Discussion:
Just in case, I'm away next week
Geoff Thompson
2000-01-14 01:04:58 UTC
Permalink
Hello All,

Not that I'm expecting any problems next week, but just
in case someone emails me directly, rather than using the
official channels :

I'm away next week (17 Jan till 21 Jan), so please use the
official email addresses to get hold of someone that can
help you.

They are :

***@domainz.net.nz
***@waikato.ac.nz

Regards,
Geoff Thompson.

----------------------------------
Geoff Thompson <***@waikato.ac.nz>
University of Waikato,
Hamilton, New Zealand
Ph: (07) 838 4748

Random Quote of the Minute :
And now for something completely the same.

----------------------------------
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Chris Wedgwood
2000-01-14 01:07:23 UTC
Permalink
> ***@domainz.net.nz

I wonder if I am the only person who thinks of things like
send-me-some-warez-***@domainz.net.nz everytime I see that address?



-cw
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Andy Gardner
2000-01-14 03:13:35 UTC
Permalink
>> ***@domainz.net.nz
>
>I wonder if I am the only person who thinks of things like
>send-me-some-warez-***@domainz.net.nz everytime I see that address?

You're not.

It just goes with the general dumbing-down of the Internet, where NSI now
sells web addresses, rather than domain names.

Sigh.


Andrew P. Gardner

Never suggest to your Mother to shop on-line for a pearl necklace.


---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Simon Lyall
2000-01-14 03:28:31 UTC
Permalink
On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Andy Gardner wrote:
> >> ***@domainz.net.nz
> >
> >I wonder if I am the only person who thinks of things like
> >send-me-some-warez-***@domainz.net.nz everytime I see that address?
> It just goes with the general dumbing-down of the Internet, where NSI now
> sells web addresses, rather than domain names.


RFC 2142

--
Simon Lyall. | Newsmaster | Work: ***@ihug.co.nz
System/Network Admin | T&C Enforcement | Home: ***@darkmere.gen.nz
The Internet Group, Auck. | Asst Doorman | Web: Currently Offline

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Geoff Thompson
2000-01-14 03:36:49 UTC
Permalink
Simon Lyall wrote:
>
> On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Andy Gardner wrote:
> > >> ***@domainz.net.nz
> > >
> > >I wonder if I am the only person who thinks of things like
> > >send-me-some-warez-***@domainz.net.nz everytime I see that address?
> > It just goes with the general dumbing-down of the Internet, where NSI now
> > sells web addresses, rather than domain names.
>
> RFC 2142
>

Eyeballs roll back into my head.... I never knew a simple little
note could create such discussion, let alone someone dragging an
RFC about recommended business email addresses out to inform
us all.

I'm sure that there have been some pretty dubious RFC's written
in the past by people seeking fame. I definately doesn't mean
that the world has to adopt them all.

But then we'll end up in a discussion about the importance
of standards, and someone will joke about Microsoft standards,
and then the discussion will turn into......

Yeah, seen it all before. Whatever.

Did I bother sending this??? Geesh.

----------------------------------
Geoff Thompson <***@waikato.ac.nz>
University of Waikato,
Hamilton, New Zealand
Ph: (07) 838 4748

Random Quote of the Minute :
And now for something completely the same.

----------------------------------
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Rob Isaac
2000-01-14 04:15:00 UTC
Permalink
Geoff Thompson wrote:
>
> Simon Lyall wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Andy Gardner wrote:
> > > >> ***@domainz.net.nz
> > > >
> > > >I wonder if I am the only person who thinks of things like
> > > >send-me-some-warez-***@domainz.net.nz everytime I see that address?
> > > It just goes with the general dumbing-down of the Internet, where NSI now
> > > sells web addresses, rather than domain names.
> >
> > RFC 2142
>
> I'm sure that there have been some pretty dubious RFC's written
> in the past by people seeking fame. I definately doesn't mean
> that the world has to adopt them all.

I'd hardly call Dave Crocker and Paul Vixie 'dubious RFC authors seeking
fame'.

> But then we'll end up in a discussion about the importance
> of standards, and someone will joke about Microsoft standards,
> and then the discussion will turn into......

Just try explaining the address '***@domainz.net.nz' over the phone
to any random clueless person, just once. Suffer through numerous
corrections of any combination of 'for', '4', 'service', 'domains',
'domain', 'domains', 'domainz', '.net', '.co' and so on. Wait patiently
through the inevitable half hour diversion into whether or not you can
have a number in an email address. Fume quietly while clueless person
says (in tones of deep distrust), "Well, *I'VE* never seen that before
... are you _sure_?". Notice how the combination of 31337 w4r3z d00d
mailbox name and saccarine pun on 'domains' and 'NZ' makes your job just
that little bit harder than it really needs to be. Curse Domainz.
Contemplate outsourcing all of your DNS services to some third party,
just so you don't have to deal with this sort of crap.

> Did I bother sending this??? Geesh.

Heh, I can't believe I bothered replying to it. Slow day at the office.

