Slashback: Deception, Fusion, Membership 254
"Congratulations! You may already own goats.cx!" King Mongo writes: "Well, well. First Verisign sent mail to trick domain owners into switching registrars ( as described earlier on Slashdot ); today I received a similar letter from Verisign asking me to renew cruel-intention.com with them. The problem is, I never bought cruel-intention.com and I've never used Verisign as a registrar. But what's this? Whois says I've owned it since September 2001? And the Technical Contact is Verisign? And it's registered for 10 years? You can bet I'll be contacting my state AG, as well as the USPS Inspectors' office; what if the domain name was offensive, or actionable (it may even be a DMCA violation)? Verisign has taken it upon themselves to hijack my identity and expose me to litigation! At least they let me know!"
Port softly, and carry a big Club. joestar writes: "Just seen in Mandrake Linux news... It seems that the recent call for Mandrake Club subscriptions had a double effect: it was a financial success for MandrakeSoft ($390,000 since the Club was first created on November 28th, 2001), and at the same time it generated lots of questions about this new approach of doing business with Free-Software. In a really interesting message, MandrakeSoft's CEO Jacques Le Marois gives all details about the Club results and why and how they are currently inventing a new business model dedicated to Free-Software oriented companies, since the traditional business models fail for these companies. Actually I'm impressed."
OK, perhaps we only have the way sideways. gh0ul writes "news.com is featuring an article regarding Microsoft and Unisys' joint venture to steer companies/individuals away from Unix and branch in to the corporate servers based on Windows2000. With all the negative impact towards 'wehavethewayout.com', im supprised they kept it going.. guess that $28 million matters.."
We've patented that way to think, sorry. An Anonymous Coward writes: "The Symantec marketing droids are on the rampage again. After patenting their definition update technology, this time they patented heuristic virus scanning. When will this insanity end? :P"
I'll believe it when it's powering my air-car. abburdlen writes: "A month ago an article in the Journal Science appeared hyping the possibility of tabletop fusion. Quick summary: Sonoluminescence in heavy acetone ... temperature of collapsing bubbles reaching temperature hotter than the Sun ... evidence of fusion. There was some excitement. There were also many initial skeptics. Looks like the doubtful win again. From the APS, 'The possibility of a major discovery has been obscured by substandard experimental techniques.' Ouch."
One day we'll all have decent bandwidth, right? Pathway writes "I know this has been looked at by slashdot before, but here's a good update comparing the Zipp Fiber to the Terabyte Triangle in Spokane at thelocalplanet.com. In the article, they compare how one prodject is so successful, while the other is foundering. It's a good read."
Mirrors. (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, how about some dedicated FTP bandwidth for club members? I know the release of the PPC-8.2 may well flatten the public servers.
--saint
Re: (Score:3, Flamebait)
Re:Mirrors. (Score:2)
-BlueLines
Re:Mirrors. (Score:2)
I also don't understand how they can claim 3 million users worldwide. Where would numbers that high come from? They'd have to be desktop users, since most users are desktop users. Let's say there are a billion computer users worldwide, and 0.5% of them (according to a recent Slashdot story) use Linux. That makes 5 million desktop Linux users worldwide. How can 3 million of them be using Mandrake? Is Mandrake really more popular on the desktop than every other Linux distro put together?? I suspect they're double-counting people. After all, it's notoriously difficult for web sites to get accurate counts of unique visitors.
Re:Mirrors. (Score:2)
"We have the way out" (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah sure... millions of slashdotters thought that they could actually find a way out from Micro$oft!!!!!
cool! (oh wait) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:cool! (oh wait) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:cool! (oh wait) (Score:2)
Or a PIII laptop owner. My Compaq Evo will sear skin if you don't get some good ventilation on it. I guess a burned thigh is one way to get me to stop playing EverQuest.
