New GOP Domain Name Violates RFC 2146

Macki writes "Citing the poor quality of republican websites, Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts has started a project called 'GOP.gov' to help improve their websites. This is all well and good, except GOP.gov isn't just their name, it's also their domain. This is a pretty clear violation of RFC 2146." (Please click below for more.)

The domain is registered to 'US House of Representatives Republican Conference' and should rightfully be GOP.HOUSE.GOV.

Excerpt from RFC 2146:

C) Subsidiary, non-autonomous components of top-level or other entities are not eligible for separate registration. International organizations listed in this document are NOT eligible for registration under .GOV. Subsidiary components should register as third-level domains under their parent organization. Other Federal entities may apply to the FED.US domain."

Comment from Roblimo: Well, that's Mackie's opinion. I disagree, at least in part. I believe a political organization - and that's what a political party is; it's certainly not a government agency - should be an ".org", not a ".gov". BTW, I don't see this as a Republican vs. Democrat thing, either, but as evidence of general Congressional cluelessness. Anyone else care to weigh in on this?

Comments

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are the only parties in the House (with the exception of Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont). They have both been around for at least 150 years. No other party has sustained members in Congress since the Civil War.

I'm gonna go off topic here but, that doesn't make it right, ya know? With only two parties to chose from, it's a safe bet that most candidates follow the party line nearly to the letter. If your vote goes to a Rep., you get a less taxes (maybe), but you'll probably get shafted with ridiculous censorship attempts in the name of the children. If you vote Dem., sure, you'll sleep better knowing that you're helping the less fortunate, but more than likely you'll have to face the fact that if you make more than 50g's a year, you're going to hell. Personally I hate the government and don't trust them with anything. That's why I vote Libertarian [note the .org :)]. And don't even tell me that I'm throwing away my vote. It's because of that philosophy that we have congressmen/senators with 40 year incumbancies(sp?) making policy about things that they have no knowledge of... E-mail tax, gimmie a f***ing break. Screw the Post Office....whoops, did I say that out loud?... sorry. Anyway...

The lack of diversity of parties, on the other hand, is in my opinion a good thing, since it keeps flakey parties from getting elected with a plurality (instead of a majority) -sometimes of only 20 or 30 percent. For example, Hitler came to power with only a third of the vote - but there were too many uncooperating parties spltting the non-moron vote. Ergo the ass won.

Maybe you should change that to "The lack of a Hitler is a good thing." Cause that's what you meant. That was an entirely different system. Congress does NOT elect our chief executive. Even if the ENTIRE congress supported David Duke for Pres, the people are not that stupid (hopefully). The only thing that a two party system accomplishes is stiffling out change in the interest of campaign supporters. Period.

--MessiahXI
messiah11@mindless.com

Re:What in the world does "GOP" stand for?

[DoorFrame]

Yeah, Grande Ole Party.

Read the RFC

[ajs]

From the RFC:

The registrar will use this RFC as guidance and will not grant the ".GOV" to any new entity which is not listed in the FIPS 95-1 or the US Government Manual or which has not been granted an exception status by the FNC Executive Committee.

This clearly makes a policy for exceptions. The FNC Executive Committee is allowed to make exceptions to the policy at their discression.

Is GOP.GOV a reasonable use of the .GOV space? Perhaps not. Is it in compliance with the RFC? Yes.

Re:Misunderstanding

[Anonymous Coward]

The GOV registrar may think they have better things to do than know the rules, but they're mistaken.

Re:What it comes down to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? .GOV shouldn't belong exclusively to the government of the United States anyway - that's what we have .US for!

Re:Should be .org.

[MessiahXI]

OK, yeah you're right. But it's beside the point. What happened in germany was going to happen regardless of the specifics of their (at that time)existing government. The country as a whole was falling apart. The economic climate was such that any form of government would have been suffocated into failure. There were way too many contributing factors to begin pointing fingers at specifics.

Re:Nobody cares

[Anonymous Coward]

What would a .WEB TLD be for? If you're reachable by any protocol that has a HTTP scheme name (and if not, what's the use of consuming DNS namespace?), by definition you're part of the World Wide Web.

IMHO there should be:

• a TLD for each class of good or service available for international trademarking, reserved strictly for holders of international trademarks (and no, I don't really know how trademarks work internationally) - mcdonalds.food.trade
• a 2LD for each class of trademark a country allows (under that country's TLD), reserved strictly for trademark holders in that country - burgerville.food.trade.us
• a subdomain for registered names in a region (here I'm thinking of registered company and trade names in US states, and whatever that corresponds to elsewhere) - andover.co.acton.ma.us
• explicitly first-come-first-served domains globally, per country, and per region (trademark holders could probably still sue infringers to force them to withdraw their registrations, but the registrar shouldn't get involved) - cmdrtaco.org.holland.mi.us

but nothing that fair will ever happen. Search engines leading to IP addresses would be better than what we have now.

Re:.org != non-profit

[kaphka]

ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non-government organizations may fit here.

[devils-advocate]
But Slashdot clearly does fit somewhere else: .COM
[/devils-advocate]

(Totally off-topic: Has anyone figured out how to get literal angle brackets in a /. comment yet?)

Re:What about USPS?

[lomion]

The US Post office is partially priovatized so technically it is both a gov't entity and a commercial venture.

Re:Political parties and government

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as most other countries with voting systems that resembles the US (that is: winner takes all in each circuit), you in effect have a two party system. Your problem is that in order for a party to compete with the two major parties, it will first hurt it closest allies bad, because it will draw votes that would otherwise had gone to those closest to it.

Thus, many voters will automatically shun such parties, first because they stand nearly no chance of winning any elections, and second, because voting for them will often raise the likelyhood of victory for a candidate that voter likes even less than the alternatives from the big parties.

The only viable tactics for alternative parties in an electoral system like the US's (and Britains), is to a) place itself in the political centre. In that case it is more likely to draw voters that don't really care that much if withdrawing their vote for the Republicans means they will benefit the Democrats, or vice versa, and b) go after circuits where either the republicans or the democrats dominate totally, since in those circuits, voters of the opposite party is more likely to be willing to consider an alternative party, since their current party doesn't have a chance to get in power anyway, and since it wouldn't have mattered if they'd voted for their current party, anyway, and since the chance of a center party to draw votes from the dominating party means the race is likely to be a lot closer...

In Britain the Liberal Democratic Party is a good example of a party that has managed to do reasonably well even with a winner takes all system, in part thanks to being placed in the political center, and drawing discontent voters from both sides.

What you need to get more parties, and a greater political diversity, is a proportional system. An important factor is that allows government to change much more rapidly according to the will of the people, since it is often much easier to start a new party than to turn an entire party in a new direction.

For an interesting discussion on two party "democracy", I suggest Professor Robert A. Dahls "After the revolution?", a very good book on democracy in general. It has a brief discussion on the US system.

One of the key problems with US "democracy" is that the "two party system" you've ended up with thanks to the winner takes all system, is a system where it is a democracy only for the active members of the two dominating parties - the rest of you only have a choice between the policies those two parties dictate, unless you have the money and resources to organize huge campaigns.

Is that democracy?

Re:What in the world does "GOP" stand for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Government of the Privileged.

Re:Should be .org.

[MessiahXI]

And the people of America are fairly aware, especially when a poor job is being done.

And who is informing them? The media? Do you think that's a "good thing"? If you merely consume mainstream news, then you are clueless about many issues. For example, how many wars, i mean "police actions" or whatever, has the US been engaged in the past 10 years? OK, now how many of those can truly be called a success? ZERO. Phillipenes(sp?), Somalia, Iraq, Kosovo, to name a few. We got involved in these regions in the name of human rights and what did we accomplish really? The Phillipenes is as corrupt as ever. Chaos still reigns in Somalia. Hussein and Milosovich(sp?) are still in power; how long till we hear from them again? And what happens after we pull out? So does the press. If the atrocities in Somalia and Kosovo are so bad, if it was so bad that we had to get involved, then why aren't we still hearing about it? Did we fix it? No, we didn't. So tell me how informed the majority of the public is.

Most people are satisfied with their representation, however, and there is little upheaval.

I would say that is because they aren't fully aware of their rights and that the government walks over our rights on a daily basis. It's become the status-quo. And it is sad.

Re:Should be gop.net

[Anonymous Coward]

URLs should always be interpreted as case sensitive, except for the scheme name (and domain name, if any). If a server treats many as equivalent it really ought to redirect you (301MovedPermanently) to the preferred representation so you can cache properly and hopefully correct your bookmark/referrer.

The real question is

[aphrael]

Why does this site exist in the first place? Officially it's "to improve the quality of republican websites", but in political speak "improve the quality of" almost always means "make more to my liking."

My bet is this is a result of some sort of power struggle within the republican party. I'm sure that the house republican caucus would love to get a jump on the national committee: it would give them much more control over the agenda.

[Of course, there's a certain amount of unfairness here: I'm sure that if Bernie Sanders, the one Congressman outside the two party system, tried to create www.socialists.gov, he wouldn't be allowed to.]

ObSideNote: www.gop.com exists. It's been poached by www.politics.com.

Re:The real question is

[MattXVI]

On the contrary, I think Rep Sanders would get his way with that, assuming he actually has anything but a passing affiliation with that party.

But to your original point, the reason gop.gov is being set up is because the RNC and other Republican sites aren't being updated, and so are fairly useless. That's all.

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are in effect saying, is that you oppose democracy. The difficulties added for new parties in the US system compared to, say Norway, where there's been both communists on the far left, and fascists on the far right (allthough not since WW II, and even before then only small minority fractions) in parliament in fairly recent times, effectively means that a large fraction of the population doesn't have proper representation in your parliament.

You may feel that is how it should be, but that doesn't make it any more democratic.

Ever thought that maybe that is a major reason why so few Americans care to vote? Because they know they in effect only have a choice between two parties they don't like?

Also, you are severly misinformed on how proportional voting systems work: Yes, it would be possible to get the cabinet with only 20-30 percent, but it is still parliament that takes all important decisions, and the cabinet, and president and/or prime minister (depending on the local flavor of government :-), still are accountable to the parliament. In most cases, though, the result is coalitions, to create a cabinet with support from the majority of the people, or close to, and with additional support from other parties in parliament.

By the way, your example with Hitler is severly flawed. Hitler only got around a third of the vote after massive intimidation and violence against the opposition, especially against the communist and socialist parties, which were very strng in Germany at the time (as in the rest of Europe). Even then, he didn't get into cabinet until he managed to trick the leader of one of the other right wing parties, to create a coalition that had close to 50%, and that got the support of yet another right wing party when electing the cabinet.

Even then, he didn't really have much power until the Reichtags fire, which he used to imprison most of the communist and socialist delegates, to remove those parties from parliament.

All in all, an two party system doesn't protect you against people who use tactics like that.

Actually, a two party system would have made it easier for him: He could have just gotten control of one party first, and instantly had close to 50% of parliament - getting control of a political party is much easier than getting control of a parliament of many... To get control of a party, he only has to get the support of a majority of the party's members, instead of the much larger body of general voters.

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhmm.. France doesn't have a proportional voting system. The only reason France have a relative pluralistic parliament is because the parties have adapted by frequently cooperating. The PS and PCF (Partie Socialiste and Partie Communiste Francaise) , for instance frequently cooperate according to their relative strength in different locations, in the cases where they can get 51% together. The same happens on the right.

That WORKS, but it works only works because no party in France really dominates, and they also have a two round system for some parts of government (been too long since I looked into the French electoral system, so I don't remember if it applies to ordinary elections to the parliament, or only presidential elections) - if no candidate gets above 50% alone, the top two candidates run again in a second round.

Also, how many times have you seen the French cabinet being thrown out?

Also, can you give some examples on the instability in Spain? Spain has only been free of Francos grip for about 25 years, and in those years their political landscape has been very stable from what I've seen....

To add other examples to the Swede who suggested Sweden: Denmark and Norway. In Norway we currently have (from left to right) socialists, social democrats, classical liberals, christian democrats, national democrats, conservatives, and liberal democrats in parliament, without any problems with stability.

Our conservatives and liberal democrats are probably closest to the Democrats and Republicans in US politics, allthough your parties are too broad politically to match any one of our parties closely.

In the near past we've also had communists, stalinists, maoists, whalers (yes, whalers as in people who hunt whales - they got very popular when Greenpeace started demonstrating against whale hunting, and got a representative in parliament), misc. protest groups, nazis (allthough not after WW-II), environmentalists, and more. Yet Norway has had one of the most stable governments in the world.

Denmark has been almost as stable as Sweden and Norway, and there's certainly other European countries with similar stability AND proportional election systems.

