* Due to the issues identified above, the current NetBSD
daemon character cannot be used.
... it specifically says the daemon character is a big problem. People may have been offended by the similarity to the imagery of (WWII) US Marines raising the flag over Iwo Jima, but NetBSD specifically wants to get rid of the daemon.
We are witnessing a revival of fascism in the United States.
When living individuals are "worshiped" as Reagan and George (the First) are by GOP legislators through the renaming of existing airports ("Houston Intercontinental" became "Bush International," and "Washington National" became "Reagan National") that is fascism. GOP legislators are saying (and we are allowing them to use our money and voices to say) that Reagan and Bush are more important than the previous namesakes, George Washington and Sam Houston.
The Republicans are going for name recognition, whitewashing the memories of mediocre (Bush) or even corrupt and anti-American (Reagan: Iran-Contra) administrations, in the hopes of drawing more support from soft-headed fools, who will see these names displayed in prominent places (and printed upon millions of airline tickets) and vote Republican because they want to be on the "winning team."
This aircraft carrier and its sister ship under construction, the "George H.W. Bush," are just two more examples of this.
While UC Berkeley and USL were filing briefs and "negotiating," commercial vendors (Sun, SGI, Pyramid, Sequent, etc.) were abandoning BSD and switching to SYS V Unix, at least partially out of fear of getting stuck without an OS they could legally sell. BSDI was the original defendent in the case, and was also pretty damaged by the entire incident, and NetBSD was also seriously affected by the two(?) years of restraining orders associated with the case, until the settlement in Jan of 1994.
It was into this legally-imposed BSD-void that Linux first emerged. Linux may not have been nearly so popular without the perception (of the time) that BSD was permanently entangled in lawsuits. (Two years is a long time to be shutdown.)
According to this history of BSD by Kirk McKusick, USL agreed not to sue any organizations that distribute Unixes based on 4.4 Lite. So, ironically, the BSD Unixes which were shunned during the AT&T-Berkeley suit may be immune SCO's current suit (because SCO derives their license from USL), and may see their popularity jump, should Linux become entangled in the same restraining order nastiness that was so damaging to BSD back in 1992-1994.
I second all of the excellent comments and suggestions made by mekkab.
The good and important thing is that you have a conscience; that you see the bigger picture. Give yourself credit for that. Most people are still asleep, or don't care. However, If you let your conscience drag you down into depression or inaction, then it's doing you and the environment no good.
Do what you can and feel better for it.
Definitely in Boston, you can get around on foot, the T, and with cabs, and get rid of the car. You'll save a ton of money on car insurance (it will almost certainly be more expensive there than where you live now), you'll save money on gas, and you won't have to worry about all (or just parts) of your car being stolen.
16 years ago, i became veggie when i went to college. It's a great time to do it, because you now have total control over your diet. Parts of Boston are going to have good veggie food -- Cambridge is a very liberal community.
Some things you will be unable to do right now. (Like solar) Don't beat yourself up about it, that's self-destructive, which is REALLY wasteful.;-) Just tuck those ideas away for later.
Regarding paper, reuse (blank sides are good for scratch paper) and then recycle. My housemate and i put out more recycling (paper, cans, bottles) than we do garbage. I know it's not going to save the world, but it does help, and it makes me feel good enough to celebrate the weekly occasion with beer.
Native Americans impacted their environment, too, but their methods of food production (hunter-gatherer) limited their population growth and their overall footprint. As you have already realized, there are things you can do to limit the impact you make. Just do what you can within reason, and don't sweat the rest.
Yes, the true thing of note here is that they've managed to put four CPUs into a machine that Sun only engineered and built to hold two. Perhaps they'd like to explain how they did this. Or, issue a correction and give us (and, dare i hope,/.'s reviewers) cause to more critically examine the veracity of performance claims from people who obviously don't know one of two fundamental things:
1) the model of machine they are using
2) the number of CPUs it holds
People should keep in mind that the U.S. and other large "established" nations don't need a legitimate reason to economically or militarily attack and cripple Sealand, they just need a plausible excuse, which they already have. The examples of these kinds of unwarranted attacks since 1980 are too numerous to catalogue, but let me recount just 3 to illustrate my point.
