Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The dark side of .io

gigaom.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 84 posts

Re: The dark side of .io

#71

Post by kijin »

bbcbasic wrote: post #64
kijin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only people who are moved and given (1) or (2) are ones that have a sufficiently good BATNA. Well said. So the question is: how do we build a world where residents of a small island can develop a sufficiently good BATNA, even against a nuclear superpower? Fixing problems at the level of the basic architecture can sometimes seem to go against fixing superficial symptoms. If you're too focused on the symptoms, it…

I am not sure, not easy when there are powerful people who have a vested interest in exactly the opposite.

Of course it won't be easy.

"Easy" in politics is when you get something done, look back, and find less than ten thousand dead bodies behind you.

Re: The dark side of .io

#72

Post by mercurial »

sologoub wrote: post #60
geographomics wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, I don't really see the argument that it is somehow their land. The argument is that they had lived there for generations and made it very much their homeland - only to be turfed out at the whim of a remote, overbearing colonial power.

By that same token, the French that first colonized and settled the islands have a claim - they were there first. As do the British who conquered the possession from the French. These situations are much more complicated than the surface view that the "big evil colonial empire" is picking on defenseless people. If the original wrong of enslaving the population was corrected, the people relocated by force would have n…

> These situations are much more complicated than the surface view that the "big evil colonial empire" is picking on defenseless people.

This situation seems pretty clear cut. Hardly anybody ever heard about these people, and the colonial administrator clearly thought them barely human. When there was an opportunity to make a quick buck on their back, no consideration was given to what they may think of it. That's precisely a colonial attitude.

> If the original wrong of enslaving the population was corrected, the people relocated by force would have never been on the island in the first place.

I'd say the least you can do, when you have been mercilessly exploiting a group of people for generations, isn't to screw them over a second time because you can make some money out of it. Especially when you're rather hypocritically talking about "human rights" and "democracy". Not to say that other western democracies don't share the same hypocrisy (the US democratized the native Americans to death, the French defended "freedom" during WWI and WWII while happily oppressing their colonies, etc...). However, "others do it too" isn't a valid defence after kindergarten.

Re: The dark side of .io

#73

Post by disordr »

hoprocker wrote: post #19
russellbeattie wrote: post #18

Sooo... what? This is easily the third or fourth time this has been linked to in Hacker News. What relevance does it have to anything? Everyone who uses .io domains are horrible, insensitive people? Those who use .me domains should be forever ashamed of the various human rights violations of the Montenegrin government in 1995? Anyone who uses bit.ly is basically insulting the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing? Et…

Another thing I've wondered about with suffix-hopping is the guarantee of stability there is -- in example, using the Libyan domain .ly in light of the recent radical changes. (An associated meta-question being, of course, if this is really the most important thing to worry about in relationship to Libya.) edit Whoops, I meant Libya.

This is what I have wondered for a long time.

Re: The dark side of .io

#74

Post by kiliancs »

It's very sad to see more examples of nations with power taking advantage of smaller nations, but I'm aware there are more cases than we'll probably be able to find out about. To me cases such as this one should be resolved based on universal principles that are sadly ignored, such as that all nations should treat each other as equal and see themselves as parts of a greater community whose best interest should be always a priority. Justice can only be made if it's based on solid principles.

Re: The dark side of .io

#76

Post by 13 »

smt88 wrote: post #48
jessaustin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Of course trademark is valuable (to important parties!), that is the premise of the grandparent comment. (So the "...firms would make do without trademark..." clause is a deliberate absurdity.) B) This anti-phishing idea is security theater. If you teach cardholders that a URL will save them from getting phished, they'll get phished. This is analogous to, though quite a bit worse than, the idea that a logo guarant…

Re: A) You said either trademarks should go away or apple.gripe should become acceptable. Definitely a false dichotomy, but my comment was targeted at either/both of those possibilities. Re: B) I completely disagree. I frequently visit mail.google.com, and I trust that I'm not getting phished. I'm going purely on the basis of the URL there. I wouldn't feel the same way going to, say, mail.google.me. In order to trust…

In a way short .com domains display some level of financial cost involved in obtaining them. If I saw a website hosted on hexagon.com I'd assume it's probably legitimate just due to the probable expensive of obtaining it being higher than a phisher might be willing to pay.

Re: The dark side of .io

#77

Post by jahewson »

There's an obvious flaw in this argument. The .io domain is a British invention, it only exists because of the decision to separate the islands from Mauritius. Had the US not wanted a military base, then the Chagos Islands would be part of Mauritius and have a .mu domain.

Had history unfolded as the OP wanted then .io would simply not exist. Alternatively, if the islands were to become independent in the future then they would no longer be the British Indian Ocean Territory, by definition, and likewise have no logical claim on (or even need for) the .io domain.

It's easy to feel sorry for these people, but it's hard to see how they have a claim on something which was never theirs and is an administrative construct of a territory which they never lived in, which would ultimately be abolished in some future ideal world.

Given the article's many complaints about the U.S. military and the CIA, I can't help thinking that the OP might have a more compelling case for boycotting .com domains.

Re: The dark side of .io

#78

Post by sjy »

jessaustin wrote: post #42
CHY872 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haha I can think of a few leaders of other nations who might enjoy this power. In Britain we essentially go by the philosophy that parliament represents the people, and parliament is the highest authority in the country. If the government doesn't like a decision made by a court, the idea is that the law can be changed.

There's something appealing about that theory, in that it would seem to stop buck-passing. I just wonder how well my own nation would have done in correcting the Supreme Court. Would we still have some of the awful things we had in the past? Would we we already have some of the great things we'll have in the future?

If Congress does not like the way its legislation is interpreted by the Supreme Court it is free to amend that legislation (and this often happens). It's not so much that the two branches of government have a different relationship in the US and the UK, but rather that in the US there is a special piece of legislation (the Constitution) which can't be amended easily.

Re: The dark side of .io

#79

Post by pearjuice »

mrfrisby wrote: post #30

This thread is a depressingly self-serving reflection of this community. Few of you seem to have bothered to do anything but skim the article and come to a snap judgement based on what seems to be your idealised notion of how TLDs should be managed. For the sake of my own sanity, lets just be clear here: 1. An island chain was forcibly depopulated in order for the largest land mass to be leased to the United States a…

Meanwhile, Palestine is still a colony of Israel but hey they don't have a nice TLD so who bothers.
Post reply on HN