Another vote for Gandi but to answer your question specifically....
Trustworthy?
Gandi are widely regarded as being the most ethical registrar out there so if behaviour to date is a good indicator of future trust then their reputation speaks volumes.
Hidden costs
No hidden costs. They do tend to be a pound/dollar or so more expensive, however that leads me onto...
Privacy ...each domain includes their whois guard service for extra privacy by default. This usually costs extra at other registrars so, all told, gandi works out as cheap, or cheaper, than most other registrars if you value your privacy,
Comparison
There's horrible companies out there who engage in question practices so it really does make a difference who you go with
To give an example here's some of my experiences with 1&1 which might help you understand the sort of difference a good registrar makes....
- Incessant cold calling with vile pre-written scripts designed to prey on un-technical people's ignorance (this was almost once a week at one point and took several attempt to get them to remove me from their list....)
- Hidden transfer costs on various domains
- 'anti-pattern' upselling of other services on their site
- Weird billing practices (such as billing you months away from when the domain renewal actually happens)
- At least weekly email spam that's relatively hard to unsubscribe from.
- You don't so much register a domain with them as you have 'an account'.
To go into that last one in a little more depth it means that they insist on auto renewing your domain and will charge you to transfer a domain away so it's often easier just to pay.
Eventually my CC details with them expired and I decided to just let the domain go rather than continuing giving them money.
However in response they started sending me ever more threatening emails about my CC card being expired and then sending letters to my house saying they'd pass the debt for auto renewing my domain on to a collection agency!
What's worse tho is the domain name didn't need renewing for 8 or 9 months but they had reregistered it anyway just to try and make me pay even tho they knew my CC details were expired!!
Ps. No affiliation to Gandi, just a fan that thinks they've proved themselves as a company and deserve your money. Also think Namecheap are pretty good, though Gandi would be the one i'd recommend first and foremost, particularly amongst slashdotters!
The idea that Linux itself is somehow massively power inefficient are, I expect, wildly ignorant.
The fact is that in order to get the sort of battery life that a Macbook running OS X does requires that the kernel/drivers/software all be optimized for that specific hardware.
Likewise, mobile phones running Android get exceptional battery life because their power output is tuned to the hardware.
And as for servers, engineers already design for maximum power per watt - the notion that there are datacenters wasting megawatts of electricity just because they're running Linux is asinine.
Was blown away by what they've doing here (note: I was the original submitter), however the thing I found bizarre - particularly in 2015, and given their target market is techies - was the inclusion of a DVD drive bay...
Battery life is arguably one of the most important features of any laptop, particularly amongst Linux users where - due to a lack of OEM tuning - installing Linux on other laptops typically only brings around ~2/3rd of the native OS's battery life.
Leaving space for an extra HDD or SSD is sorta cute but even individual SSD capacities are huge nowadays. If they absolutely had to go with the extra bay, it's a crying shame there's no option for second battery.
To their credit they're promising a 13'' version sans DVD drive next, however this perhaps only goes to reinforce that the additional of a DVD drive in the 15" model was an overstretch
Who knows, perhaps even someone from Purism is reading this and could enlighten us as to the choices they made?
I guess except those that do not drink alcohol whatsoever (God I feel sorry for them, when they wake up in the morning, THAT is the best they're gonna feel all day!!)
nicely put, tho 'waking up like shit and feeling that all day' is what keeps me a non-drinker the other 6 days of the week!
No one cares and it is just a boring day job with no passion left. This new CEO needs to excite her employees and fire QA and security people and provide a vision for improvments.
I remember a similar company, popular for a while a few years back, that given their name, you would of thought were born to execute on such a strategy.
Gandi.net - ethical registrar that don't advertise
on
GoDaddy Backs SOPA
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Gandi.net are a sizable international registrar i first heard of back during the last 'elephant sized' Godaddy debacle.
They support a load of projects like Debian and the EFF, along with charities like the International Federation of Human Rights and the WWF.
They cost a tiny bit more than Godaddy but it's a pittance given the manner with which they conduct themselves.
I like to read all the stories that get posted (and i'd wager i'm far from the only one) and would like a way of knowing what stories i've missed when i take a holiday, or am too busy to visit.
This could be solved with a timeline that shows a condensed view of which days & stories made it to onto your screen compared with those days for which there's no visit recorded.
