The sad thing is that it's probably the whole "Stargate" aspect of the show that killed it, that it's its own fans that are twisting the knife.
I never watched the original Stargate series (well, maybe two or three episodes here and there), and I didn't watch Atlantis, either. I saw the movie way back when, thought it was moderately cool, but never really associated Universe with it because it was so long ago.
But I was looking for something on Hulu to help me kill time, and I started watching Stargate Universe. I really liked it.
Maybe as a "Stargate series," you think it's a bad one, but as someone who isn't invested in the Stargate, um, universe (lower-case u), I thought just as a series, it rocks pretty well. It holds its own very well against the state of the dreck that is pretty much all sci-fi on television these days.
It was definitely getting to the point where it would have to change to stay interesting, but that doesn't change that to date, it has been interesting. I'm sorry to see it go, and if this is how fans of the other series think of Universe, then it really turns me off of wanting to go back and watch those series. If watching those series makes me so elitist that I will no longer like Universe, then to hell with it, I'll just quit while I'm ahead.
Smart people realize that you need a healthy mix of both consumer-driven and government-funded R&D. Although the result sometimes intersect, they have different motivations and often different useful results.
Interesting that you don't know whether contractual obligations have or have not been met in the case of SimpleCDN's termination.
No, but given the choice between believing that a company broke an unfavorable contract or SimpleCDN is outright lying to us in the e-mails and responses they've shown, I tend to believe the former.
I could make the same argument, that it's interesting that you'd rather believe that SimpleCDN is not just misrepresenting something, but outright lying about its communication.
No, let's just not use cheap and cheerful providers and then expect the world in return.
Why do you think contracts exist?
If I have a contract with SimpleCDN that is favorable to me, and they go out of business, then I'm SOL. I'll have to find another provider.
But if SimpleCDN has a contract with whoever is responsible for this SNAFU that is favorable to SimpleCDN, and whoever that is not only stays in business but continues to offer the same service to others that they are contractually obligated to provide to SimpleCDN, that's a problem that needs to be rectified. Just because a contract is favorable to someone else doesn't mean that you aren't obligated to fulfill it, unless you're literally going out of business or otherwise can't fulfill it. Given that they're offering the same contract to others, that doesn't sound like that's the case.
It sounds suspiciously like Comcast's "unlimited" plans. It's "unlimited" unless you use too much, then they'll cut you off. Of course, they'll keep offering "unlimited" to other people because it sounds great, marketing-wise. The only problem is that it's not really unlimited. They're lying, and that doesn't make it your fault because they offered you "unlimited" and you decided to use a lot.
People should just go and host with a different company, chalk this one up to experience and not expect to get everything for oh so very little and still expect the same quality of service as they might get from the big players.
Right. Let's just consolidate all hosting into the hands of one or two "big players." What could possibly go wrong?
Well UK2 today said that the decision "... was out of our hands." So who would that leave?
I wouldn't blindly trust someone making that claim. That could mean just about anything. "Out of our hands" could also mean that their corporate mandate is to make as much money as possible, and the bandwidth you're using (and, I assume, contractually allowed to use) could be more profitably allocated to other customers. Therefore, they regret that they're going to have to break their contract and shut you down. It's "out of their hands" only in the sense that it's "in the hands" of their investors.
I'm not saying that's what happened; you may be right and it really could be out of their hands. Until you know for certain, though, exactly where the decision was made and exactly why, I wouldn't discount any possibility.
Sorry, I don't believe you. It just doesn't make sense.
If it made sense, SimpleCDN probably wouldn't be in this situation and it probably wouldn't be posted on Slashdot, duh.
I'll tell you what, since you're so hell-bent on convincing yourself and everyone else that SimpleCDN is outright lying to everyone, why don't you get off your butt and you find out the other half of the story? I can pretty much guarantee that if you're right, that SimpleCDN is deliberately misleading everyone in some insane attempt to drum up more business by--am I understanding this right, claiming that their business is being shut down?--then it would be a much bigger story than even this one.
Either be the real provider or be held at the mercies of your suppliers. YOU should have known that. It's certainly the case in almost every business.
Thank you, Mr. Genius. Did you know that Slashdot uses hosting services, so technically, it's at the mercy of its provider. They should know this. So if their provider suddenly decides to take down their servers, hey, that's Slashdot's problem, right? I run some gaming web sites, with Linode as my hosting provider. If Linode suddenly decides to shut down my servers without warning, I suppose that would be my own damn fault, right?