First and second, the military invasions of Grenada and Panama. In both cases, the U.S. sent military troops into the country and killed people because of dissatisfaction with the target country's government. Various spin (the attack on Grenada was misleading called a "Pre-dawn Insertion" by the Reagan administration) and justifications (American students in danger in Grenada, or Noriega trading in drugs) were used, but were legally, completely irrelevant. The U.S. had explicitly agreed, in writing, never to use armed force against either of these countries. This agreement was completed in 1951 when the U.S. Senate ratified the Charter of the OAS (Organization of American States), which includes this text as Article 19 of Chapter IV:
No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements.
According to U.S. Constitution, treaties agreed to by the executive branch and ratified by the Senate are the "supreme Law of the Land." Despite the OAS's explicit prohibition against the use of any armed force for any reason whatsoever, there was not even a murmur of impeachment proceedings against Presidents Reagan or Bush, nor was there a significant international brouhaha.
Third, France bombed Greenpeace's vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, in an Auckland, New Zealand harbor ostensibly because it was going to be in international waters monitoring and protesting French atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons. France initially (vehemently) denied involvement, but eventually admitted to the crime and paid about US$6.5 to the New Zealand government. Two of the French agents involved spent less than two years in a French military base. (Despite the fact that the French government had agreed they would spend three years in detention.) The rest were never punished, despite the fact that one crewman on the Rainbow Warrior drowned when the ship sank.
Powerful and established governments do not need any real justification to get away with attacking lesser countries or organizations, and they will violate international as well as their own laws to do so, when they believe it will expeditiously suit their needs. All they require is a pretext.
In the case of Sealand, the several countries already have that. Sealand is now within the International waters of the U.K. Additionally, Sealand is not a democratic state (it's an aristocracy), and it's government or its representatives have been accused of trafficing in black-market arms and drugs.
It doesn't really matter if the charges are true or not, if Prince Roy rules more fairly and effectively than every government on the planet, or even how many countries recognize Sealand as a legitimate country. What matters is that the U.K., France, Germany, Spain or the U.S. can easily claim that Sealand is trafficing in drugs and arms, lob a cruise missile or a few bombs at them, and Sealand will cease to exist, except as a government-in-exile.
Personally, i'd hate to see that happen, and it would be unjust and unfair. But people need to wake up and realize that the "big" countries have neverplayed fair and they won't hesitate to do something horribly unfair and vile to Sealand, if it becomes a thorn in their side.
I want to second this. I've been a UNIX sysadmin for about 10 years, a senior staff member at my current gig for 4+ years, and telecommuting the 600 miles ~93% of my work-time for the last 1.5 years. The benefits are many: improved quantity and quality of work, get all those mail-order deliveries the first time, etc. But i'm giving it up, for many reasons, most of which have to do with the isolation. Like many people, i saw most of my friends at work, and so it really is just kinda weird not to see anyone except my SO and cat for a week or two at a time, or realize i haven't been even nominally out of the house in 3 days. In the past, i have had a lot of 'net relationships (via email, newsgroups, netrek, etc.) and figured i was ready to do this. I think what i was forgetting was the amount of interaction i really did have at work. You may find that people who you have worked with for 5 years seem to forget you exist, which can have harsh consequences. Being a technically senior sysadmin means i should be training the junior staff, but this has proven almost impossible. There just seems to be a lot of questions that people won't pick up the phone to ask, but that they will yell over the cube wall.
There is nothing in any of the proposals at hand that will prevent people from registering "LAME DOMAINS." So the problem of "lame" entities being the first to register domain names that would be (in anyone's opinion) more appropriate for another entity will not be solved.
The example of pgMedia, Inc. choosing an *improper* TLD demonstrates that there will always be some entities that insist on getting "whatevertheywant"."whatevertheycan" .
The fact of the matter remains that pgMedia, Inc. registered "namespace.org" after someone else registered "namespace.com." In a future with virtually unlimited TLDs, an entity like pgMedia, Inc. that puts their personal interest ahead of the philosophy or conventions underlying the TLDs, would attempt to register "name.space." Finding it taken, they would then invent a new TLD, and register something like "name.spc".