Regards, Rob.
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
James Tyson
2000-01-14 03:32:08 UTC
Permalink
> > >I wonder if I am the only person who thinks of things like
> > >send-me-some-warez-***@domainz.net.nz everytime I see that address?
> > It just goes with the general dumbing-down of the Internet, where NSI now
> > sells web addresses, rather than domain names.
> RFC 2142

Yeah, that's the Simon I know, and love.
Man of few words, or whatever.

James Tyson -- Head Engineering Toolsmith - The Internet Group.
>---------- I know stuff ----------<

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
David Zanetti
2000-01-14 10:01:10 UTC
Permalink
On Fri, 14 Jan 2000, Chris Wedgwood wrote:

> > ***@domainz.net.nz
>
> I wonder if I am the only person who thinks of things like
> send-me-some-warez-***@domainz.net.nz everytime I see that address?

Taking a break from l33t w4r3z d00dz email addresses, is anyone else
getting this list radically out of sequence? I seem to end up with the
posts in almost reverse order, with a large time delta.. :)

--
David Zanetti <***@earthling.net> | Moderator: nz.politics.announce

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Patrick O' Brien
2000-01-14 11:03:35 UTC
Permalink
Rob,

Given the personal experiences that you seem to have had with the use of the
"***@domainz.net.nz" email address, I can understand how that might
frustrate you.

I'm sorry if our choice of the user name field in the domainz email address
gives rise to specific issues with you and your customer base.

FWIW, our experience is that the choice of our email address has not been
raised as a major barrier before, either by Name Holders or through the ISP
Channel.

Emotions aside, maybe I'm missing something here.

Do I understand it that RFC 2142 is being cited as the correct "convention"
for user names for email addresses?

Am I also to conclude that there is an issue with Domainz choice of the
email address "***@...", and that we might be acting in contravention
to that RFC?

Let us look at RFC 2142, and pick out just one technical aspect -- section 7
the DNS. Let me be even bolder and quote...

............................................................................
..........................
. DOMAIN NAME SERVICE ADMINISTRATION MAILBOX

In DNS (see [RFC1033], [RFC1034] and [RFC1035]), the Start Of
Authority record (SOA RR) has a field for specifying the mailbox name
of the zone's administrator.

This field must be a simple word without metacharacters (such as "%"
or "!" or "::"), and a mail alias should be used on the relevant mail
exchanger hosts to direct zone administration mail to the appropriate
mailbox.

For simplicity and regularity, it is strongly recommended that the
well known mailbox name HOSTMASTER always be used
<***@domain>.
............................................................................
..........................

In our parlance, we tend to think of this as the "Technical Contact" for the
domain.

So how many technical administrators in the .nz space this ***@...
convention?

Well first up, your domain "iname.com", uses an address of
"***@inamecorp.com" for the technical contact. This is not consistent
with the 2142.

In the .nz Register, we've got just under 3,200 discrete "Technical contact"
addresses. Here's a list of the top 25 Technical Contact "user names" (I
mean the fields before the @..),

USER COUNT
--------- ---------

soa 126
HostMaster 95
webmaster 66
support 64
admin 54
dns 49
info 39
postmaster 30
Chris 23
paul 20
tech 19
steve 18
john 18
andrew 17
noc 15
domain 15
craig 13
richard 12
mike 11
james 11
daniel 11
registry 10
nic 10
simon 10
domains 10

Under 3% (three percent) use the convention cited in the RFC, but does that
make them wrong? -- not.

We have almost 1,900 different User Names, hardly consistent with the RFC.

In reality, there is little clustering around a few "generic" (soa, admin,
etc) names either -- "generics" comprising just over 18% of all names
chosen.

Some Technical Contacts even use the user name of "domain" or "domains",
clearly they do not seem to find the term as confusing an issue as your own
experience suggests.

Personally, I'd conclude that if there is an RFC issue with the Domainz
email address, then that issue is much, much wider. Is it really that big
an issue?

...And all because someone was polite enough to inform that they were going
to be on leave...

Patrick

PS
==

Rob, while I've got you, maybe you can do spare a thought for me too -- ask
how I might feel when confronted with terms such as "l33t w4r3z d00dz"

A simple explanation would be welcomed, and may personally come in handy
one day, happy to take it off-line :-)



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-***@list.waikato.ac.nz
[mailto:owner-***@list.waikato.ac.nz]On Behalf Of Rob Isaac
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2000 5:15 PM
To: ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
Subject: Re: Just in case, I'm away next week


Geoff Thompson wrote:
>
> Simon Lyall wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Andy Gardner wrote:
> > > >> ***@domainz.net.nz
> > > >
> > > >I wonder if I am the only person who thinks of things like
> > > >send-me-some-warez-***@domainz.net.nz everytime I see that address?
> > > It just goes with the general dumbing-down of the Internet, where NSI
now
> > > sells web addresses, rather than domain names.
> >
> > RFC 2142
>
> I'm sure that there have been some pretty dubious RFC's written
> in the past by people seeking fame. I definately doesn't mean
> that the world has to adopt them all.

I'd hardly call Dave Crocker and Paul Vixie 'dubious RFC authors seeking
fame'.

> But then we'll end up in a discussion about the importance
> of standards, and someone will joke about Microsoft standards,
> and then the discussion will turn into......

