Why Can't Other Countries Have .gov and .mil? 50
blurzero asks: "I've been wondering why the USA is the only country that can use .gov and .mil? Why can't a country have it's own .gov and .mil domain names? It seems very unfair to me. " Honestly, I think it's high time that both of these TLDs were dropped and .gov. and .mil. implemented instead. Of course, I think that the entire TLD scheme should be rethought, but that's just me.
Sounds logical (Score:2)
.gov.br and .mil.br (Score:2)
I don't think it's such a bad thing, if brazil was an english speaking language and our president lived in a white palace, we could have a perfectly legal and valid: whitehouse.gov.br.
Just my $0,02...
Too late (Score:1)
The only solution might be to stop new registrations for theses TLD's and let the TLD expire in two years while giving a nice offer to those who need a transfer.
Not just government & military (Score:2)
Has the tld
As internic doesn't have a monopoly on tld's anymore, and there are authorities outside the US, i'm assuming that
Re:Not just government & military (Score:1)
As internic doesn't have a monopoly on tld's anymore, and there are authorities outside the US, i'm assuming that .mil, .gov & .edu could be obtained internationally nowadays. Anyone know about this?
Nope, they're still controlled by whoever controlled them before, and like .ac.uk or .gov.uk they are almost totally impossible to get hold of unless you are an educational/military/government organisation.
Recent events with internic, icann etc only affected .com, .net and .org, and not any other tlds.
The .US TLD (Score:2)
You mean in 10 years? (Score:1)
One World... (Score:2)
It's all historical.. (Score:4)
The us. domain just didn't take off, which is a shame - if it had, attitudes all over the net would have developed differently and, to my mind, the DNS wouldn't be in the toilet to the extent it is right now as a better structure would have evolved. Because of this, we're left with the flat-file mess of
Other countries generally keep their governmental institutions under their own country-level TLDs. For instance, the UK has gov.uk and mod.uk for governmental and military domains respectively. There's just no need to put them in the top-level gov. and mil. domains too. It also has the advantage that there's no central authority delegating _all_ the world's governmental and military domains.
In summary -
Mindset of the DNS designers? (Score:1)
The reason why .gov and .mil refer to the US Government and Military is because the original designers of the DNS made it so.
The question, I think, has to be asked - why? Did they not believe in international computer communications? Or was it just some form of U.S. cultural arrogance?
Anyone know the answer to this? Are there any of the people who made that decision around that we could ask?
...because the USA said so. (Score:1)
However, as those two TLDs imply the USA government, the obvious change would be to make them be second-level or third-level domains under a .USA/.US TLD or .GOV.US
we created the net, so tough! (Score:2)
The fact is, we DID create it, so deal with it.
I'd rather energy be invested in creating new TLD and/or kicking businesses back into
BTW, .us IS being used, at least educationally. (Score:2)
With the wiring of schools and school districts finally happening, due to e-rate funding and paranoid school boards, there has been an explosion of k12 presence, and a good use of the
TLD Policy sucks (Score:1)
.mil for everyone
What is the polict for other countries using
dictatorship.gov
Origins..... (Score:1)
Other precedents (Score:3)
*.gob.mx for Mexico goverment sites. (Score:1)
Domain names won't be around that long anyway. (Score:1)
In the future, navigating will be all keyword based, and everyone will have forgotten what domain names are. Enter "Coca-Cola" and you'll be taken to the Coca-Cola website. (Or more likely, you'll be given a list of choices--official Coca-Cola site, Coca-Cola memorabilia site, Coca-Cola criticism.) Enter "Official Coca-Cola site" and you'll be taken directly there. (Imagine Google's "I feel lucky" button, except the smart browser will know when to offer you a list of choices, and when to take you directly there. Or perhaps you'll be taken directly to the official site even with the more general search, with a list of alternate choices in a different windowpane.)
Anyway, my point is that we shouldn't spend too much time worrying about things like whether the .gov TLD should be shared with other countries, when no one will even use URLs in a few more years.
Re:Domain names won't be around that long anyway. (Score:1)
That, of course, is the same thinking that led to the Y2K debacle. "Oh, it won't be around for *that* long."
The way it's looking now, new TLD's are the only solution for this. The whole setup is too damn entrenched in people's minds. At this point, it would be like trying to get every human being to forget that GUIs exist and use straight command-line only UNIX.
