Before anyone wonders: No, this isn't an official TLD. The domains you register there won't resolve for anyone unless they futz with their nameserver settings.<p>I'm not sure what to make of this. Looks like a bunch of hackers got really bored and perhaps had a beer too many...
Perhaps the 42registry should try to get openDNS to support .42, that would certainly open up a MUCH larger amount of people that its available to, its also reasonably easy to change to using openDNS servers.
Remember nic.d [0]? Its domain was 'nic.d,' a secret site was at '__._', and someone "registered" '☠.d' and '(>^_(7<i>.</i>)7'.<p>0: <a href="http://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/cult/whoNicDOffWithTheYummyJunkDomains.html" rel="nofollow">http://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/cult/whoNicDOffWithT...</a>
The really interesting thing here is the alternate DNS root that hosts the gimmick TLD. But it's not the first (remember AlterNIC?).<p>Getting involved with this will teach you about DNS, and that's probably the best reason to do it --- but there are risks. (Frex, you're implicitly trusting whoever's running it to direct you back to the mainstream root servers for ".com", and not to an alternate ".com" on which selected sites are directed through password-harvesting proxies.)
> WHY we do it<p>> Because a numeric TLD is something new. As far as we know, it has never been tested out in the open.
> Because it means being independent from ICANN, and we believe this to be an important aspect of the experiment.
> Because we CAN. And "we" also means YOU. Technically, the experiment works. It is not officially endorsed by the powers that be, but it<p>Point 1 is pretty equivalent to #3 "because we can", I don't think we're running out of alphabetical TLDs so I don't get the purpose of the experiment (If it ain't broke...).<p>Point 2 I don't understand, why do you need a <i>numerical</i> TLD to be independent from ICANN? Why no go for ".foo"?
I remember in the late 90s (when I was just out of the single digits) Dutch computer hobby magazines would regularly feature articles about the "alternet" or the "dark net", where they'd explain how you could visit so many more sites beyond the "normal" internet that were secret, "illegal" and exciting.<p>I'll never forget the screenshot they printed of a website with a photo of a sea and "Welcome to the atlantic ocean" on it: <a href="http://atlantic.ocean" rel="nofollow">http://atlantic.ocean</a>.
You can also use OpenNIC and get .geek, .free, .bbs, .parody, .oss, .indy, .fur, .ing, .micro, .dyn and .gopher domains.<p><a href="http://www.opennicproject.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.opennicproject.org/</a>
Now you can find all of the software that used a regex on [.0-9]+ to decide if you gave them an IP or a name.<p>I would never have done that… on any software that is still in service, to my knowledge.<p>Edit: The right way is not to try to determine which it is, pass it to inet_pton() on the assumption that it is a numeric address. If that fails, then pass it in to getaddrinfo() to let DNS or whatever the host uses for names have a crack at it. gethostbyname is obsolete now.
There are some other networks around: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_network_42" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_network_42</a>