What we need is a list of known good registrars and a set of instructions how to escape bad ones.
I'd say what we really need is a mechanism to get rid of bad registrars altogether. ICANN is so toothless in the matter its beyond disgusting. If you take a look at their list of registrars, you'll see it is pages long. And there is no shortage of fly-by-nights on there that nobody has heard of. Even worse there are many registrars in there that practice bad business tactics, or willingly cooperate with criminal spamming enterprises.
Yet good old ICANN, in their infinite wisdom, choses to leave all the registrars alone. I guess as long as the boys at ICANN are making money, then everybody is doing better, right?
Perhaps I'm wrong, but this is a hosting site issue, not a domain registry issue (or it shouldn't be a domain registry issue).
Actually, its both. However, a domain owner has many choices for hosting - including of course doing their own. Thus hosting is really a difficult issue to go after.
On the other hand, registration is not something with so many choices, and the vast majority of internet users have no ability to register a domain without the aid of an internet registrar.
And while it may not be completely obvious or fool-proof, a registrar does have limited ability to shut down access to a site. If you look at the WHOIS data for a domain (pick any one you like), you'll see that the registration data includes nameserver information. Without those nameservers defined in the domain registration, there is no way to map the domain name to an IP address and actually get a response for the domain.
Hence, if the registrar removes the nameserver data, or replaces it with useless garbage, then users will not be able to resolve the domain to an address for a request, and will not be able to view the content.
Of course, this is not fool-proof. The domain owner could just tell all his friends the numeric IP address of their page, and those friends tell and their friends, and so on. And of course anyone who has already seen it would likely have the record cached on their computer. But it would stop anyone who hasn't been there before from getting to it, which would hinder the sites ability to disseminate its content to more users.
From my vantage point, I'd say that ICANN is failing miserably at its main purpose - regulation of domain name registration. Can anyone think of anything else that ICANN (allegedly) has even the slightest influence on?
I say they are failing miserably at this because they aren't actually demonstrating any meaningful control. If you look at the list of accredited registrars, you'll find it is many pages long. And how many of those are active registrars? Not many.
And even worse, the number of active registrars on that list that actively aid in spamming operations grows every year, and ICANN doesn't seem to care in the least. If ICANN is supposed to be in control of registration, why are they letting criminal co-conspirators do registration?
None that i know of. Prisoners of war are typically held until the end of the war.
And what war would those be prisoners of?
There was no declaration of war. Even more so, there is no defined end for this war.
And shouldn't prisoners of war be people that are fighting against you? It has been demonstrated multiple times that there are people imprisoned who have nothing to do with the war other than being in a building that was being raided by our forces. We didn't randomly imprison French and German citizens while marching across Europe - and we certainly didn't ship earlier POWs half way across the world either.
The government games that are being played with the people taken hostage by the US military in this supposed war are absurd. These people deserve a trial and an opportunity to defend themselves against charges. They have been given neither.
What rights have been annihilated by the current administration? Name one.
The right to a fair and speedy trial comes to mind. How many people are captive as a result of the terrorist scare that followed September 11?
But there are even more we could discuss if you'd like...
specifically my right to own firearms.
And exactly where does your right to own firearms come from? Are you trying to refer to the Second Amendment? Because the text of that amendment never states that everyone should have assault weapons. Indeed, it doesn't really say what type of weapons, or in what context it actually applies.
I'm certainly willing to debate the second amendment further with you if that is where you feel your right to own firearms comes from.
So perhaps you would prefer something like the German or Australian health care systems, which offer the choice to purchase private supplemental coverage, but still guarantee a reasonable level of basic care for everyone?
I suspect that eventually this country will follow a path more similar to that, and I feel it would in itself be monumental progress over the catastrophe we currently have.
If you are not paying it through insurance, you are paying it through taxes. The only difference is that one of those is forced upon you and violates your fundamental rights.
First, an argument can be made that insurance is already forced upon you. Most post-secondary institutions in this country require all students and employees to carry insurance. Many private companies also require insurance as a condition of employment.
Even more so, what fundamental right is being violated in universal health care? The right to die? The conservatives have attacked that many times already (see the Terri Schaivo case, for example).