.US domains (Score:2)
The
As you can see, there are some problems with the system. Add that to the length of the names, and there's not much reason to migrate from
The big benefit, though, is that they are free. Despite this, they still aren't used much, which I think says a lot about the whole system.
For more info, check out http://www.nic.us/ [www.nic.us].
Re:Sounds logical (Score:1)
The various proposals for new TLDs include ".shop" and ".firm" as potential choices, so I don't think we'd have much trouble there.
For a new TLD to work it has to be present in root servers. While AlterNic has been trying this for a while (including TLDs such as
Phone numbers won't be around that long anyway. (Score:2)
I expect that phone numbers will have gone the way of the dinosaurs within 3-5 years. When you think about it, they're rather kludgy anyway, being a compromise between machines and humans which are ideal for neither. Switching equipment has to figure out which phones they go to anyway, but since humans aren't very good at remembering that many numbers, separating them into groups of 3 or 4 digits is supposed to be more mnemonic, but isn't completely satisfactory in that regard. There are just way too many phones, so the number of digits just get longer and longer every few years. (Was that phone number on the commercial I saw yesterday 1-800, 1-888, 1-877?)
In the future, dialing will be all keyword based, and everyone will have forgotten what phone numbers are. Just say "Coca-Cola" into the phone and you'll be connected right to Coca-Cola's CEO. (Or more likely, you'll be given a list of choices -- your local Coca-Cola distributor, a Coca-Cola bottler in your state, a nearby convenience store that sells Coca-Cola, an antique shop that has a case of super bowl commemorative Coca-Cola with Mean Joe Green's picture on the bottles, another nearby convenience store that competes with the first one, an order-line for Coca-Cola memorabilia, nutritional information for Coca-Cola, a list of human rights groups protesting Coca-Cola's involvement with oppressive governments in the third world, the vault where the secret recipe for Coca-Cola is kept, a fax-back copy of a bogus study implicating the nutri-sweet in Diet Coke with Gulf War Syndrome, Coca-Cola's consumer information line, ...) Say "Official Coca-Cola line" and you'll be taken directly there.
Your smart phone will figure it all out for you. You'll be connected directly to a recording describing an endless list of menu items to choose from. Because we all know that choosing from a preselected list is always much more accurate than having to be specific about what you want ahead of time.
Anyway, my point is that we shouldn't spend too much time worrying about things like who has what address. We'll be satisfied with the selections presented before us because the big moneyed corporations who bought up all the keywords will always know what we are looking for and what we should be getting.
War and TLDs? (Score:1)
The US still effectively controls the top level DNS servers. Let's say we went to war against, say, the UK. We obviously want to disrupt the UK's government and military communications as much as possible, so we remove
.govs CAN be used outside US, partially anyway (Score:1)
The only example I managed to find so far is Fiji's Law Reform Commission (and with the recent coup, who knows if it still exists):
http://www.flrc.gov.fj [flrc.gov.fj]
Re:Mindset of the DNS designers? (Score:2)
The original designers of the net and DNS weren't designing for the world. They were building a network between U.S. educational institutions and the U.S. military network. Since a lot of research for the U.S. military was done by research universities in the U.S., they chose names for the top level domains to simply represent what they were working with. For a good quick history on the net, check _The Cuckoo's Egg_ by Clifford Stoll. It doesn't explicitly deal with the top-level domain structure, but it does show that the original design of the net was not intended to be an international communications net.
It wasn't arrogance or U.S.-centricism. They just didn't think it would end up being a world wide phenomonon. Considering that the original design was more than twenty years ago, I think they can be excused for not seeing the information revolution.
Re:Domain names won't be around that long anyway. (Score:1)
Except with Y2K, if we're wrong about it not being around for that long, and it is around for that long, it's a major problem.
With .gov and .mil and .edu being restricted to the US, it may offend our sense of fairness, but it's not a technological problem. Systems aren't going to come crashing down because non-US governments aren't allowed to use the .gov TLD.
The way it's looking now, new TLD's are the only solution for this. The whole setup is too damn entrenched in people's minds.
On the contrary. You know how when you see a product advertised, you often see the website advertised with a URL and an AOL keyword (e.g., www.foo.com, AOL Keyword FOO)? Just a few weeks ago I saw a movie trailer (can't remember which one) which had the AOL keyword as usual, but instead of the URL, just said "Internet keyword: Foo". No domain name at all.