Okay, so let's take this to its logical conclusion. That means that really, when you think about it, the only people who should be trusted as hosting providers are the massive telecoms, right? Because they're the only ones who can really guarantee that no upstream provider will shut down your service, since they own the wires that go to your house.
That's a brilliant solution, consolidate all service in the hands of one or two companies. I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong with that.
Oh wait, AT&T depends on its wire suppliers, which depends on miners in Chile, who depend on wheat growers in Russia... Looks like we need to just consolidate the whole damn world into the hands of AT&T and let them rule us as dictators...
Can't you see? SimpleCDNNOC, posing as someone named BlueToast, decided that Slashdot is the appropriate place to justify their flagrant over-use of bandwidth and make their providers look like nasty evil companies. [blah, blah, blah]
You ignorant tool, have you ever submitted a story to Slashdot? If you had, you'd know that they don't hit the front page right away. Sometimes it's hours later, many times it's days. If you do post a story, it's not like you sit there, wait a few minutes, and then start replying to people, because you may very well be sitting there for days.
I'm guessing that "BlueToast," whoever that is, even if it is a sockpuppet, as you so flagrantly accuse him/her of being, likely posted this in the middle of the day or early evening. It hit the front page at 5:11am US Eastern/2:11am US Pacific time. Given that the story is about a U.S. provider, I'm guessing BlueToast is probably sound asleep right now, and SimpleCDNNOC's claim that he/she is up in the middle of the night working for his/her customers not only plausible, but probable.
By the way, on what are you basing your accusation of "flagrant over-use of bandwidth?" Do you have a copy of the contract that SimpleCDN and their providers? Do you have the metrics showing how much bandwidth they're using, and how much is/was available?
Slashdot is "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." Let's see... News? Yes, I think this is pretty damn newsworthy. For nerds? Well, it's squarely in the IT/technical realm, so yeah, I think that it would be of interest to nerds. Stuff? It's definitely stuff. That matters? Well, if you're one of SimpleCDN's thousands of customers, or someone who consumes those customer's content or data, or if the submitter is right in that this activity may spread to other hosting providers (which it sounds like it may), then that would be a big green checkmark in that column as well.
I could just as easily accuse you of being a sockpuppet for one of the nasty evil companies that is screwing SimpleCDN, posting on Slashdot as an Anonymous Coward to try to add insult to the injury you've already caused, and my accusation will be just as valid and appropriate as your little rant.
I guess that's just a long way of saying Anonymous Coward - if you think this story isn't worth reading, then don't comment. If you can't do that. STFU. Now get off our grass!
Don't you know that usability tests should be damned and everything programmed to meet isorox's demanding specifications by default? My god, man, do you know what you're suggesting? That he should have to click one button one time!!?
This is Kentucky we're talkin' 'bout here, where the family trees don't branch, and a "virgin" is defined as a girl that can run faster than any of her brothers. I'm absolutely SURE they gonna impeach somebody for tryin' to promote the teachin's of the Good Book!
I grew up in Alabama. I'm not going to cast stones.
Precedent has been set and well established, literally for a couple of centuries, that this applies to government, not just specifically to Congress, and that it applies to more that just literally pending or passed legislation. As a trivial counterexample, there was no law mandating prayer in school, certainly not established by Congress, but the Supreme Court decided that it still violates the First Amendment. They have been almost unwavering in upholding this, and in the few cases in which they didn't ("In God We Trust..."), they were wrong, and I hope it gets corrected at some point. As another trivial example, if President Obama signed an executive order forbidding people from praying, I assure you that the Supreme Court would rightly strike it down before the ink dries as a violation of the First Amendment.
...and no prohibition against any other religion other than Judeo-Chritianity in this.
Don't just gloss over the stuff before the "or;" it's the most important part. It doesn't just apply to prohibiting free exercise of religion, it applies also to establishment of religion. In fact, the reason this is even in the First Amendment is primary because of the state-established Church of England that was funded by taxpayer money. Colonists were quite irate that they were having to pay money to support a church across an ocean when some of them weren't even Christians. Thus, protection from establishment of State religion was codified into the supreme law of the land. Thus, funding this money with taxpayer money is blatantly unConstitutional.
Not only had this better not see one red penny of taxpayer money, but any public official who says it doesn't violate separation of Church and State should be immediately impeached for not upholding protecting the Constitution.
If people want to build these things and run them with private money, even for a profit, I don't care. But the second you start taking my money to proselytize your religion, I get VERY agitated.
Or those fanatical Canadians. The few Canadians at hockey games in the US sing that friggin national anthem louder than the 10 times as many Americans sing theirs.