Why do you feel the need to violate the rights of your neighbors and fellow citizens by telling them that, if they want to live in this country, they have to support your chosen cause.
Well, somebody made the invasion of Iraq their chosen cause. I never supported it. I didn't support it before it was done, and I certainly don't support it now. But I don't get to chose to withhold the portion of my tax dollars that go to the war because I don't support it.
If I can't withhold the part of my tax dollars that are used to kill people, why do you get to withhold the part of your tax dollars that could be used to heal people?
Please read my reply again. What I am concerned about is the fundamental violation of my rights and the rights of my neighbors and fellow citizens. I am being told that I am less and less entitled to the fruits of my labor. Last year, Tax Freedom Day fell on April 30th. That basically means that, if you started on January 1st and put all of your labor toward taxes, you would have to keep doing that until April 30th before you would be free to get 100% of your income for the rest of the year. With universal healthcare, this date will surely come later in the, each year.
The problem with that comparison is that you are likely not currently counting your health insurance expenditures as a tax. If you are only counting the money that you directly pay to the government as tax, then yes your tax would go up under universal health care[1]. However, if you are currently purchasing health care through the for-profit system, you are essentially paying a tax to them. So really the "tax freedom day" calculation should be re-done to include health care costs currently paid, before you can compare it to where it may be in the future with universal health care.
[1]: No major candidate is actually proposing universal health care. I say this as a voter who wishes that one of them would. In particular if you look at Clinton's proposal today, it bears almost no resemblance to what she rallied for as first lady[2]. Previously she wanted universal care, now she just wants to help people buy into the for-profit system.
[2]: I mention her in particular because she is frequently attacked by people who claim her to be in support of universal health care. An actual reading of her current proposals will dispel that rumor.
Sit back, relax, and watch your rights vanish before your eyes.
That statement is only valid for the few rights that haven't already been annihilated by the current administration.
Which would leave one to assume that the situation can only get better, but that was also what we thought when approaching the 2004 presidential election. Yet somehow we were proven wrong.
They certainly have the infrastructure, clout, and history of innovation to make it happen.
I'll agree with the first two, though I'd say the third is a matter of perspective.
Some of us (such as myself) would argue that tracking innovation from apple is much like doing the same from microsoft. Each has released products that could be called "innovative", but if you dig further you can find that many of these supposed innovations were actually done by someone else previously, who simply lacked the clout to get it to market and make money off of it.
Apple TV?
That would be an exceptionally well-played business move on the part of Apple, considering they are one of the companies that collaborated on Blu-ray.
I suspect we'll see some of the many companies who make money off of spam find a way to weigh in against this ruling.
The most obvious, of the legitimate business, that make money off of spam would likely be the likes of symantec and others that make software or hardware to filter spam. These people make a lot of money every year putting out new products to try to reduce the deluge that we all receive.
Possibly less obvious, but very important, is the various internet registrars that are making good money off of spamming domains. Many of these spammers register domains by the dozen, and they often use shady registrars to get that done. Those registrars certainly have contacts here in the US, and those contacts likely know lawyers.
Along with the registrars are the ISPs. Sure many of them are overseas, and won't bother to come directly to the states to try to work against the ruling, but they'll at least keep an eye on it. If the ruling actually has any sort of effect, the ISPs that sell hosting to the spamvertised domains could feel it later.
And then there are the companies that make the products that are sold through spam. Both the real and the bogus. If someone out there decided to try viagra or office 2007 because of spam, then someone else made money off of it.
For this to work, I believe they would need to convince a U.S. Federal court to extradite people to Italy, and given the merits of this case, I doubt that would happen.
Can people actually be extradited to face a civil case? I know that criminals can be extradited to face criminal charges - but I am not aware of anyone having been extradited anywhere to face a civil suit.
Of course, as I've already stated, IANAL. So if someone knows better, please let us know. I guess I just figured since civil cases don't really represent the interests of the state per se, that the state wouldn't be interested in moving for extradition for the parties involved.
And of course we do have the whole question of how Italian law may differ from American.
