Mind you, I'm sure NetSol will have a good [fake] explanation for this.
As shown in a previous message, "icy.hot" is one of the domain names that have expired back in February, yet is still unavailable for re-registration. Here are the revelant parts of the WHOIS information:
Domain Name: ICY.COM Record last updated on 08-Mar-1999. Record expires on 15-Feb-2000. Record created on 14-Feb-1996. Database last updated on 7-Jul-2000 16:34:07 EDT.
Go to Network Solution's Home Page and try to register "icy.com". You can't. Netsol says "Sorry, icy.com is not available.". Fair enough. So, I've decided that on behalf of the owner of icy.com, I'm going to pay his bill. So I go to the NSI Online Payment System. I enter "icy.com" as the domain I want to make a payment on. Here's the response I get:
Related information could not be retrieved for the domain. This could be because: 1.The top level domain is not a com, net, or org. 2.An invoice number could not be created for this domain. 3. The invoice number given does not match with that in the database.
Well, it isn't #1, and it isn't #2. It certainly isn't #3 because I did a lookup by the domain name, not the invoice number. And if I enter a domain name that completely doesn't exist, I get a different error:
Related information could not be retrieved for the domain. This could be because: 1.The domain information has not yet been processed or updated into the database. 2.You entered an incorrect domain name.
So, the domain name can't be registered. Okay. The domain name can't be renewed either. (Netsol *might* try to claim that they can do it with an invoice number -- but COME ON. Why would it be blocked in their automated payment system? I'm sure they'll have a good lie for this one.)
Network Solutions is making up the rules as they go along, and they need to have their feet held to the fire and be accountable for their actions. Someone ought to sue them over this.
I noticed that a WHOIS on my existing domain (with network solutions) gives only the most basic information. Is this what you are referring to, or something else?
Whois Server Version 1.1
Domain names in the.com,.net, and.org domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.
Domain Name: DOMAIN-NAME.COM Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC. Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com Name Server: NS1.DNS.COM Name Server: NS2.DNS.COM Updated Date: 26-jan-2000
>>> Last update of whois database: Sat, 8 Jul 00 04:46:44 EDT
The Registry database contains ONLY.COM,.NET,.ORG,.EDU domains and Registrars.
If you think your registrar has policies that work against you, switch! I used the Domain Name Buyer's Guide to select a new registrar to transfer my domains to. (Mind you, they do direct ICANN registrars only, not TUCOWS or CORE.) My choice? Gandi.Net provided an excellent value ($12/yr), and have what is probably the best legal policy around. Get THIS... The client owns the registered domain name. GANDI simply acts on the client's behalf.
About Network Solutions... they're anything but even handed or consistant. Of course, in the past, they HAVE let expired domains go back into the public pool and be re-registered by another person. (Take "police.net"... that was a customer at an ISP I worked for that let their domain name drop.) I know of many others. I also remember years ago they're harassing us and denying us a registration for "bingo.net", even though it was not taken at all! They would not let us register it!
Anyone who has had a great number of dealing with NetSol will have some war stories. This is definately a case where I'm going to vote with my dollars. I encourage others to do the same.
Honestly, if you freak at a portscan, you're a liittle paranoid.
Then the job of a systems administrator is to be paranoid. If my systems are being portscanned, I *better* investigate it and figure out what is going on.
Onto the bigger issue, I can see both sides. On one hand, I consider "ping" to be a _public_ network service. That is, if I send a ping packet to your machine, and it responds, it isn't intrusion (or "theft of CPU time") because you provide ICMP responses to the world as a regular service.
On the other hand, if someone is pinging my network in order to scan it, I am going to get miffed. Nothing I can do about it.
The moment I tried the "What's Related" button, I was a little miffed. (It was among the buttons I never use like "netscape" and "search" cluttering my browser pane.) They're getting the URLs I visit to see "what's related"? Now just what are the chances of them recording it for other purposes?
If you're worried about web bugs or cookies, here's a big one that people should be turning OFF.