Play On Linux (Re:Every windows application)
on
Wine 1.2 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Just the other day i discovered Play On Linux which fits this need.
While games are a primary feature it includes support for many of the common apps as well.
In addition to apps with built in support you can find scripts in their forum for recent versions of Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and the like
I went to Kinetica the other day and saw this and was definitely impressed.
What i don't think is obvious from RTFA was that he was running Ubuntu! There were actually 3 individual arms setup, all communicating thru a wireless access point to a laptop he had in front of him.
There were even mini postcards he was giving out with a rather dashing interpretation of Alan Turing on it:)
Would agree with the 1 Desktop Support to 100 Users figure for windows as well. Plus an optional employee in training to handle holidays, upcoming promotions to SA etc
On experience would say that ratio should hold even in a company with only 100 or so non-tech related users. Never been in a company with 5000 desktops.
At 1 to 50 you'd be expecting them to do a lot more than just help users, fix machines and write procedures.
I'd say no.
Given the likely chance that they will open source only the gui code and not the protocol library, the program might as well be closed source.
A program like Pidgin that wanted to include skype support would have to include a pre-compiled 'blackbox' file to actually communicate with anything, and since the source for this was not available, it could no longer be distributed as open source.
Even the second biggest one (12mb) is only 24kbps / 8000Hz and sounds like crap.
And there's 8mb and 4mb versions below that!
Surely a single 64kbps 220000Hz stream would of done?:s
The large version is here - 96kpbs / 32000Hz....
http://cluebytwelve.net/anticipation/Stross-Krugman%202009-08-06hi.mp3
In all probability it may be that a cross of all factors is at work.
Perhaps some people see it as queuing while others always look for the alternative way through.
Apparently its quite a big thing in Jamaica to go around throwing car battery acid in peoples faces......don't underestimate the depths of human depravity
commercial stations are already on the band wagon
on
BBC Launches APIs
·
· Score: 1
Could a commercial broadcaster ever take a step like this?
As Channel 4 who put out amazing programs/films/ documentaries.. and probably do more than anyone else to make americans jealous of british tv, are also members then, yes.. expect to see content from them soon.)
btw.. Channel 4 do have a kind of public charter to appeal to a more alternative/minority audience.. but are self funded through tv adverting etc.
Would be interesting to see outside of England though.
I would also like to see copyright last for 20 years (and not 95+ like the industry.)
Unfortunately though i believe this would be impossible for the big companies to agree to.
The amount of material generated in the last ~50 years is massive and releasing it for free distribution would destroy the marketplace for new product. Remember kids its all about capitalism and you gotta keep generating new revenue so the copyright laws keep on getting extended.
Also the copyright to something, (like the beatles), is brought and sold based on its future value.. try michael jackson/sony/emi your gonna takeaway their cash cow.
(not that i imagine they would of argued it like this in the sonny bono case though.)
Unfortunately though i believe this would be impossible for the big companies to agree to.
The amount of material generated in the last ~50 years is massive and releasing it for free distribution would destroy the marketplace for new product. Remember kids its all about capitalism and you gotta keep generating new revenue so the copyright laws keep on getting extended.
Also the copyright to something, (like the beatles), is brought and sold based on its future value.. try michael jackson/sony/emi your gonna takeaway their cash cow.
(not that i imagine they would of argued it like this in the sonny bono case though
with the emergance of cable tv in britain the bbc sold loads of its own content to ukgold who replay classic old tv - in some cases an entire season of a programme for 1 pound.
- although co-owned by the bbc isn't that essentially giving your content to the competition?
installing flash player manually, etc, configuring samba for the desktop, etc, setting up x11 at 65hz for my tft, etc, compiling drivers, etc, decss for mplayer.
been using linux off and off for 5 years and reckon it'll take me another 5 to be anywhere near productive on it... by then general tasks should be about the level of windows 98: manageable... rather than requiring a godlike ability at the command line (that those of use coming over from windows don't have...)
Slashdot Mirror
Their figures work out at an average of $221,809 per job
And even more in New York where it's $252,169.
Given average wages in the IT sector are nothing close to that it goes to show just how much is being pumped away at the top.
Another vote for Gandi but to answer your question specifically....
Trustworthy?
