Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.....
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)
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