Could be because unlike the Americans, they actually know the words to their national anthem.
There are advantages that local stores have always had that online stores have not.
The biggie has always been convenience. If I have to have (or merely just want) something right now, Amazon and other online retailers are not an option. Also, if I'm looking for, say, a new keyboard, I can't really see it, touch it, feel it, find out if I'm going to like it from an online store unless I suck it up, buy it, and hope for the best. And of course, customer service for things like exchanges and returns is much easier to deal with locally instead of having to call and get an RMA, package whatever up, ship it back, wait for the replacement, etc.
One of the main reasons I like shopping online is the base price of the whatever-I'm-buying. There have been several times I've wanted something right now, and I'm willing to pay the sales tax and even a 10% or so premium on getting it. I go to the store and find that it's 25% or even 50% more expensive.
Prime example that's fresh in my mind: Right now, I need a new power supply. I'd like to pick up a Cooler Master 1200 W supply. On Newegg.com, it costs $249. If I wanted to go pick that very same item up at my local Micro Center, it would cost me $299.99, 20% more, and that doesn't have a damn thing to do with sales tax.
I realize that Micro Center has additional costs associated with having physical stores, but that's completely irrelevant to me. All I know is that unless I'm in a real hurt, there's not a chance in hell that I'm going to essentially light $50 on fire and watch it burn just for the privilege of buying locally. $5 or $10, maybe, but $50!!? Of course, if you go to the store and show them the Newegg.com page, they'll tell you that they don't match online retailer prices. Okay, fine, then you won't get my business.
I have a feeling that this is going the way of the music industry. Brick-and-mortar retailers are feeling the pinch of a new avenue of competition. Instead of responding in a sane and professional manner, they're lobbying to stick online retailers with having to account for sales tax all over creation. Incidentally, that would put an undue burden on online retailers, since unlike brick-and-mortar stores, it means that they would have to maintain an up-to-date database of sales tax rules for every place in the country, not just the area in which they operate.
Still, even if I have to pay an extra 6% on that power supply to get it from Newegg.com, it's a hell of a lot better deal than paying an extra 6% plus 20% to get it from Micro Center. What will be the next lame excuse used by brick-and-mortar stores for not being able to compete? What will they next be lobbying for to keep their old and busted business model lining their pockets?
I just imagined my home owners association running airport screening, and it sent chills down my spine. You know, maybe the TSA isn't so bad, after all.
It's the manner in which the girls are selling domains.
I don't mind girls in commercials. Even sexy girls in commercials, if it's appropriate for the product. For example, beer, which is traditionally a "macho" drink, or Axe bodywash, or Victoria's Secret (who, contrary to common sense, are targeting their ads mainly at men that buy those sexy clothes for their girlfriends/wives).
GoDaddy's commercials pretty much tell me that they're positioning their services as a "macho" service, and it simply doesn't make sense. Their ads come off as, "Here's some gratuitous sex, now go pay us money." For one thing, it's demeaning to any woman who wants a domain name, and there are a lot of them out there. There's not even an alternate "Clydesdales" or "dalmation" ad campaign with a unisex appeal to it. For another, it's treating me (a guy who should be the target demographic for those ads) like I'm an idiot who is completely uninterested in the technical merits of one registrar over another; that if you show me a picture of a sexy woman, I'm such a dumb hairless ape that I'll be forced to buy their product.
I understand the adage of "sex sells." Their ads say to me, "we're really desperate to make a buck off of you," and that's not the attitude I want from a domain registration provider or web host, because it makes me think they're going to try to screw me over (which GoDaddy has indeed done to several of my friends). I would much rather have a registrar that has the attitude of, "we're really smart and really good at this stuff."
It's too bad, too. I used to have a lot of respect for Danica Patrick for the barriers she broke through in competing in an almost exclusively man's sport and becoming extremely popular and maintaining her integrity. Now, though, I think of her more as a sell-out, and I wish that a better role model had done so instead. Oh well, she's still a good race car driver, so whatever. It's just a shame that GoDaddy was there to exploit her. It's a little bit like if Rosa Parks had done a Playboy spread. Sure, she has every right to, but I just think it's a bit vulgar to exploit someone's historic significance like that.
I've been using Namecheap for years, and they've been pretty awesome. They have a nice set of DNS management tools, they notify me of all important things, and as their name implies, they're inexpensive.
