The Weekly Notes 2007
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Back to the Weekly Notes 2007 Archives Meltdown Continued: Last week and the
previous week, I discussed some of my problems with the web hosting service,
earthlink. That problem is still ongoing. The main dilemma was in trying to
find an alternative to earthlink for my domain hosting. I have checked out
several firms and found much to be concerned about. I sent email queries to
two firms on their contact us page. One was Copper.net and the other was
Toast.net. I posed specific questions about their service. Neither one
responded to my query. I am left to believe they only want sheep for clients.
They do not want to bother with people who want to know what’s going
on. So my search continued. As to Toast. I am now
using them as my ISP and that seems to work so far. It does bother me that
they do not respond to email queries. So I may dump them later. I definitely
do not want a domain hosting service that does not respond to queries. That
is the basis of my problem with earthlink. It would not make sense to leap
from the frying pan into the fire. I have found, as usual,
that Ask.com AKA Ask Jeeves is the best place to begin a search. I have found
more hosting services than I have time to check out. I also found a large
number of domain registration sites. There are a few that keep coming up on
every search. One of the most stunning things is the broad range of pricing
for these services. I don’t know if some of them are cons or not. I
have concluded for sure that earthlink was grossly overcharging me for the
domain hosting. I do have one positive
note. I did find a domain-hosting firm, Aplus.net. I contracted with them to
host my site, wesooomi.net. If it works out, I will be getting twice the
space and capacity for about half of what I have been paying to earthlink for
mediocre service. I have been paying 60 bucks a month to them plus 20 bucks a
year for domian registration. I will be paying about 30 to Aplus.net by the
time I include their dialup service. That is significant even for a careless
person like me. I will begin the
transition immediately, but it will take time. There are a number of subtle
things that need to be checked out and perhaps corrected for a site with a
different name and different email addresses. This is very tedious work. I
did not count them, but I estimate that my site has over 1000 pages. Each one
must be checked for possible conflicts with the new addressing. After all of that, I
must still create a new set of email addresses and make sure they work. Then
I must figure out how to upload all of my pages to the new site and check
them all out to make sure they are properly linked together. Then I must hope
I got it all right. If I get it all right, I can then try to migrate my
domain, Wesoomi.com to the new site. That may be a large problem. I discovered recently
that earthlink has managed to get control of my domain and may try to prevent
me from moving it. It turns out they took over the firm that was registering
my domain. I was set up on that. At one time, earthlink suggested I switch
from the firm that was registering my domain to this new one they recommend.
It was cheaper so I did it. It was a set up from the git-go. The other firm
was simply fronting for eathlink. Now they have put a lock
on the domain name preventing me from moving or deleting it. I found this by
querying whois on the internet. Whois is the web service firm that keeps
track of who has what domain and who the contacts are, etcetera. I will post
a copy of what I found on the Gaffer’s Column. I will also post a copy
of the Aplus invoice on William’s corner. Contrast this price of one
year of service to earhlink’s sixty bucks a month. I don’t know if
they can get away with kidnapping my domain, but I’m not sure. I have
discover that the internet can be pretty lawless in many ways. Actions that
would be totally illegal in any other venue may not be lawless on the
internet. There is no particular reason for this. It is simply that our
government has abdicated its responsibility. They claim there are no laws
governing this new venue. That is a bunch of crap.
We have all kinds of laws. In fact we have too many laws. What we lack is
common sense in our government. We have laws against stealing, we have laws against
lying, and we have laws against fraud. All we need to do is enforce them.
That’s where our government is failing. That’s where our
government always fails. My mother said it and I will repeat it. Lying is
lying, cheating is cheating, and stealing is stealing, you know it and I know
it. Technicalities and tricks with words don’t wash in my laundry. Perhaps I am fretting
over nothing. Perhaps I will ask Aplus to transfer my domain registration and
earthlink will let it happen; perhaps! If not, I do have recourse. There is
an outfit called Icann that acts as an arbitrator for domain disputes. That
is the first line of complaint. If that fails, I always have Carl Levin. He
is one of my Senators from As to earthling, what I
think may be the final bad joke came in my email this week. It was an
invitation to refer my friends to earthling to get a free month of ISP. I
like a joke as well as anyone, even when it’s on me, but that was a bit
much. I don’t know of anyone I hate that much, not even Dick Cheney.
The email, of course, is just another indication that their left hand does
not know what their right hand is doing. This whole process may
take longer than I had hoped. In my mind, the largest difficulty will be in
making a smooth transparent transfer. I will try to keep you informed and I
hope you will bear with me. Back to the Weekly Notes 2007 Archives |