Just try explaining the address '***@domainz.net.nz' over the phone
to any random clueless person, just once. Suffer through numerous
corrections of any combination of 'for', '4', 'service', 'domains',
'domain', 'domains', 'domainz', '.net', '.co' and so on. Wait patiently
through the inevitable half hour diversion into whether or not you can
have a number in an email address. Fume quietly while clueless person
says (in tones of deep distrust), "Well, *I'VE* never seen that before
... are you _sure_?". Notice how the combination of 31337 w4r3z d00d
mailbox name and saccarine pun on 'domains' and 'NZ' makes your job just
that little bit harder than it really needs to be. Curse Domainz.
Contemplate outsourcing all of your DNS services to some third party,
just so you don't have to deal with this sort of crap.

> Did I bother sending this??? Geesh.

Heh, I can't believe I bothered replying to it. Slow day at the office.

Regards, Rob.
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Joe Abley
2000-01-14 14:45:18 UTC
Permalink
On Sat, Jan 15, 2000 at 12:03:35AM +1300, Patrick O' Brien wrote:
> Do I understand it that RFC 2142 is being cited as the correct "convention"
> for user names for email addresses?

RFC2142 is a Standards Track document. It specifies a number of mailbox
names that must exist in any organisation. It says nothing about any
other mailbox names.

> Am I also to conclude that there is an issue with Domainz choice of the
> email address "***@...", and that we might be acting in contravention
> to that RFC?

No. There would be an issue with RFC2142 support if the mailbox names
specified in that document were not supported.

> Let us look at RFC 2142, and pick out just one technical aspect -- section 7
> the DNS. Let me be even bolder and quote...

Section 7 concerns contact addresses embedded within DNS SOA records.
It has nothing to do with registry technical contact addresses.

> So how many technical administrators in the .nz space this ***@...
> convention?

The use of "hostmaster" is a recommendation, not a requierement. And
again, it says nothing about technical contact addresses in the register.

> Personally, I'd conclude that if there is an RFC issue with the Domainz
> email address, then that issue is much, much wider. Is it really that big
> an issue?

Well, you can choose to be compliant with standards, or you can choose
not to. I would have hoped that Domainz might try to set an example. In
fact, it would probably have taken far less time to verify whether the
RFC2142 aliases were accepted by Domainz's mail server (and to add them
if necessary) than to formulate such an elaborate reply.

> Rob, while I've got you, maybe you can do spare a thought for me too -- ask
> how I might feel when confronted with terms such as "l33t w4r3z d00dz"

While there is a corporate/government culture within NZ which finds
the embedding of "nz" into the end of names natty, cute and professional,
there is another, much wider, internet culture that associates similar
spellings with software piracy, denial of service attacks and pornography.
I would hope it was ignorance of the latter that led Domainz to choose its
current branding, not an informed marketing decision :)

> A simple explanation would be welcomed, and may personally come in handy
> one day, happy to take it off-line :-)

http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/l/Lamer-speak.html


Joe
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Andy Gardner
2000-01-14 20:17:03 UTC
Permalink
>If I can stray to the less serious for a moment Joe....software piracy,
>denial of service attacks and pornography.

I think you lose the plot here at this point Patrick.

The simple fact is, whenever we sent one of our clients to the domainz site
to allow them to hunt for a suitable domain, we _always_ have to say
"that's domainz with a "z" at the end, not an "s".

Everytime without fail.

One of the important factors in choosing a domain name (or an email
address) is that it can't be easily confused with something that is more
obvious when you speak the domain name.

Thus both "domainz" is a stupid choice for an important web site, and
"4service" is a stupid choice for an important email contact address as
_b0th_ 0f them need explaining to the un-initiated. If you don't spell it
out, they try to go to domains.net.nz and send email for
***@domains.net.nz

If you total up the amount of extra help desk time taken up because of the
above, you will probably be surprised.

I'd prefer it if you kept to KISS principals.

How about adding A and MX records to the domains.net.nz zone so those poor
unfortunates than can spell correctly get taken to the D0mainz site anyway?

Up here for thinking down there for...


Andrew P. Gardner

Never suggest to your Mother to shop on-line for a pearl necklace.


---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Patrick O' Brien
2000-01-14 19:52:53 UTC
Permalink
Joe,

> Section 7 concerns contact addresses embedded within DNS SOA records...
> The use of "hostmaster" is a recommendation, not a requierement...

Agreed.

None the less, a number of domains do use that SOA address as their
technical contact address, and the use of HOSTMASTER as there SOA address
does not dominate.

> Well, you can choose to be compliant with standards, or you can choose not
to... probably have taken far less time to verify whether the RFC2142
aliases were accepted by Domainz's mail server.

I shun the notion that we are somehow acting in contravention of some
"alias" standard -- thus there is no need for Domainz to verify anything.

I am confident that our service provider delivers any mail sent to any of
these "standard" recommended aliases to Domainz, and equally confident that
it finds its way into an individual's in-tray.

If I can stray to the less serious for a moment Joe....software piracy,
denial of service attacks and pornography.

> http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/l/Lamer-speak.html

Thanks for the link, I see I am in real need of education, life really has
passed me by...

