Totally OT BBC PC rant.

Today it seems to be domain names. They are moaning about people having co.uk domains and not being in the UK...and say that it is a widespread con.

I want to know why they use bbc.com...

Because .com are for global sites and the bbc is global.

Why so many American sites use .com is the question.

I have heard it said that the only way to get a balanced report about events in a country is from an outside source (i.e. another country's news). However I don't know of any channels that regualrly run news features about what's going on in Britiain. .... Maybe that's because, when all is said and done, there's remarkably few newsworthy stories that have any genuine importance that happen in Britain.

Actually Radio 2, which doesn't pretend to be highbrow, is often more incisive that radio 4..

Agreed - over breakfast I can take in the entire news content of BBC1 with the sound off, while getting the real news from Radio 4. Very rarely does TV grab my full attention.

More than that: look for a source in a country that has a competent news service, but is totally uninvolved in that particular story.

For example, some years ago an American friend told me the most balanced news coverage about Northern Ireland was from Radio Jerusalem.

There was that cat which travelled on the bus every day ...

No.

Because .us is little used, because the Americans used .com to start with. And still do.

Never mind, dennis.

Pussy sells!

Yep, bbc.com is used by World Service etc

Or UK places... B-)

Doesn't explain why

American ones use them because the Internet started (as we all know) in the USA. And .com, .edu, .org etc. pre-date any country suffixes.

It's why my employer has .com - it's global, even though it's considered to be a UK company. (the .co.uk equivalent redirects to the main .com site)

It detects you are in the uk and send you there. If it didn't detect that you are in the uk some services would be restricted.

Wrong as usual. They are alternative names for the same site.

$ dig any

; DiG 9.5.1-P2 any

Wrong again, dennis (but what else did we expect?)

They are both static DNS entries and point to the same IP address. There is no 'detect' about it.

Yet another thing dennis knows nothing about.

Perhaps its Drivel, in drag.

All that tells you is that you end up at the same IP address, it doesn't say anything about what site the server will give you based on where in the world it thinks you are from your IP address.

The abilty for anyone anywhere in the world to get a .co.uk domain strikes me as a bit lax. Nominet didn't really have any answer and seem quite pleased with the relaxed access. Trouble is it's a jungle out there and it doesn't help when the game keeper doesn't bother putting any basic controls in place.

Personally I think .co.uk domains should have a UK address at which legal documents can be effectively served. ie. a PO Box or mail drop would not suffice. Though detecting a mail drop might be tricky.

really? they go to different addresses. they are not the same even if they appear to be to you.

C:\Users\Dennis>ping

Pinging

Ping statistics for 212.58.251.195: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 36ms, Maximum = 432ms, Average = 135ms

C:\Users\Dennis>ping

Pinging

Ping statistics for 212.58.253.67: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 37ms, Maximum = 41ms, Average = 38ms

Apart from the fact they don't go to the same address.