Re:gop.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that there have only been two remarkable parties for more than a century? I think we have all been snookered by them, and should fight any representation of them as legitimate government bodies. I never could get an answer from my poly sci professor on how "majority" and "minority" parties came to take over all voting rights in Congress-it's certainly not in the Constitution...

Re:Typical GOP stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap, forgot to include that I can't find my Slashdot account. That article was written by me, Mullen (jtmurphy@ecst.csuchico.edu).

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Sweden is more homogenous than the US, then that highlights even further how bad the US electoral system is, that doesn't give those diverse groups representations in parliament. In Sweden there's representatives ranging from the far left (communists) to the far right (semi-fascist elements) in parliament, and almost everything in between. The same holds true for most other countries with proportional election systems, but most of them also, like Sweden, are dominated by non-fringe parties fairly close to center, such as socialists, social democrats, liberals, christian democrats, and conservatives.

Btw., in European politics, we also have lots of flavors of liberals, so placing "liberals" in the political spectrum can't be done easily... We have social liberals, which are typically centre-left, and economic liberals, which are centre-right to far-right, depending on how liberal they are and their other views, and liberal democrats (note that we're not talking party names here...), that swing both ways, depending on other issues, but that often support less law enforcement (contrary to many economic liberals that support more law enforcement)

The US political system is soooo boring and predictable, with nearly no real choice.

Re:gop.org

[MattXVI]

I don't have to look it up. There is, as I said, only one Independent in the House, Bernie Sanders, and he organizes with the Democrats and votes like them. (He's hardly independent.) And there are no independents in the Senate, unless you count Bob Smith of New Hampshire, who was GOP all his life until nobody supported his now-defunct Presidential bid. He still doesn't know what party he's in.

Re:.org != non-profit

[ToastyKen]

(Totally off-topic: Has anyone figured out how to get literal angle brackets in a /. comment yet?)

You can use the standard < and >.

Re:.org != non-profit

[ToastyKen]

D'oh! it double-converted my characters! It looked fine in preview, though.
Ug.

Anyway, use ampersand-lt and ampersand-gt.

There.

Re:No, this isn't a mistake, perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the sender's point. Since the group is part of the House and it should be under house.gov hierarchy.

Re:What in the world does "GOP" stand for?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Grand Old Party"

Re:What in the world does "GOP" stand for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost. It's Grand Old Party. While I don't know when that 'nick began, the convention that formally launched the party was held in July 1854 at Jackson, Michigan, when a group of former Whigs, Democrats, and Free-Soilers adopted the name Republican.

Re:usps.com

[MattXVI]

They have a (ridiculous) legal monopoly on mail delivery. So they overcharge for stamps, and use the money to pay for their huge losses on package delivery, where they do have competition. If they had to compete equally, they'd go out of business.

This all kind of sucks for a lot of small businesses, who end up spending more than they should on postage. Anybody who sends out adverts will tell you they cost more to mail than to print.

The reason they aren't a .GOV domain is that they are a semi-autonomous corporation owned wholly by the US gov. - so they could probably use a .com or .gov and still be honest both ways.

The USA is a one-party state.

[MattMann]

Heard an English guy on the radio last week say that in England they make the joke:

America is a one-party state. But with typical American extravagence, they have two of them.

Re:The USA is a one-party state.

[jbgreer]

Sounds like he is re-working some old material. Beyond the Fringe (circa 1961) had a joke in the Broadway performance in which they said, "Yes, in America they have inherited our two party system. They have the Democratic party, which is roughly equivalent to our Conservative party and they have the Republican party, which is roughly equivalent to our conservative party."

Re:No, this isn't a mistake, perhaps

[MattXVI]

Well, I was responding to Roblimo's comment, where he said

I disagree. I believe a political orgaization - and that's what political party is; it's certainly not a government agency - should be an ".org", not a ".gov"

Do you see? But perhaps you are right about gop.house.gov over gop.gov

Re:usps.com

[MattXVI]

The US Postal Service definitely hasn't been privatized.

Re:usps.com

[PimpBot]

So they overcharge for stamps

Can we really say this is unfair, though? Considering that the mail gets through (most of the time ;-) aren't they doing a good job with what they charge per letter?

I guess, maybe a better question would be, how much do other coutries charge for stamps/shipping and how good is the quality?
--------------------------

Re:general cluelessness happens

[Anonymous Coward]

"silicone" and "silicon" are two different things.

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

So lets change it to "change (in government) is good when supported by the majority of the people" :-) Change is good, isn't it, so changing the quote should be too :-)

Even if Hitler had much support, the majority of the German people certainly didn't support him..

Re:You whining liberals just don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I really cant stand people who think the world is composed of a struggle between 'liberal' and 'conservative'.
Just trying to introduce a note of calm common sense and rationality into this psychopathic
"discussion" (read: Liberal indoctrination session).

You are insane.

Re:Low quality of advice

[dingbat_hp]

I think this was advice of the highest quality.

gop.gov has some measure of branding kudos, and thus it's valuable. It's the GOP's job to try and acquire such things, and the objective election watchers and federal civil servants to exercise whatever control they can to stop them.

Should it be there ? No. hrc.house.gov should be permitted instead and scrutinised very carefully to ensure it doesn't exceed whatever Whitehouse rule there is about limiting Federal funding of party campaigning.

Is it understandable ? Absolutely. It's just politicians taking anything that wasn't nailed down, and we clearly didn't nail this one down firmly enough beforehand. Don't blame crocodiles for biting your leg off, it's just what they do best.

Personally I'm dubious on any .gov domain that isn't honestly a UN-based New World Order. Having .com imply the US is reasonable enough, but the Whitehouse should stick firmly to .gov.us and stop trying to rule the whole world.

Re:Cited RFC is not a standard

[g-penguin]

trance, the point is, an RFC is followed by our community, until it is the defacto standard (at which point someone will make it official)
In this case, the RFC would be a wonderful thing to have everyone follow, but...well that will not happen.
We all have to realize that as this thing of ours (no pun intended to all of you italians/mobsters) gets out to more and more people, who adopt it with abosolutely no respect for its tradidtions (or for the traditions fo those who created/run it) the RFC process which served us so well in the apst will have to be replaced by a more corrupt, easily manipulated system which could mean lots of cash for one group, or even one senator.
The current process allows argument, best of breed adaptation, and some degree of removal of the standardization process from both government and industry.
So saying that it is "just for comment" is fully correct, but you are wrong to say that this is unimportant.

Re:Should be .org.

[Another MacHack]

E-mail tax, gimmie a f***ing break. Screw the Post Office....whoops, did I say that out loud?... sorry. Anyway...

Yeah, you did say that out loud, and you probably shouldn't have, since the whole thing was just a stupid chain-letter hoax. But, of course, just be because the government didn't actually do something is no reason to hate them for doing it, right?

Re:And, they hijack you to boot!

[g-penguin]

THAT IS NOT THE KIND OF HIJACKING THEY ARE AFTER.. GO READ YOUR NEWS.

What you are experiencing is a javascripot which many organizations use to prevent the fracturing of their precious framed sites. Tell them to GET OFF FRAMES, and this can be avoided.

Re:gop.org

[MattXVI]

It is clearly in the enumerated powers in the Constitution that the House and Senate may make their own rules. Well, the majority party (through the Rules committee) makes the rules for that Congressional session.

gop.org

[Lord_Byron]

It should definately be gop.org. They are not a government agency, and it's time that people started realizing that the Republic and Democratic parties are just two of *many*.

Re:gop.org

[Lord_Byron]

While I will agree that we, practically speaking, have a very close to two party system, that doesn't mean that we need to institutionalize it. To set in stone, even in a minor way, the notion that there are only two parties is to assist in creating a monopoly which will certainly be more damaging than any in the private sector.

Re:gop.org

[MattXVI]

Tell me, Byron- if they are "just two of *many*", then why are there only Republicans and Democrats (and Bernie Sanders) on Capitol Hill? Where are these 'many' you are so concerned with? I agree they exist, but not in sufficient numbers to notice.

The Reform party has only one elected official above the local level, and he is a complete fluke and a joke. And the only libertarian member of Congress, Ron Paul (TX), had to become a Republican to get elected. (Yes this is the same Ron Paul who ran for President as the Libertarian Party candidate)

Re:gop.org

[dattaway]

Yes, gop."gov" is more of an organization, not a government body, such as noaa.gov, nasa.gov, or nist.gov.

There should be a line drawn between special interests bodies and official government services.

Re:gop.org

[MattXVI]

This isn't a special interest organization. It's a standing committee of the majority party of the US House. Totally different. Your sentiment is certainly correct, though.

Re:gop.org

[Vladinator]

There are independants in the house... Go look it up.
"I have no respect for a man who can only spell a word one way." - Mark Twain

UK perspective

[aziraphale]

The UK parliament dropped its parliament.gov.uk domain a while back on the grounds that parliament is not a subsidiary of the government. Check out www.parliament.uk.

This isn't petty. It's important. Anything with a .gov domain element should clearly be in the control of the government. Party groups are .orgs, and that's that.

Well

[jdube]

Do you think that the "top-level-government" will care? Unless I got the wrong thing out of this, isn't this project all about making the .gov sites better? Why would they be against it? I DO suppose that there is the fart that if you let one person do it the rest will too... Can't wait to hear how this resolves.


If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

You dumbass, it is to improve the REPUBLICANS sites, NOT THE PREEXISTING .GOVS! Try reading a post before replying. -Nemmeran

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I DO suppose that there is the fart that if you let one person do it the rest will too... Can't wait to hear how this resolves.
Can't wait either.

Re:Cool! So when does reform.GOV come online?

[MattXVI]

Oh, I don't know, maybe when they have at least a single elected official in Washington.

Political parties and government

[el_chicano]

Comment from Roblimo: ... I believe a political orgaization - and that's what political party is; it's certainly not a government agency - should be an ".org", not a ".gov".

In a two-party system like ours, a political party's role depends on whether it is in power or out of power. In power it is the government, out of power it is an organization wanting power. But it should not be two hard to check on whether a party is acting as a government entity (i.e., when it is looking out for the public interest) and when it is acting as a private organization (e.g., when it is looking out for its own interests).

In theory that is; in practice it is not often easy to tell which is which...

--

Re:Political parties and government

[el_chicano]

I did not find any quotes by Twain in the online version of Bartlett's ninth edition (1901), but Michael Moncur attributes it to both Lincoln and Twain. Search Michael Moncur's quotes here.

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Re:Political parties and government

[The Asmodeus]

Ok, first off, we Americans do NOT have a two party system. We have always had multiple parties. It's just that most TV brained people can't keep up with more than two. It's thankfully changing though.

Second, it is usually easy to tell the difference. Where does the money come from? Private donations or tax dollars? Parties, although they probably do receive some government funds, receive most of their money from private donations, thus that ARE NOT part of government.

Re:Political parties and government

[el_chicano]

Your quote is attributed wrong - It was Mark Twain who said that, not Abraham Lincoln. :-)

Do a quote search. You will see that quote attributed to Abe Lincoln. Now seeing that Lincoln died about the time that Sam Clemens began writing as Mark Twain, what are the odds that he stole, umm.. borrowed, it from Honest Abe?

Also apropos: "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." -- Mark Twain :->

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Re:Political parties and government

[Anonymous Coward]

I generally vote for Repubicans (lesser of two evils...). And I also think it's arrogant to call their party a ".gov".

Re:Political parties and government

[Vladinator]

Your quote is attributed wrong - It was Mark Twain who said that, not Abraham Lincoln. :-)

I disagree as well with your statement. The GOP is NEVER a government agency, or part of the government. They act like they own it, not serve it, and this is another example of their usual arrogance.

"I have no respect for a man who can only spell a word one way." - Mark Twain

Re:Political parties and government

[el_chicano]

Ok, first off, we Americans do NOT have a two party system. We have always had multiple parties. It's just that most TV brained people can't keep up with more than two. It's thankfully changing though.

I hate to tell you this but this tendency towards a two-party system predates TV. You are partially right when you say that there have always been multiple parties, but the system is set up to encourage two main parties.

Other parties are formed when the two "official" parties lose touch due to the rise of a new political reality. They are usually small, single-issue parties and very often disappear. Sometimes they grow and become one of the two dominant political parties (like the GOP did circa the Civil War when the other parties became paralyzed by the foremost issue of the day: slavery).

If you would like to learn more about the political party system in the U.S., be sure to read Dynamics of the Party System : Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States by James L. Sundquist. It illustrates how political parties must remain relevant or they will either die out or be absorbed by another party.

