 Why doesn't nasa.gov get its url to work?
thwarted: They don't have an A record for nasa.gov.  For those who don't have dig (or don't care enough to do an actual DNS request and would rather trust some other, lesser tool):  $ dig nasa.gov

  ; <<>> DiG 9.6.1-P2-RedHat-9.6.1-7.P2.fc11 <<>> nasa.gov
  ;; global options: +cmd
  ;; Got answer:
  ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 40211
  ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

  ;; QUESTION SECTION:
  ;nasa.gov.                      IN      A

  ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
  nasa.gov.               300     IN      SOA     ns1.nasa.gov. dns.nasa.gov. 2008043229 10800 1200 3600000 14400

No A records.  $ dig www.nasa.gov

  ; <<>> DiG 9.6.1-P2-RedHat-9.6.1-7.P2.fc11 <<>> www.nasa.gov
  ;; global options: +cmd
  ;; Got answer:
  ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 22541
  ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 9, ADDITIONAL: 0

  ;; QUESTION SECTION:
  ;www.nasa.gov.                  IN      A

  ;; ANSWER SECTION:
  www.nasa.gov.           300     IN      CNAME   www.nasa.gov.speedera.net.
  www.nasa.gov.speedera.net. 120  IN      CNAME   www.nasa.gov.edgesuite.net.
  www.nasa.gov.edgesuite.net. 21600 IN    CNAME   a1718.x.akamai.net.
  a1718.x.akamai.net.     20      IN      A       64.81.79.72
  a1718.x.akamai.net.     20      IN      A       64.81.79.70

Looks like the whole site is served through Akamai too.What's a "direct @ url" ?  Now we're overloading the @ for something else too?