This does not help anyone find either entity.
Mega-corporations with cadres of IP lawyers are not going to limit the enforcement of their trademarks or copy rights to ".com," ".biz" or any other TLD. Cocacola, Inc. will want cocacola.*. (Go check: you will find they already own cocacola.com, cocacola.net and cocacola.org) It doesn't matter if it's cocacola.com, cocacola.biz, cocacola.dev, or cocacola.code. Their IP lawyers will tell them that they need them all.
And if you think it's just CocaCola, you should ask Volkswagen of America, Inc. ("vw.com"), why they sued Virtual Works, Inc. for "vw.net." (This case is still in the courts.)
I really wish that companies would behave so "logically" with regards to TLDs. But the record is very clear. More than a few companies with money and lawyers will sue anyone who gets in their way over domain names, even domain names they do not really need. It's not going to help to have anymore TLDs.
I looked at their site. Namespace.org appears to be associated with: pgMedia, Inc. (PGMEDIA2-DOM 11 e 4 st new york, NY 10003 US
Nowhere did i find any mention of a non-profit "cause," or any charities they contribute to. It looks exactly like a 100% for-profit business. If you have some evidence to the contrary, please cite it.
Several months ago, i read a bit of their suit. PgMedia, Inc. is fighting a legal battle because they *chose* to sue Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) and the National Science Foundation. (Not the other way around.)
I don't like NSI, because i think they do a sucky job, and i'm very happy to see other registrars setting up. But i think that pgMedia, Inc. sued so that they could make money by selling a virtually unlimited range of TLDs. I have not seen any evidence that pgMedia, Inc. attempted to establish a new standard for TLDs for everyone's benefit, or that they attempted to build a coalition of ISPs and potential registrars to bring pressure to bear on NSI and NSF to allow *everyone* to register TLDs.
So my conclusion is that their ultimate goal in suing NSI and NSF was to further their business goal of being the preeminent (perhaps sole?) vendor of the new TLDs, not the greater good of the 'Net.
Your second point does not seem very compelling. You are arguing that a business' domainname is irrelevant because, "most people looking for a business either know the URL from advertisements or use search engines."
The same argument is at least as persuasive, against needing any more TLDs. Let me give you an example of this:
Someone is looking for the website of a company named "AAA, Inc." What you are saying is that people either
1) Saw the company's URL ("http://www.tripleAinc.com") on TV and already know what it is.
or
2) They use a search engine to find it. If there are so hundreds of TLDs,people will still not think it's worthwhile to make a guess at the URL, and so they will rely on TV ads or search engines.
So if more TLDs does not make it any easier for people to find the entities they are searching for, why should we add them? In a world-wide name-space like the Internet, the "desirable" (readily apparent) TLDs are going to fill up immediately, and all the businesses that currently have to compromise and put something unintuitive in front of ".com" will wind up putting the same unintuitive text in front of ".biz" or ".food." Or, they will be coming up with unintuitive TLDs like "AAA.FoodsofDelware".
I understand the reasons people want more TLDs, but i don't think they will help.
Your reply contains a great example of why.
I go to namespace.ORG, and right in the center of the page is an advertisement, from "Name.Space" for domain registration for $69.95.
So "name.space" does not appear to be a non-profit entity, though it really should be because it's a.org. My guess is that it's a for-profit corp. that is incorrectly using a.org TLD. Why?
The two answers that immediately come to mind are:
1) You are deliberately trying to mislead people as to the nature of your corporation. (A for-profit corporation posing as a non-profit.)
2) You couldn't get the name you wanted in.com (or.net) because it was already take, so instead, you chose to ignore the intent of the existant TLDs.
I'm going to guess that it's #2.
If there was a (virtually infinite) list of new TLDs don't you realize that people who can't get the name they want in the TLD of their choice will simply create yet another useless TLD? (Like ".biz") So soon we would have:
How does this help anyone find you? Instead of just 3 confusing alternatives now there are 9.
The only people who will be helped by this are companies like yours, who will be taking money to registering thousands of top-level domains from huge mega-corporations that can afford to buy every possible TLD for their trademarks. In the end, the result is the same as what we have now: Big businesses buy what they want, individuals get shafted.