And yes, I studied Political Science and History in college... :-)

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Re:Political parties and government

[J. Pierpont]

> Now seeing that Lincoln died
> about the time that Sam Clemens began writing as > Mark Twain, what are the odds that he stole,
> umm..borrowed, it from Honest Abe?

Hrmm... now that you mention it, I don't think I have ever heard of the two in the same room. Could it be...?

"To the Sarcasm Cave, General Grant..."

-awc

Re:Political parties and government

[Anonymous Coward]

But it should not be two hard to check on whether a party is acting as a government entity (i.e., when it is looking out for the public interest) and when it is acting as a private organization (e.g., when it is looking out for its own interests).

In theory that is; in practice it is not often easy to tell which is which...

Dunno... when they're on truth drugs, they're looking out for the public interest. Else, they're looking out for their private interest.

Re:Political parties and government

[MattXVI]

Your opinion of their 'usual arrogance' is your own shabby little conceit. But you are wrong in thinking the Majority party conference committee isn't an offical government body. In fact, a House committee is as official as can be, no matter which party creates it.

Re:Political parties and government

[Anonymous Coward]

Under the US' winner-takes-all system, similar parties would split their votes, and whichever popular party least resembles any other would win (with an even more pitiful excuse of a mandate than they get as it is). Without the coalitions and compromise proportionate seating gives in other countries (what little I've read about this makes it sound like a really good idea), any non-extremist party can only hurt their own position.

Re:Political parties and government

[Vladinator]

I did. Go look at a copy of Barlet's.
"I have no respect for a man who can only spell a word one way." - Mark Twain

Re:You whining liberals just don't get it.

[g-penguin]

WAIT?!??!??!

I THOUGHT THIS WAS NOT A POLITICAL ARGUMENT!!!

ACHA!! Im A REPUBLICAN... YES I LIKE TO MAKE MONEY, AND KEEP ALL OF THE PROCEEDS OF MY WORK....

BUT THIS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO GET POLITICAL, SO FOR ALL OF THE PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO ARE DEMOCRATS, THIS GUY JUST BIT IT:

I AS A REPUBLICAN HAVE A SENSE OF SHAME TODAY, FOR ONE REASON. THE LEADERS OF MY PARTY GO AROUND cALLING DEMOCRATS TREASONOUS BASTA_DS, BAD MOUTH THEM, ETC. ETC. ETC.

BUT THEY MISS THE POINT. THIS IS THE WAY OUR COUNTRY HAS TO BE, WITHOUT DEMOCRATS, WE REPUBLICANS BECOME TOO OBVIOUS. WE WANT POWER, AND WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT ANY ONE ELSE BUT OURSELVES.

I AM SAYING THIS BECAUSE TODAY I AM ASHAMED. I AM ASHAMED THAT OUR PARTY, THE GRAND OLD PARTY, FAMOUS FOR STEALING FROM THE POOR, AND KEEPING THE PEOPLE IN THE DARK ABOUT OUR POLICIES, KILLED THE NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY.

WITH ONE FELL SWOOP, IN THE NBAME OF MAKING A POLITICAL STATEMENT, WE HAVE MEDE THE ENTIRE COUNTRY LOOIK LIKE A BUNCH OF IDIOTS, AND LOST ANY CLAIM TO INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP WHICH WE MIGHT HAVE HAD IN THE PAST.

SO GO BLOW IT OUT YOUR EAR.

Re:usps.com

[MattXVI]

I'm sorry you had a bad time with UPS. The overall service record of UPS versus USPS is very very one-sided, though, in favor of UPS. They're cheaper, too. They also offer online tracking.

As far as universal coverage goes, can you name a place in the US that isn't served by UPS of FedEx? (Or RPS, or Airborne Express...)

Low quality of advice

[Yarn]

At some level, a person advising the republicans has ignored the RFC. I'd expect this has happened at a fairly high level, and I agree it should be a .org, something like gop.republicans.org. (although republicans.org is probably taken by someone for some stupid irc vanity host.)

Re:Typical GOP stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for that useful bit of moron-identification.

Re:.org != non-profit

[CoderJoe]

This may be getting off topic a bit further, but Andover, being a network provider, gets (and does have) a .net name.

Should be .org.

[andyschm]

The fact that the democratic and republican parties are commonly associated as a 'subdivision' of the house is really just a sad result of the lack of political diversity in USG. No single party should ever be able to claim that it is an integral part of the government. .gov domains should be reserved exclusively for the offices and branches of the government... a party is just a private interest group of people.

Re:Should be .org.

[MattXVI]

Trust me me Matt... Change is good :)

I admire your optimism, but tell it to the Germans in 1932. Yikes!

Re:Should be .org.

[phantomlord]

>Congress does NOT elect our chief executive. Even if the ENTIRE congress supported David Duke for Pres, the people are not that stupid (hopefully).

Actually, Congress does have the power to elect the President if no candidate gets at least 270 votes from the electoral college( more than 50% of the 538 votes ). Each state in the House gets one vote to elect someone from the top 3 candidates. If none of them win by majority, the top two then goes to the Senate for their decision. See the FEC rules for more info. The party in majority generally should have the advantage in this situation.

Re:Should be .org.

[johnhebert]

Hear, hear!!!

Totally agree w/ you, Mess. Thanks for saying it better than I wanted to...

Re:Should be .org.

[MattXVI]

...Personally I hate the government and don't trust them with anything. That's why I vote Libertarian [note the .org :)]. And don't even tell me that I'm throwing away my vote..

You're throwing away your vote. The only libertarians who are ever going to vote in Congress are going to be elected as Republicans, like Ron Paul (R-TX), who was previously the Libertarian candidate for President. If enough libertarians had his sense, they could actually accomplish something within the GOP.

Maybe you should change that to "The lack of a Hitler is a good thing." Cause that's what you meant. That was an entirely different system. Congress does NOT elect our chief executive. Even if the ENTIRE congress supported David Duke for Pres, the people are not that stupid (hopefully).

I know we don't have a parliament, but tell me -what if the Presidential Vote was 30% Republican 30% democrat and 40% Ass-Biting Party in about 30 states? Well, we'd all get our asses bitten for at least four years.

The only thing that a two party system accomplishes is stiffling out change in the interest of campaign supporters. Period

On the contrary, the two-party system does indeed serve greater purposes. It lends stability to a government. Look how many times the muti-party government of Italy has collapsed since WWII. It also helps to keep the loony parties from getting seats. All of this, of course, ignores the fact that there is a multi-party system in the US. You are free to vote for many parties, or even write-in your favorite cartoon character. Fortunately, most people leave Mickey Mouse off the ballot.

Re:Should be .org.

[MattXVI]

That's a great point. But in most elections it's not a credible threat. And I wonder if, say, all those who are Libertarians joined the GOP tomorrow, would it not give them a big ideological shove - a much bigger one than the message you are describing?

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

The GOP has too many wackos who want to embed their religion in our law, and otherwise defecate on the Bill of Rights, for any hope of pushing the party towards sanity.

Re:Should be .org.

[MattXVI]

Look at how many times the multi-(usually seven-)party system in Sweden has collapsed: 0. The system is similar to the Italian system except that a part needs at least 4% of the nations' votes or 20% of a regions' votes to be accepted into parliament, and at least 2% natl. or 10% rgnl. to get continued govt. funding

That's true, but there are many other examples to the contrary, like Spain, and even France. Maybe Swedes are more homogenous in their political beliefs, in spite of the multiplicity of parties.

Yeah. Stability. Great. Just imagine how terribly unstable the whole system would be if there was a chance for *poor* people to get into politics - or a non-WASP majority. Gee, then the people of America may become politically aware, and a reasonable amount of people might vote, and then where would we be? Sheesh

You really see no value in benign stability? Most Americans want the government to be neither seen nor heard. It's hard to see where your sarcasm is taking you. Are you a US citizen? If you were, you'd know that poor people can get into politics, though I wouldn't start with the US Senate. I certainly wouldn't vote for somebody who couldn't get a job, though. What idiot would? And there are many non-WASPs involved in politics. And the people of America are fairly aware, especially when a poor job is being done. Most people are satisfied with their representation, however, and there is little upheaval.

Re:Should be .org.

[MattXVI]

You are truly deluded if you think PR is the solution to whatever problems people have with their reps. Name a single country where it has improved the actions of the government.

Re:Should be .org.

[Jamey]

>>...Personally I hate the government and don't trust them with anything. That's why I vote Libertarian [note the .org :)]. And don't even tell me that I'm throwing away my vote..

>You're throwing away your vote. The only libertarian who are ever going to vote in Congress are going to be elected as Republicans, like Ron Paul (R-TX), who was previously the Libertarian candidate for President. If enough libertarians had his sense, they could actually accomplish something within the GOP.

Except that being in the GOP is antithetical to the idea of Libertarianism. In fact, at its deepest heart, being in the LP is antithetical to being a libertarian, but as you say, we have to work within reality.

When I vote LP, I am NOT throwing away my vote. If I simply failed to vote, THEN I would be throwing it away. But, by voting LP, I am voting None Of The Above, which is an entirely different matter. It's an active statement, rather than passive disinterest.

By the way, in many parts of the country, you cannot write in a ballot. If you were to attempt it, you would be required to get a form from the people checking registration, and then, with a strong possibility that you were the only one asking for such, your write-in is no longer secret.

In fact, I feel any kind of organized political parties are a serious distortion of the ideas of the founding fathers, and it was only after they were actually infected with running the government that they succumbed to the idea of parties.

Personally, I think anyone who feels like they need to run for political office, especially anyone who does so because they think others need their help in running their lives, is certifiably insane, and should be declared incompetent and confined for treatment. I'm too busy running my own life to try to run someone elses.

What do we do instead? Try the suggestion in James P. Hogan's Voyage to Yesteryear.

Re:Should be .org.

[johnhebert]

You're throwing away your vote. The only libertarians who are ever going to vote in Congress are going to be elected as Republicans, like Ron Paul (R-TX), who was previously the Libertarian candidate for President. If enough libertarians had his sense, they could actually accomplish something within the GOP.

And if enough people voted libertarian, they wouldn't be throwing away their vote.

I know we don't have a parliament, but tell me -what if the Presidential Vote was 30% Republican
30% democrat and 40% Ass-Biting Party in about 30 states? Well, we'd all get our asses bitten for
at least four years.

Guess that depends on whose ass is getting bitten now, doesn't it? I understand your point, that most Americans are politically lazy and vote out of an emotional reaction rather than spending more than 5 minutes thinking about it. But a little ass-biting might actually make people a little more involved politically. I say let em elect a screwball if that is what the public wants. What you are proposing is rule by some self-described elite rather than rule by the people. The problem is that the people have gotten lazy but still want all the benefits of a democracy.

It also helps to keep the loony parties from getting seats.

Right. If you are going to bring up Nazis, then I'll bring up American revolutionaries being perceived as loonies by the Crown.

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

43% of a vote split between Democrat, Republican, and Perot. Although I disagree with Matt's point about multi-party systems (and actually like Clinton), you gotta admit it's a nice proof of his point.

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

these decisions are supposed to be made in Reality.

I don't know where you spend most of your time, but that's where I prefer to be.

When was the last time a third party had an enduring effect on American politics?

When was the last time my house was destroyed by a tornado? Well, it hasn't been. Yet. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. But come on! That's not sound reasoning and you know it.

And do you really think the Libertarians could ever triumph in the US?

Yes.

They'd have a much larger influence joining the GOP

Look, if the GOP's party line was magically changed to a Libertarian philosophy, then I'd vote for them. But their not. And they proly never will be. There's too much money involved. Too many interests. The status-quo will reign in the GOP for a long time.

But that's my point! In a multi-party election, most of the people may have voted against the victor! So he is exactly who the public did NOT want.

It's not as if you're exercising some ultra modern math technique to arrive at that conclusion. Those who wrote the constitution were aware that. If they had seen it as a great evil (which it isn't), then there would be expressed prohibition of such a scenario. The fact is, you can't always congregate all worthy ideas and opinions into two choices. Sometimes you need more. And if the laws that govern the universe say that less than 50.1% is all that it takes, then that's something that you, I, and everyone will have to deal with.

--MessiahXI
messiah11@mindless.com

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

43% of a vote split between Democrat, Republican, and Perot. Although I disagree with Matt's point about multi-party systems (and actually like Clinton), you gotta admit it's a nice proof of his point.

Kinda, but not really. I look at it as, if Clinton had an idealogically similiar opponent [as Perot was to Bush, in a sense] then I doubt that Clinton would have won. I mean, he's always been on shakey ground. He's a shady character. That election was a first in our recent history. Of course there are going to be a few bumps, but that doesn't mean that we need to go back to the old days and keep everything stagnant. Trust me me Matt... Change is good :).