I'm typing on a Compaq Evo N160 right now. It actually keeps a pretty decent (warm) temperature on my lap. No searage here. (P3/1G, 256M, 14.1 TFT, 20G + DVD)
Re:cool! (oh wait) (Score:2)
If you have enough energy to raise one molecule of acetone by 1,000,000 centigrade degrees, you also only have enough energy to raise 1,000,000 molecules of acetone by 1 centigrade degree.
That one molecule would be spectacularly hot, but the amount of energy in relation to the mass of surrounding fluid (assuming a couple of liters of fluid) is fairly low. The problem would be if you get the rate of fusion too high, and raise the whole mass 1,000,000 centigrade degrees.
Re:cool! (oh wait) (Score:2, Informative)
Others have addressed your confusion between temperature and actual energy content, but there's one thing more: The surface of the sun is not hot enough to cause nuclear fusion. They need to get near the temperature of the Sun's core to have a chance of fusion.
Actually, it's worse than that. To get fusion you have three factors involved: temperature, time, and pressure. All three multiplied together form a fusion quality number:
In the Sun's core all three are enormous. In the experimental reactors, the time is short (milliseconds vs. millenia) and the pressure is much less (whatever they can manage with magnetic fields and/or inertia vs. the weight of an entire star). As a result, the temperature has to be even higher than that in the Sun's core.They can offset this by using isotopes that are easier to fuse (deuterium and tritium), but that only helps so much.
Goats.cx? (Score:3, Funny)
I would rather own goatse.cx [goatse.cx] instead. Imagine the number of hits from losers you would get!
Re:Goats.cx? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Goats.cx? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Goats.cx? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Goats.cx? (Score:3, Funny)
You say that as if they're two different things...
Wow! (Score:2, Funny)
Check out this bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
Oh yeah! Spin, baby! spin!
Re:Check out this bullshit (Score:2)
"We have the way out! (except when you get a whole mess o' hits, then we can't find the way.)"
Re:Check out this bullshit (Score:2)
Come out of the light (of Unix) and into the darkness (of Microsoft Windows).
Re:Check out this bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
I think instead, it's a subtle bit of sarcasm on Mr. Kanellos' part. Go back and read it again.
--
Re:Check out this bullshit (Score:2)
Re:Check out this bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
And news.com reporters *AREN'T* Microsoft PR flacks?
Re:Check out this bullshit (Score:2, Funny)
Or maybe Verisign hijacked wehavethewayout.com and gave it to King Mongo for a few days.
"If I were King Mongo for just one day..."
Re:Check out this bullshit (Score:2)
Re:Check out this bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to be a wet blanket, but that sentence is obviously the article author's tongue-in-cheek comment. If Microsoft and Unisys declined to comment, then how could they say anything about clamoring IT managers?
Re:Check out this bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
This is about as embarrassing as the time I accidentally mixed up my boss's 12 year-old son's site with shemalesonline.com
Expensive Experts (Score:4, Insightful)
So far, their non-experts:
1) Installed a system that has embarrassed the company (by using the competitor's OS)
2) While fixing this, it was down for ages (more embarrassment)
3) Now that it's up, it's a sitting duck (with MySQL bound to the external network interface) for crackers
Now, tell me again about how companies shouldn't use experts?
Very Interesting Read on Cold Fusion (Score:5, Interesting)
Professor David Goodstein of Caltech has a very interesting paper on the physics of cold fusion [caltech.edu] and the history of the initial "discovery". He doesn't predict Mr. Fusion reactors strapped to the backs of our DeLoreans anytime soon.
Re:Very Interesting Read on Cold Fusion (Score:2)
Maze (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maze (Score:2)
They have the way out of the light into the dark.
Support alternate roots (Score:4, Informative)
--davidu
Re:Support alternate roots (Score:2, Interesting)
Jason
OpenNIC will never catch on (Score:5, Insightful)
From OpenNIC's TLD list [unrated.net], you have chosen the TLDs .glue, .indy, .geek, .null, .oss, .parody, and .bbs. All of these are either horribly narrow-reaching and have no reason to be a TLD (.geek, .oss, .parody), sound stupid (.glue, .indy), look stupid (.geek, .oss, .bbs), or are too long (all of them except .oss and .bbs).
