Build Date: Sat Sep 5 05:40:24 2026 UTC
Of what need is comedy if there is beer?
-- Head Freezin' Gene
There Ain't No Justice; It's Just .us
2000-01-11 11:28:16
Sure, the big ol' new DNS TLD rules mean that you can get a dumb ol' DOT COM from any of a number of big dickhead entrepreneur company. But did you know you can get a domain for FREE or ALMOST FREE from the coolio .us NIC? I bet you didn't. Well you should get one!
Dot-us domains (or "geographical" domains, as they're called) are the absolutely super-coolest thing to ever happen ever. You probably know that the .com, .org, .net, .gov and .mil domains are reserved for United States stuff ONLY. In other places they have to use the name of their country at the end of the domain name, like "loser.co.fr" or something, because that way we know that they are foreign and we can discriminate against them.
The crazy thing is that there's this SUPER STEALTH domain that nobody ever uses but it is the discriminate-against-me-geographical domain for the United States. It's called the .us domain, and it's really supergreat. It's defined by RFC 1480, which like if you're a super-geek you're going to go check out now. But I can summarize like this:
The .us domain is used for government agencies, companies, and individuals. ANYONE can get a .us domain. Most .us domains are in the form "domain-name.city.st.us" (thus the name "geographicals" -- everything's divided up geographically). Like, you can reach me at mr.bad@bad-pe ople-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us. OK, mine's kinda long, but you can get much shorter ones, too. Especially if you live in, like, Lee, Florida or something.
Anyways, the super-extra-cool part about the .us domain is that it's a widely distributed network. Rather than having one super-huge .us TLD server, there are thousands of city-level servers, handling .san-francisco.ca.us, for example. And the EXTRA super cool part is that it's up to these "delegated" servers to charge you for the registration -- and MOST of them charge you NOTHING, or just a few bucks. Wee-haw!
The bummer part about delegated domains is that the delegates get to add big restrictions. Like, the delegate for san-francisco.ca.us only creates one domain per person (damn!). But the good part is that you get your own COOLIO domain for practically NOTHING. Beaujolais! Go get a geographical domain today, and tell 'em Pigdog sent you.
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