The Great .us Giveaway 107
An Anonymous Coward writes: "ICANNWatch has a story about why the US Dept. of Commerce's plan to give away .us is a Really Bad Idea. Bids are fixed at $0, so the public gets nothing, but the contractor can charge what he likes for .us names, he can tie in other services, and pretty much do what he likes, except .us has to have rules that favor trademarks, and do what ICANN says. Plus it's set up so Verisign has the inside track. It's all in a paper by Brian Kahin called Making Policy by Solicitation: The Outsourcing of .us (MS Word, but ICANNWatch put up a .pdf). Last week public interest groups asked for a delay of the giveaway, but will anyone listen?"
should have happened 5 years ago (Score:1)
All the top level domains have been dominated by US firms anyway.
I think the situation is that the powers that be wanted US companies to have an advantage over everyone else.
Fair ?
Re:I want a .us (Score:1)
Might be better to get: we.have.slow.servers.so.please.do.not.slashdot.us
Re:American egotism, as usual... (Score:1)
The reason you should have gone back and changed all the
To translate to US'ian, "the right thing to do" doesnt mean "in our own best interest"
Re:You know what would be nice... (Score:1)
I thought Coca-Cola was based in Atlanta, Georgia, not in Colorado,
Re:The domain needs to be improved (Score:1)
do this without breaking the current naming
scheme. I can't for the life of me figure out
why people can't see that this is the correct
way to procede and/or they haven't done it
yet.
> The
> disbanded since they would no longer have any
> use.
Well, let's pray they won't have any *future* use
for them!
Re:American egotism, as usual... (Score:2)
Re:Wotta can o' worms (Score:1)
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Re:me.mystate.us (Score:1)
Don't get me wrong. I think its a great idea, just unrealistic. Now if we were able to do it in a request basis, I'd love to have my domain.
Secret windows code
Re:me.mystate.us (Score:1)
Again - great idea - but you forgot to add the government red tape, stir and add the little pink umbrella before smashing it over your head.
Secret windows code
Re:Canada broke down .ca horribly (Score:1)
Cities can register their names now (like calgary.ca). I know this for a fact since I have been trying to register parkhill.ca for about 6 years now, and the rules just changed again so that some dinky little town of 50 people in Ontario named "Parkhill" gets that domain, and no-one else is allowed to touch it. Same for all cities, landmarks, parks, provinces, etc.
The
Re:Had to come sooner or later... (Score:2)
Re:Some info from the FAQ (Score:1)
Re:proof that moderation doesn't work (Score:1)
Looks like moderation is working perfectly fine to me...
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Re:me.mystate.us (Score:2)
Re:You know what would be nice... (Score:3)
There's already a system for this, and it doesn't involve having other people do the work for you and getting it wrong. You can define a list of domains to search under before interpreting a domain name as absolute. The downside, of course, is that the search may take some time.
Under Unix you can put a line in your resolv.conf file like this: "search fr com". Under Windows you can enter "DNS suffixes" of "fr" and "com" somewhere in the TCP/IP configuration dialogs. Then www.coca-cola will resolve to www.coca-cola.fr while www.superpages will resolve to www.superpages.com since there is no www.superpages.fr.
What happened to Democratic Society? (Score:2)
Goatse... (Score:2)
www.mta.nyc.ny.us (Score:2)
I actually used http://www.state.ma.us/ this morning to check on Basic Cable rate regulation.
They're useful and logical domains, and I hope they're not abused like
Re:You know what would be nice... (Score:2)
No, the solution is to do just the reverse. Eliminate the .COM, .ORG, .NET, etc. domains altogether. Rely solely on country codes for the TLDs.
{But that's crazy talk!}
No it isn't, despite the fact that I seem to be talking to myself. Moving everything to the country TLDs allows domain registry, trademark disputes, and other ickiness to be handled on a country-by-country basis.
Each country is owner of its own domain, and can do whatever they want with it. Guidelines should be suggested, such as "try to put commercial entities in ".co.xx", but countries would be free to modify these guidelines as they see fit. And if some country wants to out-source its registry, or even sell rights to the domain outright, great. It's their domain. They get exactly one. They can use it however they wish.
Yes, this means that multi-national corporations would have to register in each country in which they want a cyberspace presence. Boo-hoo. It's not like they're not registering every TLD they can get their hands on already. So, the Coca-Cola corporation would have to register "cocacola.co.fr", "cocacola.co.uk", "cocacola.co.us", etc. And if they're smart, each one of these points to localized versions of their home page. No more "cocacola.com". Users all over the world can expect to see pages in their own languages. What a concept.