Gandi are widely regarded as being the most ethical registrar out there so if behaviour to date is a good indicator of future trust then their reputation speaks volumes.
Hidden costs
No hidden costs. They do tend to be a pound/dollar or so more expensive, however that leads me onto...
Privacy
...each domain includes their whois guard service for extra privacy by default. This usually costs extra at other registrars so, all told, gandi works out as cheap, or cheaper, than most other registrars if you value your privacy,
Comparison
There's horrible companies out there who engage in question practices so it really does make a difference who you go with
To give an example here's some of my experiences with 1&1 which might help you understand the sort of difference a good registrar makes....
To go into that last one in a little more depth it means that they insist on auto renewing your domain and will charge you to transfer a domain away so it's often easier just to pay.
Eventually my CC details with them expired and I decided to just let the domain go rather than continuing giving them money.
However in response they started sending me ever more threatening emails about my CC card being expired and then sending letters to my house saying they'd pass the debt for auto renewing my domain on to a collection agency!
What's worse tho is the domain name didn't need renewing for 8 or 9 months but they had reregistered it anyway just to try and make me pay even tho they knew my CC details were expired!!
Ps. No affiliation to Gandi, just a fan that thinks they've proved themselves as a company and deserve your money. Also think Namecheap are pretty good, though Gandi would be the one i'd recommend first and foremost, particularly amongst slashdotters!
The idea that Linux itself is somehow massively power inefficient are, I expect, wildly ignorant.
The fact is that in order to get the sort of battery life that a Macbook running OS X does requires that the kernel/drivers/software all be optimized for that specific hardware.
Likewise, mobile phones running Android get exceptional battery life because their power output is tuned to the hardware.
And as for servers, engineers already design for maximum power per watt - the notion that there are datacenters wasting megawatts of electricity just because they're running Linux is asinine.
Was blown away by what they've doing here (note: I was the original submitter), however the thing I found bizarre - particularly in 2015, and given their target market is techies - was the inclusion of a DVD drive bay...
Battery life is arguably one of the most important features of any laptop, particularly amongst Linux users where - due to a lack of OEM tuning - installing Linux on other laptops typically only brings around ~2/3rd of the native OS's battery life.
Leaving space for an extra HDD or SSD is sorta cute but even individual SSD capacities are huge nowadays. If they absolutely had to go with the extra bay, it's a crying shame there's no option for second battery.
To their credit they're promising a 13'' version sans DVD drive next, however this perhaps only goes to reinforce that the additional of a DVD drive in the 15" model was an overstretch
Who knows, perhaps even someone from Purism is reading this and could enlighten us as to the choices they made?
I guess except those that do not drink alcohol whatsoever (God I feel sorry for them, when they wake up in the morning, THAT is the best they're gonna feel all day!!)
nicely put, tho 'waking up like shit and feeling that all day' is what keeps me a non-drinker the other 6 days of the week!
opps. somewhat carelessly posted as AC. is there any way to delete?!
4 years too late.
No one cares and it is just a boring day job with no passion left. This new CEO needs to excite her employees and fire QA and security people and provide a vision for improvments.
I remember a similar company, popular for a while a few years back, that given their name, you would of thought were born to execute on such a strategy.
Gandi.net are a sizable international registrar i first heard of back during the last 'elephant sized' Godaddy debacle.
They support a load of projects like Debian and the EFF, along with charities like the International Federation of Human Rights and the WWF.
They cost a tiny bit more than Godaddy but it's a pittance given the manner with which they conduct themselves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandi
https://www.gandi.net/supports/
I like to read all the stories that get posted (and i'd wager i'm far from the only one) and would like a way of knowing what stories i've missed when i take a holiday, or am too busy to visit. This could be solved with a timeline that shows a condensed view of which days & stories made it to onto your screen compared with those days for which there's no visit recorded.
Just the other day i discovered Play On Linux which fits this need.
While games are a primary feature it includes support for many of the common apps as well.
In addition to apps with built in support you can find scripts in their forum for recent versions of Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and the like
.
