[NCLUG] Re: Verisign are morons...

[J. Paul Reed]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, [iso-8859-1] DJ Eshelman wrote:

> Yes... and no.  The fact that I requested them to release the domain is
> VERY DIFFERENT from if I had just in ignorance let the domain slip.  They
> simply refused to release it, which is pretty darn evil.

Well... I suppose. But I'd be willing to bet they just have no procedure
for "releasing" a domain, and if you didn't re-register it, *you*
technically don't own it anymore (actually, according to Verisign/NSI, you
never did... read the fine print on your contract), so they would be under
no legal obligation to listen to you (aside from the issue of verifying
that you had the authority to request them to "release" the domain in the
first place).

> *I* screwed up by ever renewing with Verisign when they took over NSI.
> The 'proper transfer procedure' invloves a charge that is DOUBLE what it
> costs me for an entire year.  By the time I knew that, it was too late
> anyway.  I'd already lost the client.

That's true.

I made the same mistake with my domain.

It's good to be a monopoly, isn't it?

> Well, there's more to it than that I'm sure- we deal with a lot of very
> picky clients that may requre certain procedures and firewalls to be in
> place.  I'm on the 'bottom rung' as far as that stuff is concerned- but
> it pisses me off when we're locked into something like this- remember the
> analogy of buying a car with the hood welded shut?  That's what this has
> become for us.

Right, but see that's no one's fault but your company's.

Companies might complain about Microsoft taking them to the cleaners on
billing procedures for new software (i.e. XP, Office XP, etc.), but what do
they do? Keep buying Microsoft software...

You really have no room to complain about a welded shut hood when you
solicit companies that keep the welders in business.

> But the bottom line is that a lot of C*Os don't think about a lot of
> stuff like this, and do get cornered by swift talking, drink buying
> salesmen.  It's the cards we're dealt.

Yeah... you see that at the corporate level more, obviously, but at the
smaller company/startup size, I really have no patience for that. In a way,
the C*O is saying "I don't respect you enough to even bother listening to
your suggestions," and I really have no patience for that.

> Thankfully I work for a company that is embracing Linux in a big way-
> we're hoping to have some of our users even using Linux full time soon,
> so it's expanding even beyond the

That's a good thing (tm).

> I must just be an idiot or something- I'm not seeing it.

It looks like the spellchecker module was so popular, it was added to the
Squirrelmail core in the 1.2-series. There's a mention of this on the
website plus some bugfixes mentioned in the ChangeLog.

Later,
Paul
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
  J. Paul Reed                 preed at sigkill.com || web.sigkill.com/preed
  Wait, stop!  We can outsmart those dolphins.  Don't forget: we invented
  computers, leg warmers, bendy straws, peel-and-eat shrimp, the glory
  hole, *and* the pudding cup!  -- Homer Simpson, Tree House of Horror XI