In the Gregorian calendar, the Third Millennium and the 21st Century begin on 1 Jan 2001. If you are starting the Third Millennium on 1 Jan 2000, you are using something other than the Gregorian calendar. Don't take my word for it, check with the experts:
It matters because you cannot arbitrarily drop years from centuries or millennia and still have a functional calendar everyone can use. We have thousands of books of history based on each century encompassing years 1-100 inclusive. If you decide the 20th Century ends at the end of 1999, then which past century loses the year? (Only 1999 years have passed in the Gregorian calendar.)
If you change something like the method that time is measured or counted by, without unilaterally implementing it as a standard, you cause pervasive problems. As far as i am aware, there has been no world-wide agreement or even a Papal Bull from the Vatican (who created the Gregorian calendar) to short the 20th Century one year.
Re: Net as a commodity:Bad Idea or Spawn of Satan?
on
Bandwidth as Commodity
·
· Score: 2
I think you and i agree about the lack of similarity between a natural gas pipeline and Internet bandwidth. My point in making the comparison was to demosntrate that the two are not the same. ENRON is a company whose primary business is moving natural gas in pipelines. Obviously, if they are proposing this "network bandwidth as a commodity" model, it's because *they* think they can "leverage their core business," and apply similar principles to Internet data. (I don't agree)
For technical reasons, the top-tier ISPs have long been reducing the number of other ISPs with whom they "peer" or exchange data. The complexity of the routing tables were becoming the biggest impediment to timely transmission of packets. At the backbone level, the top-tier ISPs want (and to a large extent have) routing tables that are simple, and cover very large ranges of IP address.
For example, they want to route all of 204.0.0.0 to one particular destination. What they hate is "top-level" routing of small ranges (like a Class C: 204.2.12.0) to a particular destination. This consolidation has very clearly pushed almost all but the biggest ISPs out of the top-tier.
Let's look at this from a small regional ISP's point of view: "Joe's ISP." Joe doesn't have the heft to make a peering agreement with each of the top-tier providers, so instead, he signs on with one, like UUNET. UUNET sells Joe some class C or B netblocks for Joe to use or allocate. These are specific IP addresses that are routed on the 'Net at large because of peering agreements that UUNET has established with the other top-tier providers. As far as all other top-tier providers care, traffic to Joe is really traffic to UUNET.
Joe cannot sudddenly decide to buy 1 GB of bandwidth from someone else, because he would then need new IP addresses for all his machines, new Internet DNS entries, a new T-1 connection (at least a month from the local Bell) to another top-tier ISP, etc., to make it all work. Ask any (TCP/IP) network admin what it thinks about changing every IP address in their domain once a quarter and you'll get a very clear answer. (But i'd make sure they weren't holding anything that's going to hurt when they throw it at you.) Changing IP addresses is something that any network admin with a brain in its head *never wants to do.*
So if Joe is effectively eliminated as a purchaser of this network-bandwidth commodity, the only people who would be in the market for it are the companies that already control the market. WorldComm-UUNET, Sprint, AT&T, C&W and the other top-tier ISPs don't need ENRON to step in and start brokering the data between them. When they get the technical means to charge by the packet, or dynamically route data by the cheapest ($) path, they'll do it *by themselves*.
Re: Net as a commodity:Bad Idea or Spawn of Satan?
on
Bandwidth as Commodity
·
· Score: 4
Bandwidth as a tradable commodity has got to be one of the most evil "Internet" money-grabs i've seen come down the pike since 1993. Think about it: when you add in a middle-man who make his living by trading what Party A creates and Party B consumes the price goes UP, not down. Look at any manufacturer-distributor-retailer model.
The next problem with this is that Fortune 1000 corps. are not going to accept a "Sorry, we couldn't buy (or sell you) any more bandwidth today" explanation from their ISP or net-broker. So you can bet corporations will be buying their own big chunks from their ISPs. Which means that only the little guys are going to feel the price difference here.