The biggest win is that trademark issues are resolved in the jurisdiction in which they occur. Say that the Scottish sheep farmer Angus McDonald registers "mcdonalds.co.uk". Now a certain multi-national fast-food restaurant wants the name. Who decides? With "mcdonalds.com" it's unclear what the legal jurisdiction is. With "mcdonalds.co.uk" it's perfectly clear that the courts of the United Kingdom need to settle the matter.
But that solution wouldn't generate anywhere near as much revenue for ICANN, so it'll never be done...
Chelloveck
Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:2)
The domain needs to be improved (Score:3)
oh.us - Ohio
ca.us - California
com.us - USA commerical zone
edu.us - USA educational institutions
gov.us - USA government
mil.us - USA miltary
The
This may be a bit off topic, but unless the domain is improved giving it away free will not encourage it to be used to its full extent.
Re:Imagine the possibilies! (Score:3)
For instance, a great second level domain would be "with.us". Then you could resell all the commercially useful third level domains: bank.with.us, shop.with.us, save.with.us, fly.with.us.
But there's loads of other great possibilities. You read them here first:
x.the.us (rebuild.the.us, destroy.the.us, network.the.us, educate.the.us, subvert.the.us, love.the.us, hate.the.us, fuck.the.us)
x.is.us / x.is.not.us
x.r.us (but toys.r.us will get you slapped for trademark violation.)
x.for.us (linux.for.us, beer.for.us, games.for.us, cars.for.us, software.for.us)
why.not.us, remember.us, its.on.us, kill.us, dont.forget.us, buy.us, fly.us, rent.us, sell.us, silly.us, sucks.to.be.us, computers.for.the.rest.of.us
Quick! Rush out and reserve your us domain today!
But which is better? free.beer.for.us or free.speech.for.us?
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Re:I got this one: #@ +1 ; Innovative @# (Score:1)
Re:Schools (Score:1)
Re:Imagine the possibilies! (Score:2)
Toys'R'Us actually 0wns the trademarks for hundreds of *'r'Us names.
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Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:2)
They have made it intentionally difficult to use. For instance, I've been trying to give up a delgation given to me years about for a bout a year now. Neither I nor the town who would like the domain is able to get satisfaction from Network "Solutions."
Sounds like the problem is actually lack of decenralisation. If you actually had a system which was decentralised then your town wouldn't be dealing with Verisign/NS at all, they'd be dealing with the state government to agree their third level domain (and you'd agree your fourth level domain with your local government.)
They're nearly impossible to make. The name server listed as master for the holly-springs.nc.us domain and the domain I was trying to relenquish has to move. The company it's hosted at went bankrupt and I have no idea how long I'll have use of that server's IP address. But www.nic.us -- now a Network "Solutions" "Service" -- requires email to be sent in; does not pre-fill the web form that generates the email form; responds to the request in 4-6 weeks, even if it's just to say that a field in the form was wrong (which prefilling would take care of); no one at Network "Solutions" knows about the
If things were set up correctly in the first place then you'd be dealing with hostmaster@nc.us anyway. What is really worrying is that the people in charge appear to have missed the whole point...
Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:2)
Odd that this simply isn't an issue when it comes to postal addresses or telephone numbers. Though in most parts of the world, including the US, you can get telephone numbers which are from a different area or country wide. These tend to cost extra money. Similarly you can have post forwarded from one address to another.
Why should domain naming be treated differently?
Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:2)
But not if the US was absent from it.
The value of the internet has absolutly nothing to do with the cost of creating it, or who paid for it.
Most of the connectivity to the US (with the possible exception of that between the US and Canada) isn't paid for by the US in the first place...
Re:American egotism, as usual... (Score:2)
How long did that persist for? It was invented for Military use, which would mean it wouldn't take long before there were connections to Canada, Greenland and the UK. Remember most of BMEWS is located outside the US and IIRC operated by NORAD which is US/Canadian.
Once it the Internet became an international network, it was obvious something had to be done, so all of the top-level country code domains were added.
Plenty of country codes date from when it was still "ARPAnet". We are going back over a decade, long before the "The Internet" had ever been heard of by most people, before HTTP had ever been invented...
Re:American egotism, as usual... (Score:2)
It might require a huge amount of work NOW considerably greater than about 15 years ago.
Many of these domains simply didn't exist 15 years ago, most of them didn't exist even 5 years ago.
