TLD

Top Level Domain.

Since early days there were .net .com .org .gov .int and the country codes - all controlled by Network Solutions/InterNIC/ICANN. In July 2000 ICANN proposed some new TLDs: shop, .tel, and .news. Then a few days later it was .shop, .travel, .news, (.sex OR || .xxx), .web, .arts, .store.

In previous years they had already irritated many with unweildly policies to the effect of "you don't own your domain". Efforts were made to make new TLDs under better management.

Clear Channel spot.cc : with the TLD .cc have clearly defined policies and grant rights of rent to the domain holder.

OpenNIC unrated.net : sports an interesting range of .opennic, .null, .oss, .geek, and .parody TLDs. The Parody TLD being quite useful in clearly distinguishing commercial parody from fake companies passing themselves off as Microsoft. Helps those awful peta.com (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) vs peta.org (People Eat Tasty Animals) situations, eh? OpenNIC are proposing several future TLDs including .search, .groovy, and .bbs.

Unfortunately these efforts were useless to a large degree. Spot.cc is available via ICANN but only because .cc used to be a small country (thus already in the door). Many DNS servers don't recognise anything that's not provided by ICANN. Because although anyone's welcome to make a DNS server's news.com point at goatse.cx no one will use your DNS - and you're still under ICANN's thumb.

Add the DNS server "199.5.157.128" to your TCP/IP settings in order to access a quite comprehensive list of responsible rogues (they don't have alternative .com's - they just list what they've claimed themselves). Then you can access http://the.earth.

"The agency, known as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, chose '.biz,' '.aero,' '.name,' '.coop' and '.info' to add to the pool of Net names. The others are '.pro' for professional Web sites and '.museum.'"
- CNET.com (http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-3730464.html?tag=st.ne.1002.thed.ni)

Gads, wtf are they thinking? This will destroy CGI (which are looking for .??? or .?? addresses..

like.. www.mycrapsite.museum? WTH?! this is going to totally invalidate everything; no longer can we check for valid hostnames without actually pattern matching.. this is lame.. very lame.

My question is, does ICANN have any idea what they're doing? I don't think so... i mean god.. at the very least you should keep the TLDs to a 3-letter minimum! .museum!? Gads! What's the internet coming to?! I really hope that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration does not approve these top level domains... or I'll have a whine more.

Thermoluminescent Dosimeter

Used to measure the amount of radiation someone has received. The TLD is worn on the belt. There are two different kinds in use that I know of: calcium flouride and lithium flouride. On nuclear submarines, the CaF TLD's are worn by the nuc's, and the LiF TLD's are worn by coners. So in a way, they are really coner identification badges, or a mark of inferiority.

They have a little crystal inside (made of CaF or LiF), mounted on an electrode, and wrapped with wire. The crystal absorbs gamma radiation. Later, to read the TLD, a current is applied, which causes the crystal to emit light proportional to the amount of radiation which was received by the wearer, which is sent to a photomultiplier tube that somehow interprets this and charts the result on graph paper.