The third problem with this is that network packets are not natural gas. Natural gas is purchased by corporations like ENRON at THE SOURCE, and then transported to a refinery. This model works because a cubic foot of gas (or gallon of crude) has an intrinsic value. Your data is usually worthless, except to you and the person you want to read it.
This is a really good idea to support if you want to be paying 5 times what you are now to some talentless fool in Chicago or New York who's raking it in today because some other idiot put a back hoe through the piece of fiber your packets usually blink across. And if you want inferior service.
Slashdot Mirror
* Due to the issues identified above, the current NetBSD daemon character cannot be used.
... it specifically says the daemon character is a big problem. People may have been offended by the similarity to the imagery of (WWII) US Marines raising the flag over Iwo Jima, but NetBSD specifically wants to get rid of the daemon.
We are witnessing a revival of fascism in the United States.
When living individuals are "worshiped" as Reagan and George (the First) are by GOP legislators through the renaming of existing airports ("Houston Intercontinental" became "Bush International," and "Washington National" became "Reagan National") that is fascism. GOP legislators are saying (and we are allowing them to use our money and voices to say) that Reagan and Bush are more important than the previous namesakes, George Washington and Sam Houston.
The Republicans are going for name recognition, whitewashing the memories of mediocre (Bush) or even corrupt and anti-American (Reagan: Iran-Contra) administrations, in the hopes of drawing more support from soft-headed fools, who will see these names displayed in prominent places (and printed upon millions of airline tickets) and vote Republican because they want to be on the "winning team."
This aircraft carrier and its sister ship under construction, the "George H.W. Bush," are just two more examples of this.
While UC Berkeley and USL were filing briefs and "negotiating," commercial vendors (Sun, SGI, Pyramid, Sequent, etc.) were abandoning BSD and switching to SYS V Unix, at least partially out of fear of getting stuck without an OS they could legally sell. BSDI was the original defendent in the case, and was also pretty damaged by the entire incident, and NetBSD was also seriously affected by the two(?) years of restraining orders associated with the case, until the settlement in Jan of 1994.
It was into this legally-imposed BSD-void that Linux first emerged. Linux may not have been nearly so popular without the perception (of the time) that BSD was permanently entangled in lawsuits. (Two years is a long time to be shutdown.)
According to this history of BSD by Kirk McKusick, USL agreed not to sue any organizations that distribute Unixes based on 4.4 Lite. So, ironically, the BSD Unixes which were shunned during the AT&T-Berkeley suit may be immune SCO's current suit (because SCO derives their license from USL), and may see their popularity jump, should Linux become entangled in the same restraining order nastiness that was so damaging to BSD back in 1992-1994.
I second all of the excellent comments and suggestions made by mekkab.
The good and important thing is that you have a conscience; that you see the bigger picture. Give yourself credit for that. Most people are still asleep, or don't care. However, If you let your conscience drag you down into depression or inaction, then it's doing you and the environment no good.
Do what you can and feel better for it.
Definitely in Boston, you can get around on foot, the T, and with cabs, and get rid of the car. You'll save a ton of money on car insurance (it will almost certainly be more expensive there than where you live now), you'll save money on gas, and you won't have to worry about all (or just parts) of your car being stolen.
16 years ago, i became veggie when i went to college. It's a great time to do it, because you now have total control over your diet. Parts of Boston are going to have good veggie food -- Cambridge is a very liberal community.
Some things you will be unable to do right now. (Like solar) Don't beat yourself up about it, that's self-destructive, which is REALLY wasteful. ;-) Just tuck those ideas away for later.
Regarding paper, reuse (blank sides are good for scratch paper) and then recycle. My housemate and i put out more recycling (paper, cans, bottles) than we do garbage. I know it's not going to save the world, but it does help, and it makes me feel good enough to celebrate the weekly occasion with beer.
Native Americans impacted their environment, too, but their methods of food production (hunter-gatherer) limited their population growth and their overall footprint. As you have already realized, there are things you can do to limit the impact you make. Just do what you can within reason, and don't sweat the rest.
Sorry, my bad. I Coulda swore the headline said "500-billionth." early, early this morning.
The subject says billion and the body says million. SETI's site says million.
