The syntax of domain names forms a rather limited and stilted basis for communicative language. Yet in the five years of the commercial Net's boom, a number of segments of society have become adept at employing domain names to make a point. Political speech came first (see TBTF for 9/3/95 [2]), and has by now been honed to a sharp edge, as the first and second items below demonstrate. The third item shows how, over the last couple of years, the worlds of advertising and of humor have begun to pepper their discourse with (often bogus) domain names.

[2] http://tbtf.com/archive/1995-09-03.html

Domain name policy See also TBTF for 2000-04-19, 03-31, 1999-12-16, 10-05, 08-30, 08-16, 07-26, 07-19, 07-08, 06-14, 05-22, more...

Dot Republicans

The US Republican party, currently in the majority in both houses of Congress, has annexed a piece of domain-name space to which it has a dubious claim. Longtime activist Jim Warren sent a note to several mailing lists with word that the House Republican leadership has put up a beta site at gop.gov [3]. (For international readers not steeped in US political terminology: GOP, or Grand Old Party, is a synonom for the Republicans.)

Note that the site [3] is unusable unless you bite the GOP's cookies.

I read Warren's note and a followup on Matthew Gaylor's Freemat list; since both seem to be missing from Gaylor's archive, I have posted them on the TBTF site [4], [5].

I agree with Warren that a political party has no business whatsoever holding a second-level .gov name. These names are intended for official government functions, not for partisan organizations.

In a followup [5] to the Freemat list, Richard Diamond from the House Office of the Majority Leader offered a rationale for the partisan use of the domain name.

I'm not buying it. It's disingenuous to imply that the Republican party is a part of the government in the same way that, for example, the FTC is. And it's cynical in the extreme to grab desirable real estate in domain-name space just because you're the majority party and have the power to do so.

[3] http://www.gop.gov/
[4] http://tbtf.com/resource/gop-dot-gov.html
[5] http://tbtf.com/resource/gop-dot-gov.html#followup

Businesses based on domain names See also TBTF for 2000-07-20, 04-19, 1999-12-16, 08-30, 07-08, 02-01, 1998-08-10, 04-20, 02-23, 02-09, 1997-12-08, more...

Exploiting Elian

Since late last year, the media have been transfixed by the sorry spectacle of the clashing political passions heaped upon the innocent head of a six-year-old accident survivor [6]. Within two weeks of the rescue at sea of Elian Gonzalez, netrepreneurs began registering domain names to capitalize on the boy's plight. Of the 39 such domains registered since that time, two are being put to use in the way the Web intended: they mark actual Web sites advocating on one side or another of the furor over Elian's fate. One name is being used to shill for a get-paid-to-surf racket. Four domains are actively for sale -- if this exploitation doesn't technically sink to the level of cybersquatting, then it surely qualifies as shameful. The other 32 domain names are either parked or empty. Some of these may represent an actual intention to erect a site on the Elian affair, but I'd wager most would turn out to be for sale if you inquired.

This table [7] names the names of those who are exploiting Elian by means of domain names.

For the final word on this whole sordid business, read the Pigdog Journal's short take [8]. Skip this link if strong language offends you.

[6] http://www.msnbc.com/local/WTVJ/146533.asp
[7] http://tbtf.com/resource/exploiting-elian.html
[8] http://www.pigdog.org/auto/crazy_but_true/link/1151.html

Advertising and humor

A couple of years back I put up a Web site [9] to celebrate and document the spread of the meme of using bogus Web addresses to humorous effect. The eponymous first sighting occurred in a pottery shop in Port Clyde, Maine, whose owners proudly sport a sign above their door: www.nowedonthaveawebsite.com. I've been astonished at the growth and spread of this meme. Here is a selection from the recent sightings.

[9] http://nowedonthaveawebsite.com/

• KilltheDot.com

  This amusing but serious-minded campaign was widely covered a month ago. The Industry Standard's Alex Lash chalked it up to "class resentment over San Francisco's techno-elite and its yuppie accoutrements" [10]. (These sentiments can't have been eased by the recent opening in Multimedia Gulch [11] of the hot new hotel W, with its trendy restaurant, XYZ.) Someone plastered San Francisco's south-of-Market area with stickers and posters, each one featuring a single bogus Web address with a sharp point to it. Each was signed KilltheDot.com and/or BlowtheDotOutYourAss.com. Among the more printable of the bogus addresses were these:

  • ButIdon'tNeedMyToothpasteDelivered.com
  • AnythingIFoundInMyGarageForSale.com
  • AllthePornYouCanEat.com
  • ShredsOfSomeonesSoulForAuction.com

  The paper-based slogans didn't last long on the SOMA streets, but all are preserved here [12], at the domain name KilltheDot's perpetrator, "Sam Lowry," obtained only after his little local campaign had begun to cause worldwide waves [13]. At [12] you can download PDF versions and make your own KilltheDot.com stickers.