These are the same reasons nobody wants a domain under .biz, .info, .museum or any of the other "official" new TLDs. Geeks seem to be naturally deficient at proper design [themes.org], so I'm not blaming what is essentially a geek project for having this problem. An alternative to the monstrosity Verisign and ICANN have made of their root servers is severely needed. But, if I may, I would like to suggest you ditch these ugly TLDs and put some more thought into choosing names people actually would want on the end of their site names. Think to yourself, would you seriously consider getting a ".parody" domain? Here are some tips:
Re:OpenNIC will never catch on (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes, new TLDs are needed... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure - kick the danes, while you're at it! (Score:4, Interesting)
.dk is an official TLD for the "danish" part of the web.
Thank you for telling us, that our TLD is ugly.
Go suck on my.dk
Re:OpenNIC will never catch on (Score:3, Insightful)
You are expressing a shocking (to me) level of doubt in something which is a clearly better alternative to the ridiculous conservatism in the TLD world. The TLDs OpenNIC has chosen aren't good enough for you. Suggest some! Isn't that the point? It's a system that's open enough that everyone can help make it better, instead of something like ICANN. That's the point of OpenNIC. Open. NIC. Not ICANN.
(For the record, I hadn't heard of OpenNIC until today)
Someone in another thread mentioned this, and it's true: what we really want is any TLD at all. Why append three letters to a URL when it's mostly meaningless now?
Most parties purchase
So how is the TLD remotely meaningful?
And FYI there has been acceptance of the new ICANN-endorsed TLD's.
I live in New York City and am a regular user of the MTA's (Metropolitan Transit Authority) services, most obviously and frequently the subway. Everywhere the MTA's old URL used to be on posters and signs, there is a little circle with "new" or something, and their new URL: http://www.mta.info.
".info" used to look stupid to me, too, but now it looks pretty darn normal.
So, general acceptance or not, some people seem to be finding this useful. "Think outside the box" and you'll eventually realize that the TLDs can actually convey useful information about a URL.
All it takes to make the unfamiliar familiar and the awkward comfortable is a little love and clarity. Why wait?
Re:Support alternate roots (Score:3, Informative)
Technically, I think that this is not quite right. I believe that OpenNic does not support the icann
Personally, I would have a hard time finding a way to care less than I already do about anything under
Re:Support alternate roots (Score:2)
I'm looking for "the way out" (Score:5, Interesting)
So far I've gotten Trim, InStr, InStrRev, Left, Right, and a few others done. Having these functions really make translating the code a lot easier.
I wonder, is this too trivial to post on sourceforge? I'd love to share.
Re:I'm looking for "the way out" (Score:2)
Re:I'm looking for "the way out" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm looking for "the way out" (Score:2)
Ummmm... you can cover a lot of ground if you just install Apache::ASP [apache-asp.org].
Is there a good registrar review site anywhere? (Score:4, Interesting)
Since there are so many ill-behaved registrars out there (starting with the root of all DNS evil, Verisign), I would really like to see some unbiased reviews of some of them. But Googling around, I'm having a hard time finding anything.
I'm mostly looking for a registrar whose customer agreement does not state somewhere in subparagraph J that they actually own my domain and can take it away anytime they feel like it for no good reason. I know the courts have said that they have that right anyway, at least in the US, but I'd at least prefer that they not shove it in my face.
Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere? (Score:3, Informative)
Their prices have gone up a little since I originally registered arnor.net and my other site, but their domain registration agreement is still readable, clearly states that you own the domain, and they can only take it away according to ICANN policies or non-payment. The web site makes it easy to modify the configuration for your domains. The free features like email and web site forwarding are really useful. If I register more domains, I'll keep going there.