MessiahXI
messiah11@mindless.com

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why this has been marked 'Flamebait' is way way over my head. Some moderator is a moron.

Re:Should be .org.

[MattXVI]

And if enough people voted libertarian, they wouldn't be throwing away their vote.

No, but these decisions are supposed to be made in Reality. When was the last time a third party had an enduring effect on American politics? And do you really think the Libertarians could ever triumph in the US? They'd have a much larger influence joining the GOP (where most of them are already).

But a little ass-biting might actually make people a little more involved politically.

Why should I want more people to be more politically active? Would life be improved if even more people who don't know jack about government and economics are out casting ballots?

I say let em elect a screwball if that is what the public wants.

But that's my point! In a multi-party election, most of the people may have voted against the victor! So he is exactly who the public did NOT want.

What you are proposing is rule by some self-described elite rather than rule by the people.

No, that is what you are proposing. The only people who would be ruling in a multiparty system are those 20 or 30 percent who got the plurality. In a two-party system, a majority of the voting people voted for the victor, which is more just.

Right. If you are going to bring up Nazis, then I'll bring up American revolutionaries being perceived as loonies by the Crown

You can bring them up, but that doesn't make it relevant. There is no ideological comparison between the two. And the contexts were ENTIRELY different. The colonies had no parliamentary representation at all, third party or otherwise. The Nazis did, and won in your favorite kind of system.

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

(another) AC said:
The only thing that a two party system accomplishes is stiffling out change in the interest of campaign supporters. Period

MattXVI responded:
On the contrary, the two-party system does indeed serve greater purposes. It lends stability to a government. Look how many times the muti-party government of Italy has collapsed since WWII.

Look at how many times the multi-(usually seven-)party system in Sweden has collapsed: 0. The system is similar to the Italian system except that a part needs at least 4% of the nations' votes or 20% of a regions' votes to be accepted into parliament, and at least 2% natl. or 10% rgnl. to get continued govt. funding.


He continued:
It also helps to keep the loony parties from getting seats. All of this, of course, ignores the fact that there is a multi-party system in the US. You are free to vote for many parties, or even write-in your favorite cartoon character. Fortunately, most people leave Mickey Mouse off the ballot.

Yeah. Stability. Great. Just imagine how terribly unstable the whole system would be if there was a chance for *poor* people to get into politics - or a non-WASP majority. Gee, then the people of America may become politically aware, and a reasonable amount of people might vote, and then where would we be? Sheesh.

Re:Should be .org.

[broonie]

Indeed - reading the bit on the front page I had thought that that was going to be complaining about it being a .gov domain, not about where it is in .gov. There is a difference between a political party and the apparatus of government and I'm surprised that the people handing out the address didn't notice or think of that (it's one of the first things in the RFC).

If it does have to be under .gov, then gop.gov doesn't seem unreasonable - I would imagine that there are Republicans in places other than Congress which tends to suggest that putting them under house.gov is a bad idea. If they have to be under .gov, gop.gov seems the lesser of two evils. I could be missing something about American politics, though.

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, either Germany is relevant or not. Make up your mind!

MessiahXI
messiah11@mindless.com

Re:Should be .org.

[MattXVI]

But they are the only parties in the House (with the exception of Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont). They have both been around for at least 150 years. No other party has sustained members in Congress since the Civil War.

And the 'sad lack of political diversity in the USG' isn't at all apparent to a person familiar with the huge ideological diversity in both major parties. The lack of diversity of parties, on the other hand, is in my opinion a good thing, since it keeps flakey parties from getting elected with a plurality (instead of a majority) -sometimes of only 20 or 30 percent. For example, Hitler came to power with only a third of the vote - but there were too many uncooperating parties splitting the non-moron vote. Ergo the ass won.

Re:Should be .org.

[MattXVI]

German elections in 1932 are more relevant to contemporary multi-party democracy than to British colonialism in the 1700's.

Re:Should be .org.

[jimhill]

"In a multi-party election, most of the people may have voted against the victor! So he is exactly who the public did NOT want."

Like, uh, Bill Clinton in 1992, who was elected with around 43% of the votes cast?

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

And if we allow that, someone may suggest actual proportional representation.

(For those who don't know: constituencies are Evil. IF, in ever constituency, 51% vote for party A, and 49% for party B, party A gets 100% of the seats, rather than 51%. This sucks.)

Re:Should be .org.

[Anonymous Coward]

Swedes more homogenous? I could buy that. The United States is essentially ungovernable, because there's almost nothing We the People can agree that we want - other than being safe from the whims of each other and the authorities, of course. Assimilation had its virtues.

Re:Should be .org.

[sklib]

When was the last time a third party had an enduring effect on American politics?
Any time that you vote for a third party it is supposed to send a message to the existing parties that there is some part of the population that wants change. In the current system, there is no way that a third party can win any majority-based election, but the ideas of the third parties have been known to be integrated into the platforms of R/D. I do not know enough history to give you specific examples, but I remember this much to be the case.

Re:Typical GOP stupidity

[MattXVI]

It's funny that they are the majority party when they've alienated so much of the population. Or maybe you're just full of beans.

Re:.org != non-profit

[mattdm]

for their isp stuff, maybe. for the rest of it, no.

--

Uh...

[jperret]

I'm certainly missing something here.
Macki says GOP.gov is a violation of the RFC and shouldn't be allowed.
Then Roblimo says (roughly) "I don't agree with Macki's opinion, it should be GOP.org and not GOP.gov".
Don't you two agree then ?

Confused,
--Jonathan

Re:Uh...

[Serf]

They do agree, somewhat. The difference is that Macki thinks that the address should be gop.house.gov and Roblimo thinks it should be gop.org. I'd tend to side with Roblimo myself, but not for any reasons that haven't been stated yet (I think).

Re:Uh...

[alfredo]

I think it should be Lackeysforbigbusiness.com

plutocrats.com

showmethemoney.com

Iknowbetterthanyou.com

WeAreTheLaw.com

GOPubberalles.com

partyabovecountry.com

you get my drift.

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

big-brother.com
church-as-state.org

Re:No, this isn't a mistake, perhaps NOPE

[Jburkholder]

...CAIS.COM, the nameservice provider for GOP.GOV, has a banner image of a major city skyline being destroyed in massive, flaming explosion.

Really! What the hell is that about? It's part of their "Join the risk-free Revolution" logo? WTF kind of company slogan/logo is that supposed to be? Someone please explain because I _really_ would like to know.

Misunderstanding

[MattXVI]

I'm sure it's just a simple misunderstanding. These people have better things to do than keep up with domain-name rules. No doubt it'll be fixed.

(By the way, it's Congressman J.C. Watts, Not J.C. Watt)

Australian Chaos

[Anonymous Coward]

I am in a position to know about some of the internal working in australias capital - Canberra - damn chaotic...

We dont have a .mil.au - instead we have .defence.gov.au. For example our defence web site is http://www.raaf.defence.gov.au/ - not exactly imaginative, but then neither are our websites.

The website i am involved in kicks most of our Gov'ts websites - http://www.airtc.defence.gov.au/

The whole reason this isnt http://www.airtc.mil.au/ is because one lame duck on a desk 'doesnt like it'.

sorta gives you an idea of what goes in in government, doesnt it?



[sorry about Anon Coward - email me on scorpion@australia.airforce.net - btw thats an american company, not our own domain!]

Teo.

well, the rfc sez...

[Lx]

"This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind."

I suppose it doesn't really matter. Seems pretty inconsequential to me, since naming standards are pretty routinely violated.

-lx

Re:No, this isn't a mistake, perhaps NOPE

[johnhebert]

The choice of GOP.GOV does not lead to one thinking that this is the domain name of a standing committee of the House.

This relationship would be better described as RobLimo suggested; GOP.HOUSE.GOV. This is what is intended in RFC 2146.

An interesting experiment would be, as you suggested, to have the Democrats register DEMOCRATS.GOV, or better yet, INDEPENDENTS.GOV, and see what kind of stink that would raise.

Now what I find even more interesting is that CAIS.COM, the nameservice provider for GOP.GOV, has a banner image of a major city skyline being destroyed in massive, flaming explosion. Coming on the heels of the Senate voting down participation in the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, my paranoid conspiracy theory engine purrs...

Cited RFC is not a standard

[trance9]

It says clearly, right at the top, that it is "informational only" and "does not specify an Internet standard of any kind". You cannot violate a non-binding RFC.

RFC's are just requests for comments. They are not necessarily standards. Some of them wind up getting approved through the standardization process, but apparently this is not one of them.

It's interesting that they have the gop.gov domain, but it's not interesting that they violated a non-binding, non-standard RFC.

And Malda's $3.5 million in stock options?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to one story , cmdr taco got that after Andover took over.

"Malda will receive an additional $3.5 million plus stock over the next two years should he remain with Andover.net. "


Note - I don't think there's anything whatsoever wrong with this - any tech site with such a big crowd is worth a lot. and it is good that linux/open source work is making money. After all, the code is GPL'd :)

However, it did interest me in terms of the .org domain and how it could result in profit.... Anybody know?

Can you sell a non-profit .org for stock options and cash? is slashdot registered as a non-profit?

Re:What about Slashdot?

[Sehnsucht]

.nu is a country? I thought it was one of the recent addedd 'made-beleive' TLDs, just FOR doing stuff like theres.something.nu etc .. :)

Re:usps.com

[MattXVI]

I would rather lead the way than look to other countries as a standard. Do we really want the postal service of France? (no offense please I love France hehe).

I would make two assertions. First, a private corporation could deliver the mail at a lower cost and with greater reliability. The US gov itself uses Fedex for it's overnight shipping - NOT the USPS! It's just the sort of service that works much better when it's subject to competition. Second, it shouldn't even matter how efficient the USPS is. In a free country, I should be able to start a business delivering mail in my hometown. Right now, if I did, I'd be shut down and imprisoned. No kidding. It happened in Baltimore in the 80's. (not to me of course!)

better things to do than keep up with rules

[MattMann]

You're right some people have better things to do than keep up with domain-name rules, but I don't think you go far enough.

Only geeks think hierarchically. The average non-geek has a single ACCumulator and just a JMP instruction, no JSUB. Sure, they could theoretically implement recursion, but they won't and never will because they don't have the stackspace anyway. They do stuff like watch "Voyager" on Wednesay without ever thinking, "'Voyager.UPN.net' and 'Voyager.WSBK.Ch56.tv'... must be multiple inheritance."

Actually, they don't even watch Voyager at all, but that was the only program I knew the call letters for.

TLDs should be wiped out completely. For all of our geek glory, exactly how many sites do we actually use TLDs for either? "Hmmm... let me think, do I want the profit-making foo, or the non-profit foo?" It's so stupid! We think just like everyone else does: "I want Altavista, I want Slashdot, I want Yahoo, I want InterNIC" and then we have to remember which TLD is appropriate.

"Hierarchy through obscurity" is what it is, and it's stupid.

Re:Be disgusted because it makes things harder

[CoderJoe]

If you want to see something really funny/disturbing, do a whois on lucasfilm.

Why only two parties?

[dondi]

A standard "poly sci" answer would be that it is not that majority and minority parties took over everything in the rules of the US Congress - the phenomenon derives from the nature of the US electoral system.

When you elect a single candidate from a territory (a President from the nation as a whole, a Senator from a state, etc.), this creates a very powerful incentive for all people in the system to reduce the relevent choices down to two. Suppose you have three parties contesting elections of this sort. As a quick and dirty principle, we will also suppose that everyone can rank all three parties in terms of preference, and that those rankings are reasonably consistent - supporters of party A will tend to rank all three parties in the same order (which, since we are being generic here, we can describe as A,B,C - meaning A is their first choice, and C is their last choice) and supporters of the furthest opponent (party C) will tend to rank the parties in the opposite way. If all three parties keep contesting elections, there will almost certainly be many cases where two of the parties realize that if they worked together, they could defeat the remaining party which is currently winning the election - and they would be happier with the result. For example, party A gets 40% of the vote, party B gets 35%, and party C gets 25% - so parties B and C realize that if they united behind the candidate from party B, they would win the election, and they would prefer that result. The same logic affects voters (who don't want to "waste" their vote), party organizers (who want to win elections for their party), issue activists (who want to get their preferred policies adopted), etc. Of course, once the vast majority of elections are being contested between two parties, it is quite likely that rules in the Congress will reflect that partisan "fact of life."