> I would hope it was ignorance of the latter that led Domainz to choose its
current branding..

Well, perhaps all of New Zealand should give up now Joe -- Certainly the
issue that you flag rally damns us all forever, perhaps it was an ISO3166
conspiracy when they handed out Country codes.?

Its a terrible thought to ponder, as I sit here early Saturday, that there
is a whole sub-culture that views every single domain name ending in .nz as
a pornographic site.

Perhaps we should advise the "Net Nanny's" of the world to put an automatic
block on all domain names ending in .nz to protect children?

Maybe that is why the US Presidential advisory team was so keen for us to be
involved as part of their Y2K coordination program -- .nz was polluted with
pirates, waiting to bring down the US, masquerading under a .nz domain?

What hope is there for the NZ Herald, and what about NZ L-57, we might as
well give back the cup right now :)

Cheers,

Patrick

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Joe Abley
2000-01-14 22:21:11 UTC
Permalink
On Sat, Jan 15, 2000 at 08:52:53AM +1300, Patrick O' Brien wrote:
> > Section 7 concerns contact addresses embedded within DNS SOA records...
> > The use of "hostmaster" is a recommendation, not a requierement...
>
> Agreed.
>
> None the less, a number of domains do use that SOA address as their
> technical contact address, and the use of HOSTMASTER as there SOA address
> does not dominate.

And we've agreed that that's not relevant. But thank you for mentioning
it again.

> > Well, you can choose to be compliant with standards, or you can choose not
> to... probably have taken far less time to verify whether the RFC2142
> aliases were accepted by Domainz's mail server.
>
> I shun the notion that we are somehow acting in contravention of some
> "alias" standard -- thus there is no need for Domainz to verify anything.

Guess we'll just add that to the list of standard requirements that
Domainz feels they are too good for. Frankly I'm surprised that you
are happy with the remarkable inflexibility of UDP to run DNS over,
and haven't invented some superior scheme to meet your own particular
requirements.

> I am confident that our service provider delivers any mail sent to any of
> these "standard" recommended aliases to Domainz, and equally confident that
> it finds its way into an individual's in-tray.

Again, it was the aliases _required_ by RFC2142 I was talking about, not
those _recommended_ by RFC2142.

> If I can stray to the less serious for a moment Joe....software piracy,
> denial of service attacks and pornography.
>
> > http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/l/Lamer-speak.html
>
> Thanks for the link, I see I am in real need of education, life really has
> passed me by...

If you want to keep people in any particular segment of life happy, it
can sometimes pay to learn a little about their associated culture.

On the other hand, if you don't care about keeping your customers happy,
you can ignore their advice and laugh at their petty requests.


Joe
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Patrick O' Brien
2000-01-14 23:44:31 UTC
Permalink
Andy,

> I think you lose the plot here at this point Patrick.

Just a little tongue-in-cheek for a change this Sunny Wellington weekend;
I'll get back to me-the-formal-person if you prefer.

>...Everytime without fail.

It would have been good to have received feedback like this formally earlier
if it is giving yourself and your customers grief. Any reason why it was
not forthcoming?

> How about adding A and MX records to the domains.net.nz zone so those poor
> unfortunates than can spell correctly get taken to the D0mainz site
anyway?

Yes, we hold the domains.net.nz (with an 's"), and it is a relatively simple
task to forward all mail from there to the correct address.

Interestingly we used to do that some whilst back, but the level of email
coming in from the that domain was not significant -- so we took away the
mail box.

We will put it back in and monitor, thanks for the suggestion, always happy
to try out good suggestions..

> Thus both "domainz" is a stupid choice...

Andy, pleased to receive your opinion, but I guess we need to agree to
differ.

When we talk to Registrars in the States, they have no problem spelling
Domainz with a "Zee" ;-)

I suppose I could make the same argument about "twocows.com", or was it
"2cows.com". However, they do not seem that bothered over their choice, and
I never herd of their customers complaining in droves ;-)

Maybe, in the not too distant future, we will all be able to look back in
hindsight on "CDnow.com" and say -- wasn't that a stupid choice given that
there was "MP3now.com".

Really, we should all blame the breakdown in rules of nomenclature on
"Toys-R-Us", or was it "Bedz-R-US"., Look at what's happened since...

http://www.babiesrus.com/ -- One for Joe (Congrats)

http://ripsrus.retrogames.com/ -- retro!!

http://www.stumps.org/mission.html -- this one's definitely not cricket

http://www.netwayglobal.com/ -- this one' not what you'd imagine

http://www.slutsrus.nu/ -- this one is exactly what you'd imagine

http://www.reptilesrus.com/ -- someone had already registered
Brontosau-R-us

http://www.shrooms-r-us.com/ -- true name bastardisation if you ask me

http://www.geeksrus.com/ -- catering for all tastes

http://indigo.ie/~clupo/ -- and one closer to my home

http://www.domainsrus.com -- and closer to my business home

and wait for it, you'd never had guessed,

http://www.domainzrus.com -- what a great name :)

Have a wonderful weekend,

See you,

Patrick

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-***@list.waikato.ac.nz
[mailto:owner-***@list.waikato.ac.nz]On Behalf Of Andy Gardner
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2000 9:17 AM
To: ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
Subject: Re: Just in case, I'm away next week


>If I can stray to the less serious for a moment Joe....software piracy,
>denial of service attacks and pornography.