Another thing I like about Namecheap is that you can delegate control over your names to other people. I run a suite of hobby gaming web sites, and I've made contingency plans in case I get hit by a proverbial bus. (Or a real one.) I've given one of the other site admins permissions over the names so that if need be, he can manage them or even move them to another registrar. Obviously, I trust him implicitly, but the point is that if something happens to me, the names aren't just up for grabs once the registration expires. They may exist, but I don't know of another registrar that allows you to delegate permissions like this.
I can't speak about their technical support; I've never had to use it.
Just to prove I'm not a shill for the company (I'm only affiliated with them as being a customer), if there's one thing that's stupid about them, it's their name. I mean, "Namecheap"? Makes them sound so, I dunno, Wal-Martish, especially given what has been a good record so far with me.
Disclaimer: I loathe GoDaddy.com. Their commercials are downright offensive, their service is expensive crap, and I've known many people burned by them.
Having said that, I can't imagine that this is anything but a money grab by GoDaddy.com. When I read this, two thoughts came to mind.
First, they'll probably catch a lot of people who are not technically savvy enough to noticed that they're registering a.co instead of a.com. I know, how can someone be technically savvy enough to know they need a domain name and go through the process of registering it, but not know they need a.com? The easy answer is marketing goobs. Where I used to work, the marketing decided that.biz would be the next "hot" thing, and changed all of the company letter head, business cards, and ad copy to [company].biz, even though we still owned our.com name. It was a dismal failure, of course. We even got complaints from employees and customers because e-mails were bouncing due to spam systems and/or software that didn't recognize.biz as a legal address didn't work with our domain name. Eventually, the powers-that-be finally made the marketing department relent and they changed it back, but it was still an expensive, needless, unmitigated disaster.
Second, even for technically savvy people, if.co becomes a popular alternative, it's yet one more TLD that competent businesses will have to register. Any business worth its salt now has to register [company].com, [company].org, and [company].net. I run some hobby gaming sites, and even I register those three for my sites to make sure that no one tries to squat my site names. It seems painfully obvious to me that GoDaddy wants to add another TLD--and another $30 to their coffers for every domain name registered--by "legitimizing".co domain names. If I were dumb enough to use them as a registrar, that means if I don't want someone squatting my site name, now I'll have to register [site].co as well. Worse, I really need to make double sure that I register that one because it's so easy to mistype.com as.co.
So no thank you. As far as I'm concerned, unless you run a business out of Bogotá, having a.co domain is like having a.biz domain--kind of stupid, and any non-Colombian business or organization that tries to use one instead of.com will be treated as fly-by-night by me, most likely a scammer or spammer.
Every time I see that quote attributed to Duke Nukem, I bristle. The original quote came from a 1988 movie called They Live, starring wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Keith David. I actually paid good money to go see that at a theater!
I guess Duke Nukem made the phrase famous, but still, it was blatantly stolen. The exact quote is:
I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.
In the movie, Roddy had just burst into a bank with shotguns looking to kill him some aliens. When he delivered the line, I thought I was going to die laughing, it was so over-the-top. Anyone who likes Duke Nukem should see the movie at some point to enjoy the original source of the quote in all of its glory.
So wait, are you saying that no one reads the articles, and that the summaries of submissions just contain the first little bit of the back-end article?
Are they riding the coattails of Facebook? Hell yes, they never said they're not! The site's tagline is, "The funniest and lamest of facebook." But again, it's parody, which is allowed by the First Amendment.
Did you even read the article? They're not the ones who initiated this action. Facebook has already contacted them several times threatening to sue, and they have every reason to believe they will. If they do, then Lamebook, which has a site that is protected by the First Amendment, will be forced to defend themselves through a trial and umpteen appeals in a faraway district, likely one that is very unfriendly to them.
All they are doing is asking for a declaratory judgment that they have done nothing wrong so that they won't be litigated into either bankruptcy or submission. From there, some news outlets picked up the story, because it is of interest to the tech community.
Will they benefit from the free advertising as a result? Maybe so, but that doesn't change that the motive is probably primarily self-preservation, not revenue generation.
Lamebook is quite obviously a parody site, something that is protected by the First Amendment. Facebook (which has already tried to claim trademark on all ----book sites) has already threatened to go after Lamebook. If they do so, it will be tried in whatever Facebook-friendly court district that Facebook wants.
In order to help protect themselves, Lamebook is suing them preemptively to declare that they have the right to their parody site and avoid being put in a position where Facebook simply outspends them in litigation.
I say good for 'em, and I hope they win. This is a MUCH better long-term strategy than simply not responding to Facebook or mocking them until they get shut down.
