Verisign Considers Restarting Sitefinder

Rosco P. Coltrane writes "The Washington Post reports that VeriSign is considering reviving its infamous search engine. 'Site Finder was not controversial with users' says VeriSign's Tom Galvin, and VeriSign 'assured ICANN that it would give 60 to 90 days' warning to resolve any remaining technological problems.' Such as leaving the DNS service alone for example?"

Outsourcing

[Anonymous Coward]

You think we might be able to outsource VeriSign to India?

Not controversial

[ralmeida]

'Site Finder was not controversial with users'

It wasn't controversial at all. Everybody agree it was a bad idea.

Comical Ali at work..

[Channard]

'Site Finder was not controversial with users'

And in other news, the US forces were crushed in Iraq, Mars Beagle did not go missing and has been transmitting pictures for many days, and these aren't the droids you're looking for.

Re:And microsoft does this anyway to all windows u

[mr_mozz]

Thats a different issue entirely. Having a *browser* point you to a search engine is all well and good. You can modify this behaviour to suit yourself. But if the *internet* starts doing this stuff for you... well, it's not a pretty picture.

MyDoom.D

[dew-genen-ny]

And in other news, techno soothsayers predict that verisign is going to be the target of a large DDos attack in the near future......

"Not controversial with users"

[heironymouscoward]

The full paragraph from the internal Verisign report reads:

"Studies in Outer Mongolia showed that our Site Finder service was not controversial with users of the Trans-Himalaya Yak Courier Service. Everyone else on the planet, including Arawoyo Pnu (34) from Upper Amazonia, found the service both useless and obnoxious. We therefore recommend renaming the Site Finder service to 'Yak Finder' in order to better exploit the Outer Mongolian market."

Re:Why is a profit-company in such a central role?

[ron_ivi]

Or even set up your own TLD [crackmonkey.org]

Learning lessons from Hitler

[gbulmash]

The main tenet of Nazi propaganda was that the public is more likely to believe a big lie than a small one.

Seems to be a philosophy the PR flacks for VeriSign and SCO subscribe to wholeheartedly.

"You have to license your Linux installation from us." "Everybody likes Sitefinder." "I was singing in a church choir in Cucamonga when the murder happened." "I won't cum in your mouth."

Sheesh.

I have a new job

[Anonymous Coward]

God will roast ICANN stomachs in hell at the hands of Verisign.

I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide behind our firewalls. We will welcome them with bullets and shoes.

VeriSign Poll

[Anonymous Coward]

"Site Finder was not controversial with users, 84 percent of whom said they liked it as a helpful navigation service,.."

Hmm, I wonder how they selected those users ?

Something like this ?

Are you running Windows, Mydoom, Kazaa, and you don't care about privacy or legal issues ? Have we got a poll for you !

An apology from the Washington Post

[alien_blueprint]

Galvin said that the continued opposition stems from "an ideological belief by a narrow section of the technological community who don't believe you should innovate the core infrastructure of the Internet."

In our recent article a number of mistakes slipped past our content review processes. In this case "destroy" was incorrectly spelled "innovate". Also "ideological" clearly was meant be "correct". Likewise "narrow section" appeared instead of "all".

We apologise for these errors and any confusion they might have caused.

Re:And microsoft does this anyway to all windows u

[heikkile]

Yes, but that is only when you browse the web. When you mistype the address into anything else than a web browser (email address, ssh connection, ftp, vpn, ntp, Z39.50, any private protocol), the program is supposed to receive an error message, and handle it in some meaningful way. Instead the broken DNS gives you a sitefinder address, and your program tries to contact that. Most likely it will time out (in a few seconds), and report to the user that the server he wanted to contact is down. This causes lots of frustration among users, and lots of unnecessary support calls.

Re:Proof that some people never learn

[Anonymous Coward]

Those that repeat truisms are also forced to repeat them.

Re:And microsoft does this anyway to all windows u

[FrenZon]

When you type in a wrong address at the moment which doesn't exist, you are automatically taken to either a site search engine, which is pure crap.. or to the microsoft auto search [...]

Or you can just use the Microsoft created and provided TweakUI to change this to go whatever page or search engine you desire. The key is it's user-controlled (heck they can just use another browser), not a change to the core system as this Verisign shenanegans is.

Re:And microsoft does this anyway to all windows u

[Dark Lord Seth]

It's not as if you can choose to not use DNS

Actually, you can. But Slashdot would be awkward when called "66.35.250.150, news for nerds, stuff that matters" instead...

Re:You would think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in that case I think the Internet Death Penalty for Verisign would be called for...

Looks like like they already have

[blorg]

Looks like they already have - www.nonexistentdomain.com [nonexistentdomain.com] ;-)

Pathfinder

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be more impressed if Verisign restarted the Pathfinder [sgi.com] instead of Sitefinder.

Re:Proof that some people never learn

[RAMMS+EIN]

`` Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it...''

And, as jonadab put it, ``those who do study history are doomed to watch in frustration as it is unwittingly repeated by those who do not''

Tomatoes

[nuintari]

I seem to remember something about a big pile of tomatoes at the last NANOG meeting in Chicago, where Verisign defended sitefinder to a very hostile crowd of network admins. Was to be a symbolic gesture of our disdain for the system. What part of, "We don't like sitefinder, it breaks DNS standards, we think it sucks, and you need to die, or at least spend several weeks in a bed with tubes sticking out of you," did they not understand?

Re:when is DDOS not a DDOS ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sitefinder is very popular with users, we have had almost one billion hits in the first 24 hours".

Re:And microsoft does this anyway to all windows u

[fyonn]

yes I have, thats irrelevant to if someone decides not to use DNS. they can always define the name in their hosts file, access the site correctly and still not use DNS.

dave

Re:Alternative root servers

[fanpoe]

Tee Aich Ee Pee Ay Gee Ee Cee Ay En En Oh Tee Bee Ee Dee Eye Ess Pee Ell Ay Why Ee Dee.

Can't we just have standard behaviour ?

[clickety6]

Everybody knows what to expect when you mistype a DNS name - pages of porn!

Re:You would think...

[Lukey Boy]

Excuse me sir! Did you just imply that Microsoft DNS services adhere to the standard protocols? ;-)

Re:And microsoft does this anyway to all windows u

[kooshvt]

You can actually configure IE to disable the autosearch feature or select one of several other popular search engines. Open the search sidebar and click customize -> autosearch settings. This is a feature I don't mind having at the browser level.

Re:Proof that some people never learn

[glwtta]

Maybe it's about time we saw the US taking up .us domains too...

As soon as we figure out how to make everyone else use .them

Re:And microsoft does this anyway to all windows u

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude your userid is pretty low (not as low as mine hahaha ok nevermind I am too lazy to log in), anyway, you should know how this works on /.