This contrasts sharply with the experience of many European countries, which use a proportional representation system of elections. They do not divide territory up into single-member districts, but instead cast votes nationwide, and allocate seats within the legislature in proportion to the votes received (ignoring a broad range of variation in mechanics - there are a whole bunch of different proportional representation schemes). In these countries, we usually see a noticeably larger array of different parties regularly participating in elections, and we see entirely different forms of legislative organization as well.

Of course, this explanation still has a few holes. The continued survival of the British Liberal party, and the rise of the Social Democrats in Britain, and the New Democrats in Canada are still seen as anomolies (both Britain and Canada use single-member district elections). There are probably additional "problem" cases elsewhere in the world (my comparative politics classes were taken several years ago.) However, I think it is fair to say that for many political scientists, the interesting question is not why there are only two parties in the US, but why there are more than two in Canada and Britain.

uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

what happened to the comments?

A reply from someone involved

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I'd respond to this article as someone who's actually involved in the gop.gov project. The first cause of confusion seems to stem from the difference between the RNC and the House Republican Conference.

The Conference is the official communications arm of the majority party in Congress. Their function is to talk about legislative and policy issues, not political issues (such as fundraising, etc.).

As an official leadership office within the legislative branch of government, the Conference's gop.gov qualifies to reside within the .gov namespace. The name GOP is derivative of the office title, "House Republican Conference."

The second disagreement is a rather interesting one. If all .gov domain names need to be "subsidiary" of the top-level entity, then all cabinet agencies must be of this form: defense.whitehouse.gov, irs.treasury.whitehouse.gov because all executive branch agencies and departments are arms of the White House. Exactly what purpose would that serve, other than to make it incredibly inconvenient to find information you need?

The legislative branch is a co-equal branch of government. If a cabinet-level executive agency can get its own name, then the legislative branch is entitled to the same access. That's why the Speaker of the House has speaker.gov and the Majority Leader has freedom.gov.

The Speaker is mentioned in the Constitution as third in line to the presidency. His office, therefore, is on the same constitutional footing as any cabinet secretary's office.

By the way, other cabinet agencies are using non-derivative domain names, such as "seniors.gov" and "time.gov". Their purpose is to deliver information to the public, not to force people to use the U.S. Government Manual every time they need to find their tax forms.

This is not a contested issue. These domain names are already registered and have been found by the registrar to be in compliance with the RFC.

Re:A reply from someone involved

[Anonymous Coward]

The name GOP.GOV strongly implies the Republican party as a whole is officially entrenched as part of the US government, which many of us are strenuously objecting to on principle.

Re:A reply from someone involved

[Anonymous Coward]

The Republican party runs the legislative branch of government. The Democrat party runs the executive branch. The Judicial branch is fairly non-partisan (meaning only that judges have been appointed by both parties). If you object to this you are merely objecting to reality.

GOP in this case does not refer to the Republican National Committee.

Re:All these "new" domains are not new

[Jburkholder]

I guess I agree, partly. At one point, I would think a conceptually pure TLD scheme would be in everybody's best interest. But, since its all meaningless at this point, I've given in to the dark side and gone along with the madness...

Tonga, or rather the hey.to domain, has been bastardized fully to my own purposes.

Wait 'till November

[jhutchins]

Just wait until after the November elections.
If they have their way it will be gop.gov

So who gets to register .gov domains now?

[Mr. Slippery]

Can Micro$oft register "microsoft.gov" now, bringing the old joke about MS acquiring the US one step closer to reality?

Can the Reform, Green, Libertarian, and Communist parties get .govs? Or hey, how about an anarchist "no.gov"? Or a Lenny Bruce "fuckthe.gov"? ("If you can't say `Fuck,' you can't say, `Fuck the government.")

Most importantly, can I register EmperorNorton.gov to commemorate the first and only Emperor of the United States?

The Republican and Democratic parties are private entities with no more special legal standing than other parties, or the Church of SubGenius for that matter. If a group of them in the House want a domain, the house.gov admin can give them gop.house.gov. If the party can get a .gov, anyone should be able to.

Re:Nobody cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I meant a URL scheme name of course (what was I thinking? "http" is a scheme name!)

Re:What about Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the registrars for ORG sent a letter of the form "it has come to our attention you no longer qualify for this namespace, please migrate within 90 days", I don't see a problem.

How about freekevin.mil to stir things up a bit

[Anonymous Coward]

just a thought...

Re:.org != non-profit

[Anonymous Coward]

(And for the curious, yes I did use "&lt;" and "&amp;" to compose that message. Super Bonus points for guessing how I composed this message!)

TLD's for Dummies

[MikeFM]

Okay call me weird but I think the domain system is truely fucked. To me it'd make much more since to allow anyone to register their TLD w/ an open committee of TLD owners. Then instead of having any centralized server for TLD's each TLD's name server could have the links not only to their sub-domains but also all the other registered TLD's. Possibly limit each person, organization, or company from having more than one registered TLD at a time. That way it stays decentralized, nobody controls more than one TLD, each TLD is allowed to set up it's naming scheme anyway it wants, and there is no silly bickering over if we should add additional TLD's or not. I personally am waiting for .oss or .gnu for my domains! :)

GOP != bunch of Old White Guys

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have bothered to get a picture of JC Watts before you commented.

Here is the link to his house.gov website: Just another old white guy?

Maybe one of the Mods can link to this in the blurb from the main page?

Reserved mine.

[evileye]

Cool maybe we can get a .mil domain next.

It probably is

[Gleef]

If it's going to be site of the House Republican Conference, it is not in violation of the RFC, but it's still poorly located. It should be "hrc.house.gov", not "gop.gov", same way the House Committee on Veterans Affairs has "veterans.house.gov".

Their use of GOP instead of HRC makes me particularly suspicious that the intent of the site is for party business, not HRC business. They are using the HRC's government status to get access to an address they would otherwise not have access to. A political party should never masquerade as a government entity, we are not the Soviet Union (nor is Russia anymore).

In fact, I question the need to give the HRC (and whatever the Democrats' counterpart is, the HDC?) official house committee standing. The fact that members of Congress share a party should not be something to form a committee over, it should be an unofficial caucus at best.

----

Re:It probably is

[Winged Cat]

Their use of GOP instead of HRC makes me particularly suspicious that the intent of the site is for party business, not HRC business. They are using the HRC's government status to get access to an address they would otherwise not have access to. A political party should never masquerade as a government entity, we are not the Soviet Union (nor is Russia anymore).

Hate to break it to you, but the political parties pretty much act like they are the elected government...and for good reason. Hopefully, this reason will go away within our lifetimes - but until then, the Democrats and Republicans are, for the most part, the de facto American government.

Re:It probably is

[MattXVI]

In fact, I question the need to give the HRC (and whatever the Democrats' counterpart is, the HDC?) official house committee standing. The fact that members of Congress share a party should not be something to form a committee over, it should be an unofficial caucus at best.

Then you truly, truly, don't know how Congress works on a day-to-day basis. The member runs around all day meeting constituents, attending to lots of committee meetings, occasionally making speeches, going to hearings, and voting in the full House. They have only a small amount of time for learning about legislation, or party work. The Conference Committees keep members from duplicating tons and tons of effort. Most of the bills Congress votes on are incredibly complicated and non-controversial. The Conference Committees are essential to sorting all of this mess out. They are a vital organizing element of Congress.

Re:It probably is

[ripler]

If it's going to be site of the House Republican Conference, it is not in violation of the RFC, but
it's still poorly located. It should be "hrc.house.gov", not "gop.gov", same way the House
Committee on Veterans Affairs has "veterans.house.gov".

I agree, the use of gop.gov makes me think of a political party. It is a chance for the party to ingrain itself into the political landscape for a long time to come. In another 18 years, there will be people voting who have always seen gop.gov, and it could have great influence over the coming generations. This is a slick (read: slime-like) move on the part of the Republican Party.

I agree that hrc.house.gov would be much more appropriate, and I intend to write (not email) my local reps (All Republicans) to inform them of my concern. Anyone else think of this?

Re:It probably is

[jgibson]

Then you truly, truly, don't know how Congress works on a day-to-day basis.
[snip]
The Conference Committees keep members from duplicating tons and tons of effort. Most of the bills Congress votes on are incredibly complicated and non-controversial.

You truly, truly don't understand how Congress works if you're going to insist on calling party caucuses "Conference Committees." A conference committee is a joint House-Senate committee charged with negotiating a compromise version of a bill that's passed in differing versions in the two houses. It has nothing to do with the parties.

The House Republicans refer to their caucus as a "conference" only because they have a phobia of the word "caucus."

Re:It probably is

[SEE]

In fact, I question the need to give the HRC (and whatever the Democrats' counterpart is, the HDC?) official house committee standing. The fact that members of Congress share a party should not be something to form a committee over, it should be an unofficial caucus at best.

I agree that it's questionable whether or not it should be an official part of the government; but the fact is that the HRC (like its Democratic counterpart) is provided for in the House rules (established in accordance with Article I Section 5 of the Constitution).

Re:It probably is

[Gleef]

First off, I did a little more research. The HRC already has a server at http://hillsource.house.gov. Their equivalent for the Democrats is the House Democrat Caucus, and they have a website at http://dcaucusweb.house.gov. Since the HRC already has a server at a meaningful location, why would they need another at a misleading location?

Secondly, if the purpose of these groups is to handle all the complicated technical details, preventing duplication of effort on non-controversial issues, then why are they separated by party? Every technical committee is bipartisan, these are not technical committees. My understanding is that their purpose is to make it easier for those congressmen who want to be loyal party members to see which bills they are supposed to be voting for or against.

Sure enough, a quick look at these websites show them both to be sharply partisan. The HRC opens with bright red text saying "STOP THE RAID", referring to the GOP's stand on recent social security debates. The HDC hides it a little better, but the partisan sentiment is at least as strong on their site.

Again, these are clearly extensions of the political parties, why do they have official government standing? Secondly, why does the HRC, who already have a website, need another one; particularly one whose name carries the implication that the Republican Party is a core government agency?!?

----

Why, hello there Republican!

[deusx]

Really, didn't your mother tell you that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all? Now go wash your mouth out.

Re:No, this isn't a mistake, perhaps NOPE

[MattXVI]

This relationship would be better described as RobLimo suggested; GOP.HOUSE.GOV

Maybe you're right, but gop.gov is much simpler, and that Conference Committee is probably going to be here longer than the IRS.

An interesting experiment would be, as you suggested, to have the Democrats register DEMOCRATS.GOV, or better yet, INDEPENDENTS.GOV, and see what kind of stink that would raise

Now, I'm sure the Dems could do this - they have a Conference Committee, too. But there is no 'Independent' conference in the House. There is only one Independent member, and he organizes with the Dems.

Now what I find even more interesting is that CAIS.COM, the nameservice provider for GOP.GOV, has a banner image of a major city skyline being destroyed in massive, flaming explosion. Coming on the heels of the Senate voting down participation in the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, my paranoid conspiracy theory engine purrs...

hehe- that's funny. But what dumbass would sign an unverifiable treaty? The image of a burning city would be more likable if the skyline was DC instead of NYC, though. ;)

All these "new" domains are not new

[ufdraco]

I wish you were right. From http://www.uninett.no/navn/domreg.html:

• .nu - Niue
• .to - Tonga

Both of these domains quite verifiably belong to those countries--and if you notice, the global TLDs section ONLY has .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, and .org. Everything else is a country.

/me expresses his disgust at the abuse of the domain name system.

Re:All these "new" domains are not new

[reflector]

For those that haven't heard the story on this, some US enterpreneurs decided they wanted to ease the so-called "domain name crunch", so they made proposals to some small countries like Tongo (.to), Cocos (.cc), and Niue (.nu), that in exchange for the use of their TLDs, or at least a significant portion thereof, these enterpreneurs will pay to upgrade the internet infrastrcucture in those countries. These are 3 of the countries that agreed to the terms, I don't know if there are others, as well.

While I think that the "domain name crunch" is all hype (kxq7m_zy.com is as good a domain name as any), and that these businessmen went about this in the wrong way, it was with the permission, even blessings, of those countries. They get their infrastructure upgraded, the businessmen make their money, and greedy, rapacious Americans (but I repeat myself) get their shiny, new, 1-word domain status symbols to park in their driveways next to their shiny new BMWs.

Re:All these "new" domains are not new

[ufdraco]

What about .arpa?

What about it? .arpa is not a TLD--not according to RFC 1591. And if it is, show me a site that uses it--doing a quick search in google, I came up with no .arpa domains.

Re:All these "new" domains are not new

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fictional. IRL, edu, gov, and mil are bound strongly to the USA; net, org, and com somewhat less strongly.

Re:All these "new" domains are not new

[pb]

Yep, but what do you expect from such bastions of tourism?