I think you lose the plot here at this point Patrick.

The simple fact is, whenever we sent one of our clients to the domainz site
to allow them to hunt for a suitable domain, we _always_ have to say
"that's domainz with a "z" at the end, not an "s".

Everytime without fail.

One of the important factors in choosing a domain name (or an email
address) is that it can't be easily confused with something that is more
obvious when you speak the domain name.

Thus both "domainz" is a stupid choice for an important web site, and
"4service" is a stupid choice for an important email contact address as
_b0th_ 0f them need explaining to the un-initiated. If you don't spell it
out, they try to go to domains.net.nz and send email for
***@domains.net.nz

If you total up the amount of extra help desk time taken up because of the
above, you will probably be surprised.

I'd prefer it if you kept to KISS principals.

How about adding A and MX records to the domains.net.nz zone so those poor
unfortunates than can spell correctly get taken to the D0mainz site anyway?

Up here for thinking down there for...


Andrew P. Gardner

Never suggest to your Mother to shop on-line for a pearl necklace.


---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Patrick O' Brien
2000-01-14 23:45:32 UTC
Permalink
Joe,

> Guess we'll just add that to the list of standard requirements that
Domainz feels they are too good for

Where is this list published?

> I'm surprised that you are happy with the remarkable inflexibility of UDP
to ...

What is it that the "4service" address or the "domainz.net.nz" domain has to
do with UDP?

> Again, it was the aliases _required_ by RFC2142 I was talking about..

Why don't you give me the list of those aliases and send mail to them. Let
me know where Domainz is falling short on these RFC standards please.

> If you want to keep people in any particular segment of life happy, it can
sometimes pay to learn a little about their associated culture.

No problems there Joe, you and I are as one.

> On the other hand, if you don't care about keeping your customers happy,
you can ignore their advice and laugh at their petty requests.

Well, I do care, and I took the trouble to find out more, and I am committed
to improve if there are real issues flagged that we can improve upon -- and
I am not laughing at requests.

My regards,

Patrick



-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Abley [mailto:***@patho.gen.nz]
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2000 11:21 AM
To: Patrick O' Brien
Cc: ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
Subject: Re: Just in case, I'm away next week


On Sat, Jan 15, 2000 at 08:52:53AM +1300, Patrick O' Brien wrote:
> > Section 7 concerns contact addresses embedded within DNS SOA records...
> > The use of "hostmaster" is a recommendation, not a requierement...
>
> Agreed.
>
> None the less, a number of domains do use that SOA address as their
> technical contact address, and the use of HOSTMASTER as there SOA address
> does not dominate.

And we've agreed that that's not relevant. But thank you for mentioning
it again.

> > Well, you can choose to be compliant with standards, or you can choose
not
> to... probably have taken far less time to verify whether the RFC2142
> aliases were accepted by Domainz's mail server.
>
> I shun the notion that we are somehow acting in contravention of some
> "alias" standard -- thus there is no need for Domainz to verify anything.

Guess we'll just add that to the list of standard requirements that
Domainz feels they are too good for. Frankly I'm surprised that you
are happy with the remarkable inflexibility of UDP to run DNS over,
and haven't invented some superior scheme to meet your own particular
requirements.

> I am confident that our service provider delivers any mail sent to any of
> these "standard" recommended aliases to Domainz, and equally confident
that
> it finds its way into an individual's in-tray.

Again, it was the aliases _required_ by RFC2142 I was talking about, not
those _recommended_ by RFC2142.

> If I can stray to the less serious for a moment Joe....software piracy,
> denial of service attacks and pornography.
>
> > http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/l/Lamer-speak.html
>
> Thanks for the link, I see I am in real need of education, life really has
> passed me by...

If you want to keep people in any particular segment of life happy, it
can sometimes pay to learn a little about their associated culture.

On the other hand, if you don't care about keeping your customers happy,
you can ignore their advice and laugh at their petty requests.


Joe

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Joe Abley
2000-01-15 00:26:00 UTC
Permalink
On Sat, Jan 15, 2000 at 12:45:32PM +1300, Patrick O' Brien wrote:
> > Guess we'll just add that to the list of standard requirements that
> > Domainz feels they are too good for
>
> Where is this list published?

On the numerous mailing lists where requirements from operators have
been put to Domainz, and been summarily ignored. Check the archives,
Patrick, if you don't remember.

> > I'm surprised that you are happy with the remarkable inflexibility of UDP
> > to ...
>
> What is it that the "4service" address or the "domainz.net.nz" domain has to
> do with UDP?

Your expertise at quoting fragments out of context in order to make
yourself look silly speaks for itself.

> > Again, it was the aliases _required_ by RFC2142 I was talking about..
>
> Why don't you give me the list of those aliases and send mail to them. Let
> me know where Domainz is falling short on these RFC standards please.

I _have_ sent mail to them. They don't bounce. However, I have no idea
where they go. If you were interested in supporting them, you'd support
them and publicise the fact. You're clearly not interested in doing this.
I don't see that any additional debate is going to add anything here.