Yes, the true thing of note here is that they've managed to put four CPUs into a machine that Sun only engineered and built to hold two. Perhaps they'd like to explain how they did this. Or, issue a correction and give us (and, dare i hope, /.'s reviewers) cause to more critically examine the veracity of performance claims from people who obviously don't know one of two fundamental things:
1) the model of machine they are using
2) the number of CPUs it holds
First and second, the military invasions of Grenada and Panama. In both cases, the U.S. sent military troops into the country and killed people because of dissatisfaction with the target country's government. Various spin (the attack on Grenada was misleading called a "Pre-dawn Insertion" by the Reagan administration) and justifications (American students in danger in Grenada, or Noriega trading in drugs) were used, but were legally, completely irrelevant. The U.S. had explicitly agreed, in writing, never to use armed force against either of these countries. This agreement was completed in 1951 when the U.S. Senate ratified the Charter of the OAS (Organization of American States), which includes this text as Article 19 of Chapter IV:
According to U.S. Constitution, treaties agreed to by the executive branch and ratified by the Senate are the "supreme Law of the Land." Despite the OAS's explicit prohibition against the use of any armed force for any reason whatsoever, there was not even a murmur of impeachment proceedings against Presidents Reagan or Bush, nor was there a significant international brouhaha.
Third, France bombed Greenpeace's vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, in an Auckland, New Zealand harbor ostensibly because it was going to be in international waters monitoring and protesting French atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons. France initially (vehemently) denied involvement, but eventually admitted to the crime and paid about US$6.5 to the New Zealand government. Two of the French agents involved spent less than two years in a French military base. (Despite the fact that the French government had agreed they would spend three years in detention.) The rest were never punished, despite the fact that one crewman on the Rainbow Warrior drowned when the ship sank.
Powerful and established governments do not need any real justification to get away with attacking lesser countries or organizations, and they will violate international as well as their own laws to do so, when they believe it will expeditiously suit their needs. All they require is a pretext.
In the case of Sealand, the several countries already have that. Sealand is now within the International waters of the U.K. Additionally, Sealand is not a democratic state (it's an aristocracy), and it's government or its representatives have been accused of trafficing in black-market arms and drugs.
It doesn't really matter if the charges are true or not, if Prince Roy rules more fairly and effectively than every government on the planet, or even how many countries recognize Sealand as a legitimate country. What matters is that the U.K., France, Germany, Spain or the U.S. can easily claim that Sealand is trafficing in drugs and arms, lob a cruise missile or a few bombs at them, and Sealand will cease to exist, except as a government-in-exile.
Personally, i'd hate to see that happen, and it would be unjust and unfair. But people need to wake up and realize that the "big" countries have never played fair and they won't hesitate to do something horribly unfair and vile to Sealand, if it becomes a thorn in their side.
I want to second this. I've been a UNIX sysadmin for about 10 years, a senior staff member at my current gig for 4+ years, and telecommuting the 600 miles ~93% of my work-time for the last 1.5 years. The benefits are many: improved quantity and quality of work, get all those mail-order deliveries the first time, etc. But i'm giving it up, for many reasons, most of which have to do with the isolation. Like many people, i saw most of my friends at work, and so it really is just kinda weird not to see anyone except my SO and cat for a week or two at a time, or realize i haven't been even nominally out of the house in 3 days. In the past, i have had a lot of 'net relationships (via email, newsgroups, netrek, etc.) and figured i was ready to do this. I think what i was forgetting was the amount of interaction i really did have at work. You may find that people who you have worked with for 5 years seem to forget you exist, which can have harsh consequences. Being a technically senior sysadmin means i should be training the junior staff, but this has proven almost impossible. There just seems to be a lot of questions that people won't pick up the phone to ask, but that they will yell over the cube wall.
The example of pgMedia, Inc. choosing an *improper* TLD demonstrates that there will always be some entities that insist on getting "whatevertheywant"."whatevertheycan" .
The fact of the matter remains that pgMedia, Inc. registered "namespace.org" after someone else registered "namespace.com." In a future with virtually unlimited TLDs, an entity like pgMedia, Inc. that puts their personal interest ahead of the philosophy or conventions underlying the TLDs, would attempt to register "name.space." Finding it taken, they would then invent a new TLD, and register something like "name.spc".