Wikipedia is headquartered in the US. Do they have an Italian office? I see that a ping to "it.wikipedia.org" returns the same IP address (208.80.152.2) as "en.wikipedia.org". So I'm not sure that wikipedia actually has any sort of physical presence in Italy.
Of course, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure it can be difficult to sue someone in a different country, particularly if you aren't going to their country to file the suit. If they file suit against them in Italian court, I'd expect it would be difficult to enforce a judgement from across the pond.
I think it's more due to the $6-$10K rip off, err... premium charge for the diesel that has virtually zero chance of payback, ever, for 99% of buyers.
What vehicles are you aware of where such a charge was applied? From what I've seen, VW charges the same for the turbo gas as they do for the turbo diesel.
The only car I've seen so far that had an extra charge for diesel was one that didn't actually get here with a diesel option - the dodge caliber. When Chrysler was teasing us with a diesel option for that car before officially putting it on sale, they listed the diesel as an option on the website. Though considering the diesel they were offering was a technologically superior German diesel, the surcharge probably would have been worth it for efficiency, reliability, and torque.
The VW diesels already get better freeway mileage than anything else for sale in the US - Japanese hybrids included. But yet diesels don't sell in anything other than trucks at any appreciable rate in the US.
And if you are asking why, you just need to look back to the 1970's - when the US big three so royally screwed up the application of diesel engines for sedans that many American buyers would never consider them again. Those were cars that got poor mileage, belched out soot that nearly forced you to repaint your house, and had horrendous reliability to boot. And don't forget about the noise, either.
Unfortunately, it appears that the same anti-diesel people from the 70's have risen to be the CEOs at the big three in the current decade. We know that all three are making diesel sedans - and selling them well overseas. The ford focus and dodge caliber are just two examples of small vehicles made by US auto makers that are available as diesels in other markets.
So really, whats the point of making a diesel-electric hybrid? Are there that many people outside of this country that think its a great idea to lug around a trunk full of batteries?
I know I am not alone in saying I'd be happy to buy a diesel sedan from the big three if they would wake up and sell one here.
I'm running FreeBSD, and the latest release of wine works just fine for most things.
Then I guess we have had markedly different wine / FreeBSD experiences. I haven't found a working combination of the two since FBSD 5.4 with a version of wine that was still numbered by its release date. Since then each successive version of wine has run fewer windows applications for me.
And as for games, I have yet to find a windows game that I can run in wine on FreeBSD at all. But obviously that's not the focus of FreeBSD anyways, so I don't hold it against either. It would certainly be nice to be able to at least run some of my most needed windows applications in wine, though.
Not that I completely blame either party - they each are focusing on their core markets. The core market for wine is Linux, with BSD being gravy. Similarly, the core market for FreeBSD is file / database / web server, with workstation stuff primarily being gravy.
So I realize that I really have no right to complain that wine runs so poorly on my laptop running FreeBSD, but it still leaves me wondering if the two will ever care whole-heartedly about each other.
The GPS data is lousy to protect us from terrorism, of course. Some of us may even recall when the GPS data in the US was intentionally only accurate to about a block or so. The statement from the GPS providers was the same then - we didn't want terrorists to have good information on where anything in particular was in our country.
As long as the "global war on terror" is going on, we'll probably continue to see only semi-useful data from the GPS satellites.
I wonder about that. I think most companies have strict controls over what software can be installed, because employees have very narrow needs at work. So, if ReactOS is able to run those programs, why not switch rather than be forced to have the painful experience of buying and running Windows Vista?
I think its also worth considering that most companies have very specific declarations of what they will support. And being as most desktop IT support staffers are trained to support windows, you'll have a hard time selling many businesses on training their existing staff on a new OS, even if it can meet its goal of 100% software compatibility.
And of course also worth remembering is how difficult it is to buy a PC without windows installed on it. Most businesses I've worked with prefer to buy PCs from large manufacturers so that they can buy into the large-manufacturers' support systems as well. And if those PCs already have windows on them, and were sold to be supported with windows running on them, why would the business want to invest time and/or money in setting up those same systems with something else?
So as much as I would love to see a tremendous fall from grace for windows, I don't think we'll see it anytime soon. The way that windows is entrenched in the market will require a failure much more catastrophic than just (the slashdot perspective of) vista.