And I should also mention Hosting-Network, Inc [featureprice.com] where I've got my site. I'm on the $60/year plan, they don't mess with your site, server is BSD/Apache with PHP,CGI and Perl, you get email addresses, lots of webspace, and your own IP address. It rocks.
At prices like this, everyone should have their own domain, website, and set of email addresses...
Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere? (Score:4, Informative)
--
kurukshetra [kurukshetra.org] all the desi news and views you could use
Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere? (Score:2)
Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere? (Score:2)
Personally, I use gandi.net - it's cheap, and it works for me.
I utterly hate netsol/verisign and everything they represent. There's a domain I wanted to buy recently that had expired almost a year ago, and I emailed to ask when I could expect it to be deleted from their database. Here's their response and my subsequent reply:
On Thu, 28 Feb 2002 CustomerService@networksolutions.com wrote:
> >
> Thank you for contacting VeriSign.
>
> VeriSign, Inc., periodically deletes domain names that are up
> for deletion in bulk since bulk deletion better enables us to
> insure that only those domain names that are actually up for
> deletion are properly deleted (as compared to running a deletion
> process).
Excuse me?
> The dates on which these bulk deletions occur are arbitrarily
> selected by our engineering department based upon system loading
> and other technical factors. In order to protect against
> an overload of our systems, we do not disclose these deletion dates.
So, to answer my question, it appears the answer is "When we feel like
it". Since this domain has been expired for almost a year, and you do
deletions in bulk, I think it's safe to extrapolate this to mean "Never".
> You may, therefore, either continue to check our site for the
> availability of the domain name and attempt to obtain it through
> the public registration process, contact http://www.snapnames.com
Who will charge me $45 for the privilege of monitoring a domain that I'll
never be able to buy because you won't delete it from the database.
> to attempt to back-order this domain, or, in the alternative, contact
> the listed registrant directly and discuss the possibility of
> executing a registrant name change agreement.
Since the current owner is a domain squatter, indicating my interest in
the domain would undoubtedly trigger them to charge an extortionate price.
This seems extremely bizarre considering the fact that they no longer
actually own this domain. By not deleting expired records, you're
effectively saving domain squatters huge amounts of money since they don't
actually need to renew the domain to retain ownership.
> Best regards,
> pat002
Thanks, pat002. Your answer is pretty much what I had expected. I know
that there's nothing you can personally do to help me, so I'd ask that you
pass my email onto whatever superior you can. Perhaps eventually someone
will realise that it's these sort of questionable business practices that
are driving many many people to use alternate domain registrars.
Other instances? More Proof? (Score:4, Interesting)
Has this happened to anyone else? I'm a bit skeptical of this. This could really land Verisign into some HOT HOT HOT water. It ain't like Verisign is going to target ONE person. If this has only happened to ONE person, then perhaps someone else registered the domain. What other domains does this guy have? Anything similar? Info Info info!!!! The slashback doesn't give much!
Re:Other instances? More Proof? (Score:2)
I notified (networksolutions at the time) them about their error and they actually wanted me to fax them a copy of my driver's license to verify my identity!
I finally emailed the admin contact listed for the domain and told them if they wanted their domain they needed to sort things out.
As it turned out, it was a stupid data entry error by some minimum wage slave... they mistyped one character and assigned me as the billing contact rather than the correct person...
For the life of me I can't understand how this company is still in business.... I have had nothing but problems whenever I delt with them, and their prices are inordiate...
Doug
What DB is wehavethewayout.com? (Score:5, Interesting)
But is the site itself entirely clean? The server yesterday revealed that some interesting ports were left open. The most interesting of which is port 3306, which is used by MySQL and Postgres. Since wehavethewayout.com was a BSD/Apache combination, it was almost certainly running an open source database, too. While Unisys has switched the front-end server to Windows IIS, the most likely explanation for keeping this port open is that the back-end still interfaces to a MySQL database. MySQL is cross platform, and there's a Windows version too. This would certainly make for a rapid port, as it doesn't require a rewrite of the cgi scripts.
