WARNING: Boycott WHOIS via Network Solutions
I have been in the habit for quite some time of still using the whois search by going to netsol.com (Network Solutions). For those that haven't read the Left Behind book series, there is a very similar and ironic twist to the "netsol" concept and it stuck with me.
Anyway, I just learned the hard way today, that Network Solutions is now registering domains that have been searched for via their whois tool.
I was doing some preliminary research on the replacement for this year's TulsaCodeCamp event, since I wanted to come up with something new, unique and maybe repeatable (hint). After seeing the available domain names and weighing the options, I went to register the domain I had picked using my usual registrar GoDaddy only to be informed it was no longer available.
I went back to "netsol" and this time when I searched it said "available here". Looking at their whois record and out of curiosity the whois record via GoDaddy, both said it was registered just today 1/29/08 by Network Solutions and even says "Available there".
Where is INTERNIC? This situation is only getting worse by the minute. Not only are there the lowest of the low, slimiest of the slime, cyber squatters who predatorily jump on a domain and put up nothing but a stupid search script. There's the registrars that charge exorbitant late fees (like 12x annual fees) to renew at about 15 days late, then when you don't bow to their demands, hold on to the domain for several years hosting nothing but the same stupid search scripts.
This is the one time I welcome some form of oversight, whether it be INTERNIC, the US Government, United Nations, somebody please end this. It is so very bad for the public, customers and the general internet populace.
Comment Notification
If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here
Subscribe to this post's comments using
Comments
Leave a Comment
About dwalker
David Walker has over 15 years experience in application development with over 50% of that employed as a consultant with companies such as: Texaco, Bank of Oklahoma, Winner Communications (ESPN.com) and IBM Global Services. At the age of 14, he began his application development ambitions with a Commodore 64, BASIC, and a 300 baud modem. Even at that early age, he primarily focused on two specific application types: multi-user communities and database applications.
His hunger to learn as much as possible about development lead him through courses such as DBase III, DBase IV, Pascal, C, C++, Java, and several in UNIX. He started his development career first doing heavy processing with Access and VBA, then moved on to VB 3, Oracle, and Delphi. Visual Basic was one environment that remained constant for many years, including his very first .NET projects performed in Visual Basic.NET.
After working several years on very high end internal Corporate applications, the consultant company he was working for, sought out his ideas for actual software products that could be packaged and sold. He had already developed several prototypes of a dynamic portal application, before portals even became popular, so this became the logic decision and he became the Director of Product Development. Under his direction, a team of developers and graphic artists, took a skinning approach before that become popular, and completed the core portal application, and continued on to developer 15+ add-on modules, including things such as: Help Desk Ticket Systems, Change Control, Records Management, Human Resources, and many more applications. Eventually, it spun off into it's own separate company as KnowledgeGEAR, a complete intranet in the box solution.
Having worked as a consultant, he has had a experience with a very wide range of applications and architectures, at one time, even converting several Fox Pro and GW-Basic applications to VB 6 and ASP. His early training of Unix and the C language and years of experience with JavaScript, lead him very quickly to C#, where he has remained focused ever since.
He is the current President of the
Tulsa Developers .NET user group.. He has been an MCP since 2003 and MCAD and MCSD since 2005. He is currently pursuing his MCDBA and then on to MCSE.