Mando.org

This has been all over Slashdot and theNANOG mailing list, but for those of you that don’t visit either, Verisign has hijacked the Internet. Well, not really, but kinda.

Verisign is the company in charge of the .com and .net top level domains. Actually, the US government made Network Solutions (which used to be a non-profit organization) in charge, but Verisign bought them out several years ago.

Verisign has now decided to put in what’s known as a wildcard A record for the .com and .net top level domains. In English, this means that every domain will now resolve to an ip adress, whether that domain is registered or not. Again, in English, this means that every .com or .net domain is now valid regardless of registration status.

What does this mean? Example:

If someone tries to go to yahoo.com (which does exist), but they mis-spell yahoo (it’s happened) and they type in mandoisthegreatest.com (which, unfortunately, does not exist), they used to get an error message saying something to the effect of “Cannot find server”, or something like that. The person now knows that they mis-typed yahoo.com and can do something about it.

Now, with Versign’s new wildcard A record in palce, if the same thing happens, Verisign will kindly redirect them to sitefinder.verisign.com, which is an search engine. Sleazy? No doubt. Hijacking? Possibly.

But that’s not really the biggest problem here. The big problem is that one of the primary anti-spam measures is domain validation. Simply put, before a mail server receives an email it verifies that the sender’s domain is valid. Sure, it’s a simple check but every little bit helps. Now, this is totally useless as every .com and .net domain is now “valid”.

Hopefully this will be the straw the breaks the camel’s back. Verisign has done some pretty slimy things in the past and with any luck this will finally create a long and serious discussion about DNS and who’s really in charge around here.

According to the Washington Post, ICANN has no comment. Really. Wow. I’m so surprised I could die from not suprise. What a bunch of weak losers. Those people are nothing but a bunch of yellow-bellied geeks playing important.

Found this article linked from Instapundit. It’s an answer to Ann Crittenden’s The
Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued.

While it is true that women pay a price for being a mother, it’s often forgotten that men pay a price for being a father. This price is much less obvious to and outside viewer and is only truly understood when faced with fatherhood.

You see, I left college about 22 hours shy of graduating. I figured that I would have all the time in the world to go back, finish my degree, maybe even go on to grad school, etc. Finishing school never ranked high on my importance scale, as jobs seemed to keep coming and work was good. That was 4 years ago.

Now, I sit here with a wife, a child (and one on the way), a mortage, a car payment, and no way to go back to school. Some rough back-of-a-napkin calculations show that there’s no way for us to afford my trip back to school before our last child heads off to elementary school. That’ll be at least another 6 years assuming no more kids after this one.

Sometimes I find myself wondering what life would be like if things had been different: If I had been more serious about school, if Aiden hadn’t come along when he did, etc. And that makes me feel terrible.

I love my son and my family more than life itself, and while I don’t get to spend the time that I’d like to with them, I know that they love me as well. They are my joy and my life and it hurts just to think about them not being here. But sometimes I still catch myself wondering.

And that painful dichotomy is my Daddy Tax.