I went to Kinetica the other day and saw this and was definitely impressed. What i don't think is obvious from RTFA was that he was running Ubuntu! There were actually 3 individual arms setup, all communicating thru a wireless access point to a laptop he had in front of him. There were even mini postcards he was giving out with a rather dashing interpretation of Alan Turing on it :)
Would agree with the 1 Desktop Support to 100 Users figure for windows as well. Plus an optional employee in training to handle holidays, upcoming promotions to SA etc On experience would say that ratio should hold even in a company with only 100 or so non-tech related users. Never been in a company with 5000 desktops. At 1 to 50 you'd be expecting them to do a lot more than just help users, fix machines and write procedures.
I'd say no. Given the likely chance that they will open source only the gui code and not the protocol library, the program might as well be closed source. A program like Pidgin that wanted to include skype support would have to include a pre-compiled 'blackbox' file to actually communicate with anything, and since the source for this was not available, it could no longer be distributed as open source.
Even the second biggest one (12mb) is only 24kbps / 8000Hz and sounds like crap. And there's 8mb and 4mb versions below that! Surely a single 64kbps 220000Hz stream would of done? :s
The large version is here - 96kpbs / 32000Hz....
http://cluebytwelve.net/anticipation/Stross-Krugman%202009-08-06hi.mp3
I would imagine the same principle might apply to those who in crowds who rush inbetween people or push past others.
While similar i'm not sure it fits 'the mob as a fluid' theory though:
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2009/01/physics-of-crowds.html
Itself somewhat dismissed (at least in passing) for disregarding irrationality here:
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13174313
In all probability it may be that a cross of all factors is at work. Perhaps some people see it as queuing while others always look for the alternative way through.
...and this is the worst askslashdot ever.
that is all.
Their defense is solid - there is no difference between them and something like google image search...
But I can't help thinking that such a vital tenant of the internet is at risk from them having named themselves The Pirate Bay.
'Pirate' being a word the recording industry has tirelessly popularised as a banner under which to demonize copyright infringers.
It'd be like finding microsoft not guilty of anti-competitive behaviour had they been called monopolysoft.
What if someone *intentially* breaks one open?
...don't underestimate the depths of human depravity
Apparently its quite a big thing in Jamaica to go around throwing car battery acid in peoples faces...
Could a commercial broadcaster ever take a step like this?
.. and probably do more than anyone else to make americans jealous of british tv, are also members then, yes .. expect to see content from them soon.)
.. Channel 4 do have a kind of public charter to appeal to a more alternative/minority audience .. but are self funded through tv adverting etc.
This sounds like the creativearchive in all but name.
As Channel 4 who put out amazing programs/films/ documentaries
btw
Would be interesting to see outside of England though.
thats stupid .. i mean atlhons started at, what, 500mhz? ...or what if someone ends up upgrading their machine from a duron/celeron?
I would also like to see copyright last for 20 years (and not 95+ like the industry.)
.. try michael jackson/sony/emi your gonna takeaway their cash cow.
Unfortunately though i believe this would be impossible for the big companies to agree to.
The amount of material generated in the last ~50 years is massive and releasing it for free distribution would destroy the marketplace for new product. Remember kids its all about capitalism and you gotta keep generating new revenue so the copyright laws keep on getting extended.
Also the copyright to something, (like the beatles), is brought and sold based on its future value
(not that i imagine they would of argued it like this in the sonny bono case though.)
I would also like to see copyright last for 95.
.. try michael jackson/sony/emi your gonna takeaway their cash cow.
Unfortunately though i believe this would be impossible for the big companies to agree to.
The amount of material generated in the last ~50 years is massive and releasing it for free distribution would destroy the marketplace for new product. Remember kids its all about capitalism and you gotta keep generating new revenue so the copyright laws keep on getting extended.
Also the copyright to something, (like the beatles), is brought and sold based on its future value
(not that i imagine they would of argued it like this in the sonny bono case though
with the emergance of cable tv in britain the bbc sold loads of its own content to ukgold who replay classic old tv - in some cases an entire season of a programme for 1 pound.
- although co-owned by the bbc isn't that essentially giving your content to the competition?
installing flash player manually, etc, configuring samba for the desktop, etc, setting up x11 at 65hz for my tft, etc, compiling drivers, etc, decss for mplayer.
... by then general tasks should be about the level of windows 98: manageable ... rather than requiring a godlike ability at the command line (that those of use coming over from windows don't have...)
been using linux off and off for 5 years and reckon it'll take me another 5 to be anywhere near productive on it