-All remote "links" would have had to have been changed across the *entire* Internet--albeit smaller than it is today. When I say links I mean html links, gopher links (or whatever they're called as gopher was popular then), and various other protocols
HTTP came along much later
Massive updates to all DNS servers, at all levels
Only those in one country since the rest of the planet used geographic domains from the start. (Even networks such as JANET managed to communicate with the rest of the world, dispite there not being any agreement between networks on which way around to have the name...)
Re:Oh for fuck's sake (Score:2)
Nor will adding new TLD's help when people insist on everything being www.foobar.com or www.foobar.*
I don't think I've ever visited a
Or more likely only serve some Americans you'd think companies in Alaska and Hawaii would actually want to use geograpic domains. You even have one US city hijacking another country's domain (maybe anywhere bombed by the USA needs to get a strong grip on their domain name.)
Re:Had to come sooner or later... (Score:1)
I would guess: Very, very expensive international meetings (but why don't they shift the cost onto the governmental and commercial reps?) and high salaries for directors.
Re:www.mta.nyc.ny.us (Score:1)
And they have a great website, too. I recently used it to print out a pdf of the handicapped parking placard application. Pennsylvania appears to be very pro-technology.
Now if I could just get the contract to enable the aforementioned MTA website to support refilling MetroCards by credit card. That would save me TONS of time in the MetroCard machine line.
--
Steve Jackson
Re:So what? (Score:2)
If the second-level DNS servers cannot be contacted because Network "Solutions" refuses to update the
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Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:2)
Step 2. Call Verisign. Chase your way around that company until you have confirmed that no one is willing to help with the
Step 3. Call the Department of Commerce and/or your representive and senators.
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Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:2)
"SPECIAL AWARD CONDITIONS, NCR 92-1874, Amendment Number Twenty-One (21) [doc.gov]" is as follows:
1. Section I. B. 11. Other Top Level Domains of Amendment 19, as amended, is amended as follows:
.us Top Level Domain
Until such time as the Department of Commerce ("Department") designates a successor registry for the
As administrator, NSI shall use commercially reasonable efforts to maintain the status quo with respect to the operational policies, practices, procedures, administration, and daily operations of the
As custodian of the
Upon designation by the Department of a successor registry, or November 10, 2001, whichever comes first, NSI shall use commercially reasonable efforts to cooperate with the Department to facilitate the smooth transition of operation of the
Nothing in this Amendment is intended to preclude NSI from seeking or obtaining the rights to function as the successor registry for the
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Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:5)
I do (see email address). My town does. All k-12 schools do.
Unfortunately,
They have made it intentionally difficult to use. For instance, I've been trying to give up a delgation given to me years about for a bout a year now. Neither I nor the town who would like the domain is able to get satisfaction from Network "Solutions." So, I just set the domain back up on my servers and provided the delegation.
Which bring me to the second problem: updates. They're nearly impossible to make. The name server listed as master for the holly-springs.nc.us domain and the domain I was trying to relenquish has to move. The company it's hosted at went bankrupt and I have no idea how long I'll have use of that server's IP address. But www.nic.us [www.nic.us] -- now a Network "Solutions" "Service" -- requires email to be sent in; does not pre-fill the web form that generates the email form; responds to the request in 4-6 weeks, even if it's just to say that a field in the form was wrong (which prefilling would take care of); no one at Network "Solutions" knows about the
- - - - -
Re:there's something like this in Oz (Score:1)
Yes, but how many bob's shoe stores do you think there are in Toledo, Ohio?
Explains a lot... (Score:4)
Verisign has been effective in stalling on every application, usually by taking 6-8 weeks to reply with an incorrect response like citing lack of authorization for the community (which was sent with the application). After you receive the erroroneous response and send a note to them pointing out their error, they take another 6-8 weeks to send a response saying "contact the community domain administrator for assistance" (which is what we would be if they'd get their act together).
All Verisign's efforts have done is fully alienate each community (we do a good job letting folks know who's botched up the job) and given them a reputation as a company to avoid like the plague.
We had a hunch the stalling tactic had another purpose...
*scoove*
Some info from the FAQ (Score:4)
Who can get a US domain name?
Individuals, organizations, businesses, city/county governments, Native Sovereign Nations, schools (K-12, private, community colleges), libraries, state agencies, and museums may obtain a US domain name.
Examples:
Jane Doe in Canoga Park, CA = jane-doe.canoga-park.ca.us
Bob's Shoe Shop in Toledo, OH = bobs-shoe-shop.toledo.oh.us
City Hall in New Orleans, LA = ci.new-orleans.la.us
Monroe School District in MT = monroe.k12.mt.us
Can I register something.us? .us.
