all to one page, then let him, but if he's just pissing all over stuff to keep other people away... Well, we don't need that bullshit on the net as well as in the physical world.
Wow, that's the best laugh I've had in a while. I'm not sure if that 's brilliant or silly, but I do find it amusing.
I can imagine George and his advisors sitting around some large expensive table discussing if they want to buy www.bushblows.com. I'll bet they were laughing as hard as I was.
It says something about the power; or maybe the perceived power of the internet. It's really amazing how far it has come in the span of a few years. I was thinking back to 94 when I got my first account on Prodigy. You had to pay extra to go on the "Web" at that time and the speed coming through prodigy was horrible, but I'll bet I didn't sleep for a week.
Now the internet seems so commonplace, having an email adr. is the norm not the execption, and major political powers are giving some serious thought on how to harness the power.
This should be interesting.
Let's see. One of the major American presidential contenders cluelessly claims to have created the Internet, while the other actually does some research to figure out how it works and uses it to his advantage. One throws up a site with lots of open source buzzwords in a transparent and lame attempt to get free labor out of the geek community without any understanding of that community. The other does enough research to realize which domains competitors and detractors would try to register, and takes action to mitigate the threat as quietly as possible.
While Gore claims to be the high-tech candidate, I think Bush is the man for the geek community. Why? His actions show that instead of jumping on buzzwords and trying to jump in front of the crowd so that he can call himself a leader, Bush is actually willing to do his homework and study the nature of our world before he opens his mouth.
Note please do not construe this post as flaim bait. This forum isn't about who supports welfare, abortion, bombing soveriegn countries, etc. It's about technology and which candidate can best drive it forward. Please, please, please, limit responses to this.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
It's even a somewhat interesting site. Presents some pros and cons.
Honestly, I thought it was kinda dumb that Bush had to do this....but I can understand his reasoning...
Why do people in general have to create sucks.com sites? Yeah, you may not like the person, but you can still let the person campaign/sell/express their opinion. Going out and just saying they suck is just childish. If you want to vent your frustrations with someone, you can find a far more adult way to do it somewhere else.
(And I'm not associated with *any* political party...I don't agree with any of them)
Anyone capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
socialism is still a theory
capitalism is still a theory
Feudalism never ended. People just feel rich because of suits.
communism is extreme socialism for control of power. Some cultures' medium of value(currency) is power.
protectionism is extreme capitalism for control of
money. Some cultures' medium of value is money.
so far no culture has held value as a medium of value.
stop trying to legislate or institutionalize good will. nothing lasts past a few generations after its inception. every generation is as far from the last generation as the next will be from it because nothing changes just the percentage of different qualities of character. stop being so ridiculously enthusiastic, it's sickening.
Read Forever Flowing, A Captive Mind, watch "Brazil" a few times.
"but we can still do much better..." go back to coding.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
These stories weren't very interesting to begin with and now they're just plain annoying. I don't care.
I care about Linux news, but not what people have to say about piddly bi-weekly kernel improvements.
Thank you, and good night.
Hands in my pocket
Bush is not domain sitting, domain sitting is when you buy up a bunch of domains with the intent to sell them to the people who would accually want those domains.. like buying ibm.com
anyhow, if your refering to the guy who the story says wants 300,000 (?? didn't go back and reread figure could be wrong..) then I appologize and ignore me..
Canada does this. They have very strict
rules on who gets what type of domain name,
and how many you can have. An organization
can only have ONE domain name, and it either
has to relate to their company name, or
a registered trademark. So now, for example,
you can have either coke.ca or coca-cola.ca,
but not both. You wouldn't believe the hoops
I had to jump through to get pollock.ca!
Jason