Slashdot Mirror
The sad thing is that it's probably the whole "Stargate" aspect of the show that killed it, that it's its own fans that are twisting the knife.
I never watched the original Stargate series (well, maybe two or three episodes here and there), and I didn't watch Atlantis, either. I saw the movie way back when, thought it was moderately cool, but never really associated Universe with it because it was so long ago.
But I was looking for something on Hulu to help me kill time, and I started watching Stargate Universe. I really liked it.
Maybe as a "Stargate series," you think it's a bad one, but as someone who isn't invested in the Stargate, um, universe (lower-case u), I thought just as a series, it rocks pretty well. It holds its own very well against the state of the dreck that is pretty much all sci-fi on television these days.
It was definitely getting to the point where it would have to change to stay interesting, but that doesn't change that to date, it has been interesting. I'm sorry to see it go, and if this is how fans of the other series think of Universe, then it really turns me off of wanting to go back and watch those series. If watching those series makes me so elitist that I will no longer like Universe, then to hell with it, I'll just quit while I'm ahead.
Smart people realize that you need a healthy mix of both consumer-driven and government-funded R&D. Although the result sometimes intersect, they have different motivations and often different useful results.
Interesting that you don't know whether contractual obligations have or have not been met in the case of SimpleCDN's termination.
No, but given the choice between believing that a company broke an unfavorable contract or SimpleCDN is outright lying to us in the e-mails and responses they've shown, I tend to believe the former.
I could make the same argument, that it's interesting that you'd rather believe that SimpleCDN is not just misrepresenting something, but outright lying about its communication.
No, let's just not use cheap and cheerful providers and then expect the world in return.
Why do you think contracts exist?
If I have a contract with SimpleCDN that is favorable to me, and they go out of business, then I'm SOL. I'll have to find another provider.
But if SimpleCDN has a contract with whoever is responsible for this SNAFU that is favorable to SimpleCDN, and whoever that is not only stays in business but continues to offer the same service to others that they are contractually obligated to provide to SimpleCDN, that's a problem that needs to be rectified. Just because a contract is favorable to someone else doesn't mean that you aren't obligated to fulfill it, unless you're literally going out of business or otherwise can't fulfill it. Given that they're offering the same contract to others, that doesn't sound like that's the case.
It sounds suspiciously like Comcast's "unlimited" plans. It's "unlimited" unless you use too much, then they'll cut you off. Of course, they'll keep offering "unlimited" to other people because it sounds great, marketing-wise. The only problem is that it's not really unlimited. They're lying, and that doesn't make it your fault because they offered you "unlimited" and you decided to use a lot.
People should just go and host with a different company, chalk this one up to experience and not expect to get everything for oh so very little and still expect the same quality of service as they might get from the big players.
Right. Let's just consolidate all hosting into the hands of one or two "big players." What could possibly go wrong?
Well UK2 today said that the decision "... was out of our hands." So who would that leave?
I wouldn't blindly trust someone making that claim. That could mean just about anything. "Out of our hands" could also mean that their corporate mandate is to make as much money as possible, and the bandwidth you're using (and, I assume, contractually allowed to use) could be more profitably allocated to other customers. Therefore, they regret that they're going to have to break their contract and shut you down. It's "out of their hands" only in the sense that it's "in the hands" of their investors.
I'm not saying that's what happened; you may be right and it really could be out of their hands. Until you know for certain, though, exactly where the decision was made and exactly why, I wouldn't discount any possibility.
Sorry, I don't believe you. It just doesn't make sense.
If it made sense, SimpleCDN probably wouldn't be in this situation and it probably wouldn't be posted on Slashdot, duh.
I'll tell you what, since you're so hell-bent on convincing yourself and everyone else that SimpleCDN is outright lying to everyone, why don't you get off your butt and you find out the other half of the story? I can pretty much guarantee that if you're right, that SimpleCDN is deliberately misleading everyone in some insane attempt to drum up more business by--am I understanding this right, claiming that their business is being shut down?--then it would be a much bigger story than even this one.
Sorry, that's your problem.
Either be the real provider or be held at the mercies of your suppliers. YOU should have known that. It's certainly the case in almost every business.
Thank you, Mr. Genius. Did you know that Slashdot uses hosting services, so technically, it's at the mercy of its provider. They should know this. So if their provider suddenly decides to take down their servers, hey, that's Slashdot's problem, right? I run some gaming web sites, with Linode as my hosting provider. If Linode suddenly decides to shut down my servers without warning, I suppose that would be my own damn fault, right?
