Surf Roots, Software Thoughts

I’ve taken George W.’s $300 stimulus check, given a small donation to Barack Obama, and put the rest into my Europe savings fund.  This means that the majority of the check will be converted into Euros and then spent on food, beer, or hostels.

Thanks, George W.!

Here’s the ad:

Here’s my profile:

Apparently their tageting algorithm needs some work.  Actually, maybe the purchaser of that ad wanted to target all males in hopes of finding some people who are still not open about their gay sexual orientation.  Who knows.

Take a look here.  Basically they’re claiming ownership on certain subdomains (subdomain.domain.com) and placing their own promotions onto it.  This is shady practice number two, which proceeds their awful domain search practices.  Just another reason to not use Network Solutions.  I hope they get sued for lots of money.

A while back I wrote a post that explained how Network Solutions would steal your domains if you used their site to search. Techcrunch just wrote that they’re getting sued. Hopefully they get what they deserve. Assholes.

This is apparently the week of accidents. Last week I was in a bike accident, and this Sunday I nearly flipped my truck and managed to escape with only minor body damage. Monday, the day after my 360, someone slammed into my parked truck while I was at work in the morning. The woman said she fell asleep on her way to work. She scraped the whole side panel of my car and nearly took off my front-left wheel, which was turned into the curb to avoid rolling down the hill. She managed to put my car up on the curb as well, so she must have been driving pretty fast. She left her contact information on the windshield, so her insurance will take care of everything. I’m super glad that I was hit by a responsible person!

I got a flat tire on my way to work today as well, and I’m fortunate that Koos could pick me up and drive me to the bike shop seeing as how my truck isn’t drivable I found a lucky penny while I was waiting for Koos, so hopefully it will be the end to my streak of bad luck :).

Check these bad boys out:

I’ve been trying to help a friend setup a blog, so I told him to pick a domain. I pointed him to netsol.com (Network Solutions) to find a domain to use, because I find their domain search tool to be very useful. My friend did some searching and found a domain that he liked. I pointed him to WingSix, which is the registrar that I prefer to use. He did a search on WingSix with plans to purchase and got a message saying that the domain was taken. We returned to Network Solutions to see if the domain was still available there, and it was. We then did a whois lookup to see if someone did own it, and someone does.

It turns out that Network Solutions registers every domain that you search for. That means that if you do a search on Network Solutions for a domain, then they’ll exclusively own the domain. You now have two options: purchase the domain through Network Solutions or choose another domain and search for the domain elsewhere. So what’s the catch? Network Solutions adds a fee to your bill when registering a domain that they own, so instead of costing $9 / year, your domain will cost $40 / year (at least for the first year).

In the extreme case that the whole internet used Network Solutions for searching, Network Solutions would own all new domains, turning themselves into a monopoly.

Update: pledge this if you disagree with their practices or sign the online petition! Digg this posts and that article as well!

Update 2: Apparently Network Solutions is going to get rid of this policy!  CNet has more.

I’ve been considering creating a blog for a while now, and I’ve finally executed! I’d have a better first post than this one, but I’ve been slammed preparing for my winter break, finals, and everything else that happens at the end of the quarter.

More to come soon!