Oh, will the pain never end (grin)...
Re:What DB is wehavethewayout.com? (Score:3, Informative)
Still, it's a fair assumption they were running MySQL. Possibly just out of the box -- does MySQL listen to a network port by default? PostgreSQL only listens on unix domain sockets by default, you actually have to edit the config to get it to listen to the network.
Re:What DB is wehavethewayout.com? (Score:2, Insightful)
wait a minute, how can you argue that using root is better than a non-priveleged account? Is the postgres account is compromised, they get postgres data. If root is compromised, they get the keys to your car.
Re:What DB is wehavethewayout.com? (Score:2)
The most interesting of which is port 3306, which is used by MySQL and Postgres.
Postgres (at least on my systems) defaults to tcp/5432.
Slashback. Hmm. (Score:2)
Clarification regarding "the way out" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also quite possible that since this really isn't an "in-house" Microsoft deal, they didn't have their web developers working on it...they probably farmed it out to some starving web-heads from SF for an absurdly low price. That said, most web developers don't develop for MS boxes simply because hosting companies charge twice as much for Windows space as a general rule.
Sure, it may seem like some mass hypocricy or something...but if the website isn't about "Use IIS for hosting two-page, temp web pages!" there really isn't much of an issue.
Also, notice the page has at the bottom:
"©1994-2002 Unisys Corporation. All rights reserved."
NOT
"©1994-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved."
-Jayde
Re:Clarification regarding "the way out" (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with the sentiment that this isn't about web hosting, but then again its about business. Appearances are important and downtime just looks bad period for potential customers. It may not be logical, but if my storefront is falling apart you probably won't walk in to check out my products regardless of their merits.
Well maybe it is logical, if a company can't properly set up a marketing site how much faith can one have in its other decisions in outsourcing. At a certain point you just have to ask yourself, "Who is making these outsourcing decisions and why do they still have a job?"
On top of that, this is a marketing attempt against open source which has very little marketing muscle. Its just plain embarassing to see the world's wealthiest corporation falter in front of some geeks and some IBM marketing.
Re:Clarification regarding "the way out" (Score:2)
You don't pull the plug on the old system until the new system is ready. If you don't know when the new system will be ready, that itself speaks volumes.
Speaking of IBM marketing, I keep remembering the Cheddar.com commercial, although in the case of wehavethewayout.com, Swiss and Limburger seem more appropriate than Roquefort.
Re:Clarification regarding "the way out" (Score:2)
Substandard techniques? (Score:3, Funny)
From the APS, 'The possibility of a major discovery has been obscured by substandard experimental techniques.
What kind of experimental technique could account for that kind of error? Oops! Maybe maybe we shouldn't have set it up in a nuclear reactor that must be where the heat is coming from!!
Re:Substandard techniques? (Score:2)
Patents (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if this is the case with Symantec, but I have a friend that works for a company in the semi-conductors business, and that company has a patent-incentive policy: for each patent request filled, the author receives a US$500 bonus. If the request is approved (and the company - not the author, of course - gets the patent), he/she gets another US$2000.
That would explain a lot of crazy/stupid/useless patents...
Re:Patents (Score:2)
Whats more important is that your name is on a patent. This makes a big difference to some folks, and employers as well. For the individual, it's kinda the professional equivalent of getting a research paper published.
Re:Patents (Score:4, Insightful)
wehavethewayout.com FTP (Score:3, Interesting)
You can still log in as anonymous, but there's just a dummy html file there. Before, you could find
The PR people know their stuff. I would imagine they took plenty of courses during those several days of downtime to learn how 'cp -R *' actually works.
Re:wehavethewayout.com FTP (Score:2)
It's BSD/Apache as a quick check of a million other posts on this and other sites would have found out and even the site in question would have told you. Microsoft runs BSD and UNIX very heavily internally and has done since the network was first set up
Now why they would choose apache over IIS is up to you to guess ?
