[As always, please delete my email address from the message header and
from the digest ToC=2E Thanks=2E]
>>> When I use another redirection alias, through 'us.tc' or 'net.tc'
>>> still other ads show up in German or French.
>> I don't know the answer to any of your other questions. But
>> smartdots.com (the German registrar who is giving away those .tc
>> subdomains) has a header line in their redirected pages that says the
>> language is German.
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I did not realize '.tc' was assigned
> to Germany.
It's not. It's assigned to the Turks and Caicos Islands, which is a
British territory in the Caribbean.
> For some reason, I thought that '.de' was their country code.
True, but irrelevant. Dave didn't claim that the .tc domain was assigned
to Germany. What he actually said was that the .tc and net.tc
SUBdomains (not the overall .tc domain) were ADMINISTERED by (not assigned
to) a German registrar COMPANY (not the government of the Federal
Republic of Germany). Presumably, SmartDots purchased the rights to
those subdomains through legitimate means from the registrar of the overall
.tc domain, which is an English company called AdamsNames
Limited. AdamsNames itself presumably has an arrangement with the T&C
government (or possibly their colonial superiors in London) to administer
the .tc name space.
Bob Goudreau
Cary, NC
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It seems like that Adams Company has
a lot of domains they give away for free, just for asking, and taking.
Both '.tf' and '.tc' are entirely divided up with lots of sub-domains
under them, including all the various two letter country codes and
all the USA domains such as .org, .com, .net, etc ... if you go to
http://smartdots.com or http://cydots.com or http://www.unonic.com
or http://dhs.org you will see a drop down menu listing (in each
case) **dozens** of domains and sub-domains, etc where you are free to
help yourself, as long as the unique name of your site is not taken.
http://cydots.com gives away all the '.ms' domains the same way. And
they all -- cydots, smartdots, unonic, etc give lots of free webmaster
tools, if you want them; passworded web sites, hit counters, email,
etc. 'dhs.org' is out of Australia, and they give away lots of
dhs.org subdomains, and also 'n3.net'. They --'dhs.org' -- ask for a
five dollar donation for their work which can be paid through PayPal,
but all the '.tc', '.tf', and '.ms' domain names are totally free, and
they also offer email, and various webmaster tools
Every one of them works like re-directors, but they offer to 'cloak'
the real site you are at with whatever name you tell them. I am sure
there are more like that, those are the only ones I found thus far. I
do not know where '.ms' (smartdots.com) is located, but it must be
that same Adams Company, or at least they use the same domain
name-picking software that '.tf' (known to be Adams Company) uses.
So I suggest everyone stock up on domain names from all those
countries. PAT]
BobGoudreau@