LISNews: Librarian News

www.thebookstandard.comDoes not exist according to whois records. But someone keeps submitting stuff from them, and google cache still seems to have them. Where's the hole in my internet?-- Ender, Duke_of_URL

Looks like they've been around for at least a year.  Whose whois are you using? - - - -% whois thebookstandard.comWhois Server Version 1.3Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registeredwith many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.netfor detailed information.   Domain Name: THEBOOKSTANDARD.COM   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com   Name Server: NYNS07.VNUUSA.COM   Name Server: NYNS09.VNUUSA.COM   Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK   Updated Date: 06-jul-2004   Creation Date: 24-may-2004   Expiration Date: 24-may-2007 [...]Registrant:VNU EMEDIA, Inc.   770 Broadway   NEW YORK, NY 10003   US   Domain Name: THEBOOKSTANDARD.COM   Administrative Contact:      Evans, Christian          cevans@vnuemedia.com      VNU eMedia, Inc.      770 Broadway      NEW YORK, NY 10003      US      646 654 5524 fax: 646 654 5583   Technical Contact:      Network Solutions, LLC.           customerservice@networksolutions.com      13200 Woodland Park Drive      Herndon, VA 20171-3025      US      1-888-642-9675 fax: 571-434-4620   Record expires on 24-May-2007.   Record created on 24-May-2004.   Database last updated on 15-Jun-2005 14:44:02 EDT.   Domain servers in listed order:   NYNS07.VNUUSA.COM            199.249.170.2   NYNS09.VNUUSA.COM            209.11.49.2

I don't use MSIE if I can at all help it. Mozilla on Win2k is my main browser, with Lynx at a Unix shell prompt in a completely different part of the country as my preferred debugging system. Both of them took both links (the article's at www.thebookstandard.com and your "corrected" one at just thebookstandard.com) without complaining. In all cases, I got through with no trouble.

I'm willing to believe that something funky is going on. I just can't manage to replicate it, and can't really figure out anything more based on your description.

Using Moz on Debian (Ubuntu).-- Ender, Duke_of_URL

Garbage in, garbage out. To grapple for a quick metaphor, you are trying to bang in a nail with a wrench.
WHOIS is access the database of *domains* (and top-level-domains). There is a limited ability to track individual hosts. Most people never bother to register individual hosts. So in the vast majority of cases, a WHOIS is for www.whatever.tld comes up empty. What you want for individual hosts is nslookup or dig.

The distributed WHOIS database is maintained in component pieces by several different authorities around the globe, according to top level domain. Depending on which authority your query is directed to, you can get seemingly ambiguous results. For a while, you couldn't get proper *.ORG info out of Internic/NetworkSolutions. Also, depending on your flavor/distro/version of *nix, you can get different results from fwhois than from whois.