Verisign - overreaction?
Doc Searls - and everyone else, it seems - has gone completely bonkers over Verisign grabbing incorrectly entered urls and redirecting to their search pages. So.... let's see. I type an URL wrong. Would I rather see a search page, or a lame 404 page? Exactly why all the fuss over this? If you don't want to use their search, retype the url. And hey, that's exactly what you would have to do if they weren't redirecting. Sheesh - get a grip gang.
Update - there are some good comments on this, things I hadn't considered. As I said in a comment: What this points out (to me) is the disconnect between application usage of http, and 'Joe browser' usage of http. This kind of redirect is a problem for the former, and a non-issue for the latter. When I posted this, I had my 'Joe browser' hat on, and didn't consider the development aspect. Hmm....
Comments
Not 404
[Daniel Von Fange] September 23, 2003 22:17:11.686
Except it would not be a 404 error. Only if you actually connect to a server can you get a 404. :P
Untitled
[] September 23, 2003 22:35:55.114
The lack of a 404 error is the real problem. There is no way for an application using HTTP to detect if the url used is an error without it.
Because the Web is not the Internet
[Charles Miller] September 24, 2003 1:08:38.958
Verisign have broken the DNS, then put in a workaround for the web, leaving everything else broken. That's a big problem. Most applications consider NXDOMAIN to be a fatal error, but host unreachable or connection refused to be transient. Suddenly removing the ability to make that assumption is pretty bad. Verisign anticipated this would be a problem for SMTP and put in a reject-everything server, but that's two protocols out of thousands. And what happens when (as has happened already) that SMTP server goes down? And even with the workaround, mail breaks in other ways. If your domain has multiple mail-servers, one of them dropping off the DNS won't break anything: mail will be routed to your secondary MX. Except if it then starts resolving to Verisign's reject-everything server, at which point all mail to your domain starts to bounce. And that's not even getting into the privacy problems, or the political/legal problems with Verisign staking a claim to the whole .com and .net namespace at the expense of the other registrars.
Re: Because the Web is not the Internet
[James Robertson] September 24, 2003 2:02:18.364
Comment on Because the Web is not the Internet by James Robertson
What this points out (to me) is the disconnect between application usage of http, and 'Joe browser' usage of http. This kind of redirect is a problem for the former, and a non-issue for the latter. When I posted this, I had my 'Joe browser' hat on, and didn't consider the development aspect. Hmm....
Nils Kassube
[] September 24, 2003 12:03:37.654
You also have to consider the implications for spam prevention. Now it's no longer possible to check for the "real" existence of a domain. *sigh* PS: Regarding software patents in the EU: Today was the vote in the EU parliament. We won! Pure software patents are not allowed and crippling of interoperability won't happen ;-)
Regarding Verisign
[Andres] September 24, 2003 14:00:01.836
See also http://www.eff.org/Infra/DNS_control/20030919_verisign_gone_wild.php
Re: Verisign - overreaction?
[mark@talios.com] September 24, 2003 17:41:16.796
Comment on Verisign - overreaction? by mark@talios.com
The fuss over it not that you're web browser is going to the search page, that's not so bad. But their implemtation is at the DNS lookup level, so anti-spam checkers get valid domain/ips for invalid faked emails, so let the mail through.
The internet ISN'T the web.