I'm wondering how close they are coming towards the original programming structures of Pac-Man. (Yes, I know. But for those who don't, it was programmed in assembler for the Z-80 processor. I have the arcade game.) I've seen a number of vintage game programming books which detail in various ways how the game was programmed. (The different tables and what not.) I'm a little surprised that someone hasn't disassembled and documented the game's code.
Question: Will it still have the original cheat where if you fit into the right side of the "T" (which is above where you start) and face up while no ghosts are looking, you can stay there forever without getting caught?
You've got to laugh at this one. From page two, left column, "Voices from the FIN":
"It's great to receive the latest updates right in our mailboxes." - A. DeBlois
Either this quote is completely fictional, or they've quoted someone who is so completely out of touch to think that it is 'great' to 'receive the latest updates RIGHT IN OUR MAILBOXES!!!' Incredible technology! I love all the email from Microsoft about their innovation!
A planted quote, or a person who's totally bonkers, either way, its funny.
Corporatism threatens to overwhelm individuals all over the world...
Jon, I like that you are talking about corporatism. In fact, Slashdot is the site that first hooked me up with that meme, and I appreciate it. However, I don't think that a cheese farmer, while a recent news item, is a great example of corporatism working against an individual, or why an individual should fight back.
If you were trying to sell someone on the idea of corporatism with your article, I don't think people would rally behind you. McDonalds encroaching on the rights of a cheese farmer in France? Hardly compelling. The story of the Film Festival ruining the delicate ecosystem of Mr. Hanky is far more grabbing.
I want to see real corporatism, Jon. Show it to me. Show me corporations stomping all over normal people. (For example, health care and corporatism. Coporations and their ability to change the law to work against individuals.)
Give us stuff that makes Scientology tactics look like amateurs.
There isn't any better description for what is going on. It *is* anti-competitive, and the music industry is controlling what we listen to, and trying to control what medium we use to listen to it. If it wasn't for them, I could have plugged my Rio like device into a digital jukebox and downloaded from good songs for my personal use.
So the majority of girls don't want to watch the Man Show, or to play Football. (Yes, there are exceptions.) The reason probably isn't so much that they are male dominated. Perhaps women aren't as interested in computers because the male domination has steered everything in a direction that they are really not interested in. Ever thought how modern computing would be different if it was women dominated by the start?
In 1994, I was creating commercial and organizational Gopher sites. That's right, a paid... er... Gophermaster. Within a year, it really started to lose its meaning. As mentioned, HTTP does everything Gopher could, and much more. There wasn't any point anymore.
The gopher sites remained around until about 1997 when an operating system update was installed. We didn't noticed that it wasn't running gopherd. Nobody else noticed either, it seemed.
Perhaps I'm short-sighted. But I really don't see the Earth being around that long (Y12k). Am I alone in this? I think that 10,000 years is a little too ambitious. Making a 1000 year time capsule / rosetta stone would seem to be more practical, IMHO.
I wish I could moderate you up. One way or another, the audio reaches a format that is accessable. (Say, someone could read a dolby digital output. Or they could pick an analog signal off of the wires to the speakers.)
You mention signal degradation. Well, with audio cassettes, you get more loss with each generation copied. But if you (worst case) record an analog signal, your only loss is at the first recording. All subsequent copies are just as good.
I'm not an audio nut, but this is fine with me. My imperfect human ears cannot distinguish the difference between an MP3 that was sourced from a digital CD, versus an MP3 that was sourced from an FM station or a digital sampling of the analog output of a stereo.
Let's say that you're correct, and that in general, there is far more money to be made in Mac software. Does this even more so raise the barier of entry to open source software on the Mac?
I thought popped into my head. It seems flamish, but I still consider the question to be valid.
Since the financial reward of Mac programming is generally (yes, a generality) less than that of Windows programming, wouldn't the barrier to adopting open source for the Mac be far less than the IBM world? (But maybe more than the UNIX/Linux world?)