No. See the examples above and read the Overview section of the Web site for complete information on the structure of the US Domain. Domain names are constructed with organization-name or personal-name followed by the city-name, the state-code, and
How much does it cost? .us domain names by the US Domain Registry may charge a nominal fee
The US Domain Registry does not charge any fees. Organizations approved to register
Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:1)
That would be horrible (Score:1)
What we really need is simply alternate DNS systems. Then you could set up your France-matters-on-the-internet example by having the French ISP run it's own DNS, probably offering a couple of different DNS's for it's customers. The rest of us could continue to pretent that the whole EU was some mythical place that was invented for a movie or marketing purposes, like Gotham City or Oz.
No big surprise (Score:3)
Tony
there's something like this in Oz (Score:1)
Buckets,
pompomtom
Re:me.mystate.us (Score:1)
They're not? Are you sure? This is absolutely not a troll; but your claim refutes things that I've always thought true, and that I'd thought that I had seen sufficient evidence for.
EINs and SSNs might conflict -- I'm not asserting that they do, but logically they might commingle in the same 9-digit-identifier space -- but please inform us, absent identity theft, whether two different people might find themselves with the same SSN, absent fraud or some other deception.
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Re:woohoo! (Score:1)
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proof that moderation doesn't work (Score:1)
Moderation Totals:Troll=1, Redundant=1, Funny=4, Overrated=1, Total=7.
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woohoo! (Score:4)
icannisfucking.us!
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Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:1)
For a long time - this may still be true - the .us TLD was fragmented geographically. If you wanted a domain, you couldn't get foo.us, or even foo.ca.us - it was foo.sf.ca.us. This is:
- no good for a company that has a presence in more than one city
- no good for individuals (since you'd have to change domains every time you moved)
- no good for projects and organizations either (who wants to make people remember what city and state you lived in when you started a site for exchanging vegetarian recipes or whatever?)
Basically, the geographic fragmentation madeHad to come sooner or later... (Score:3)
How it works with .UK (Score:2)
Perhaps a similar scheme could be adopted for .us
All the major multinationals in the UK have a .co.uk as well as a .com, all universities have had .ac.uk for ages, and the others are gaining in popularity now as well.
Re:me.mystate.us (Score:2)
As for the free websites thing.. don't we have it already, and it isn't it called Geocities? It's not like people are in dire need of 10Mb online storage space.
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I call dibs! (Score:1)
Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:1)
From http://www.nic.us/overview/locality.html [www.nic.us]:
no good for individuals (since you'd have to change domains every time you moved)From the same page:
no good for projects and organizations either (who wants to make people remember what city and state you lived in when you started a site for exchanging vegetarian recipes or whatever?)Well, there is the statewide .gen.state.us domain, so people would only have to know the state.
But yeah, in general, the forced geographical naming does make things inconvenient for anyone other than state/city governments and individual users.
I have a domain under austin.tx.us, and luckily, austin.tx.us was delegated over a decade ago to a guy who has plenty of clue. No hassles with Network Solutions, and no registration fees :)
Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:3)
Each state has total control over it's own portion of
I fear the disruption that will occur when
(And just to kick in my own idea for a cool
HTML conversion/mirror of solicitation paper (Score:1)
Why so short? (Score:2)
Edward Burr
Re:Had to come sooner or later... (Score:2)
I would guess ICANN gets a share of the profits
ICANN is a non-profit. (Amazingly, considering how much cash they rake in; where does it all go?)
Re:Had to come sooner or later... (Score:3)
I checked around and found this from Karl Auerbach:
Second, I do not believe that ICANN is paying enough attention to economizing. I have noted that ICANN's previous President is jetting around the world on ICANN business. That strikes me as odd - and expensive. Similarly, ICANN's senior staff does seem to show up, sometimes by two's and threes, at a lot of meetings around the world, even if only to give a short presentation. And I have heard quiet, but persistent, rumbles that some of these the presentations were not particularly well technically grounded. It seems that ICANN would be better served by fewer trips by fewer people.
Re:No big surprise (Score:1)
OTOH, this could become very price competitive, since anyone can come in and undercut prices since there is no fee to pay. They just have to keep the servers running and bandwidth available.