Re:All these "new" domains are not new

[Zaffle]

Its not an "official" tld.

.. take a look at a nslookup on it.

Com:

Non-authoritative answer:
com nameserver = F.GTLD-SERVERS.NET
com nameserver = F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET
...etc... eg the root name servers.

Int:
Non-authoritative answer:
int nameserver = NS.ISI.EDU
int nameserver = NS0.JA.NET
int nameserver = NS1.CS.UCL.AC.UK
int nameserver = NS.UU.NET

See what I mean? :)

Re:All these "new" domains are not new

[AndyB]

Why be disgusted?

The countries owning those country codes in most cases have given their permission for them to be used globally, typically because the country is small enough to have no real need for them. And usually said country is making a good chunk of change on the side from this too.

It's just naming schemes - nothing worth getting disgusted or losing sleep over :). And if it helps make names easier to remember - well that's the whole point of not just spewing out IP addresses in the first place, right?

Re:All these "new" domains are not new

[Mr. Piccolo]

Ummm... what exactly is .int used for? I've never seen a domain name ending in .int.

Re:All these "new" domains are not new

[mattc]

They are for international organizations. Try www.nato.int and www.un.int for example..

Re:All these "new" domains are not new

[Anonymous Coward]

the global TLDs section ONLY has .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, and .org. Everything else is a country.

What about .arpa?

And, they hijack you to boot!

[KinChip]

For those of you who go to the site http://www.gop.gov , you will find that the 'back button' doesn't work (unless you furiously and rapidly hit it 3 or 4 times). Isn't the government trying to pass legislation to prevent this type of hijacking? Is this whole site a cruel hoax? Who could be behind it - Gore? (After all, he created the internet.)

Re:And, they hijack you to boot!

[tweek]

Are you using IE? This is one feature of modern web browsers I DESPISE. I don't want a website to have that much control over my browser. Of course I use netscape under X so it doesnt matter. Or as junkbuster reports me "Netscape-Mozilla/AbacusOS from transmeta". Most sites that don't check for explicit agent name in the javascript I get by on.

Re:And, they hijack you to boot!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, you can't turn of javascript in later versions of IE. That's really the only thing I find lacking in IE5, but it is a rather big omission.

...but characteristic of GOP Internet understandin

[deusx]

Actually, I think you're partly right-- it's a matter of ignorance. However, I doubt it will be fixed.

In fact, although some would say this is a violation of an obscure, subtle, lesser known rule of the net... I would say that this is an example of how the GOP don't know or care to really know the culture and rules and how things work on the Net.

Yet, they want to legislate it.

The time to complain about domain names and TLD

[mr]

is long past.

Years ago, non network entites registered .net and non orgs registered .org. In fact, back in the dawn of time before the earth cooled, (the mid to late 80's) you would be steered to the proper TLD.
But as soon as you had to pay for the domain, as long as you had the money, you were able to register what you want.

The time to complain was back when the first non .net and .org registrations happened.

My personal favorite is wildwildwest.net - a domain to promote a movie has exactly WHAT to do with offering network services? Warner Brothers didn't answer my e-mail asking that question, and the InterNIC's e-mail was like "So what".

If they allow GOP.gov, then .edu and .gov are fair game.

Re:No, this isn't a mistake, perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that you have confused a committee with a conference. House Committees are assigned to deal with specific areas of legislation (Commerce Committee). They hold hearings, subpeana witnesses, and vote on proposed legislation. In short, they have legislative authority to investigate on behalf of the whole Congress. As such, they are comprised on members of both parties, although committees are chaired by a member of the majority party.

A House Conference is more akin to a social club. Membership in the Republican Conference is limited to Republicans. A Conference does not hold official hearings, does not subpeana witnesses, and does not have official legislative authority to act on legislation. Rather, a conference is a gathering of like-minded individuals for the purpose of agreeing on and implementing a political strategy in the Congress.

Conferences are not legislative bodies (like committees); they are political bodies (like the RNC).

Re:You whining liberals just don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The US was founded on principles like "no law respecting the establishment of a religion", "equal protection under the law", and "freedom from unreasonable search and seizure" - the Republican platform opposes these and others in their quest for a fascist theocracy.

Kibo for President!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

More Bangs for your Subject Lines!

What it comes down to.

[cswiii]

The GOP is a political organisation, but not part of the government, nor any governing body. No political parties are written into the constitution; not even a two-party system is suggested. Furthermore, efforts have been made to consider political parties somewhat "privatised" - any donations made to a political party are not tax deductible, for example.

The evolution of the American political process has led people to equate the parties with government, but the fact remains that the Republican and Democratic parties are not part of the government.

To me, the GOP's efforts to secure a .gov, is a brash, overt attempt to usurp some sort of political power, for a private group. Such domains should be reserved for just that -- governmental bodies, lest groups with outside motives use them for political gain.

Re:usps.com

[elspud]

I have to agree with your gripe about UPS. I live in Boston, and I'm a student. I don't have a car. If UPS delivers something, they always come by when I'm in class (naturally) and they'll only try to get it to you 3 times. And where is their distribution center? Far enough outside of the city that you need a car to get to it. At least the post office has a presence in every town.

Re:It's use, not abuse

[RonVNX]

No argument from me there. I happen to think it's a "bad thing", but it's not an "abuse" of the Niue namespace. It's a legitimate use of the namespace, but I'd completely agree that at least on paper it's probably not a good thing for the people of Niue.

I suspect however, that at some point, Niue will either get a new namespace if the current system gets scrapped, or that Niue will be assigned a new country code. Same with Tonga.

Slashdot should interview JC Watts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do that "best of 10 reader submitted questions" get answered deal. I bet JC would do it.

It would be interesting to say the least.

Please?

Re:What about USPS?

[lomion]

That is what i said..it's partially privatized, it's also one of the few gov't agencies that makes a profit..

dot com

[nicksand]

These chaps should definately be under a dot com address, since you buy yourself a senator for about a hundred grand or so.

Hmmm. eSenator.com -> buy yourself an ear in American politics. Methinks I have a new startup idea.

Which is worse: the TLD abuse or FrontPage?

[Ptolemarch]

You know, the abuse of the TDL .gov rather pisses me off, but once you think about the fact that Freshmeat (no network services, AFAICT) has a .net and Slashdot (for-profit) has a .org, then you realize that the whole thing has been fscked up for a while, now. This is a bit worse, since .gov hadn't been polluted before, but it's just another step along the way.

What really pisses me off is that GOP.gov was written in: [drum roll] FrontPage.

Yes, the all-powerful Grand Old Party, powerful enough to merit its own .gov, can't find a decent web developer.

And, so, I hereby offer my service as web developer for GOP.gov for the low-low price of one (1) cogent.gov, free of charge, forever. Who should I talk to in GOP.gov? (FrontPage put the META NAME="generator" tag in, but the developer didn't put the META NAME="author" tag in.)

s/TDL/TLD/g

[Ptolemarch]

You know, as I was clicking the "submit" button, I realized (too late) that I should have been hitting "preview"...

Re:general cluelessness happens

[deusx]

"silicone" and "silicon" are two different things.

Umm, I think that was the point. But thanks for playing.

Re:...but characteristic of GOP Internet understan

[MattXVI]

It's not the GOP. There are so few technically clueful people in Congress period. (AlGore was an exception-God Bless the Father of the Internet). Why would a geek with massive stock options run for Congress?

But actually this is true of most issues, not just technical ones. Congressmen must vote every day on things they cannot possible have had time to study and understand. It's just a fact of life.

The Evil Empire sets the rules

[RonVNX]

Never mind RFCs. The days of reason are long past. The Evil Empire of the Internet (Network Solutions) has deemed that .com, .net, and .org are all equal, and meaningless in distinction. .org is no longer for non-profits. In fact, Network Solutions encourages everyone to register a name in all three TLDs. (obviously to increase their revenue)

Re:...but characteristic of GOP Internet understan

[G-Man]

Well of course the Dems know more about the Internet 'cuz like, you know, Al Gore invented it ;)

What with Janet "No Strong Crypto" Reno, and Louis "Wiretappin' Must Be" Freeh, I think there are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle to complain about.

Isn't .gov itself a violation of good sense

[loudici]

This gop.gov is just one more demonstration of how democratic the US of A are.
On a side line, I wonder why the US have a .gov domain and french governmental institutions go under .gouv.fr and not .gouv . Isn't it just a nice symbol? France has a 'gouvernement francais' germany a 'deutsche regierung', the UK a queen, and the us have 'THE government'.
Is that the new world order?
---

Re:Isn't .gov itself a violation of good sense

[Schnedt]

You can go to the domain of my primary email account, @freenet.msp.mn.us, that way. I like using it occasionally, it's a very geograpically bound email address. (some people get furious at the notion that ANYTHING on the net should be geographically bound. I feel as much as possible should be).

Re:Isn't .gov itself a violation of good sense

[laura20]

Because it was designed (and paid for for many years) under the aegis of a US Government Agency, DARPA (actually ARPA at the time.)

No one made the rest of the world adopt the protocols and RFCs of ARPAnet/Internet; you could have all standardized on JANET's wierd reverse protocol, or stuck with UUCP, or made up something new. But Internet was the biggest and best, and so with that came the inheritance of .gov and .mil as privileged US domains. Ya move into someone else's house, it's rude to lecture them about the layout.

I'll note that no one is stopping other countries from setting up their own nameservers that don't pay attention to .mil and instead only take requests for *.mil.us to reach those sites, if dealing with the heritage really gets up your nose.

Laura

Re:Isn't .gov itself a violation of good sense

[Anonymous Coward]

On a side line, I wonder why the US have a .gov domain and french governmental institutions go under .gouv.fr and not .gouv.

Well, mostly because .gov is a TLD (top-level domain) and ".gouv" is not. .fr, on the other hand, is. So anything French has to go under .fr. Why doesn't the US have a national TLD? 'Cause we invented the damn system, that's why, and the rest of the world has to play by our rules. ;^) (Actually, the US does have a national TLD - .us - but it's pretty rarely used.)

Re:Isn't .gov itself a violation of good sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent post!

Re:Isn't .gov itself a violation of good sense

[KyleCordes]

That seems like a great idea.

Until you move.

(I chose my domain name on the belief that my name is quite unlikely to change.)

Re:Isn't .gov itself a violation of good sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that kind of name is NOT geographically bound. If whomever is in charge of msp.mn.us wants to, they are free to give out names under that to people anywhere in the world.

Nobody cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody gives a damn if the RNC or anybody wants to register a .gov address in violation of this RFC. Look, the whole problem started because if you wanted a high level TLD you had to register .com, .org or .net. Once the .coms were gone, people began registering the .orgs and .nets regardless and now nobody cares (which isn't such a bad thing).

Whole problem would have been alleviated if additional domains had been added (will we ever see a .web? I personally doubt it...they'll drag their feet for another 10 years before that happens).

Since y'all have found this site without scratching your heads about how a for-profit site is using an .org designiation, get over it already.

Re:What about Slashdot?

[Ashen]

An ISP is still a COMmercial entity, so therefore I think the .com is valid. ;) I am in a college dorm and I don't even get an edu, I am always IP'd. :/

Re:No, this isn't a mistake, perhaps

[MattXVI]

No. The House Republican conference is a standing committee of the US House, and is not at all comparable to the RNC. It doesn't have the same role or power as many other committees. But it definitely is a legitimate and official organizational body of the House, with all the appropriate priveleges. For the record, there are lots of these sorts of groups in both branches of Congress. More in the House, though.

Re:is a political party part of government?

[el_chicano]

If the current parties disappear, the government survives quite nicely.

Yes, but other parties will form to take the place of the ones that disappear...

The biggest parties are not cast in stone, neither their number nor their identification. There is nothing special about them, except that they are big and rich. They were not created with the nation, they were late comers.

While the current political parties were not around, there have always been parties in existence. In fact, one of the goals of the founding fathers was to design a system to moderate the passions of factionalism (or what we call partisanship). For more on the history of political parties in the US, see my other post on another thread...

--

American extravagence, right on topic

[MattMann]

well, I, too, was reworking old material, that's why I pointed it out. Let me also point out that this newer version of the joke contains an extra joke about "American extravagence" reflecting something else Europeans think about us: makes it much funnier, IMHO. Another funny [yes, and old] version of the latter joke is, "America is the only civilization to go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of culture" :)

And, since some will undoubtedly claim this has been off-topic ... bollocks, for several reasons.