Remember the slashdot article a while back about a sub-atomic project having the possible risk of creating a black whole which sucks up the earth instantly? (God, just saying that I sound like I'm trolling.)
The idea's pretty good. As we start playing around with more and more with elementary particles, we run the risk of tripping over an exploiting a "bug" as it were, in the nature of the universe. Or just something darn wierd that isn't a bug, but a feature that we didn't understand.
Probably not a popular view here, but if you are going to use something like Perl to be the front end glue for all your dynamic content, don't expect to be a speed demon when you've got a few hundred simultaneous users. A compiled language, like C, is optimum for thrifty thinking web designers. Small memory footprint. Small loading time. Small CPU expenditure.
Harder to program in, but worth the trouble if you're building a scalable site. Just a personal opinion... I would avoid a real SQL database for simple jobs. While plugging in something like MySQL may make programming a whole lot easier, you pay for it in performance.
DAMN! This is super-ultra important. I lose all my unvested options at the end of the month. The options have a strike price of $17/share. The current value of the stock we'll call $47/share. Are you saying that I can outright buy these unvested options at $17/apiece? How do I do this?!!?!
A related topic of related interest is stock options at a major corporation. The major advantage is that the company is stable, and you're *almost* guaranteed that your options will be worth *something*. The downside is that you're not going to get a zillion shares (or a significant percentage), and you probably won't be seeing outrageous growth in the near term. Another disadvantage is that you may get very screwed during an acquision.
In our case, we were given a 1200 shares with a strike price of $26. A third of these vested each year. First year, their after-tax value was around $7,000 at the time of vesting. Second year, the next set of options had an after-tax value of $12,000. The market was not kind to the stock this year, and has effectively stalled at around $13k but fluctuates WILDLY. (No longer an INVESTMENT stock... the stock is now a TRADING stock.)
Be aware that taxes eat a significant chunk of the value, unless you hold for over a year. Cashing in during the first year will cost you around 43% of the amount in taxes.
I *did* make the mistake, discussed earlier, about confusing options as compensation instead of incentive. So did just about everyone else I know. I'm being paid $20k below an easily obtainable market value. But there is an advantage of having options instead of a salary... bulk payment. Having an extra $1k/month is great. But being hit by $12k at once is a WHOLE LOT BETTER. You can do something useful with all the money at once.
What are some useful things to do with your stock options?
If you have credit card debt, and you don't think your stock is going to gain at a rate equal to what you're paying on your credit card, PAY OFF THE CREDIT CARDS. You're paying out more than you're gaining, otherwise.
If you've got a stock that you think is going to go up like a rocket (or you are forced to excersize your options earlier than you want to), investigate a MARGIN LOAN. I have options with Solomon Smith Barney. I called the line I use to excersize my options. I hit the option for a real person. I asked to speak to a financial advisor. Basically, you are using the value of your options as a guarantee to buy more stocks with. (There are risks. Talk to an advisor and completely understand the transaction.) The other net plus is you get a real trading account.
Of course, there's always the obvious options of starting your own company, or just spending left and right on cool stuff. Can I recommend arcade games? Ones by Atari, perhaps?
The downside to all of this is that there is no guarantee. You are gambling that the value will go up. (Actually, at one point, people who would have excercised their options would have had to PAY money!) The other is that you'll still be working for the company. Also, you're gambling that there isn't a significant change at the company.
What kind of significant change? Well, EDS is taking over our IT shop at the end of the month. We have to excersize our options before February, or we lose them. And, we're getting SCREWED out of our future unvested options (easily worth post-tax $40k, and certainly more in the future). They've put in writing the effective language of "you WILL join EDS and lose your options or you are fired and lose your options and don't get any severance benefits". My (pre-EDS) employeer is going to get what they're asking for... a nice class action suit slapped on them.
EDS actually wants to keep a good chunk of us and they realize we're getting screwed. (IE: "If I don't get my stock options, you don't get me!") They claim to be working a (nebulous) "performance share" deal. The question now is if it'll be worth $500/year, or $50,000/year.