Finally, how do we know that it will just be the same big companies protecting their trademarks and narrowing the pool by getting redundant
Re:The domain needs to be improved (Score:1)
I agree with this structure as well. The Internet is a global system (hence the Inter- as in International). Every country should have control over their domain. That way they could see as to how they want to make second level domains. That way there would be no ICANN to worry about. And when users complain "The web address is too long" first we tell them "Hey everyone who doesn't live in the US already has to type the long addresses" and second forward looking browsers like Mozilla, Galeon, and Konqueror will implement a region look up URL filter. This will allow you to tell the browser what country you live in and it will automatically fill in the .us, .uk, .jp at the end of each URL. Then if you want to go outside the country you are in you just have to type the whole thing including country code.
Of course this seems like extra steps for the browsers but knowing how stupid/lazy the typical american surfer is (yeah the ones who don't know what USENET or IRC is) I think it would be met with favorable reviews.
And the forseeable unfortunate side-effect of this is that countries that like to sensor people, we all know who they are, will be able to filter / firewall people out a lot easier. But compared to this massive mess of disorganization I believe that would be worth the risk at this point.
Re: godhelp.us... (Score:1)
That gives me a really.... dumb idea. Register help.us and make it into a wildcard domain...
The possibilities are endless! ... And useless.
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Who uses .US now? (Score:2)
You have violated MY trademark! (Score:1)
I am the CEO of The Chicago Cubs. Since we all know that our team will win the World Series when hell freezes over, we have trademarked the phrase "Now hell has froze over". Your company name will confuse people over our company.
You may resolve this by the following: 1) You pay us the sum of $10^10, send us your firstborn child, and YOUR bowl of clam chowder! Or 2) Have Sammy Sosa slug you and all your employees all over the place while Kerry Wood smashes all your equipment. We are after all protecting our trademark.
follow the money (Score:1)
Maybe it's bad, but... (Score:1)
I tried to get it resolved with the branch of USC that was supposedly the arbitrar of such issues. They replied:
Thank you for your message. We are investigating your complaint and
will contact you when we have more information.
US Domain Registrar
That was in October of 99. Further inquiries on my part yeilded no results.
Maybe ICANN will screw it up, but at least you'll have someone to turn to with an issue.
Nationalistic IP laws- solved! (Score:1)
Re:Nationalistic IP laws- solved! (Score:1)
Re:Some info from the FAQ (Score:1)
Re:me.mystate.us (Score:1)
~LoudMusic
me.mystate.us (Score:2)
johnwilliamdoe2001.dallas.tx.us
Hey, I'd take it if it was free!
~LoudMusic
Canada broke down .ca horribly (Score:1)
What about .of.us? (Score:1)
- WhatifGodwasone.of.us
- Justthetwo.of.us
- Thestory.of.us
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Re:No big surprise (Score:2)
Yep, railroads. Specifically, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. During their initial construction of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, they were given scandalously good deals by the government--largely in the form of huge land grants that in many parts of the American West exist to this day, but in other ways such as backed bonds, as well. This, of course, caused a great hue and cry at the time, despite a great deal of popular sentiment supporting railroad building in general. By modern standards, it was a staggering giveaway of public resources--you would never see anything on that scale happening today with modern communications and press.
But there was a reason for it--it opened the greater part of the country to settlement and development (whether that is a desirable goal is a topic for a different thread). Both railroads nearly went bankrupt even with such advantages--it was an undertaking that could not have ever been accomplished without the resources of the government behind it; yet it was a private venture, and private investors eventually profited from it. But, less directly, so did the entire country--we became a wealthy, influential nation largely due to the effect of those railroads on commerce. Nor could the government have accomplished it without the drive and freedom of private companies.
I will not argue that Verisign is performing a similar service. But what if the Internet is the American West, and Verisign the Union Pacific? Or, at least, what if that is how our government is looking at the situation? The Internet is the vast, un-exploited frontier, awaiting the chugging engines of commerce to enrich us all... I'm not sure I believe any of that to be the case. But take a few moments at look at it from that angle and comment. Are ridiculous deals for large companies ALWAYS bad? Or may they sometimes be justified in the larger context which we may not always consider?
Re:That would be horrible (Score:1)
I'm sure I am not the only one here who is sick of the
Re:American egotism, as usual... (Score:4)
This is a valid argument only if this were to happen today. When .MIL and .GOV were created, there was no such thing as a country code. .EDU and .COM weren't even delegated to anybody when .MIL started up. The "internet" was really just a connection of researchers and US governmental institutes. This isn't an example of American elitism, or even a matter of America-centric thought -- the simple fact is, the internet started as an American government entity. That's why we have .MIL and .GOV.