Okay, so let's take this to its logical conclusion. That means that really, when you think about it, the only people who should be trusted as hosting providers are the massive telecoms, right? Because they're the only ones who can really guarantee that no upstream provider will shut down your service, since they own the wires that go to your house.
That's a brilliant solution, consolidate all service in the hands of one or two companies. I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong with that.
Oh wait, AT&T depends on its wire suppliers, which depends on miners in Chile, who depend on wheat growers in Russia... Looks like we need to just consolidate the whole damn world into the hands of AT&T and let them rule us as dictators...
You ignorant tool, have you ever submitted a story to Slashdot? If you had, you'd know that they don't hit the front page right away. Sometimes it's hours later, many times it's days. If you do post a story, it's not like you sit there, wait a few minutes, and then start replying to people, because you may very well be sitting there for days.
I'm guessing that "BlueToast," whoever that is, even if it is a sockpuppet, as you so flagrantly accuse him/her of being, likely posted this in the middle of the day or early evening. It hit the front page at 5:11am US Eastern/2:11am US Pacific time. Given that the story is about a U.S. provider, I'm guessing BlueToast is probably sound asleep right now, and SimpleCDNNOC's claim that he/she is up in the middle of the night working for his/her customers not only plausible, but probable.
By the way, on what are you basing your accusation of "flagrant over-use of bandwidth?" Do you have a copy of the contract that SimpleCDN and their providers? Do you have the metrics showing how much bandwidth they're using, and how much is/was available?
Slashdot is "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." Let's see... News? Yes, I think this is pretty damn newsworthy. For nerds? Well, it's squarely in the IT/technical realm, so yeah, I think that it would be of interest to nerds. Stuff? It's definitely stuff. That matters? Well, if you're one of SimpleCDN's thousands of customers, or someone who consumes those customer's content or data, or if the submitter is right in that this activity may spread to other hosting providers (which it sounds like it may), then that would be a big green checkmark in that column as well.
I could just as easily accuse you of being a sockpuppet for one of the nasty evil companies that is screwing SimpleCDN, posting on Slashdot as an Anonymous Coward to try to add insult to the injury you've already caused, and my accusation will be just as valid and appropriate as your little rant.
I guess that's just a long way of saying Anonymous Coward - if you think this story isn't worth reading, then don't comment. If you can't do that. STFU. Now get off our grass!
Don't you know that usability tests should be damned and everything programmed to meet isorox's demanding specifications by default? My god, man, do you know what you're suggesting? That he should have to click one button one time!!?
This is Kentucky we're talkin' 'bout here, where the family trees don't branch, and a "virgin" is defined as a girl that can run faster than any of her brothers. I'm absolutely SURE they gonna impeach somebody for tryin' to promote the teachin's of the Good Book!
I grew up in Alabama. I'm not going to cast stones.
You certainly approve of government taking money from other people to fund your interests, right?
Not for my religious interests, because it's explicitly forbidden. Duh.
If you recall the text...
I've memorized the text.
IOTW, there's no law being made here...
Precedent has been set and well established, literally for a couple of centuries, that this applies to government, not just specifically to Congress, and that it applies to more that just literally pending or passed legislation. As a trivial counterexample, there was no law mandating prayer in school, certainly not established by Congress, but the Supreme Court decided that it still violates the First Amendment. They have been almost unwavering in upholding this, and in the few cases in which they didn't ("In God We Trust..."), they were wrong, and I hope it gets corrected at some point. As another trivial example, if President Obama signed an executive order forbidding people from praying, I assure you that the Supreme Court would rightly strike it down before the ink dries as a violation of the First Amendment.
...and no prohibition against any other religion other than Judeo-Chritianity in this.
Don't just gloss over the stuff before the "or;" it's the most important part. It doesn't just apply to prohibiting free exercise of religion, it applies also to establishment of religion. In fact, the reason this is even in the First Amendment is primary because of the state-established Church of England that was funded by taxpayer money. Colonists were quite irate that they were having to pay money to support a church across an ocean when some of them weren't even Christians. Thus, protection from establishment of State religion was codified into the supreme law of the land. Thus, funding this money with taxpayer money is blatantly unConstitutional.
Not only had this better not see one red penny of taxpayer money, but any public official who says it doesn't violate separation of Church and State should be immediately impeached for not upholding protecting the Constitution.
If people want to build these things and run them with private money, even for a profit, I don't care. But the second you start taking my money to proselytize your religion, I get VERY agitated.
Or those fanatical Canadians. The few Canadians at hockey games in the US sing that friggin national anthem louder than the 10 times as many Americans sing theirs.
