Ben’s Blog

You may have heard, ICANN has approved a proposal to slacken the rules on the internets TLDs. Starting in early 2009, anyone with sufficent hardware, and a buisness plan, will be able to make their own TLD. I don’t like this for two main reasons.

Firstly, the internet is mean to be free. When companies start buying domain names like http://www.coca.cola, it will just have been turned in to one big advert. Which is not what we want. How long until we see things like http://www.mobilephones.buyhere? Or http://www.buycomputers.verycheap. The TLD is not meant to be user customizable. It is meant to give some basic information about the site. For example, .com is a company (although it has now turned more into a generic TLD, as seen in my URL). .net is a personal website. .org is a non profit organization, and then you get country specific TLDs, like .co.uk, .fr and .de. That is it’s main purpose, which brings me onto my second point.

As it is, the internet is structured. You know that when you read .com, you have come to the end of the address. When this proposal is implemented, URLS like http://buy.mobile.phones.here.very.cheap will be a vaild URL. We don’t want this! We want an address like http://subdomain.domain.com. At the moment, if you can’t remember the address of a website, you can safely try .com as the most likely TLD. If that doesn’t work, then .co.uk, .net and .org are safe ones to try. The internet will lose it’s structure. If there are no limits on the TLDs you can use, then it’s like being able to make up your own postcode. The internet will lose all structure.

This is my view, but if you disagree with me, please say so because I would be interested to know why.

I decided recently that I needed to really learn how to code in one operating system. Since Linux is pretty complicated with UIs hard to make, I decided to go for either .NET or Cocoa. Since I hate Mircosoft, I thought I’d go with Apple’s Cocoa, which I have used once before, and was very enjoyable. Also, this will let me write programs for my iphone when I get it *said with crossed fingers*. I’ve ordered a book on Cocoa, and a book on Objective-C. They are Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, by Aaron Hilleglass (A professional cocoa teacher), and  Programming in Objective-C by Stephen Kochan.  They look very good.

Last night, I fixed Ubuntu. Gnome had killed itself the week before, but I really didn’t want to fix it because I  had no idea what the problem was. Turned out, the problem was minimal and a sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop fixed it.

Reading a Lifehacker post on Ubuntu, I read about a program for Linux called Gnome Do. It is a clone of Quicksilver, if anyone knows what that is. Basically, I can now press Super (windows key) and Space, and Gnome Do pops up. I can open firefox by typing fx <enter>. Or any other approximation of the name of the program. I can quickly find files, and even tweet, by typing ‘tweet’ <tab> ‘Tweet here’. It really is good, and should speed up my day to day using a bit. Also, I have found a program called mail-notifier which sends you a pop up when ever you get an email. It even works with Hosted Gmail, which is good.

Sean and I are still dreaming of iPhones, but it is getting closer =). Now I just need to secure a Paper round. Joe let me help on his once, and I am confident that I could do it by myself.

Apple have just unveiled the 3G iphone! Sean and I were thinking, well, maybe, but then they went and capped the price at $199! They’re releasing them accross the globe on July 11th, and as soon as I find out what contract wer’e talking about I’m having one.

Also, Ubuntu is broken. It wasn’t me. Got some new headphones. They’re nice.

(note - views expressed in this post may change after the inital wahoo-ness has worn off)

A few things have happened recently that I’d like to write about. This post may get a bit nothing-y in which case, I’ll try to stop.

It’s my birthday in about a month, and we (Sean, Jonathan, Pete and I, the Geek Clique), are going to have a LAN party. We plan to play Supreme Commander and Command and Conquer Generals, perhaps with small bouts of Assault Cube and Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. We need a network switch, but that costs very little. The games are all on amazon for less than £5 each. We’ll see how it turns out.

This week, one of my friends at school has begun to write a comic called ‘Ronnie’. It is a blatant ripoff of Dilbert, but he denies it. I’ve agreed to host it on the internet, and I’ll see how long he keeps producing them. The link is in my blogroll, or at http://mooseguy.com/ronnie.

After last week’s ShefLUG meeting, I decided to have a go at installing Gentoo on my powerbook. The installation was successful, and I’m going to mess with X now. Should be fun.