  [10] http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,12842,00.html
  [11] http://tbtf.com/siliconia1.html#mmgulch
  [12] http://www.blowthedotoutyourass.com/
  [13] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/technology/...
  

• fastenyourseatbelt.com

  Brian Spangler writes:

  Recently a Philadelphia TV station started advertising that they were now syndicating the series Star Trek: Voyager. The tagline of the ad was "Think of it as fastenyourseatbelt.com." Apparently no one had done their homework; the name had been taken a year and a half before. The page is unrelated to Star Trek, TV, or anything else.

  Spangler adds a warning that the site [14] contains a page with JavaScript code that tries to steal your e-mail address by automatically submitting a form. I didn't come across such a page, but if you go there it would be prudent to turn off JavaScript.

  [14] http://www.fastenyourseatbelt.com/
  

The following four sightings come from Bennett Haselton, who seems to be enjoying this pastime.

• dot-dotcom.com

  Michelob Light has a commercial showing the floor of some stock exchange, with company officials standing over an unfurled banner reading dot-dotcom.com, and investors frantically buying and shouting "What do they do?!" "who cares?! They drink Michelob Light!" (The name, grabbed on 22 February, is "parked" at the site of the domain-name registrar through which it was signed up.)

• www.FumblingWithACondom.com

  When it was announced that two teenagers were going to lose their virginity on OurFirstTime.com (and before people found out it was a scam), David Letterman said on his show:

  In a few days, two teenagers are planning to become the first couple to lose their virginity in a live broadcast over the Internet. I believe you'll find them at www.FumblingWithACondom.com.

  The domain name is available.

• www.spear-a-boar.com

  In a year-ago column [15] Dave Barry wrote:

  In the old days, when the Mud People needed food, they had to manually throw spears at wild boars; whereas today they simply get on the Internet, go to www.spear-a-boar.com and click their mouse a few times (the Mud People use actual mice).

  Ten months after the column was published, spear-a-boar.com was registered to Shaun Ivory, and now redirects traffic to ivory.org. This is (at minimum) the third time a bogus name from a Dave Barry column has been pressed into service to direct traffic to someone's site. (Either Barry never learns or he doesn't mind.) In the first instance, none other than our own informant Bennett Haselton grabbed aintnowebsite.com [16] and redirected its traffic to his Peacefire site. As of last September, Hasleton switched the redirect to an automated Dave Barry column generator [17].

  [15] http://www.herald.com/content/archive/living/barry/1999/docs/jan02.htm
  [16] http://www.aintnowebsite.com/
  [17] http://www.peacefire.org/staff/bennett/autodave/aintnowebsite.html
  

• SHHHH!!! dot com

  In "Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me," Dr. Evil tells his son to shut up in several creative ways, one of which is dubya-dubya-dubya dot SHHHH!!! dot com!! (Shh.com, shhh.com, shhhh.com and shhhhh.com are all registered to different people; the first one available now is shhhhhh.com.)

Software that serves cookieless ads from hiding

Recently TBTF reader Harold Jarvie wrote to me:

Jarvie had stumbled upon an example of a stealthy and much-misunderstood channel for advertising: software that funnels ads to users through a locally installed program with no current Net connection required.

Last February, with the memory of the RealMedia and DoubleClick imbroglios still fresh, a company called Aureate Media was subjected to the refining fire of Internet users' concerns over privacy [18]. (In March Auriate changed its name to Radiate, perhaps to distance itself from that firestorm.) While the rumors [19] sweeping the Net were mostly overblown, Aureate/Radiate was assuredly going about its business in a suspiciously stealthy way. Why? This CNet story [18] on the affair cites one plausible reason: Radiate was afraid of how Net users would react if they knew what the software was really doing.

Radiate [20] and Conducent [21] make software that has been called adbots or spyware. These terms aren't perfect, but they'll serve our needs. Other examples of adbots are Qualcomm's free Eudora mail agent, Apple's Sherlock 2 search consolidator, and Comet Cursor. Most adbots are written for the Windows operating system.

Spyware gets installed along with software you download. Its purpose is to serve ads in a dedicated window of that software. The ad revenue subsidizes the software so that you get it for free or at a discount. Advertisers get an audience of demographically targeted users. Sounds like a good deal all around, doesn't it?