This does not help anyone find either entity.
Mega-corporations with cadres of IP lawyers are not going to limit the enforcement of their trademarks or copy rights to ".com," ".biz" or any other TLD. Cocacola, Inc. will want cocacola.*. (Go check: you will find they already own cocacola.com, cocacola.net and cocacola.org) It doesn't matter if it's cocacola.com, cocacola.biz, cocacola.dev, or cocacola.code. Their IP lawyers will tell them that they need them all.
And if you think it's just CocaCola, you should ask Volkswagen of America, Inc. ("vw.com"), why they sued Virtual Works, Inc. for "vw.net." (This case is still in the courts.)
I really wish that companies would behave so "logically" with regards to TLDs. But the record is very clear. More than a few companies with money and lawyers will sue anyone who gets in their way over domain names, even domain names they do not really need. It's not going to help to have anymore TLDs.
pgMedia, Inc. (PGMEDIA2-DOM
11 e 4 st
new york, NY 10003
US
Nowhere did i find any mention of a non-profit "cause," or any charities they contribute to. It looks exactly like a 100% for-profit business. If you have some evidence to the contrary, please cite it.
Several months ago, i read a bit of their suit. PgMedia, Inc. is fighting a legal battle because they *chose* to sue Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) and the National Science Foundation. (Not the other way around.)
I don't like NSI, because i think they do a sucky job, and i'm very happy to see other registrars setting up. But i think that pgMedia, Inc. sued so that they could make money by selling a virtually unlimited range of TLDs. I have not seen any evidence that pgMedia, Inc. attempted to establish a new standard for TLDs for everyone's benefit, or that they attempted to build a coalition of ISPs and potential registrars to bring pressure to bear on NSI and NSF to allow *everyone* to register TLDs.
So my conclusion is that their ultimate goal in suing NSI and NSF was to further their business goal of being the preeminent (perhaps sole?) vendor of the new TLDs, not the greater good of the 'Net.
Your second point does not seem very compelling. You are arguing that a business' domainname is irrelevant because, "most people looking for a business either know the URL from advertisements or use search engines."
The same argument is at least as persuasive, against needing any more TLDs. Let me give you an example of this:
Someone is looking for the website of a company named "AAA, Inc." What you are saying is that people either
1) Saw the company's URL ("http://www.tripleAinc.com") on TV and already know what it is.
or
2) They use a search engine to find it. If there are so hundreds of TLDs,people will still not think it's worthwhile to make a guess at the URL, and so they will rely on TV ads or search engines.
So if more TLDs does not make it any easier for people to find the entities they are searching for, why should we add them? In a world-wide name-space like the Internet, the "desirable" (readily apparent) TLDs are going to fill up immediately, and all the businesses that currently have to compromise and put something unintuitive in front of ".com" will wind up putting the same unintuitive text in front of ".biz" or ".food." Or, they will be coming up with unintuitive TLDs like "AAA.FoodsofDelware".
I understand the reasons people want more TLDs, but i don't think they
will help.
Your reply contains a great example of why.
I go to namespace.ORG, and right in the center of the page is an
advertisement, from "Name.Space" for domain registration for $69.95.
So "name.space" does not appear to be a non-profit entity, though it
really should be because it's a
corp. that is incorrectly using a
The two answers that immediately come to mind are:
1) You are deliberately trying to mislead people as to the nature of your
corporation. (A for-profit corporation posing as a non-profit.)
2) You couldn't get the name you wanted in
already take, so instead, you chose to ignore the intent of the
existant TLDs.
I'm going to guess that it's #2.
If there was a (virtually infinite) list of new TLDs don't you realize
that people who can't get the name they want in the TLD of their choice
will simply create yet another useless TLD? (Like ".biz") So soon we
would have:
namespace.com
namespace.net
namespace.org
namespace.biz
namespace.company
namespace.names
namespace.dns
namespace.bus
namespace.cool
How does this help anyone find you? Instead of just 3 confusing
alternatives now there are 9.