Sometimes, I wish I didn't have to worry about options. They really add a lot of stress and unhappiness to what should be something pretty simple. But then, if it weren't for options, we wouldn't be paid well.
Back to the original topic, take the job with options or a higher paying one without? It is just like investing. Determine your tolerance for risk, and go from there. If you take the options, then take the time to understand the stock and the way it behaves. What sort of things it reacts to, and what other stocks it reacts with. See if it is a trading stock (goes up and down in a range) or an investing stock (nice upward and somewhat consistant line). Options in a trading stock are almost worth nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
As shown in a previous message, "icy.hot" is one of the domain names that have expired back in February, yet is still unavailable for re-registration. Here are the revelant parts of the WHOIS information:
Domain Name: ICY.COM
Record last updated on 08-Mar-1999.
Record expires on 15-Feb-2000.
Record created on 14-Feb-1996.
Database last updated on 7-Jul-2000 16:34:07 EDT.
Go to Network Solution's Home Page and try to register "icy.com". You can't. Netsol says "Sorry, icy.com is not available.". Fair enough. So, I've decided that on behalf of the owner of icy.com, I'm going to pay his bill. So I go to the NSI Online Payment System. I enter "icy.com" as the domain I want to make a payment on. Here's the response I get:
Related information could not be retrieved for the domain. This could be because:
1.The top level domain is not a com, net, or org.
2.An invoice number could not be created for this domain.
3. The invoice number given does not match with that in the database.
Well, it isn't #1, and it isn't #2. It certainly isn't #3 because I did a lookup by the domain name, not the invoice number. And if I enter a domain name that completely doesn't exist, I get a different error:
Related information could not be retrieved for the domain. This could be because:
1.The domain information has not yet been processed or updated into the database.
2.You entered an incorrect domain name.
So, the domain name can't be registered. Okay. The domain name can't be renewed either. (Netsol *might* try to claim that they can do it with an invoice number -- but COME ON. Why would it be blocked in their automated payment system? I'm sure they'll have a good lie for this one.)
Network Solutions is making up the rules as they go along, and they need to have their feet held to the fire and be accountable for their actions. Someone ought to sue them over this.
Whois Server Version 1.1
Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
Domain Name: DOMAIN-NAME.COM
.COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU domains and
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS1.DNS.COM
Name Server: NS2.DNS.COM
Updated Date: 26-jan-2000
>>> Last update of whois database: Sat, 8 Jul 00 04:46:44 EDT
The Registry database contains ONLY
Registrars.
How the heck did you generate that list?
Of course, we all know what will end up being one of the primary uses of this technology: pr0n.
About Network Solutions... they're anything but even handed or consistant. Of course, in the past, they HAVE let expired domains go back into the public pool and be re-registered by another person. (Take "police.net"... that was a customer at an ISP I worked for that let their domain name drop.) I know of many others. I also remember years ago they're harassing us and denying us a registration for "bingo.net", even though it was not taken at all! They would not let us register it!
Anyone who has had a great number of dealing with NetSol will have some war stories. This is definately a case where I'm going to vote with my dollars. I encourage others to do the same.
Then the job of a systems administrator is to be paranoid. If my systems are being portscanned, I *better* investigate it and figure out what is going on.
Onto the bigger issue, I can see both sides. On one hand, I consider "ping" to be a _public_ network service. That is, if I send a ping packet to your machine, and it responds, it isn't intrusion (or "theft of CPU time") because you provide ICMP responses to the world as a regular service.
On the other hand, if someone is pinging my network in order to scan it, I am going to get miffed. Nothing I can do about it.
If you're worried about web bugs or cookies, here's a big one that people should be turning OFF.
Question: Will it still have the original cheat where if you fit into the right side of the "T" (which is above where you start) and face up while no ghosts are looking, you can stay there forever without getting caught?