Radiate has assembled an impressive network of software developers who supply "400 of the Internet's hottest software titles" [22] (this page actually lists 279 titles), mostly for free, to a claimed user base of 17 million. Among Radiate's more popular titles are CuteFTP, GO!Zilla, and GetRight.

Here are some things Radiate's spyware does -- independent of its host software, which you installed -- that they didn't mention on their Web site until the February controversy forced them to let in a little more sunlight.

• The installation procedure rigs your default browser to start up the adbot whenever the browser is opened. This "browser parasite" behavior is known to cause browser instability and crashes.

• The adbot downloads ads, and copies of the Web pages you would get to by clicking on those ads, for the entire time you are online, even when you are not running the host software.

• If you got the host software on a trial basis, the adbot continues to run silently even after the trial period has expired or you have registered the host software.

• The adbot continues to run silently even after you have deinstalled the host software.

• The adbot reports to Radiate all of the "Radiate family" programs on your machine.

• The adbot reports how long you view each ad and which you click on.

There's nothing inherently evil in any of this behavior, no smoking-gun violation of your privacy. Radiate insists they do not know your identity and do not want to know it. Aside from your IP address, which all Net services need, Radiate stores only a unique ID assigned when you install the host software. Nonetheless, reading the above list makes me queasy. I suspect that most Netizens would voice similar reservations. It's not OK with me that my software uses my Net connection for communications I did not authorize.

Security guru Steve Gibson offers the best way to deal with adbots and spyware. His utility OptOut [23] detects and optionally removes all traces of Aureate/Radiate software from your machine. (Gibson writes all of his code in assembly language. OptOut is just over 30K in size and the download finishes before you can take your finger off the mouse button.) Later versions will deal with the other spyware vendors' adbots.

Note that if you remove Radiate's spyware using OptOut, the host program(s) you downloaded from Radiate development partners will stop working. You should deinstall all such programs if you plan to rid your machine of spyware.

Gibson's OptOut page is also the best and most balanced account I have read of the Aureate affair and of spyware in general. In the month since OptOut first appeared, Gibson has recorded more than half a million downloads.

[18] http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1558696.html
[19] http://www.federalcourts.com/federalcourt/News/lostincyberspace_feb242000.html
[20] http://www.radiate.com/
[21] http://www.conducent.com/
[22] http://www.radiate.com/consumers/products.html
[23] http://grc.com/optout.htm

Soon: futures and options in the raw material of the Internet age

TBTF for 1998-12-15 [24] introduced two companies making a market in bandwidth, Band-X and RateXchange [25]. The latter has now teamed with Dow Jones to publish its price index, which will go live on May 1. As the graph shows, when the online markets opened their doors the rates for bandwidth dropped precipitously. Further drops can be expected as bandwidth continues down the path toward commoditization as the raw material of the Internet age.

Here are RateXchange's press release [26] and coverage in news.com [27].

RateXchange began as a subsidiary of NetAmerica (NASDAQ: NAMI), but now the parent entity is renaming itself after the sub. Other companies making markets in bandwidth include Arbinet and Enron Communications.

Thanks to TBTF sometime-columnist Lloyd Wood for the tip.

[24] http://tbtf.com/archive/1998-12-15.html#s07
[25] http://www.ratexchange.com/
[26] http://www.ratexchange.com/press/pr20000411.html
[27] http://home.cnet.com/category/0-1004-200-1677726.html

Stay up-to-date with TBTF from your text-messaging cell phone

WebWirelessNow [29] offers a free service you can use if your cell phone is capable of receiving text messages. Sign up for any number of infolinks offered by Web service providers -- such as TBTF [30] -- and get a short text update from that site delivered to your phone. After one call to set up the infolink, the service doesn't even cost you air time: you hang up after one ring and WebWirelessNow captures your phone number to send the text message to your phone.

I consider WebWirelessNow a clever and potentially useful service. Once I'd heard about it, my inner geek wouldn't rest until TBTF content was available over this channel. I've set up infolinks for a number of services (sign up for any or all at [30]):

• Latest TBTF Log item
• Latest issue of TBTF
• Latest Jargon Scout entry
• Latest Siliconia
• Latest NoWeDontHaveaWebSite sightings

The WebWirelessNow site features a directory of selected infolinks. TBTF's aren't listed, perhaps because the content doesn't fit into any of the convenient categories: stock quotes, flight times, weather, ski reports, sports, traffic, etc.

Unfortunately my own cell phone isn't text-messagable. So while this service has been up for a while and some folks have used it, I have not seen it in action. If you sign up [30], please let me know how it works. Better yet -- send me a snapshot from your e-camera. I'll post the most imaginative pictures on the site.

