Dean Anderson wrote:
Is it any worse than IE taking you to msn search when a domain doesn't
resolve? Or worse than Mozilla taking you to Netscape, duplicating a
Google search, and opening a sidebar (and a netscape search) you didn't
want?
Yes, it is worse. Much worse. There is a fundamental difference between
this defaulting happening in the DNS and happening in a client program.
It is necessary that the wire protocols distinguish between existence and
non-existence of resources in a standard manner (NXDOMAIN in this case)
in order to give the client the choice of how to handle non-existence.
If IE wishes to default to doing a web search under those circumstances,
that is silly but harms no one else. What Verisign has done pre-empts
that choice for everyone.
-zefram
--
Andrew Main (Zefram) <zefram(_at_)fysh(_dot_)org>