First, the main thread was killed as soon as it was pointed out that

1. the organization involved is a .gov, and
2. those tlds are guidelines not rules anyway, as evidenced by profits.slashdot.org

Second, to bring this back on topic even further, the foolish consistency some want to bring to domain TLDs (the main topic of this discussion) is the same as the foolish consistency some wish to bring to threading. "off-topic" should be applied to things which are jarringly off-topic, way back at the TLDiscussion. This deeply nested thread, for the 2 people still reading it, is insightful and on topic, else it'd have been abandoned several clicks ago.

And third, just as domain TLDs allow for "topical" exceptions, so does "off-topic" allow for the exception for humor... and valiance?

Who's using .arpa? (with gratuitous CNAME idiocy)

[Jim Efaw]

There's only one subdomain left in arpa, and that's in-addr.arpa. This subdomain provides the information that allows you to backresolve (convert an IP address back to its hostname). All these nameserver records have backwards-looking names, like 40.224.207.209.in-addr.arpa, for the IP address 209.207.224.40. (By the way, that IP doesn't backresolve. Shame on Rob and Andover!)

It's true that this domain is almost never used for forward resolution of hostnames. However:

• All Internet service providers are supposed to be maintaining their backresolving in-addr.arpa records, but a lot of them are too dumb and/or too lazy to do it. IMHO, lack of backresolving IP addresses is a sign of a shoddy provider.
• You can do forward resolving in arpa, if you think you'd like to have a sexy hostname like fred.224.207.209.in-addr.arpa.
• According to RFC 2317, you are now allowed to make your in-addr.arpa entries a CNAME (alias) for an entry somewhere else. We've been using this successfully at my ISP to delegate blocks (smaller than a class C) to our customers. Witness (just using a private block as an example):
  • Example 1 - You give 10.2.3.248 to 255 to Billy Fred's nameserver:
    248.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. NS nameserver1.billyfred.com.
    248.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. NS nameserver2.billyfred.com.
    249.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 249.248
    250.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 250.248
    251.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 251.248
    252.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 252.248
    253.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 253.248
    254.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 254.248 A lookup on 10.3.2.253 becomes a lookup for 253.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa., but that is now an alias for 253.248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa, which you've pointed to Billy Fred's nameservers. He's handing the domain 248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa with entries like this:
    252.248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa. PTR happybox.billyfred.com.
    253.248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa. PTR sadbox.billyfred.com.
  • Example 2 - You give Fred Billy Company 10.2.3.0 to 7 using the same concept, but using their own domain:
    1.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-1.fredbilly.com.
    2.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-2.fredbilly.com.
    3.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-3.fredbilly.com.
    4.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-4.fredbilly.com.
    5.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-5.fredbilly.com.
    6.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-6.fredbilly.com. Then, over in fredbilly.com, the owner can put things like this:
    backresolve-1 PTR fredsbox
    backresolve-2 PTR elsewhere.friendofbilly.org.
    backresolve-3 PTR fredsotherbox Then, for example, 10.2.3.3 is a lookup on 3.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa, which is an alias for backresolve-3.fredbilly.com, which tells you that the address is fredsotherbox.fredbilly.com.

Does your brain hurt yet? By the way, I wouldn't pay attention to that stuff in RFC 2317 about slash being a valid character. I know there are at least a few machines near me that hate slashes in subdomain names. My suggestion: Stick using hyphens instead, or just cannibalizethe first address of the IP range, since nobody sane would use the "0" address of a subnet for a real machine anyway.

Be disgusted because it makes things harder

[ufdraco]

I don't deny that it is legal or that the countries are being compensated--but I don't have to like it either! I'm hardly so principled that I'm going to lose sleep over it, though. (but thanks for your concern ;-) And despite the fact that there is nothing you or I can do about the TLD situation, I'm going to argue the point anyway.

While it is true that the purpose of domain names are to make it easier to find sites than using the raw IP numbers, there was a reason domains were set up the way they were. If it were *just* to make things easier to remember, then why have all the hubub about TLDs in the first place? IIRC, it was to make the DNS lookup tables simpler. Rather than to have a monolithic database full of TLDs of every size, shape, and color; we have a hierarchical system and split by TLD.

But while we are at it, why not make the domains self-describing? After all, duke.pdjlk is not much easier to remember than 19.233.5.154. And what if there is also a duke.oqwre? Which is which? The .com/.org/.gov/... system makes things much easier. But once we eliminate that distinction, the TLDs become meaningless and nearly as bad as random garbage. How often have you mistyped a URL b/c you couldn't remember its TLD?

With everyone registering under whatever TLD suits them, we can't tell what kind of site we are going to anymore. What's the sense in that?

Ok, I spent way too much time on that--it's amazing what you'll do to avoid homework ;-)

Geeks In Congress

[magicpaul]

So why don't we start the Slashdot political party? Then we could have our very own slashdot.gov domain name.

Vote /.!

/. forever!
----

Re:What about Slashdot?

[MikeBabcock]

"Yes but ..." :-)

.NET was designed to be the companies part of making the Internet a network ... that would be ISPs, large and small. From sprint.com's ISP section to uu.net (also uunet.com) to (as I mentioned) tyenet(.com).

Having both .com and .net addresses? Yes, this seems plausible ... although they should have different homepages in my mind ... one geared toward "Hi, we're a company, here is what we do" and the other "Hi, we're involved in the Internet ..."

Just my $0.02 ... :)

J.C. Watts

[JamesKPolk]

Well, Watts is the head of the House Republican Caucus, so if he's starting up a site in that capacity (representing a coalition of Republican Congressional representatives), I can conceive of that being a .gov site.

It's no different from freedom.gov in that respect. freedom.gov is Rep. Dick Armey's site as House Majority Leader.

Re:.org != non-profit

[mattdm]

It might now. It didn't originally.

And, actually, it doesn't really fit within the original plan for .com -- Slashdot isn't a company (I don't think). Andover is the company. Under the original plan, they should be slashdot.andover.com. So it's all pretty unclear anyway.

It'd be better if we had a more complicated hierarchical structure (a la usenet) from the beginning -- slashdot.tech.news, or something. But it's probably too late for that.

--

Dear Moderator: That's not a troll, you moron!

[Anonymous Coward]

See below about "You whining liberals just don't get it" -- now THAT is a TROLL, baby! Oh, yeah. And I'm damn proud of it, too. Some of my best work.

But this guy is just disagreeing with you, that's all. If that makes him a "troll" in your eyes, you've got some kind of serious personality disorder.


Lighten up. Get a sense of humor. Dare I even suggest a little maturity to go along with that?

Re:general cluelessness happens

[freakho]

And the GOP site was made using frontpage, to boot. I can't even do my little mental "superior dance" when I see stuff like this anymore. I just get depressed.

fh

is a political party part of government?

[trb]

I don't think a political party is an integral part of government, it is a temporary body that occupies government. Government is a container, and it's occupied by party members. If the current parties disappear, the government survives quite nicely.

If gop.gov is allowed, then so should every political party, great and small, be allowed a foo.gov domain. The biggest parties are not cast in stone, neither their number nor their identification. There is nothing special about them, except that they are big and rich. They were not created with the nation, they were late comers. As such, why do they have power to demand special treatment (like a .gov) any more than libertarian, reform, communist, socialist, green, et al?

Re:general cluelessness happens

[MattXVI]

Maybe because Gates donated a boatload of free MS software to the House and Senate when they began to take an interest in MS's fight with the DOJ.

Re:What about Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time to play Imaginary Letters! The rules are simple: you read the imaginary letters, and just imagine how /.ers would react to them!

First up, what if your braindead idea were enforced by Network Solutions?

"Dear Domain Holder:

On behalf of Network Solutions, your monopoly leader in domain name registration, I am writing to inform you that your domain name, SLASHDOT.ORG, no longer meets our criteria for .ORG domains. Within SEVEN (7) days of this letter being sent, SLASHDOT.ORG will be removed from our databases.

Please feel free to register SLASHDOT.COM or SLASHDOT.NET if they are available. If they are not available, we will be happy to find you a new alternative such as SLASHDOT12345.COM or SLAS-HDOT.COM.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Nick W. Nic,
Network Solutions
'Don't Like Us, Go To Hell'"

And from the opposite-of-progress-is department:

"Dear Mr. MALDA:

"The domain name slashdot.org is now owned by a for-profit entity. This is in direct violation of U.S. Code 66666.32(a), which expressly prohibits for-profit entities from owning .org domains. The penalty for not surrendering your domain name slashdot.org to the government's standing committee on Internet regulation is a $50,000 fine or up to 6 months in prison.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Dem N. Gov,
Standing Committee On Internet Regulation
'Exon, X off'"

How about the holy-f--k-pat-was-right department?

"Dear Domain Holder:

"The United Nations Domain Registration Organization (UNDRO) was recently given power over all three-letter top level domains (TLDs). Under the UNDRO charter, corporations are no longer permitted to use the .org domain.

"Your domain name has been seized and is held by the United Nations, and will be given at no cost to a non-profit organization in Belize on January 1, 2000.

"If you wish to appeal this decision, please file your appeal in person at the UNDRO's offices in Switzerland.

"Wun W. Gov,
United Nations Domain Registration Organization
wwgov@blackhelicopters.int"

And don't worry if I left out the organization you thought should have the power to seize domain names from their owners. There's imaginary letters from them, too, just waiting to be written.

Re:What about Slashdot?

[AndyB]

Check your RFCs. ORG was never for "non-profits" only. It was deemed as the miscellaneous category for people who didn't fit into INT, EDU, GOV, MIL, NET, or COM.

Here's the snippet from RFC 1591, written by Jon Postel himself:

"ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non-government organizations may fit here."

Re:general cluelessness happens

[freakho]

Don't you mean a bloatload? :)

fh

It's use, not abuse

[RonVNX]

This was never really abuse at the country code level, and although .org used to mean non-profit, that's no longer the case. Network Solutions makes names from registrations and has declared all TLDs open, except those under special restrictions, like .EDU . Mind you, I've seen organizations with an .EDU that they're not entitled to by the rules.

In any case, .nu is the part of the domain name space delegated to Niue. Niue was/is free to do with it as they please, including selling registrations to others outside Niue. So there's no abuse there.

I just hope the people of Tonga got something for their .to namespace. From what I've read, I'm still not clear on how a company got their hands on the entire .to namespace.

Re:It's use, not abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Niue was/is free to do with it as they please, including selling registrations to others outside Niue. So there's no abuse there.

Unless of course you live there and wanted one of the domains foreigners bribed your government to withhold. They may have the authority to screw over their subjects, but that doesn't make it appropriate, and I don't patronize the sleazeballs that subsidize the practice.

.org != non-profit

[mattdm]

"ORG" was NEVER meant to be restricted to non-commercial entities, despite the widesspread misconception. Check out RFC 1591:

ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non-government organizations may fit here.

--

Re:.org != non-profit

[Anonymous Coward]

Preview screws up entities. Compose in HTML, go back from the preview, and submit the original version - then your < and & will still be there.

Shouldn't the other political parties get .govs?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the republicans get .gov TLDs the other political parties (e.g. democrats, reform, etc.) should be entitled to get .govs too.

No, this isn't a mistake, perhaps

[MattXVI]

Now that I read this more carefully, I see why they are using a .GOV domain. This group that Congressman Watts is registering is an officially organized committee of the US House of Reps. It is the House Republican Conference. This is just like if, say, the Commerce Committee of the House, or the Appropriations committee of the Senate wanted a domain name. They would also use .GOV Any standing committee of either branch could do this.

I think the source of the misunderstanding here is that you guys think this is something coming out of the RNC (Republican Nat'l Committee) Headquarters-this is totally different. The Party Conference is an official standing sommittee of the US House, and exists as long as there are Republicans on the Hill. The Democrats could do the same thing. Any party could.

Hmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the GOP site to help improve other GOP sites doesn't understand how the web sites/domains are supposed to be named. Not a good sign.

Re:Hmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

These people are concerned with political ideas, not domain-name registration rules. The fact is, most party websites stink. The RNC website stinks. So does the DNC's. J. C. Watts has a job in the Republican leadership- to get out their message. So he is making a site with good content.

Touche', point taken.

[deusx]

Not just Republicans, I agree. Just one more reason to form a sovereign virtual nation. :)

Re:What about USPS?

[Surak]

The USPS is only privatized to the point that it is the only government program that is entirely self sufficient. Its still a government agency, and is not a contractor...if it were truly privatized, then other companies like UPS or Federal Express would be to bid for the contract.

Re:IRS.Gov? MyName.Gov?

[Dr. Zim]

That's because the Government Printing Office is already known by most as the GPO. It's at http://www.access.gpo.gov/, if you're interested.

Re:usps.com

[ssb201]

The USPS is a fully chartered corporation. Many Government Agencies are actually chartered as corporations. Take for example the IRS, a nice "private" corporation, chartered in Maryland.