Could be because unlike the Americans, they actually know the words to their national anthem.
/knows the words, at least to the first verse.
There are advantages that local stores have always had that online stores have not.
The biggie has always been convenience. If I have to have (or merely just want) something right now, Amazon and other online retailers are not an option. Also, if I'm looking for, say, a new keyboard, I can't really see it, touch it, feel it, find out if I'm going to like it from an online store unless I suck it up, buy it, and hope for the best. And of course, customer service for things like exchanges and returns is much easier to deal with locally instead of having to call and get an RMA, package whatever up, ship it back, wait for the replacement, etc.
One of the main reasons I like shopping online is the base price of the whatever-I'm-buying. There have been several times I've wanted something right now, and I'm willing to pay the sales tax and even a 10% or so premium on getting it. I go to the store and find that it's 25% or even 50% more expensive.
Prime example that's fresh in my mind: Right now, I need a new power supply. I'd like to pick up a Cooler Master 1200 W supply. On Newegg.com, it costs $249. If I wanted to go pick that very same item up at my local Micro Center, it would cost me $299.99, 20% more, and that doesn't have a damn thing to do with sales tax.
I realize that Micro Center has additional costs associated with having physical stores, but that's completely irrelevant to me. All I know is that unless I'm in a real hurt, there's not a chance in hell that I'm going to essentially light $50 on fire and watch it burn just for the privilege of buying locally. $5 or $10, maybe, but $50!!? Of course, if you go to the store and show them the Newegg.com page, they'll tell you that they don't match online retailer prices. Okay, fine, then you won't get my business.
I have a feeling that this is going the way of the music industry. Brick-and-mortar retailers are feeling the pinch of a new avenue of competition. Instead of responding in a sane and professional manner, they're lobbying to stick online retailers with having to account for sales tax all over creation. Incidentally, that would put an undue burden on online retailers, since unlike brick-and-mortar stores, it means that they would have to maintain an up-to-date database of sales tax rules for every place in the country, not just the area in which they operate.
Still, even if I have to pay an extra 6% on that power supply to get it from Newegg.com, it's a hell of a lot better deal than paying an extra 6% plus 20% to get it from Micro Center. What will be the next lame excuse used by brick-and-mortar stores for not being able to compete? What will they next be lobbying for to keep their old and busted business model lining their pockets?
I just imagined my home owners association running airport screening, and it sent chills down my spine. You know, maybe the TSA isn't so bad, after all.
It's the manner in which the girls are selling domains.
I don't mind girls in commercials. Even sexy girls in commercials, if it's appropriate for the product. For example, beer, which is traditionally a "macho" drink, or Axe bodywash, or Victoria's Secret (who, contrary to common sense, are targeting their ads mainly at men that buy those sexy clothes for their girlfriends/wives).
GoDaddy's commercials pretty much tell me that they're positioning their services as a "macho" service, and it simply doesn't make sense. Their ads come off as, "Here's some gratuitous sex, now go pay us money." For one thing, it's demeaning to any woman who wants a domain name, and there are a lot of them out there. There's not even an alternate "Clydesdales" or "dalmation" ad campaign with a unisex appeal to it. For another, it's treating me (a guy who should be the target demographic for those ads) like I'm an idiot who is completely uninterested in the technical merits of one registrar over another; that if you show me a picture of a sexy woman, I'm such a dumb hairless ape that I'll be forced to buy their product.
I understand the adage of "sex sells." Their ads say to me, "we're really desperate to make a buck off of you," and that's not the attitude I want from a domain registration provider or web host, because it makes me think they're going to try to screw me over (which GoDaddy has indeed done to several of my friends). I would much rather have a registrar that has the attitude of, "we're really smart and really good at this stuff."
It's too bad, too. I used to have a lot of respect for Danica Patrick for the barriers she broke through in competing in an almost exclusively man's sport and becoming extremely popular and maintaining her integrity. Now, though, I think of her more as a sell-out, and I wish that a better role model had done so instead. Oh well, she's still a good race car driver, so whatever. It's just a shame that GoDaddy was there to exploit her. It's a little bit like if Rosa Parks had done a Playboy spread. Sure, she has every right to, but I just think it's a bit vulgar to exploit someone's historic significance like that.
I've been using Namecheap for years, and they've been pretty awesome. They have a nice set of DNS management tools, they notify me of all important things, and as their name implies, they're inexpensive.
