Slashback: Deception, Fusion, Membership

Slashback arrives tonight with updates on the lukewarm path to cold fusion, one more update on what Microsoft claims is "the way out" (really, this time), a hopeful look at Mandrake's Club, and more -- read on below for the details.

"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."

Comments

Support alternate roots

[davidu]

There is a way to begin to move away from Verisign
OpenNIC :: http://www.opennic.unrated.net/

The OpenNIC is a user owned and controlled Network Information Center offering a democratic, non-national, alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries.

Membership in the OpenNIC is open to every user of the Internet. All decisions are made either by a democratically elected administrator or through a direct ballot of the interested members and all decisions, regardless of how they are made, within OpenNIC are appealable to a vote of the general membership.

Using their root zone will have NO adverse effects on your current websurfing but it will allow you to view alternative roots which have been democratically decided upon.

Check it out!

--davidu

Steps to Buying a Domain Name For Dummies(tm)

[BigBlockMopar]

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:

1. Type the name of the domain you want.
2. Read the message that it's already been taken.
3. Choose a new domain name.
4. Repeat 1-4 until you hit paydirt.
5. Type your name, country, address, telephone, e-mail address. Note: this e-mail address will be spammed, and all this other info will be visible in whois.
6. Whip out your credit card. Pay $35/year. Make sure your browser is using HTTPS before you click the form submit button and send your credit card across 400 unsecured routers.
7. Enter the hostnames of your nameservers. If you're hosting the site yourself, you will need to create a host record including name and IP address for each of your primary and secondary DNS.
8. Wait for confirmation e-mail, telephone call, etc.
9. Look your domain up in whois and find yourself!
10. Wait an agonizing two days or so before top-level DNS servers catch up with the whois database and people can see your Apache test page.

It's really not very difficult.

Patents

[felipeal]

When will this insanity end?

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:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere?

[Mr_Person]

Gandi has worked great for me. Only 12 euros per year (about $10) and their terms of service are very good (you actually own the domain). They also do website and e-mail redirection for free.

Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere?

[washirv]

I can't recommend gandi (www.gandi.net) highly enough. In addition to the small and entirely pro-consumer terms of service, it's really cheap: a mere $10. And since I switched to them, the email address that I use to register domain names has stopped getting spam. (The old one that I used with netsol still gets plenty). These guys are the best.
--
kurukshetra all the desi news and views you could use

Versign: They're Bastards!

[IronTek]

A friend of mine had registered a domain through Network Solutions (Verisign) and had renewed it for several years.

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!