I've been running my own DNS servers "forever" - many of the domains are from our days as an ISP back in the late 1980s.

Recently I had to change the IP address of one of my core servers - one of the ones whose address is actually registered so that other domains can have our servers only listed by name in their zone records.

This domain has always been registered with Network Solutions. It's old and stable.

So I logged on to the www.networksolutions.com site and logged into my account - and went looking for the "manage DNS servers" page. All I found were pages that linked to ways to move my DNS to Network Solutions' own DNS - not what I wanted at all!

So I called their support line. A sweet young thing, after walking me through logging in again and clicking on the "Domains" menu item on the left - to display additional menu items. Everything was there except the "Manage DNS servers" item. She read me out the URL that I needed and I manually typed it into the browser bar. Fine - but what about the missing menu item?

She said she'd started a trouble ticket. About an hour later I got an e-mail telling me exactly the same as the sweet young thing had - 'When you login to accouint(SIC) manager, please click on "Domains" and beneath you will see options. the second option will be "manage name servers".' So I sent them a screen capture of my browser window showing that there was no such menu item. Following is what I got back:

Dear Richard Pitt,

The issue you reported to Network Solutions on 2/3/2009 06:25:43 AM and assigned Service Request 1-384655708 has been completed and closed.

This response is regarding your concern that you are unable to see the "manage name servers" tab in your account manager using the browser Mozilla Firefox and IE7.

Our account manager is designed and test in IE6 and some browsers may not present all options. If you need a change made, please call our customer service group and they can assist in performing the name server update.

Thank you for your patience.

We hope this update has been helpful. However, if you have any additional questions, or feel that the issue has not been completely addressed, please do not hesitate to email our Technical Support Department at technicalsupport@networksolutions.com or call us at 1-866-391-HELP (1-866-391-4357). If calling from outside the U.S. or Canada, please call 570.708.8788

Sincerely,

RUDY004

Network Solutions Technical Support

Now I don't know about you, but I don't have a copy of IE6 hanging around. None of the Windoze virtual machines I use have it. The one real Windows box I have does not have it.

All have been updated to IE7 but all have Firefox as the default browser.

Don't you think that THE primary domain purveyor on the internet should support something recent and secure, not to mention something that by default supports the latest root certificates for their secure pages.

EE Times has a story today about the BBC's showing their DIRAC codec that they've been working on for years (Slashdot 2004)

From a personal perspective, having recently gone through the technical problems of creating a set-top-box with reasonable expectation of being adopted by industry, I can say that the dearth of good codecs at any reasonable price (taking encoding, distribution and decoding into account) lead us finally to adopt a Linux version of Windows Media for High Def mostly because the encoder and server are "free" with the operating system - and they account for a large part of the investment in infrastructure.

BBC's web site has an excellent overview of the technology that is licensed under the Mozilla Public License, including notes that they have reference implementations non only in software but soon in hardware too, with NuMedia Technology Ltd. having produced such hardware already.

Looks like H264 and MPEG4 will either have to soften their pricing for creation products or open things up more to compete.

Abstract from my article on FTAA that has relevance to Copyright, DMCA, Digital Rights Management, etc.

If "publishing" (in the context of when the copyright act takes effect for a work) were taken (by the courts for instance) to be defined only as that done without any rights management or extra contractual ties, then all works not so published (with DRM) would then become trade secrets (or something to that effect) and would lose (or never gain) the protection of the government via the copyright act and have to go after civil damages for individual transgressors.

Of Social Contracts and Government Sell-outs