> > On the other hand, if you don't care about keeping your customers happy,
> > you can ignore their advice and laugh at their petty requests.
>
> Well, I do care, and I took the trouble to find out more, and I am committed
> to improve if there are real issues flagged that we can improve upon -- and
> I am not laughing at requests.

Excellent. I expect therefore that we will shortly see deployment of a
production, authoritative whois server which responds to RIPE-181 queries
live any day then, as well as service-level agreements with secondary
nameserver operators, a registry-registrar interface that meets the
requirements of registrars, and a registry that doesn't close for
business two days out of every seven?

Or does the fact that none of these have been actioned in the previous
months and years speak more loudly about your committments than simple
throw-away comments in nznog?


Joe
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Tony Wicks
2000-01-15 00:47:58 UTC
Permalink
ENOUGH Already !!!!!!!! This thread has gone on far too long to be of any
use apart from creating noise.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-***@list.waikato.ac.nz
[mailto:owner-***@list.waikato.ac.nz]On Behalf Of Joe Abley
Sent: Saturday, 15 January 2000 13:26
To: Patrick O' Brien
Cc: ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
Subject: Re: Just in case, I'm away next week


On Sat, Jan 15, 2000 at 12:45:32PM +1300, Patrick O' Brien wrote:
> > Guess we'll just add that to the list of standard requirements that
> > Domainz feels they are too good for
>
> Where is this list published?

On the numerous mailing lists where requirements from operators have
been put to Domainz, and been summarily ignored. Check the archives,
Patrick, if you don't remember.

> > I'm surprised that you are happy with the remarkable inflexibility of
UDP
> > to ...
>
> What is it that the "4service" address or the "domainz.net.nz" domain has
to
> do with UDP?

Your expertise at quoting fragments out of context in order to make
yourself look silly speaks for itself.

> > Again, it was the aliases _required_ by RFC2142 I was talking about..
>
> Why don't you give me the list of those aliases and send mail to them.
Let
> me know where Domainz is falling short on these RFC standards please.

I _have_ sent mail to them. They don't bounce. However, I have no idea
where they go. If you were interested in supporting them, you'd support
them and publicise the fact. You're clearly not interested in doing this.
I don't see that any additional debate is going to add anything here.

> > On the other hand, if you don't care about keeping your customers happy,
> > you can ignore their advice and laugh at their petty requests.
>
> Well, I do care, and I took the trouble to find out more, and I am
committed
> to improve if there are real issues flagged that we can improve upon --
and
> I am not laughing at requests.

Excellent. I expect therefore that we will shortly see deployment of a
production, authoritative whois server which responds to RIPE-181 queries
live any day then, as well as service-level agreements with secondary
nameserver operators, a registry-registrar interface that meets the
requirements of registrars, and a registry that doesn't close for
business two days out of every seven?

Or does the fact that none of these have been actioned in the previous
months and years speak more loudly about your committments than simple
throw-away comments in nznog?


Joe
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Simon Blake
2000-01-15 10:51:50 UTC
Permalink
Evening all

On Sat, 15 Jan 2000, Patrick O' Brien wrote:

> FWIW, our experience is that the choice of our email address has not been
> raised as a major barrier before, either by Name Holders or through the ISP
> Channel.

I'd be interested to know how many members of nznog saw the request to
join NewZ-***@domainz.net.nz, thought "bah, gratuitous use of mid-word
capitalisation, more marketing puff from Domainz", and chose not to join.
I know I did, and I'm grateful to Joe for filtering the content of
NewZ-***@domainz.net.nz and passing the interesting bits onto nznog.
Had the list been named domainz-***@domainz.net.nz, or
domainz-***@domainz.net.nz, I'd almost certainly have joined the new
mailing list.

Now I'm not saying that's rational, you shouldn't judge a book by it's
colour, and all that, but that's the thought process I went through.

The rest of the email is a digression on the (in)accuracy of the numbers
offered by Patrick. Please ignore if you've got anything better to do.

<stuff deleted for brevity>

> In the .nz Register, we've got just under 3,200 discrete "Technical contact"
> addresses. Here's a list of the top 25 Technical Contact "user names" (I
> mean the fields before the @..),
>
> USER COUNT
> --------- ---------
> soa 126
> HostMaster 95
> webmaster 66
> support 64
> admin 54
> dns 49
> info 39
> postmaster 30
> Chris 23
> paul 20
> tech 19
> steve 18
> john 18
> andrew 17
> noc 15
> domain 15
> craig 13
> richard 12
> mike 11
> james 11
> daniel 11
> registry 10
> nic 10
> simon 10
> domains 10

Let's see if my long forgotten stats 101 is up to this:

3200 tech contact email addresses
29966 total .nz domains, according to Mark Davies.

Only 776 domains are covered by the top 25 listed above, so 29190 domains
are shared out amongst another 3175 tech contact email addresses. By my
reckoning, that's over 9 domains per addressee, on average, but with a
maximum of 10, or they'd have made the list above.

