Cruising around Wingnuttery in cyberspace, I came across this article that is entitled "Desperation from Democrats" and says, among other things, that Kossacks are saying absolutely SCANDALOUS things about Govenor Palin.
Then in the comments, I saw someone attempting to be a cybersleuth and drawing some pretty wide conclusions. So, for the benefit of Wingnuts - here's how to use "teh interwebs".
The comment, in it's entirety, goes like this:
In the Linux console, if you enter the following commands, you can learn the secrets of a political dirty trick. First, look up the host of ‘sarahpalingayrights.com’ to get the site’s IP address.
host sarahpalingayrights.com
sarahpalingayrights.com has address 74.208.74.232
Then use the same command to look up the domain name pointer of that IP address.
host 74.208.74.232
232.74.208.74.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer obamadefense.com
Well, well. "Obamadefense.com," eh?
And what happens if you enter obamadefense.com on your browser’s address line?
Why, you’re redirected to none other than FightTheSmears.com, the official Barack Obama site that’s supposed to be defending him against smears.
Looks like they may have a second purpose: to generate a few smears of their own.
So let's take it apart, step by step.
First, sarahpalingayrights.com - it's true, if you look on an IP address checking site that IP address does indeed come out to 74.208.74.232 - that bit is fine.
But then it loses its way somewhat.
You see, 74.208.74.232 is owned by the hosting company GoDaddy.com which as well as fightthesmears.com has around 7,028,638 other domains that it regulates. However, if you type 74.208.74.232 into your browser window, what the internet does is check the highest hits to a site hosted at that address. The highest hitrate, in the event of a numeric address that is a gateway, is deemed to be the site the user wants, thus, fightthesmears.com with its high hit rate is regarded by Firefox and Internet explorer as the most likely destination for anyone typing 74.208.74.232 into their browser window. It's a bit like typing a word into the browser window instead of a full URL. Try it - type just the word dailykos into your browser. It will change what you've typed to http://www.dailykos.com and it does so by asking search engines what the most likely domain is that a person typing 'dailykos' would want to visit, based on site popularity.
This does not mean, however, that the Obama campaign owns sarahpalingayrights.com - in fact, the Sarah Palin site was registered by an organisation called "domains by proxy" which you will find a large number of right wing sites use to mask who actually owns the site. They get this company to register the site on their behalf specifically to ensure anonymity - try entering some sites into the IP checker for yourself, and see how many were registered by that organisation.
In comparison, fightthesmears.com was registered by "Obama for America" so it quite clearly isn't the same organisation.
For a comment on an article talking of Democrat desperation, this makes some very desperate - and extremely tenuous - links that don't hold up under scrutiny. Maybe the poster of that comment should learn how to use "teh interwebs" before accusing Democrats of smearing.