As you admit, you're American. Therefore, you visit a lot of websites that have an American presence (you probably don't visit too many Dutch farmers news sites, or?). When people fill out those forms, you want to make it easy for them. So, you put the country as the default for what most of your visitors are going to be. And on .DE sites, Germany is the top country. In .CO.UK sites, England or UK is going to be the default country.
Being an American and seeing the US chosen by default validates this point. How many times has another country shown up that you had to change it? I would venture you're not visiting too many Syrian sites where US was the default country. One the other hand, how annoying is it to find that you had to search a list of 200+ countries to find the US sandwiched somewhere between the United Arab Emirates and Uraguay, when you're on a site in English by a company that has a large American presence. At the very least, most companies put their top markets right at the top of the list so that the majority of their users don't have to take much effort searching through a list, whether that list is US & Canada or UK, Scotland, Ireland, etc.
Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:1)
The MTA [nyc.ny.us] (MAPS and Sched's for Trains and Subways, etc..
DMV Vanity Plates [state.ny.us] Real nice, even shows you the plate and how it'll look before you order it..3 years ago, you could look it up to see if it was taken, but couldn't order it over the net...
EZ-Pass once was on ny.us, but they changed over to www.e-zpassny.com [e-zpassny.com]. They actually have online stuff instead of a link over to a form you have to snail mail...
.kb
Re:Hopefully we're long past the point... (Score:1)
.kb
Re:A top level domain... (Score:1)
can I get in on it? (Score:2)
Corporate-Welfare dept. (Score:2)
Correction (Score:2)
Re:That would be horrible (Score:1)
but that changes barely nothing to ur point, that is right: AOL is pure crap
anyway, the situation is even worse. Germany and France share one very bad situation: the TLD is used for everything (schools, universities, companies, etc.). The french nic has promoted
that leads me to my point: in France,
Wotta can o' worms (Score:2)
So does this mean, for example, that the website for the City of Phoenix, Arizona (www.ci.phoenix.az.us) could be found guilty of infringing a BIOS manufacturer's trademark? And the trademark holder is granted preference in a domain name dispute?
I'll bet the case would get thrown out before it even got to www.supreme.state.az.us.
A top level domain... (Score:1)
I (despite the fact I am not catholic) would pay a premium for a
Re:woohoo! (Score:2)
To remediate this measure, you must send me the following $10^9, your first born child, all of your Body Thetans, your immortal soul, and a bowl of clam chowder (hey, I'm hungry here).
D - M - C - A
You know what would be nice... (Score:2)
So what? (Score:2)
use of .us (Score:1)
www.(cityname).k12.(2 letter state code).us
for example, my school's website address is www.oakgrove.k12.mo.us [k12.mo.us]
Re:The domain needs to be improved (Score:1)
Well, let's pray they won't have any *future* use for them!
Imagine the possibilies! (Score:5)
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Re:me.mystate.us (Score:1)
Re:me.mystate.us (Score:1)
Let's see, at 10MB a person, times 280 million people, that's 2,800 terrabytes. I think we should wait till disk space becomes really cheap before we worry about government subsidized web pages.
But more to the point, I think .us geographic domains should generally be available to the public for free. People and businesses should be able to call up their city/county clerk and grab a domain. If I own a Joe's pizza in Plano, TX, I should be able to get joespizza.plano.tx.us for free. It just seems so cheap to implement and would help pull the Internet towards some semblance of organization.
Re:Except Joe AOL web browser says your page is br (Score:1)
Well, with a .geek domain, you probably wouldn't be targetting those kinds of people. It'd be like the main Internet, initially only for those with the technical know-how to be interested, and then for the masses later.
Yes, a business wouldn't want to use OpenNIC right now. But a geek might!
OpenNIC would come down firmly on the infinity side, I think. Check their page. (Cool link, though.)
Re:Except Joe AOL web browser says your page is br (Score:1)
True; hence my attempt to make that subset a greater percentage.
Use an alternative name service! (Score:2)
OpenNIC [unrated.net] is a nice alternative to ICANN's tyranny. It's complementary to the existing structure, too. (New TLD's don't conflict, so you can use both at the same time.) Wouldn't you like a .geek website?
Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:1)
> was allowed to use it.
Worthless? I wouldn't go that far. Not as cool, yes. But worthless, no.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any non-US site that I goto with any regularity.
Surprised? The US Government is Tech-Ignorant (Score:1)
There are many possibilities for
Re:should have happened 5 years ago (Score:2)
I am curious to read just how hard federal government workers work.
I want a .us (Score:1)
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