This seems hugely implausible to me - if the 3178 addressees with 10 or
less domains are distributed evenly between 1 and 10 domains, then there
is only room for 17490 domains, which is way short of the count listed on
Mark's page. They'd have to be massively skewed towards 10 and away from
1 to allow for 29190 domains. Somebody with a better grasp of standard
deviations can comment on whether this is statistically plausible.

Stepping back from my inadequate statistical analysis, lets look at
specifics. ***@citylink.co.nz, ***@katipo.co.nz and ***@wellington.net.nz
all resolve to me, in various guises. A quick count in various bind config
files leads to me to believe that I am responsible for name servers
mastering for about 120 domains. Whenever I setup new DNS services for a
user, they get specific instructions to use one of the above email
addresses when they fill out the new domain form on www.domainz.net.nz.
The vast majority of them do so, and therefore I would be suprised if
there are less that 100 occurrences of "nic" in the .nz registry.

As a check, I found 15 ***@katipo.co.nz's in the Domainz records for the
first 20 domains in the Katipo bind config (the rest were
***@katipo.co.nz - oops :-). So the 10 listed for "nic" above, is,
bluntly, utterly wrong.

I'm not a big registrant, by any means, and I'm also not particularly anal
about enforcing that my users type the right info into the Tech contact
fields - if they want to put their own email addresses in, that's their
lookout. However, I believe that the big registrants generally do the
domainz rego on behalf of their users, and so it's fair to assume that
most of them are more rigorous than I. Therefore, it seems unlikely to me
that addresses such as ***@netlink.net.nz, ***@xtra.co.nz, and
***@2day.net.nz have numbers as low as listed above. Perhaps the
relevant people could have fun with wget and grep and confirm this.

> In reality, there is little clustering around a few "generic" (soa, admin,
> etc) names either -- "generics" comprising just over 18% of all names
> chosen.

That is absolutely *not* what the above data says. The above data says
(making the rash generalisation that the top 25 addresses are all
generics, and the only generics in the 3200 addresses) that generics
account for only 2.5% of the names chosen (this may be an invalid
assumption, but you'd expect generics to be towards the top of the list).

While generics may comprise only 18% of addressees, I'd love to know what
proportion of total domains are covered by generic addresses - I'd
hypothesise (and hope) that it would be much, much higher.

Obviously, this rant doesn't really add anything to the discussion about
email addresses, but I for one would be worried if Domainz were using such
patently wrong data as part of their decision making process.

Cheers
Si

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Dean Pemberton
2000-01-15 22:02:42 UTC
Permalink
On Sat, Jan 15, 2000 at 11:51:50PM +1300, Simon Blake wrote:
>
> I'd be interested to know how many members of nznog saw the request to
> join NewZ-***@domainz.net.nz, thought "bah, gratuitous use of mid-word
> capitalisation, more marketing puff from Domainz", and chose not to join.
> I know I did, and I'm grateful to Joe for filtering the content of
> NewZ-***@domainz.net.nz and passing the interesting bits onto nznog.
> Had the list been named domainz-***@domainz.net.nz, or
> domainz-***@domainz.net.nz, I'd almost certainly have joined the new
> mailing list.
>
> Now I'm not saying that's rational, you shouldn't judge a book by it's
> colour, and all that, but that's the thought process I went through.

=) yep. Thats exactly the thought process that I went through.

And I could not agree more that, in this case it might have been the wrong one.

But when I'm receiving shyte-loads of these kind of messages per day asking me
to join every mailing list from every web site that I choose to visit, you
would think that a mailing list with content as important as
NewZ-***@domainz.net.nz would have been architected to stand out to me a bit
more.

I'm sure that someone is going to reply to this and say ``You Dumbass, why
didn't you just read the message and judge for yourself rather than just seeing
the capital Z and deleting it.''

Well good point - but again, we have atleast two people here (Simon and Myself)
, who can be considered in the target audience for this list, who just deleted
this message right off the bat.

Now if Saachi's made an ad for Telecom NZ which made 50% of it's target
audience turn off the tv and walk out of the room instantly, how long do you
think it would be before they got their ass's caned? No matter how informative
the article is, no matter how important the information is that it carries, if
you can't get people to read it then whats the point.

To me it's like having a mailing list called
`***@DoMaInZ.nEt.nz' and
putting ``Do you want to make money fast!!!'' as the subject. MAN! thats going
straight in the bin no matter what it content is*.

I suggest that NewZ-***@domainz.net.nz is only a few steps better.

Atleast <whatever>-announce@<wherever>.com is a standard that your target
audience is going to understand and do the right thing with, ie read it.

Why do you think that Telecom has stuck with the fuzzy animals for so long? If
it works then stick with it. They have obviously found that having fuzzy
creatures bouncing on the screen while they read their latest toll call special
rates is the way to make it stick in peoples minds.

The golden rule of marketing ``If it makes people buy it, use it''

So Patrick. I would suggest in future you hire someone from your target
audience and have them involved in the decision making process at domainz. If
you have already done this, then by the very fact that people like Simon, Joe
and myself are having this conversation with you, they are not doing their job.


Dean


* I actually considered changing the subject of this message to ``Do you
want to make money fast!!!'' and then sending it out again, once with the orig
subject and once with the new one. Then asking how many people even read the
second one. But I think I've made my point and it would just waste peoples
mental bandwidth.