Once that hits there will be a Windows alternative with absolutely 0 Microsoft code. It has the potential to make them irrelevant.
Even if ReactOS is capable of running 100% of windows software, it would be nearly impossible for them to reach the level of market saturation that microsoft enjoys. And it would be very difficult to describe a product with such high presence as being so easily made irrelevant.
With that said, I'll also say that I would be first to celebrate any such falling of windows. I run any OS I can in the place of windows, anywhere I can. But saying that ReactOS has the potential to make windows "irrelevant" is unfortunately a bit silly.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say what we really need is a mechanism to get rid of bad registrars altogether. ICANN is so toothless in the matter its beyond disgusting. If you take a look at their list of registrars, you'll see it is pages long. And there is no shortage of fly-by-nights on there that nobody has heard of. Even worse there are many registrars in there that practice bad business tactics, or willingly cooperate with criminal spamming enterprises.
Yet good old ICANN, in their infinite wisdom, choses to leave all the registrars alone. I guess as long as the boys at ICANN are making money, then everybody is doing better, right?
Actually, its both. However, a domain owner has many choices for hosting - including of course doing their own. Thus hosting is really a difficult issue to go after.
On the other hand, registration is not something with so many choices, and the vast majority of internet users have no ability to register a domain without the aid of an internet registrar.
And while it may not be completely obvious or fool-proof, a registrar does have limited ability to shut down access to a site. If you look at the WHOIS data for a domain (pick any one you like), you'll see that the registration data includes nameserver information. Without those nameservers defined in the domain registration, there is no way to map the domain name to an IP address and actually get a response for the domain.
Hence, if the registrar removes the nameserver data, or replaces it with useless garbage, then users will not be able to resolve the domain to an address for a request, and will not be able to view the content.
Of course, this is not fool-proof. The domain owner could just tell all his friends the numeric IP address of their page, and those friends tell and their friends, and so on. And of course anyone who has already seen it would likely have the record cached on their computer. But it would stop anyone who hasn't been there before from getting to it, which would hinder the sites ability to disseminate its content to more users.
From my vantage point, I'd say that ICANN is failing miserably at its main purpose - regulation of domain name registration. Can anyone think of anything else that ICANN (allegedly) has even the slightest influence on?
I say they are failing miserably at this because they aren't actually demonstrating any meaningful control. If you look at the list of accredited registrars, you'll find it is many pages long. And how many of those are active registrars? Not many.
And even worse, the number of active registrars on that list that actively aid in spamming operations grows every year, and ICANN doesn't seem to care in the least. If ICANN is supposed to be in control of registration, why are they letting criminal co-conspirators do registration?
He should have worked on using excel as a high-performance web server. Then gamasutra.com might not be smoldering rubble right now...
And what war would those be prisoners of?
There was no declaration of war. Even more so, there is no defined end for this war.
And shouldn't prisoners of war be people that are fighting against you? It has been demonstrated multiple times that there are people imprisoned who have nothing to do with the war other than being in a building that was being raided by our forces. We didn't randomly imprison French and German citizens while marching across Europe - and we certainly didn't ship earlier POWs half way across the world either.
The government games that are being played with the people taken hostage by the US military in this supposed war are absurd. These people deserve a trial and an opportunity to defend themselves against charges. They have been given neither.
The right to a fair and speedy trial comes to mind. How many people are captive as a result of the terrorist scare that followed September 11?
But there are even more we could discuss if you'd like...
specifically my right to own firearms.
And exactly where does your right to own firearms come from? Are you trying to refer to the Second Amendment? Because the text of that amendment never states that everyone should have assault weapons. Indeed, it doesn't really say what type of weapons, or in what context it actually applies.
I'm certainly willing to debate the second amendment further with you if that is where you feel your right to own firearms comes from.
So perhaps you would prefer something like the German or Australian health care systems, which offer the choice to purchase private supplemental coverage, but still guarantee a reasonable level of basic care for everyone?
I suspect that eventually this country will follow a path more similar to that, and I feel it would in itself be monumental progress over the catastrophe we currently have.