I'm not defending them but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I worked for Univac a lo-ong time ago and (Score:2)
going with 2000, not XP (Score:2)
And we are supposed to trust them when they don't even bother getting a site up running XP as the OS?
Given that this is a flag ship promo site, you would think they would have all the OS issues sorted out well in advance.
If I was witty, I would think up something to do with the activation screwing them up.
Re:going with 2000, not XP (Score:2)
Re:going with 2000, not XP (Score:2)
Aaaargh. Win2K is a server OS. Windows XP is a desktop OS. Why would you use a desktop OS to host a website? That's almost as asinine as expecting palm.com to be running on an array of palm pilots.
Anyway, the campaign was about Big Iron data servers, not web servers.
Re:going with 2000, not XP (Score:2)
I assume that web servers are much easier and simpler than Big Iron data servers.
Re:going with 2000, not XP (Score:2, Informative)
Unix is the light (Score:3, Interesting)
which way would you go, from the light into the dark or from the dark in to the light?
thier PR ppl missed that metaphore =)
hehe
Re:Unix is the light (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Unix is the light (Score:2)
I closed a few IE windows, got back to the one for wehavethewayout.com, and Internet Explorer (5.0 on NT4) crashed on me.
Now what that has to do with going from the lighted and a-maze-ing unix side to the dark and bottomless pit Microsoft Windows side, I have no idea.
Re:Unix is the light (Score:2, Funny)
From February through July of 2000 we set out to identify software infrastructure trends of Internet computing. Our approach involved several different activities. We studied the needs and realities of eCommerce sites by visiting several of them and interviewing decision makers.
(We bought some stuff at Amazon and interviewed each other about our experiences.)
We analyzed appropriate fractions of current research activity by visiting universities and attending a few key conferences and workshops.
(We hung out at some colleges and went to some frat parties - sorority chicks rule!)
We also informed ourselves directly by exploring material available at appropriate Web sites [21, 23].
(We browsed the web.)
Re:Unix is the light (Score:2)
No wonder IBM mainframes are selling well. IBM knows something, and it's about tomorrow not just today.
From what I can tell, Microsoft offerings have sacrificed security, flexibility, and functionality for initial setup simplicity and wowser gizmos. Unix may be a maze (amazing?
Versign: They're Bastards! (Score:4, Informative)
Last year, when his domain was coming up to expire, he didn't want to pay Verisign's fees...so he just figured he's let it lapse and maybe go reregister it with someone else...trouble is, though its expired, Verisign hasn't released the domain!
So my friend can't renew/reregister with anyone except Verisign b/c they won't release the domain back into the pool of available domains!
No surprise about Mandrake (Score:3, Interesting)
I tried redhat at first, because thats what I heard was one of the best. But I found Mandrake to be friendlier to me, a windows user. It hasn't crashed in two months, and runs my apache server just fine. Also shares my home network connection, so I don't have to pay at&t the extra cash for extra IPs.
And I actually paid for my copy, bought it at staples. worth every penny.
"hacking" see "Whining " (Score:5, Funny)
Wank, wank, wank.
Well, keep that up and "hacker" will soon mean "a whinny little bitch." I'm so sick of that crap (well, thankfully it's mostly died down of late). It is entirely possible for words to have multiple meanings. The fact that a word you think sounds "cool" does not give you license to go out and try to change the English language. Sheesh.
Re:"hacking" see "Whining " (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually it does. English is a living language and usage dictates the meanings of words. A dictionary is not the guide to how words are spelled and what they mean, it is rather a reflection of usage.
From Ambrose Bierce:
"DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. "
Cold Fusion story and other things (Score:3, Funny)
As for the matter of wehavethewayout.com... Two companies that had it coming. The dinosaur and the Borg... wonder how much fingerpointing is going on right now. (Come to think of it, Rick Belluzzo... never mind.)