The only people who will be helped by this are companies like yours, who
will be taking money to registering thousands of top-level domains from
huge mega-corporations that can afford to buy every possible TLD for their
trademarks. In the end, the result is the same as what we have now: Big
businesses buy what they want, individuals get shafted.
the United States Naval Observatory
the Royal Greenwich Observatory
It matters because you cannot arbitrarily drop years from centuries or millennia and still have a functional calendar everyone can use. We have thousands of books of history based on each century encompassing years 1-100 inclusive. If you decide the 20th Century ends at the end of 1999, then which past century loses the year? (Only 1999 years have passed in the Gregorian calendar.)
If you change something like the method that time is measured or counted by, without unilaterally implementing it as a standard, you cause pervasive problems. As far as i am aware, there has been no world-wide agreement or even a Papal Bull from the Vatican (who created the Gregorian calendar) to short the 20th Century one year.
I think you and i agree about the lack of similarity between a natural gas pipeline and Internet bandwidth. My point in making the comparison was to demosntrate that the two are not the same. ENRON is a company whose primary business is moving natural gas in pipelines. Obviously, if they are proposing this "network bandwidth as a commodity" model, it's because *they* think they can "leverage their core business," and apply similar principles to Internet data. (I don't agree)
For technical reasons, the top-tier ISPs have long been reducing the number of other ISPs with whom they "peer" or exchange data. The complexity of the routing tables were becoming the biggest impediment to timely transmission of packets. At the backbone level, the top-tier ISPs want (and to a large extent have) routing tables that are simple, and cover very large ranges of IP address.
For example, they want to route all of 204.0.0.0 to one particular destination. What they hate is "top-level" routing of small ranges (like a Class C: 204.2.12.0) to a particular destination. This consolidation has very clearly pushed almost all but the biggest ISPs out of the top-tier.
Let's look at this from a small regional ISP's point of view: "Joe's ISP." Joe doesn't have the heft to make a peering agreement with each of the top-tier providers, so instead, he signs on with one, like UUNET. UUNET sells Joe some class C or B netblocks for Joe to use or allocate. These are specific IP addresses that are routed on the 'Net at large because of peering agreements that UUNET has established with the other top-tier providers.
As far as all other top-tier providers care, traffic to Joe is really traffic to UUNET.
Joe cannot sudddenly decide to buy 1 GB of bandwidth from someone else, because he would then need new IP addresses for all his machines, new Internet DNS entries, a new T-1 connection (at least a month from the local Bell) to another top-tier ISP, etc., to make it all work. Ask any (TCP/IP) network admin what it thinks about changing every IP address in their domain once a quarter and you'll get a very clear answer. (But i'd make sure they weren't holding anything that's going to hurt when they throw it at you.) Changing IP addresses is something that any network admin with a brain in its head *never wants to do.*
So if Joe is effectively eliminated as a purchaser of this network-bandwidth commodity, the only people who would be in the market for it are the companies that already control the market. WorldComm-UUNET, Sprint, AT&T, C&W and the other top-tier ISPs don't need ENRON to step in and start brokering the data between them. When they get the technical means to charge by the packet, or dynamically route data by the cheapest ($) path, they'll do it *by themselves*.
Bandwidth as a tradable commodity has got to be
one of the most evil "Internet" money-grabs i've seen come down the pike since 1993. Think about it: when you add in a middle-man who make his living by trading what Party A creates and Party B consumes the price goes UP, not down. Look at any manufacturer-distributor-retailer model.
The next problem with this is that Fortune 1000 corps. are not going to accept a "Sorry, we couldn't buy (or sell you) any more bandwidth today" explanation from their ISP or net-broker. So you can bet corporations will be buying their own big chunks from their ISPs. Which means that only the little guys are going to feel the price difference here.
The third problem with this is that network packets are not natural gas. Natural gas is purchased by corporations like ENRON at THE SOURCE, and then transported to a refinery. This model works because a cubic foot of gas (or gallon of crude) has an intrinsic value. Your data is usually worthless, except to you and the person you want to read it.
This is a really good idea to support if you want to be paying 5 times what you are now to some talentless fool in Chicago or New York who's raking it in today because some other idiot put a back hoe through the piece of fiber your packets usually blink across. And if you want inferior service.