Another thing I like about Namecheap is that you can delegate control over your names to other people. I run a suite of hobby gaming web sites, and I've made contingency plans in case I get hit by a proverbial bus. (Or a real one.) I've given one of the other site admins permissions over the names so that if need be, he can manage them or even move them to another registrar. Obviously, I trust him implicitly, but the point is that if something happens to me, the names aren't just up for grabs once the registration expires. They may exist, but I don't know of another registrar that allows you to delegate permissions like this.
I can't speak about their technical support; I've never had to use it.
Just to prove I'm not a shill for the company (I'm only affiliated with them as being a customer), if there's one thing that's stupid about them, it's their name. I mean, "Namecheap"? Makes them sound so, I dunno, Wal-Martish, especially given what has been a good record so far with me.
Disclaimer: I loathe GoDaddy.com. Their commercials are downright offensive, their service is expensive crap, and I've known many people burned by them.
Having said that, I can't imagine that this is anything but a money grab by GoDaddy.com. When I read this, two thoughts came to mind.
First, they'll probably catch a lot of people who are not technically savvy enough to noticed that they're registering a .co instead of a .com. I know, how can someone be technically savvy enough to know they need a domain name and go through the process of registering it, but not know they need a .com? The easy answer is marketing goobs. Where I used to work, the marketing decided that .biz would be the next "hot" thing, and changed all of the company letter head, business cards, and ad copy to [company].biz, even though we still owned our .com name. It was a dismal failure, of course. We even got complaints from employees and customers because e-mails were bouncing due to spam systems and/or software that didn't recognize .biz as a legal address didn't work with our domain name. Eventually, the powers-that-be finally made the marketing department relent and they changed it back, but it was still an expensive, needless, unmitigated disaster.
Second, even for technically savvy people, if .co becomes a popular alternative, it's yet one more TLD that competent businesses will have to register. Any business worth its salt now has to register [company].com, [company].org, and [company].net. I run some hobby gaming sites, and even I register those three for my sites to make sure that no one tries to squat my site names. It seems painfully obvious to me that GoDaddy wants to add another TLD--and another $30 to their coffers for every domain name registered--by "legitimizing" .co domain names. If I were dumb enough to use them as a registrar, that means if I don't want someone squatting my site name, now I'll have to register [site].co as well. Worse, I really need to make double sure that I register that one because it's so easy to mistype .com as .co.
So no thank you. As far as I'm concerned, unless you run a business out of Bogotá, having a .co domain is like having a .biz domain--kind of stupid, and any non-Colombian business or organization that tries to use one instead of .com will be treated as fly-by-night by me, most likely a scammer or spammer.
Every time I see that quote attributed to Duke Nukem, I bristle. The original quote came from a 1988 movie called They Live, starring wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Keith David. I actually paid good money to go see that at a theater!
I guess Duke Nukem made the phrase famous, but still, it was blatantly stolen. The exact quote is:
In the movie, Roddy had just burst into a bank with shotguns looking to kill him some aliens. When he delivered the line, I thought I was going to die laughing, it was so over-the-top. Anyone who likes Duke Nukem should see the movie at some point to enjoy the original source of the quote in all of its glory.
So wait, are you saying that no one reads the articles, and that the summaries of submissions just contain the first little bit of the back-end article?
Are they riding the coattails of Facebook? Hell yes, they never said they're not! The site's tagline is, "The funniest and lamest of facebook." But again, it's parody, which is allowed by the First Amendment.
Did you even read the article? They're not the ones who initiated this action. Facebook has already contacted them several times threatening to sue, and they have every reason to believe they will. If they do, then Lamebook, which has a site that is protected by the First Amendment, will be forced to defend themselves through a trial and umpteen appeals in a faraway district, likely one that is very unfriendly to them.
All they are doing is asking for a declaratory judgment that they have done nothing wrong so that they won't be litigated into either bankruptcy or submission. From there, some news outlets picked up the story, because it is of interest to the tech community.
Will they benefit from the free advertising as a result? Maybe so, but that doesn't change that the motive is probably primarily self-preservation, not revenue generation.
Lamebook is quite obviously a parody site, something that is protected by the First Amendment. Facebook (which has already tried to claim trademark on all ----book sites) has already threatened to go after Lamebook. If they do so, it will be tried in whatever Facebook-friendly court district that Facebook wants.
In order to help protect themselves, Lamebook is suing them preemptively to declare that they have the right to their parody site and avoid being put in a position where Facebook simply outspends them in litigation.
I say good for 'em, and I hope they win. This is a MUCH better long-term strategy than simply not responding to Facebook or mocking them until they get shut down.