First, an argument can be made that insurance is already forced upon you. Most post-secondary institutions in this country require all students and employees to carry insurance. Many private companies also require insurance as a condition of employment.
Even more so, what fundamental right is being violated in universal health care? The right to die? The conservatives have attacked that many times already (see the Terri Schaivo case, for example).
Why do you feel the need to violate the rights of your neighbors and fellow citizens by telling them that, if they want to live in this country, they have to support your chosen cause.
Well, somebody made the invasion of Iraq their chosen cause. I never supported it. I didn't support it before it was done, and I certainly don't support it now. But I don't get to chose to withhold the portion of my tax dollars that go to the war because I don't support it.
If I can't withhold the part of my tax dollars that are used to kill people, why do you get to withhold the part of your tax dollars that could be used to heal people?
The problem with that comparison is that you are likely not currently counting your health insurance expenditures as a tax. If you are only counting the money that you directly pay to the government as tax, then yes your tax would go up under universal health care[1]. However, if you are currently purchasing health care through the for-profit system, you are essentially paying a tax to them. So really the "tax freedom day" calculation should be re-done to include health care costs currently paid, before you can compare it to where it may be in the future with universal health care.
[1]: No major candidate is actually proposing universal health care. I say this as a voter who wishes that one of them would. In particular if you look at Clinton's proposal today, it bears almost no resemblance to what she rallied for as first lady[2]. Previously she wanted universal care, now she just wants to help people buy into the for-profit system.
[2]: I mention her in particular because she is frequently attacked by people who claim her to be in support of universal health care. An actual reading of her current proposals will dispel that rumor.
That statement is only valid for the few rights that haven't already been annihilated by the current administration.
Which would leave one to assume that the situation can only get better, but that was also what we thought when approaching the 2004 presidential election. Yet somehow we were proven wrong.
I can't seem to connect to nin.com. Does anyone know of a cached version of the page?
I haven't listened to much NIN since Pretty Hate Machine, and I'd like to know what the hype is all about.
I'll agree with the first two, though I'd say the third is a matter of perspective.
Some of us (such as myself) would argue that tracking innovation from apple is much like doing the same from microsoft. Each has released products that could be called "innovative", but if you dig further you can find that many of these supposed innovations were actually done by someone else previously, who simply lacked the clout to get it to market and make money off of it.
That would be an exceptionally well-played business move on the part of Apple, considering they are one of the companies that collaborated on Blu-ray.
The winner was the same product that I see advertised here on slashdot while typing this response.
I'm sure that's just pure coincidence, though.
I suspect we'll see some of the many companies who make money off of spam find a way to weigh in against this ruling.
The most obvious, of the legitimate business, that make money off of spam would likely be the likes of symantec and others that make software or hardware to filter spam. These people make a lot of money every year putting out new products to try to reduce the deluge that we all receive.
Possibly less obvious, but very important, is the various internet registrars that are making good money off of spamming domains. Many of these spammers register domains by the dozen, and they often use shady registrars to get that done. Those registrars certainly have contacts here in the US, and those contacts likely know lawyers.
Along with the registrars are the ISPs. Sure many of them are overseas, and won't bother to come directly to the states to try to work against the ruling, but they'll at least keep an eye on it. If the ruling actually has any sort of effect, the ISPs that sell hosting to the spamvertised domains could feel it later.
And then there are the companies that make the products that are sold through spam. Both the real and the bogus. If someone out there decided to try viagra or office 2007 because of spam, then someone else made money off of it.
Can people actually be extradited to face a civil case? I know that criminals can be extradited to face criminal charges - but I am not aware of anyone having been extradited anywhere to face a civil suit.
Of course, as I've already stated, IANAL. So if someone knows better, please let us know. I guess I just figured since civil cases don't really represent the interests of the state per se, that the state wouldn't be interested in moving for extradition for the parties involved.
And of course we do have the whole question of how Italian law may differ from American.
Wikipedia is headquartered in the US. Do they have an Italian office? I see that a ping to "it.wikipedia.org" returns the same IP address (208.80.152.2) as "en.wikipedia.org". So I'm not sure that wikipedia actually has any sort of physical presence in Italy.