Re:Domain names won't be around that long anyway. (Score:2)
Want sites related to keywords? Fine, that's what search engines are for. (And if that's too difficult, hey, there's alway AOL. (snicker))
Want to contact a specific machine or service? You need an address. How does e-mail, or ftp, work with your keyword scheme? Does "mail someguy@Coca-cola" give me the Coca-cola corporation, the memorabilla site, or what?
I would suggest that few people use them now. Naive users go to their ISP's configured portal and search for some keyword - often using a hostname as a search term, rather that using an "open location" menu option, because URLs and hostnames are a mystery to them. Slightly more knowledgeable users might type in www.megacorp.com in an "open location" box to get to the MegaCorp website, but a long URL - http://www.megacorp.com/some/document.html - leaves them lost.That's fine for the Great Unwashed - their search for "infamous.net" will certainly turn up my website - but when I want to telnet somewhere, I need a hostname (or IP address, of course), not a keyword.
Re:Phone numbers won't be around that long anyway. (Score:1)
Well, at least it won't be any worse than the current situation in that regard.
Re:Domain names won't be around that long anyway. (Score:2)
Well, I hate to get into a "how long have you been on" argument, but since you brought it up, I've been online since 1989, thank you very much. I use elm to read my email.
Want to contact a specific machine or service? You need an address.
I'm not saying they won't exist. I'm saying they'll be invisible to the user, and only of concern to the computer.
They already are on much of the web. How many addresses are embedded in mailto links without displaying the address on screen? Why wouldn't that work in other applications?
When you go to decode an email which someone has encoded using your PGP public key, do you need to be able to see your private key? Why? Do you type it in by hand every time you use it? Do you even care what it is, as long is it exists and it works and it's secure?
Why, then, do you need to know someone's email address? Wouldn't you rather just type "Sodium Attack" than having to look up the email address? If you know more than one Sodium Attack, then your computer can present you with a list of choices, or otherwise offer you a way of distinguishing one from another.
And if you're trying to contact someone at Coca-Cola, under the current system you still need to go and find the correct address. What's the difference whether you're able to see the address itself, or you find a link allowing you to email Coca-Cola, with the actual address hidden from view?
when I want to telnet somewhere, I need a hostname (or IP address, of course), not a keyword
Your software needs the hostname or IP address. You do not.
Cultural arrogance (Score:1)
The US dominates far to [sic] much in the Internet space.
If it was your country than started a small network, designing to the needs of the system, funded by your (parents'?) tax dollars... would you feel the same way?
ARPAnet was around in the 1970's. Since it is easier and cheaper to devise a non-scalable system, that's what they made... kind of like FAT12 was "big enough" for a floppy. <arrogance>So quit whining and put up the dollars to fund a better system, or come up with some ideas for (mainly US-based) companies and institutions to throw R&D money at.</arrogance>
-- LoonXTall
Re:It's all hysterical.. (Score:1)
..unless you own one of these "popular"
Internet ethics are nice, but when a six-figure check is offered with your name on it all for a goofy name you registered in 1994, well, it makes you laugh.
Re:War and TLDs? (Score:1)
Re:War and TLDs? (Score:1)
Re:Phone numbers won't be around that long anyway. (Score:1)
Applause (Score:1)
Want .co.us? Ask Colorado. (Score:2)
Has the tld .us got entries for organisation type in it? I know the 2 letter state codes are all present & accounted for (apparently, they are fairly difficult to get hold of tho')
.CO.US domains (Score:2)
Re:.US domains (Score:1)
Maybe I should have said that ISI [isi.edu] doesn't charge anything for registrations. I know that I got mine for free (the contact in my city worked at the local university), but I don't have any experience outside that area.
But when I was looking over the list of delegated subdomains [isi.edu], I noticed that many of them were delegated out to random companies in different states. It's ridiculous. Many of the places given subdomains aren't real towns. I guess some people at those companies looked through a map and wrote down the names of some places and asked ISI to make them the contact so they could charge your something that costs them nothing.
Re:It's all historical.. (Score:1)
Re:Domain names won't be around that long anyway. (Score:1)
The solution is for the US to do something honorable, and recognize that its creation has grown larger than its true control; the solution is for people to do something logical for a change, and create a well-designed system and follow it.
The solution as I see it is to abandon the
For example, whitehouse.gov would become whitehouse.gov.us. Assuming yahoo.com is a US-based entity, it would move to yahoo.com.us. And so on.