"It's great to receive the latest updates right in our mailboxes." - A. DeBlois
Either this quote is completely fictional, or they've quoted someone who is so completely out of touch to think that it is 'great' to 'receive the latest updates RIGHT IN OUR MAILBOXES!!!' Incredible technology! I love all the email from Microsoft about their innovation!
A planted quote, or a person who's totally bonkers, either way, its funny.
Jon, I like that you are talking about corporatism. In fact, Slashdot is the site that first hooked me up with that meme, and I appreciate it. However, I don't think that a cheese farmer, while a recent news item, is a great example of corporatism working against an individual, or why an individual should fight back.
If you were trying to sell someone on the idea of corporatism with your article, I don't think people would rally behind you. McDonalds encroaching on the rights of a cheese farmer in France? Hardly compelling. The story of the Film Festival ruining the delicate ecosystem of Mr. Hanky is far more grabbing.
I want to see real corporatism, Jon. Show it to me. Show me corporations stomping all over normal people. (For example, health care and corporatism. Coporations and their ability to change the law to work against individuals.)
Give us stuff that makes Scientology tactics look like amateurs.
I hope they use this hammer well.
So the majority of girls don't want to watch the Man Show, or to play Football. (Yes, there are exceptions.) The reason probably isn't so much that they are male dominated. Perhaps women aren't as interested in computers because the male domination has steered everything in a direction that they are really not interested in. Ever thought how modern computing would be different if it was women dominated by the start?
The gopher sites remained around until about 1997 when an operating system update was installed. We didn't noticed that it wasn't running gopherd. Nobody else noticed either, it seemed.
Perhaps I'm short-sighted. But I really don't see the Earth being around that long (Y12k). Am I alone in this? I think that 10,000 years is a little too ambitious. Making a 1000 year time capsule / rosetta stone would seem to be more practical, IMHO.
I wish I could moderate you up. One way or another, the audio reaches a format that is accessable. (Say, someone could read a dolby digital output. Or they could pick an analog signal off of the wires to the speakers.)
You mention signal degradation. Well, with audio cassettes, you get more loss with each generation copied. But if you (worst case) record an analog signal, your only loss is at the first recording. All subsequent copies are just as good.
I'm not an audio nut, but this is fine with me. My imperfect human ears cannot distinguish the difference between an MP3 that was sourced from a digital CD, versus an MP3 that was sourced from an FM station or a digital sampling of the analog output of a stereo.
Let's say that you're correct, and that in general, there is far more money to be made in Mac software. Does this even more so raise the barier of entry to open source software on the Mac?
Since the financial reward of Mac programming is generally (yes, a generality) less than that of Windows programming, wouldn't the barrier to adopting open source for the Mac be far less than the IBM world? (But maybe more than the UNIX/Linux world?)
I seemed to have missed this. Where does he discuss this?
Remember the slashdot article a while back about a sub-atomic project having the possible risk of creating a black whole which sucks up the earth instantly? (God, just saying that I sound like I'm trolling.)
The idea's pretty good. As we start playing around with more and more with elementary particles, we run the risk of tripping over an exploiting a "bug" as it were, in the nature of the universe. Or just something darn wierd that isn't a bug, but a feature that we didn't understand.
Nice point, Bill.
You have to wonder how long these motors last. That smoke you see coming out the back? No... it's not just the tires. :)
:)
Obviously not designed to be an environmentally friendly demonstration, but it does raise awareness about electric motors.
Also... I'm wondering if they use special batteries in order to get that super-quick drain rate. And what gauge their wires are.
Yes, but can you have Zope AND high volume? Zope is like a three legged dog stuck in the middle of a horse race. But it does some really cool tricks.
Probably not a popular view here, but if you are going to use something like Perl to be the front end glue for all your dynamic content, don't expect to be a speed demon when you've got a few hundred simultaneous users. A compiled language, like C, is optimum for thrifty thinking web designers. Small memory footprint. Small loading time. Small CPU expenditure.