Of course, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure it can be difficult to sue someone in a different country, particularly if you aren't going to their country to file the suit. If they file suit against them in Italian court, I'd expect it would be difficult to enforce a judgement from across the pond.
What vehicles are you aware of where such a charge was applied? From what I've seen, VW charges the same for the turbo gas as they do for the turbo diesel.
The only car I've seen so far that had an extra charge for diesel was one that didn't actually get here with a diesel option - the dodge caliber. When Chrysler was teasing us with a diesel option for that car before officially putting it on sale, they listed the diesel as an option on the website. Though considering the diesel they were offering was a technologically superior German diesel, the surcharge probably would have been worth it for efficiency, reliability, and torque.
The VW diesels already get better freeway mileage than anything else for sale in the US - Japanese hybrids included. But yet diesels don't sell in anything other than trucks at any appreciable rate in the US.
And if you are asking why, you just need to look back to the 1970's - when the US big three so royally screwed up the application of diesel engines for sedans that many American buyers would never consider them again. Those were cars that got poor mileage, belched out soot that nearly forced you to repaint your house, and had horrendous reliability to boot. And don't forget about the noise, either.
Unfortunately, it appears that the same anti-diesel people from the 70's have risen to be the CEOs at the big three in the current decade. We know that all three are making diesel sedans - and selling them well overseas. The ford focus and dodge caliber are just two examples of small vehicles made by US auto makers that are available as diesels in other markets.
So really, whats the point of making a diesel-electric hybrid? Are there that many people outside of this country that think its a great idea to lug around a trunk full of batteries?
I know I am not alone in saying I'd be happy to buy a diesel sedan from the big three if they would wake up and sell one here.
Indeed, euro quality is up, and asian quality is down for cars on the US market today. Just read any automotive magazine on the newsstand today.
Then I guess we have had markedly different wine / FreeBSD experiences. I haven't found a working combination of the two since FBSD 5.4 with a version of wine that was still numbered by its release date. Since then each successive version of wine has run fewer windows applications for me.
And as for games, I have yet to find a windows game that I can run in wine on FreeBSD at all. But obviously that's not the focus of FreeBSD anyways, so I don't hold it against either. It would certainly be nice to be able to at least run some of my most needed windows applications in wine, though.
Not that I completely blame either party - they each are focusing on their core markets. The core market for wine is Linux, with BSD being gravy. Similarly, the core market for FreeBSD is file / database / web server, with workstation stuff primarily being gravy.
So I realize that I really have no right to complain that wine runs so poorly on my laptop running FreeBSD, but it still leaves me wondering if the two will ever care whole-heartedly about each other.
Is when FreeBSD and wine will start to care about each other.
The GPS data is lousy to protect us from terrorism, of course. Some of us may even recall when the GPS data in the US was intentionally only accurate to about a block or so. The statement from the GPS providers was the same then - we didn't want terrorists to have good information on where anything in particular was in our country.
As long as the "global war on terror" is going on, we'll probably continue to see only semi-useful data from the GPS satellites.
In other words, forever.
I think its also worth considering that most companies have very specific declarations of what they will support. And being as most desktop IT support staffers are trained to support windows, you'll have a hard time selling many businesses on training their existing staff on a new OS, even if it can meet its goal of 100% software compatibility.
And of course also worth remembering is how difficult it is to buy a PC without windows installed on it. Most businesses I've worked with prefer to buy PCs from large manufacturers so that they can buy into the large-manufacturers' support systems as well. And if those PCs already have windows on them, and were sold to be supported with windows running on them, why would the business want to invest time and/or money in setting up those same systems with something else?
So as much as I would love to see a tremendous fall from grace for windows, I don't think we'll see it anytime soon. The way that windows is entrenched in the market will require a failure much more catastrophic than just (the slashdot perspective of) vista.
Even if ReactOS is capable of running 100% of windows software, it would be nearly impossible for them to reach the level of market saturation that microsoft enjoys. And it would be very difficult to describe a product with such high presence as being so easily made irrelevant.
With that said, I'll also say that I would be first to celebrate any such falling of windows. I run any OS I can in the place of windows, anywhere I can. But saying that ReactOS has the potential to make windows "irrelevant" is unfortunately a bit silly.