At 1/31/03 8:24 PM, Michael Brody wrote: >Funny how baptista.god does not resolve on my computer.....
Yes; if .god domains are so useful that they cost three times as much as a .com name, I wonder why Joe isn't using it for his e-mail address? Probably the same reason that new.net uses a ".net" domain name, I guess. It's like seeing a Chevrolet salesman driving a Toyota -- makes you wonder. Surely if, say, 1% of the Internet can access Joe's names without upgrading, they're only worth 1% as much as a .com name. Very odd, that. To answer the question of "why shouldn't TUCOWS offer them?": The "domain names" offered by New.net, Joe Baptista, and other for-profit alternate root services don't work for the majority of Internet users, and probably never will. What's worse is that these operators have the nerve to charge MORE for them than most people charge for .com names, as if they're something special. Customers who buy such names are disappointed -- and rightfully so, because none of the alternate TLD sellers I've seen include anything close to an appropriate disclaimer indicating they are useless for running a real site. I challenged New.net to display their numbers in percentages rather than absolute values a long time ago on this list, and they will not; they would rather trick people into buying something worthless. Most Internet users have no idea that 174 million people accessing New.net names means that 65% of the Internet cannot reach them, even if you believe New.net's 174 million claim (which I don't -- they do things like count every download of the plugin as 1.5 users, which is laughable; the number is probably more like .5 due to people reinstalling it, or downloading it three separate times with different pieces of shareware, etc.). When customers get scammed in this way, it makes them suspicious of the entire domain name industry, which hurts all of us. If a naive customer buys a New.net .shop "domain", then finds it doesn't work as expected, that customer is much less likely to buy a new domain from the rest of us in the future, even if that domain name is a real domain name that works across 100% of the Internet. Once burned, twice shy. So that's why I wouldn't put up with TUCOWS selling such names -- they'd be making the industry even shadier than it already is. Selling New.net domain names is simply unethical; it's raw greed taking advantage of people's ignorance. I don't do business with scam artists. (A totally separate argument against .god, New.net, etc., is that one person/company should not be allowed to claim and control common words without the permission of the Internet community, but I won't go into that because it doesn't really matter. They're all just a freak sideshow anyway, and the danger that the more knowledgeable community might take them seriously seems to have [mostly] passed. BulkRegister's idiocy/greed seems to be an exception, rather than the rule.) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Mathews, Tiger Technologies http://www.tigertech.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------- "He was the most even tempered man in the Navy. He was always in a rage."
