Domain of Slack

I launched a side project, Below the Dinкомпютри втора употребаmebelimebelimebelimebeli??????. You can find my updates there. There are plans for the Domain of Slack site, mostly to become an aggregator of the various DoSers blogs and projects. More to come on that in a bit. Until then, you can hear me Below the Din.

Stanley Kamel, who spent the past few years portraying Dr. Kroger on the USA series “Monk,” was found dead in his Hollywood Hills home on Tuesday.
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I got an email from GoDaddy warning that I needed to update my company’s contact information on the domains that it owns. Still not even a year into the new job, and having never dealt with GoDaddy before, I hopped on and changed the names that needed to be changed.

I didn’t even think twice about it until I heard that GoDaddy was using these calls to action, coupled with their policy of locking down domains for 60 days after contact information is updated, as a way of locking people into renewing their yearly contracts.

Now what gets me is that A) Our contact information was in need of updating; B) I was happy with their service, and was planning on renewing anyway; C) I have no problem with a temporary lockdown period after changing information, as it theoretically helps prevent domain hijacking.

However, by doing this, by gaming their own system to take away my decision to renew or transfer my domains, they plant that “seed of unnecessary evil” in the back of my head. All that does is give me a reason to keep an ear out for other negative stories about GoDaddy. The more negative stories I hear (should there be any), the more likely I am to drop them next time around.

All because they wanted to force me to do something I in all likelihood was going to do anyway.

Mahalo Daily’s Veronica Belmont had an interesting interview with Warner Brothers VP of Technology Ethan Kaplan

Two takeaways:
1. He started out running R.E.M.’s unofficial fan site. Very cool.
2. He says the head of WB wanted to not just catch up with technology to advance how we use technology to listen to our music. If Kaplan’s boss is paying the issue more than lip service, then things may be finally turning in the right direction for music fans.

I signed with DirecTV this past XXXX, and I just heard that starting April 15, you will be deleting pay-per-view movies off of my DVR within 24 hours of purchase.

This is unacceptable. As a father of a infant in a household with crazy work schedules, we rarely ever watch a 30-minute sitcom within 24 hours of airtime, let alone an 80-120 minute movie.

In fact, this is exactly why we ordered the DVR in the first place.

I would appreciate it if you would pass along to the TV and movie studios that are “forcing” you to do this that our household will no longer be purchasing pay-per-view movies, and as this was the only means by which we could watch movies, outside of cable TV, these studios aren’t simply going to get our money via another distribution system.

To you, DirecTV, I implore you not to further cave in to these industries and extend these practices to your broadcast and cable channel packages, as I will drop your service at the first available opportunity and urge other DirecTV/DVR subscribers to do the same.

Finally, pass along my sincerest congratulations to the TV and movie studios on their continuing efforts to cling to 20th century business models in this digital age. At last, they’ve finally beaten piracy!

…No, actually, exercises like these in digital rights management only penalize the people who play by the rules. And I can’t imagine that angering paying customers is a successful long-term strategy. But I could be wrong.

Regards