--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Pemberton - ***@lucent.com Linux User# 157870
Guy who does stuff at Lucent Technologies - Bell Labs Innovations
Lvl 38, 55 Collins St, Melbourne 3000, Australia
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Richard Naylor
2000-01-16 10:46:21 UTC
Permalink
At 09:02 am 16/01/00 +1100, Dean Pemberton wrote:

<words of wisdom deleted>

>So Patrick. I would suggest in future you hire someone from your target
>audience and have them involved in the decision making process at domainz.
If
>you have already done this, then by the very fact that people like Simon, Joe
>and myself are having this conversation with you, they are not doing their
job.
>
Reading the postings on this I agree with Dean. What we have is a classic
business problem.

+ Patrick is a CEO who delivers company performance to his Board. Seems to
do OK

+ Company product (Domain Names) is used by a high proportion of market
savvy people

+ product is technical and is made to work by technical people

+ Patrick markets to the marketing people

+ The technical people seem to have no point of contact at Domainz

To me it seems Patrick needs a permanent technical staffer who makes it
work or can advise on the product, while Patrick keeps the marketing people
and his Board happy. Perhaps its time the Domainz Board invested in some
more staff as this area will continue to grow and unless the issues are
resolved they won't go away, just get worse.

rich

***@citylink.co.nz

This mail message contains information that is confidential and which may
be subject to legal privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, you
must not use, distribute or copy this message. If you have received this
message in error, please notify the sender immediately and erase this mail.

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
2Day Operations
2000-01-15 14:58:51 UTC
Permalink
> > In the .nz Register, we've got just under 3,200 discrete
> "Technical contact"
> > addresses. Here's a list of the top 25 Technical Contact "user names" (I
> > mean the fields before the @..),
> >
> > USER COUNT
> > --------- ---------

<snipped>

Our automated registration server shows 4762 .nz domains delegated to
2day.com name servers at 1900 NZDT last Friday. The technical contact
address of either ***@2day.net.nz or ***@2day.com was entered
by our system into the registry add or modify template

I didnt see the word "operations" in the top 25 at all, so the 2dayless view
of dumbainz is working very well.

If Mr O'Brien spent just a little time answering important commercial
messages from us rather than wasting time on this list, then we would not be
spamming all nzirl board and isocnz members with messages looking for
somebody with sufficient balls to even acknowledge our quite serious and
legit operational concerns.

regards

Peter Mott
Chief Enthusiast
2Day.com
-/-

---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Lin Nah
2000-01-15 16:44:41 UTC
Permalink
I had to delurk for this...

Standardisation of email addresses.

One of the good reasons behind RFC2142 seems to have been lost here.
With the standard mailboxes specified, it ensures that when I email
those email addresses, I can expect the emails to land in the mailbox
of the people who are in charge of that particular task.

Patrick O'brien did a search of the database and came up with the
"username" statistics. That is fine that they don't use the standard
addressing as they are specifying their own.

The idea behind the standardised mailboxes is that if all else fails
emailing that particular username should work.

For example if someone in that datbase was named as ***@domainname.co.nz
had left and the domain name didn't update it. SHould I wish to contact
the technical contact (who was ***@domainname.co.nz) and it bounced because
joe had left, I can then send it to postmaster or one of the other admin
addresses.


I often have to contact administrators regarding abuse like spam, DOS
attacks etc. As long as I know the domain name, I don't have to think
about it. I should be sure that if I emailed ***@domainame, the email
will get to the person who handles it. Whether abuse is an actual mailbox
or an alias that points to someone else's mailbox or a .forward in some
account is immaterial to me.

It becomes a problem is we have to contact a domain's administrative
contact and the email to abuse@ (or postmaster@ or soa@ etc) bounces and
we have no other means of finding out the email address since finger
does not work, there is no whois available for that country (or gtld),
or no website for that domain. Only avenue is to traceroute and contact
their upstream provider hoping that they will be able to forward that.


This is why if people do know about RFC2142 and do try to adhere to the
compulsory bits of it, it would make life easier for everyone.

So in the case of domainz, I don't mind the 4service as long as the
equivalent required username is also available.

just my 2b worth
Lin

ps Oscar Abley's webpage http://patho.gen.nz/~oscar
---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
2Day Operations
2000-01-16 20:06:04 UTC
Permalink
> To me it seems Patrick needs a permanent technical staffer who makes it
> work or can advise on the product, while Patrick keeps the
> marketing people
> and his Board happy. Perhaps its time the Domainz Board invested in some
> more staff as this area will continue to grow and unless the issues are
> resolved they won't go away, just get worse.

If the Domainz board introduced performance measures that included customer
satisfaction and technical innovation, they would also have to stop hiding
behind comments like "I have to support the CEO because according to his
brief, he is doing his job well. The fact that I dont agree with the way he
does things, or the level of service customers receive is not relevant"

regards

Peter Mott
Chief Enthusiast
2Day.com
-/-


---------
To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to ***@list.waikato.ac.nz
where the body of your message reads:
unsubscribe nznog
Loading...