What about Slashdot?

[AntEater]

Maybe I'm missing something here but how is Slashdot a non-profit and why does it have an .org domain? If I remember correctly it is owned by a "for profit" type company. It seems to me like the same type of abuse of the TLD's.

Re:What about Slashdot?

[MikeBabcock]

While we're ranting ... how many of you have Internet providers that aren't .NET's? And how many .COMs should be .ORGs? I know dozens and dozens. I worked at tyenet.com ... which bugged me ... tye.net maybe ... tyenet.net sure ... but tyenet.com? We were an ISP! :)
</rant>

Re:What about Slashdot?

[Schnedt]

True, but when it was bought by Andover it should have been required to give up the .org name.

It seems clear to me.

Re:What about Slashdot?

[Zaffle]

Ahh but, Slashdot originaly wasn't owned by Andover.net.

And anyway, other tlds are abused frequently. (I thought the country TLDs (eg .nu) was for host in that country. But we've all seen the rash of those tlds.:))

Re:What about Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many corporations have one TLD per subsidiary or even per product, instead of using the hierarchy appropriately? And what the fsck is the deal with www.navyjobs.com?!
/

Re:What about Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a non-regional for-profit organization not fit in COM?

Re:usps.com

[Mr. Slippery]

The overall service record of UPS versus USPS is very very one-sided, though, in favor of UPS...They also offer online tracking.

Ever have to deal with their customer service after they damage your shipment? It's horrible, and everyone I've talked to who had to deal with their customer service reps had similar stories.

I need online tracking like I need a hole in my head - I don't care what route my package takes, I just want it delivered quickly and undamaged. And if they can't do that (and they can't), I want a quick resolution, not to have to make eight phone calls to finally have someone come out to look at a computer with its case bashed in, shrug, and say, "Sorry 'bout your luck."

Sorry if I'm ranting, but UPS has managed to make my Permanent Shit List.

Re:usps.com

[DarkBlack]

Did you bother to see if http://www.usps.gov/ worked? Try it and you'll see. It's more than likely that they just registered multiple domain's as NSI 'suggests'.

Silicone Valley

[acb]

Isn't that the name given to the high-tech arm of the Hollywood entertainment-industrial complex?

gop.org

[JerryLinux]

I must agree on 2 points - 1) (Most)politicians are clueless about the Internet (and computers) 2) It should be gop.org

Shouldn't it be slashdot.COM

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

The public interest

[webster]

> it should not be two hard to check on whether a party is acting as a
> government entity (i.e., when it is looking out for the public interest)
> and when it is acting as a private organization (e.g., when it is looking
> out for its own interests).

By this criteria, we should also be seeing House.org and Senate.org and WhiteHouse.org etc. etc. The entire .gov domain can just be retired.

Re:usps.com

[Mr. Slippery]

First, a private corporation could deliver the mail at a lower cost and with greater reliability

The USPS gets it monopoly on first-class mail in return for guarnteed universal service at a single price. Doesn't matter if your correspondent is right next door to a major post office, or living in a shack on top of a mountain at the end of a twenty mile dirt road; your stamp will get your letter to them. FedEx, UPS, etcetera, are free to say, "We don't deliver to such-and-such areas," or "we charge a 2000 percent surcharge to anyone not living within twenty miles of a major city."

Is postal mail important enough to warrant government intervention to ensure universal one-price service? I dunno. Most of mine goes right to the recycling bin. (And I mean "right to" - I have a small trash can right underneath my mailbox, don't even bother bringing the junk into the house anymore.)

I tell you this, though: after my experience with UPS's abysmal customer service when they damaged two packages of mine, USPS looks a whole lot better than it used to! Their "Priority Mail" service is a pretty good deal.

Exactly... BIG F*$&%NG DEAL

[Anonymous Coward]

So what if it violates the RFC. It's a pretty pointless, nitpicky rule in the first place. Does anybody really care if it is gop.house.gov or gop.gov, or gop.org anyway? It's not like there is a lot of contention for the .gov namespace. Doesn't he have anything better to do than complain about this? For that matter, why am I even posting...

Amen brother

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the basics like Forte Agent, and Microsoft Media Player?

Cool! So when does reform.GOV come online?

[Anonymous Coward]

The precedent is set in motion. Gov't favoritism cannot be showed to one political party over another. Of course, we must the also allow:

green.gov
libertarian.gov
neo-nazi.gov
etc.

offtopic: javascript in ie5

[razorwire]

You can turn off Javascript in IE5, but it's much more painful than in Netscape.

1. Open the "Internet Options" panel.
2. Select the "Security" tab
3. Click "Custom Level".
4. Set "Scripting of Java applets" to "Disable".
5. Click "OK".
6. Click "OK" in the window that pops up. (Yes, I am sure, dammit!)
7. Curse Bill Gates and his minions for this shining example of non-usability.
8. Enjoy Javascript-free surfing.

--

sigh

[discore]

another example of the government thinking they are better than everyone else. i mean the "general public" has to follow these neat "rfc" thingies, but i dont think we do, right?

well maybe one day things will be different
maybe not

usps.com

[Noke]

The United States Postal Service is a .com
They are a government agency, aren't they? Why are they using a commercial TLDN?

Re:usps.com

[PimpBot]

I *believe* its because USPS doesn't actually use government funds(or at least, not that much)...they live off stamp revenues and package shipping.

How they manage that, I wish I knew ;-)
--------------------------

Re:usps.com

[DaKrushr]

Nope - the post office has been privatized.

What in the world does "GOP" stand for?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing it's the Republican party, but I fail to see the connection! Guess I watch too much Discovery and not enough CNN. (Though that may change now that Beyond 2000, Next Step, Amazing America, Movie Magic, and Wings are no longer on DISC... *weep* *sob*)

Re:What in the world does "GOP" stand for?

[PimpBot]

Grand Ol' Party, I think...
--------------------------

general cluelessness happens

[Zarf]

I saw the congress woman from NewYork address Bill Gates on the virtues of Silicone Valley and mentioned NY's Silicone Alley on C-Span a while ago. She sounded like she could use some silicone removal herself. Perhaps she was thinking of implanted chips or chip implants.

All-in-all I wouldn't be too upset that D.C.-ites don't get the internet... it's probably better that way. The internet culture will be better off if the law-makers just have to react to it rather than having control over it's growth.

- // Zarf //

Should be gop.net

[anonymous cowerd]

> Citing the poor quality of republican websites, Republican
> Conference Chairman J.C. Watts has started a project
> called 'GOP.gov' to help improve their websites. This is all
> well and good, except GOP.gov isn't just their name, it's also
> their domain. This is a pretty clear violation, etc.

Since this web site is intended to be used "to improve websites," shouldn't it maybe get the .net suffix?

You'd think that government and the military would be extremely solicitous toward their own .gov and .mil suffixes. Has anyone fired off a letter to GOP.gov? I imagine that they would be kind of peeved at having to give up their chosen domain name but consider. I'd bet you a dollar that if I as a private individual tried to register, say, uncharted.gov or uncharted.mil as my own domain name, InterNIC wouldn't allow it. But if they get to do GOP.gov despite the RFC, then the next thing you know you're only a law suit away from all kinds of weird minor political parties trying to passing themselves off as this_and_that.gov, implicitly the voice of the government itself. I'm sure neither Repubs nor Dems would care for that outcome.

Also, I have a question I'm sure many /. readers can answer: wouldn't GOP.gov be case-sensitive? I just tried an experiment; I typed in

http://www.YAHOO.com/
http:/SLASHDOT.ORG/
http:/www.CONCENTRIC.net/

and in all three cases I got to the expected page. But when I changed

http://www.concentric.net/~Wkiernan/

to

http://www.concentric.net/~WkieRnan/

I got a 404 error. Is it only case sensitive in subdirectories?

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Re:Should be gop.net

[JamesKPolk]

Host names in DNS aren't case sensitive, so the www.blah.com can be all caps, or whatever.

However, the path sent to the server ("/", "/~Wkiernan", or whatever) is case sensitive, if the server chooses to parse the paths that way.

it's an *Informational* RFC...

[Anonymous Coward]

...so they aren't breaking any Internet "standard". Even if they were, there isn't an IETF Enforcement Agency, so there's nothing to stop them. Unless...the RFC *is* stating a government policy. Now, how likely is it that violations of this policy would be seriously examined in today's politcal climate? Who's in charge? Yes, that's right, Republicans.

If anyone in a low-level agency tried to take away the gop.gov domain based on some policy that was adopted in 1997, don't you think that maybe that agency would be risking its FY2000 budget? Or, another action that Congress could take would be to attach a rider to some other bill such that political parties can register under .gov. There are so many ways that the Republicans could change the rules here that it isn't even worth debating what the rules *are*. Any rules made up by the bureaucracy can be countermanded by the Congress (or the courts if it came to that).

Whether or not one approves of gop.gov, there is no technical reason why gop.gov should not be allowed...the RFC is a purely discretionary document intended to help organize the .gov namespace.

Is this amusing? Sort of. Am I surprised that the .gov maintainers didn't follow the rules in this case? Not at all.

(BTW, are we sure that there have been no further FIPS documents since 1997 that clarified or extended RFC-2146?)

EXACTLY

[Chris Johnson]

That is EXACTLY the point. FedEx, UPS, etcetera, are free to say, "We don't deliver to such-and-such areas," or "we charge a 2000 percent surcharge to anyone not living within twenty miles of a major city." And they will, and they especially will if you hao other options. I recently had a FedEx guy refuse to _climb_ _stairs_ to knock on my door- to him, if my (useless) doorbell wasn't working, I didn't deserve 'express package delivery'. (Bugger was carrying my O'Reilly books too!)
The price is almost irrelevant. The real issue is that if it was a private corporation, they would instantly disenfranchise anybody living in that shack at the top of a mountain- thus getting the lower price. Well, other countries may feel differently (socialist ones may actually understand this even better than we do!) but the USA was founded on the concept that _everyone_ counts, and that the government looks after everybody's interests, as best it can- very likely unimpressively, but you have to give it points just for being willing to try. The mail system is a perfect example- it is in fact pretty competitive on price with the private corporations (though you can pay extra to a private corporation whose representative then refuses to bother to knock on your door and squanders the time savings you thought you were buying), but the real issue is what the private corporations will refuse to do because it's a money sink- who they'll put the screws to in order to make better offers to the majority.
Damn right it's socialist thinking. This nation was founded on little carefully chosen bits of socialist thinking. It's a problem when that is lightly brushed aside. Why yes, let's disband the post office! Hell, let's disband the judicial system, and law enforcement, and people can take their gripes and concerns, for instance about fraud practiced by big corporations, or negligence resulting in loss of life, to efficient for-pay courts paid for by the mysteriously immune-from-guilt defendants! Then they can be informed of the loss of their suit through a for-pay mail system that refuses to deliver to an address that won't co-pay (or something- now wouldn't that be profitable: pay to get your mail!). Most efficiently of all, we could have the for-pay law enforcement take notice of these miserable plebian worthless drags on the country, and go out and shoot them in the head, whereby the whole nation can be made to run more efficiently and profitably!

If anybody thinks that isn't sarcasm, go see a doctor...

Should be GOP.com

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be GOP.com -- everybody knows that the Democratic and Republican parties are for-profit entities.

.gov should follow presidency, or senat maj.

[sklib]

I say that whoever has the presidency AND the senate majority gets to .gov sites, and all the others get .org. 'Cause come on, in that case, there's no reason to kid yourself about who's who :)

Re:What about USPS?

[Surak]

For that matter, what the Post Office? Sure, we've got usps.gov, but its also usps.com. Surely the USPS part of the government and not allowed to be a .com.

IRS.Gov? MyName.Gov?

[SEWilco]

There was a recent announcement that the IRS was moving to IRS.Gov, where it used to be at IRS.Treas.Gov. A similar violation of the RFC.

As I've been politically active, I asked NIC.Gov if I can register my name under .Gov also. I wonder how large a staff they'll need to monitor when political clubs drop below the registration requirements and get de-registered.

But I am surprised that AlGore didn't already get GOP.Gov registered to the GOvernment Printing office...

Re:IRS.Gov? MyName.Gov?

[PimpBot]

I don't see how irs.gov would be a violation...its a government agency, where as the GOP is merely a political faction. Could you elaborate, please?

Anyways, shouldn't it be irs.pain.suffering.no_money.gov? ;-)
--------------------------

I believe....

[Roofus]

That the USPS is a private entity chartered by the government to deliever all of our mail. That would pretty much make them a company with special powers.


I could be wrong though, I'm usally pretty ignorant and often pull stuff out of my ass.