I would also like to see Registrars organized more sensibly. I disagree with the splitup of Internic; I think that for each country code a single registrar would make sense, ie registrar.us, registrar.jp, etc. Alternatively, if this is too generalized, a registrar for each second level domain type could be used, ie, registrar.com.us, registrar.org.us, registrar.net.jp, etc.
A few simple reshufflings and TLD/SLD domain name conventions could solve many domain name problems. IMO netizens simply don't make enough use of subdomains. The DNS system can support subdomains (IIRC) up to 127 levels deep, yet for the most part we've only expanded sideways -- and now we're feeling the crunch.
This has been another $0.04 by
eudas
Um, that's not a TLD. (Score:2)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
TLDs (Score:1)
It would be nice to get www.philippines.gov, www.uk.gov, www.frace.gov. At least, it would be easy to go to those country websites instead of guessing, www.philippines.gov.ph or other domains. Better yet, I would suggest a secondary domain to those root
Also, the ICANN should grant more domains (this is for you seniors IT decision makers.) Appeal to them. Request domains like:
Hey it is nice to see
linux.news, tennis.sports, athome.isp, bbc.news, cnbc.asia. They are better (for me) than linux.com, tennis.com, athome.net, news.bbc.co.uk, cnbcasia.com.
Or there should be a way of getting IP address like 111.111.111.111, 123.123.123.123 (something like remembering telephone numbers). Why not get even 12.12 (12.0.0.12) or 1.1? At least, if everybody gets the available domain names, get the numbers.
The Internet is an unlimited virtual space. Why it be like registering all the companies in the world under the
Johnlaw
Think and Speak!
What does equality mean ? (Score:1)
The internet is only valuable because its widespread, who got there first isnt relevent, its vaulable becasue it got accepted everywhere.
Maybe one day you will understand how rewarding it can be to give and ask nothing in return.
Have you ever heard of leading by example ?
If you truely believe in something it is irelevent what others think.
Judge those other examples on their own merits it has nothing to do with the net.
Darpanet/arpanet? (Score:1)
Was the DNS scheme designed before or after widespread international use?
----------------
--------
"It is one thing to show a man he is in error, and another
to put him in possession of the truth." -- John Locke
--Justify
Re:Want .co.us? Ask Colorado. (Score:3)
That is grouped by tribe, such as:
.cheyenne.nsn.us
.sioux.nsn.us
.chickasaw.nsn.us
regardless of what state surrounds them.
nsn stands for "Native Sovereign Nation". I suppose that those tribes that aren't sovereign by treaty shouldn't qualify; dunno if any have a domain.
Of course, just because they HAVE the domain, doesn't mean anything resolves there. Most email addresses of the Chickasaw tribe, for instance, are @chickasaw.com, which is an ISP previously owned by the tribe.
--
Re:Other precedents (Score:1)
Nobody cares (Score:1)
Re:Um, what about old .arpa TLDs. That's 4 letters (Score:2)
Re:Not just government & military (Score:2)
Actually, it stands for "Academic Community". Similarly, .co.uk represents a "Commercial Organisation", not the commonly used contraction of "company". As such, it should really be pronounced "see-oh-dot-yoo-kay", rather than the "coh-dot-yoo-kay" currently used on TV, but the latter pronunciation is probably too entrenched in the minds of the general population to be changed now.
Re:Domain names won't be around that long anyway. (Score:1)
That's a very good reason why we still use addresses today. I never said addresses would disappear tomorrow.
Now ask yourself which is easier: to type "luser@machine.place.blah.gronk.org" and get a single user, or to type "Bob" and get a single user? (Oh wait, even the most primitive email programs allow aliases that already do that.)
Yes, if "Bob" is all you know about the person, then you'll come up with a list of thousands of people. But just how did you find this person's address in the first place? And wouldn't it work just as well with a link to the address, invisible to the user, as with having to manually retype the address every time you want to use it??!
Do you really manually type addresses every time you email someone? Things are already moving in the direction I outlined. Or perhaps you've never heard of an address book or aliases?
Please, try to have some semblance of an imagination and see where technology will be more than a week from now. Apparently you aren't capable of looking ahead further than that.
You know, I posted for months as an anonymous coward and never got flamed like that. I'll take it as a compliment that someone gave me enough notice to hate me so much.