October 2009

Domain Helper

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On the topic of burying the web's complexity behind a "user friendly" interface:

If you are a Comcast user you may have noticed a change in your surfing: if you mistype a URL in the address bar at the top of your browser you are taken to a Comcast "search" page (powered by Yahoo!) that asks you if you want to try another search.

If you are a purist your head just exploded--the address bar is not a search engine nor should it be redirecting you to one!

Errors that lead to bogus search pages are the oldest trick in the web's rigged deck. Whether the search is functional doesn't matter--the "portal" page is essentially an ad.

Fortunately you can disable what Comcast calls its "Domain Helper": Log into your Comcast user account, go to

"My devices" / Domain Helper / status: ON

and turn the status to OFF. It takes 24 hours and a modem reboot before the change is effective.

You will feel less helpless and dependent on a big corporation to define your web experience and you might actually enjoy seeing what happens when you type "tw5tter.com" or "go5ogle.com"--just don't click any links on the non-Comcast search page you discover.

Other posts about this: 1 / 2 (opting out has gotten less complicated since this post but agreed that opt-out should be the default) / 3 ("typosquatting"- nice!) / 4

Update, Jan. 2012: Comcast has ceased using Domain Helper because it's incompatible with DNSSEC, which it just implemented. Their statement:

When we launched the Domain Helper service, we also set in motion its eventual shutdown due to our plans to launch DNSSEC. Domain Helper has been turned off since DNS response modification tactics, including DNS redirect services, are technically incompatible with DNSSEC and/or create conditions that can be indistinguishable from malicious modifications of DNS traffic (including DNS cache poisoning attacks). Since we want to ensure our customers have the most secure Internet experience, and that if they detect any DNSSEC breakage or error messages that they know to be concerned (rather than not knowing if the breakage/error was "official" and caused by our redirect service or "unofficial" and caused by an attacker), our priority has been placed on DNSSEC deployment -- now automatically protecting our customers...

Translation: (i) "We'll treat you like idiots until it's no longer in our interests to do so" and (ii) "I meant to do that."

Inbox Bloat and Apple

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Blogger C-Monster complains about inbox bloat from artists and publicists sending her photos, PDFs, and other unnecessarily large files. Commenter KS has a theory for the large files besides the simple rudeness of the senders:

I blame this sad state of affairs on Steve Jobs, for bringing us ever closer to the Totally Thoughtless Convenience promised by high tech.

By burying complexity (including any notion of file size or format) under an intuitive interface and lozenge-like packaging, we’ve been turned into apes like the ones hooting at the monolith in Kubrick’s 2001.

Bill Gates has brought untold suffering to the brains of billions, but at least some of them have an idea what “100K” means.

This comment arrived at a timely moment, since yours truly had been arguing with Apple fans who are shocked, shocked to learn that anyone out there could dislike the Apple (TM) spherical trust family of products (I haven't read the last few comments--I was starting to feel overwhelmed). It is true that Safari started the trend of resampling and zooming whole browser pages that now Windows and even Firefox are following. Hey, Moore's Law means more processor power, right? Let's start using that puppy!

But Windows is hardly blameless in the "let's hide what's under the hood from users" dept. In Windows, file types are hidden by default. You have to poke around in the control panel to turn on extensions so you know whether that sound file is a 3 megabyte mp3 or a hard-drive filling 20 megabyte .wav. Microsoft also invented something insidious called an .mht file for rendering Web pages. Instead of just the html code and some pictures in an associated folder, when you click an .mht it immediately goes on the Web and looks for CSS information and other data necessary to render the page. Maybe it will find it, maybe it won't and you will be looking at nothing or a logon screen somewhere you didn't ask to see.

C-Monster's and KS's points are good, though--people should have some basic awareness of the size of the files they are sending and the effect of that size on the recipient's hard drive, Mother Earth, etc. C-Monster refers to the "low res world" of email HTML--heck, a few years ago emails were text-only and some hackers still think it was bloat-inducing when HTML became standard issue.