/Brian
More of the firestorm about that fusion experiment (Score:4, Interesting)
It's all very interesting, and I'll be curious to see what the final conclusions are. I'm still not sure if I think it was best to publish now, or wait for more independent confirmation. At least they didn't try to hide all the controversy (they even point out that senior science managers at Oak Ridge Lab contacted the journal and asked them to delay publishing the paper..)
Physics Today has an article on cold fusion (Score:2, Informative)
Verisign Renewals (Score:2, Funny)
If I remember correctly, there were all along the lines of:
fart-sluts.com
shitonmyface.com
I wish I still had the list, there were so funny!
wehavetheway... (Score:3, Insightful)
Good Registrar (Score:2, Informative)
I would recommend Gandi to any person registering a domain.
Could Terabyte's tagline be any more obnoxious? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh really? Well then PLEASE SHOOT ME NOW. Because I was hoping that the cure for AIDS and/or Cancer, the resolution of the Israeli/Palestine conflict, and perhaps cold fusion would be a big deal.
I recently had DSL installed, so apparently it's all downhill from here.
Steps to Buying a Domain Name For Dummies(tm) (Score:4, Informative)
Is it possible (easy?) for someone to register a domain name using someone else's information? That could be an explanation for Verisign sending you a letter about a domain you never registered...
Uhh... yeah. I guess you've never bought a domain.
Okay. For *.com, *.net and probably *.org:
It's really not very difficult.
Re:Steps to Buying a Domain Name For Dummies(tm) (Score:2, Informative)
Silly -- the TTL field in TCP has a maximum value of 255, so you could only send insecure credit card data through 254 routers. And the default TTL is usually 64 on Linux and FreeBSD, though it is higher on Solaris and Windows.
Realistically and conservatively you should only expect to be able to send your insecure data through about 60 routers. You'd need multiple routes or multicast to exceed 255 routers, so you may want to consider mass email or mass Usenet posting instead.
-Kevin
Re:Steps to Buying a Domain Name For Dummies(tm) (Score:3, Funny)
Silly -- the TTL field in TCP has a maximum value of 255, so you could only send insecure credit card data through 254 routers. And the default TTL is usually 64 on Linux and FreeBSD, though it is higher on Solaris and Windows.
Yeah. Hyperbole.
Realistically, however, less than 30 hops by traceroute.
Realistically and conservatively you should only expect to be able to send your insecure data through about 60 routers. You'd need multiple routes or multicast to exceed 255 routers, so you may want to consider mass email or mass Usenet posting instead.Calling Mastercard: "Hi, I'd like to cancel my card. No, I didn't lose it... I accidentally spammed over 1.3 million e-mail addresses and 40,000 newsgroups with it. Yeah. I think you can expect a little activity on that number over the next few years...."
Re:cruel-intention.com (Score:4, Interesting)
We naturally checked out the domain and it's unused -- probably because the initial payment to Verisign bounced (we had to cancel all our credit cards and start over) -- but Verisign's still trying to get us to pay for a renewal! Gotta love their optimism; too bad we can't get 'em arrested for fraud, but then I guess Verisign itself has technically done nothing wrong here, just tried to perpetuate someone else's fraud.
Re:cruel-intention.com (Score:2)
Sounds like someone just registered the domain to him for no good reason - most of mine are or were registered to fictitious addresses, it's easy enough to do. The record was updated in December; perhaps since the poster is listed as the owner, Verisign would be willing to give him information regarding the history of the domain. The state of the record prior to December might bear some information regarding who actually registered it.
In any case, I have my doubts that Verisign was behind this. Most likely it was some sort of prank, or maybe an undelivered gift?
Shaun
Re:'wehaveawayout' debacle... (Score:2, Informative)
No, they'll get a dialog asking them if they wish to install Java, and if so will then go ahead and download and install Microsoft's JVM. Subsequent visits to any site with java applets will work just fine without any prompting (because they already installed the JVM).
Re:what's up with the department? (slightly ot) (Score:2, Funny)
timothy
Re:heuristic might actually be useful... (Score:3, Informative)
/Brian