Harder to program in, but worth the trouble if you're building a scalable site. Just a personal opinion... I would avoid a real SQL database for simple jobs. While plugging in something like MySQL may make programming a whole lot easier, you pay for it in performance.
Its the reutnr of the classic SmellUSmellMe server! Live chat, and scents! My dog would LOVE it.
(On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.)
DAMN! This is super-ultra important. I lose all my unvested options at the end of the month. The options have a strike price of $17/share. The current value of the stock we'll call $47/share. Are you saying that I can outright buy these unvested options at $17/apiece? How do I do this?!!?!
A related topic of related interest is stock options at a major corporation. The major advantage is that the company is stable, and you're *almost* guaranteed that your options will be worth *something*. The downside is that you're not going to get a zillion shares (or a significant percentage), and you probably won't be seeing outrageous growth in the near term. Another disadvantage is that you may get very screwed during an acquision.
In our case, we were given a 1200 shares with a strike price of $26. A third of these vested each year. First year, their after-tax value was around $7,000 at the time of vesting. Second year, the next set of options had an after-tax value of $12,000. The market was not kind to the stock this year, and has effectively stalled at around $13k but fluctuates WILDLY. (No longer an INVESTMENT stock... the stock is now a TRADING stock.)
Be aware that taxes eat a significant chunk of the value, unless you hold for over a year. Cashing in during the first year will cost you around 43% of the amount in taxes.
I *did* make the mistake, discussed earlier, about confusing options as compensation instead of incentive. So did just about everyone else I know. I'm being paid $20k below an easily obtainable market value. But there is an advantage of having options instead of a salary... bulk payment. Having an extra $1k/month is great. But being hit by $12k at once is a WHOLE LOT BETTER. You can do something useful with all the money at once.
What are some useful things to do with your stock options?
If you have credit card debt, and you don't think your stock is going to gain at a rate equal to what you're paying on your credit card, PAY OFF THE CREDIT CARDS. You're paying out more than you're gaining, otherwise.
If you've got a stock that you think is going to go up like a rocket (or you are forced to excersize your options earlier than you want to), investigate a MARGIN LOAN. I have options with Solomon Smith Barney. I called the line I use to excersize my options. I hit the option for a real person. I asked to speak to a financial advisor. Basically, you are using the value of your options as a guarantee to buy more stocks with. (There are risks. Talk to an advisor and completely understand the transaction.) The other net plus is you get a real trading account.
Of course, there's always the obvious options of starting your own company, or just spending left and right on cool stuff. Can I recommend arcade games? Ones by Atari, perhaps?
The downside to all of this is that there is no guarantee. You are gambling that the value will go up. (Actually, at one point, people who would have excercised their options would have had to PAY money!) The other is that you'll still be working for the company. Also, you're gambling that there isn't a significant change at the company.
What kind of significant change? Well, EDS is taking over our IT shop at the end of the month. We have to excersize our options before February, or we lose them. And, we're getting SCREWED out of our future unvested options (easily worth post-tax $40k, and certainly more in the future). They've put in writing the effective language of "you WILL join EDS and lose your options or you are fired and lose your options and don't get any severance benefits". My (pre-EDS) employeer is going to get what they're asking for... a nice class action suit slapped on them.
EDS actually wants to keep a good chunk of us and they realize we're getting screwed. (IE: "If I don't get my stock options, you don't get me!") They claim to be working a (nebulous) "performance share" deal. The question now is if it'll be worth $500/year, or $50,000/year.
Sometimes, I wish I didn't have to worry about options. They really add a lot of stress and unhappiness to what should be something pretty simple. But then, if it weren't for options, we wouldn't be paid well.
Back to the original topic, take the job with options or a higher paying one without? It is just like investing. Determine your tolerance for risk, and go from there. If you take the options, then take the time to understand the stock and the way it behaves. What sort of things it reacts to, and what other stocks it reacts with. See if it is a trading stock (goes up and down in a range) or an investing stock (nice upward and somewhat consistant line). Options in a trading stock are almost worth nothing.
Good luck!