Thanks to TBTF Irregular Dan Kohn for the tip.

[29] http://www.webwirelessnow.com/
[30] http://tbtf.com/pull-wwn/

[31] http://tbtf.com/jargon-scout.html

dot-communist

Faisal Jawdat sends in this neat coinage. A dot-communist is an employee of a dot-com, particularly one with stock options (the workers owning the means of production, don't you know) -- an employee who is steeped in the dogma of the new economy. Jawdat claims to have invented the term and says he has "bludgeoned it into active use" within his company.

The day after Jawdat's missive, Sumner Redstone cemented dot-communist's place in the lexicon in a speech at the National Association of Broadcasters [32], which was widely covered. Here's the soundbyte that everyone quoted:

[32] http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,14022,00.html

bugwards-compatible

TBTF Irregular Eric Scheid proposed this intuitive adjective, descriptive of software deliberately written to behave in a fashion similar to earlier buggy or non-standard versions.

A Google search [33] turns up six instances of bugwards-compatible, and Alta Vista lists five [34], the earliest a 1996 posting [35] by Brian Behlendorf.

The term may be primed for wider use thanks to the doctype switching feature in Internet Explorer 5 for the Macintosh. An article by Eric A. Meyer explains it [36]:

[33] http://www.google.com/search?q=bugwards-compatible&btnG=Google+Search
[34] http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?sc=on&hl=on&kl=XX&pg=q&text=yes&q=bugwards-compatible&search=Search
[35] http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/hypermail/1996q1/0126.html
[36] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/04/14/doctype/index.html
[36a] http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/bug-compatible.html

emailingering

Another submission from Faisal Jawdat, who credits a co-worker for coining the term. Emailingering describes a particular and common style of avoiding getting anything done at work, using your computer and the Internet as both cause and justification. See [37] for Jawdat's more fully elaborated definition.

[37] http://tbtf.com/jargon-scout.html#emailingering

Calm technology for Linux system management

John Heidemann has written an eye-opening little app called LavaPS [38], claiming inspiration from Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown's calm technology meme [39]. LavaPS offers a restful, nonintrusive way to monitor what's happening on your Linux or FreeBSD system. Important attributes of system processes are mapped to the size, speed, color, and luminence of dynamic blobs in a window: bigger blobs are using more memory; faster blobs are consuming more CPU cycles, etc. Who needs a virtual aquarium?

[38] http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/SOFTWARE/LAVAPS/index.html
[39] http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/acmfuture2endnote.htm

And now they want to port it to Windows

It all began with an online comic beloved of the Slashdot community. J.D. "Illiad" Frazer's User Friendly birthed the meme of implementing Microsoft's widely loathed paperclip buddy to offer valueless advice from deep within Unix's VI text editor [40]. A twisted gent named Joel Ray "Piquan" Holveck took it upon himself actually to implement this anathema [41], whose name is Vigor. (It rhymes with Igor.)

It could be that when naming his damnable progeny, Illiad had in mind an open-source, improved VI offshoot called VIM. (Vim and vigor, get it?) But in fact Holveck implemented Vigor on a different variant, Keith Bostic's NVI. Bostic's reaction upon learning about Vigor is memorably captured on Holveck's site [41].

This Linux Ticker interview [42] gives Holveck a chance to explain himself. (Note: [42] downloads 618K of images along with 33K of text, including all five User Friendly strips in the Vigor sequence. You might want to begin with image loading turned off.) Of most interest is Holveck's careful application of Sun Tzu's warfighting advice to the Microsoft / open source "conflict."

And a tip of the TBTF topper to Irregular [43] Anton Sherwood.

[40] http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/00jan/20000107.html
[41] http://www.red-bean.com/~joelh/vigor/
[42] http://linuxticker.com/print/677.html
[43] http://tbtf.com/the-irregulars.html

Here are the spaces I've set up at Take It Offline [44], [45] for those who wish to comment on and discuss this issue's articles. I'll be monitoring and actively posting to these forums.

• Domain naming as speech
  http://www.quicktopic.com/3/H/bDNfW5UXkV9TM8vcv1.html

• Adbots and spyware
  http://www.quicktopic.com/3/H/R0OLtmiwXaPmwa6c7dU.html

• Other comments on this issue of TBTF
  http://www.quicktopic.com/3/H/jzCcJkQ8tcXapFwxS5.html

[44] http://www.quicktopic.com/
[45] http://tbtf.com/archive/1999-10-05.html#06

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