Testing out the JeffreyMichaelChausse.com address I mentioned in my earlier post, VeriSign’s SiteFinder exclusively suggests jeffreymichael.com as a possible correct address.
JeffreyMichael.com belongs to Jeffrey Michael Basset.
Jeffrey Michael Basset is a proud member of the “International Guild of Gay Webmasters”.
Three clicks from his home page leads you to gay porn. (Click “Enter”, Click “Adults Only”, click “I’m Over 18″).
Make of this what you will… I just think it’s interesting.
Filed under Cool Stuff, Personal Notes
Here’s how I propose humanity deals with the VeriSign typo-jacking shenanigans. The way I see it, they are open to the world’s largest class action lawsuit. Practically every human being on Earth has a case against them.
Excerpts from: US Code: TITLE 15 > CHAPTER 22 > SUBCHAPTER III > Sec. 1125
“A person shall be liable in a civil action by the owner of a mark, including a personal name which is protected as a mark under this section, if, without regard to the goods or services of the parties, that person […] (i) has a bad faith intent to profit from that mark, including a personal name which is protected as a mark under this section (ii) registers, traffics in, or uses a domain name that […] in the case of a mark that is distinctive at the time of registration of the domain name, is identical or confusingly similar to that mark.”
I am not a lawyer, but I believe I legitimately excerpted that legalese, which translates in English to: Nobody can use my personal name as a domain name for the purpose of profit.
My full legal name is Jeffrey Michael Chausse. Verisign is using www.JeffreyMichaelChausse.com for the purpose of profit. Practically everyone on earth (Sorry, John Smith) could find some variant of their name which VeriSign is abusing in a similar manner.
Any lawyers want to back me up on this? I’ll be the first to join up in a class action lawsuit.
Filed under The Internet Biz
If so, I may be willing to sell you my phone number… which, I just realized, spells:
978-SHIT-WELL
He he… I usually check on these things at phonespell.org. I intentionally picked my last phone number because it spelled “SUPA-FISH”. Which was pretty cool, except it translated to a number very awkward to say out loud. This time I went for one that had a good ring to it when spoken (in its traditional numerical format, that is). I guess I never checked what it could spell… Oh well. At least I’ll never forget my phone number if I ever have to call home for some reason…
Sorry if reading the dirty word in my blog at work just got you fired, but this was too funny to ignore…
Filed under Cool Stuff, Personal Notes
CircleID has a great “Special Coverage” page called “Domains Gone Wild!” for tracking the VeriSlime typo-jacking chicanery.
Filed under The Internet Biz
You know, considering their music was used in a Volkswagen advertisement plugging the Apple iPod, you’d think the Polyphonic Spree’s album would be available from the iTunes music store.
You’d be wrong.
Filed under General Computing
VeriSign is being sued by “Popular Enterprises“, owner of the typo-squatting junk portal Netster. VeriSign is basically being sued for abuse of its monopoly power. I’d have to say Popular Enterprises has a point. The lowest going rate to register a domain is about $10 per year. So, for every mistyped domain they want to redirect to THEIR search engine, they have to pay about $10 a year. I don’t know how many domain names they own, but if they owned 100,000 domain names, it would cost them a million dollars a year to hold on to them.
Verisign just obtained more domain names than there are atoms in the universe. For free. Abuse of monopoly power? Um, yeah, a bit.
Filed under The Internet Biz
InfoWorld pundit Jon Udell thinks Ray Ozzie’s “Saving The Browser” article “may prove to be the single most influential weblog item ever written”. I don’t know. I think my “badger badger badger badger” post on Ridiculent would at least have to be a close second.
Filed under Groove
Looks like VeriSign is having second thoughts about hijacking the entire Internet for fun and profit.
Filed under The Internet Biz
Well, the stupid contact form stopped working again. This time it’s definitely not my fault. Clearly something is misconfigured on their Coldfusion server or mail server. Meanwhile, I’ve gone a bit more low-tech on the contact page. I will be moving this site to a new hosting company soon. In addition to this silliness, I recently learned that the IP address of my mail server has been added to at least one SPAM blacklist. Apparently, Uplinkearth does not really enforce it’s anti-spam guidelines. Perhaps not terribly surprising seeing as they sell email lists. Plus, my site randomly goes off line every so often for no good reason. I figured this site wouldn’t require heavy horsepower, so I went with the cheapest host I could find. I guess you get what you pay for, though. I don’t care to support this company much longer.
Filed under This Site
Pardon me for stealing Jeremy Zawodny’s headline, but there’s really no better way to put it.
You know those folks who register misspelled domain names, to trick fat-fingered web surfers into visiting their site? Well, they’re evil.
Now, Verisign (who absorbed Network Solutions, the original domain name registrar), through some DNS trickery, rigged up a system whereby EVERY NON-REGISTERED DOMAIN NAME, typed by ANYONE, using ANY web browser (that MSN search thing IE does is small potatoes), goes to a site THEY own. EVERY SINGLE MISTYPED DOMAIN NAME will go to THEIR site. This is BEYOND evil.
One nifty side-effect? No longer will mail sent to a nonexistent domain name “bounce”, because EVERY possible domain name now exists! Wee!
As as test to see it in action, I visited: www.chhhhheeeeessssseeee.com. Sure enough. There it is. Hey neat, the links on the “Sitefinder” page go to “sponsored links”. Imagine that.
That’s it. I’m done with the Internet.
Filed under General Computing
AAARGH! I just learned that the “Contact Jeff” form on this site has been busted for Lord knows how long… To anyone who has tried to reach me, I humbly apologize - I was certainly not ignoring you. I could have sworn I tested it thoroughly when I put it up.
In any case, it DEFINITELY works now. If you’ve tried to send me something important via that form, you can try again, or if you don’t trust it (and I can’t blame you), know that mail sent to any name [at] the domain name of this site will get to me. (Yes, that last bit was purposefully obfuscated.)
CALL ME BACK, ED McMAHON!
Filed under This Site
This is REALLY, REALLY bad. A company called “Eolas” claims to have an exclusive patent on “browser plugins”. The scary part is they’re winning cases against Microsoft (meaning, by extension, they could easily obliterate smaller targets like Opera). If they succeed, say goodbye to embedded Flash, Quicktime, Java, and video. All joking about annoying ads aside, this could mean utter chaos for web development. Microsoft is scrambling to find practical workarounds that can fit through loopholes in the patent. Yuck.
Update: Ray Ozzie thoroughly demonstrates “prior art” in Notes R3.
Filed under The Internet Biz
Buzzword Alert!
First, Groove was the “Napster of Business”. Now we’re a leading provider of “darknet” software.
Filed under Groove
For those unfamiliar with Netflix, it’s an online DVD rental service which allows you to make a list of movies you want to see (your “queue”), and then it mails them out to you in order, allowing you to rent as many movies as you can watch, for a fixed monthly price. It’s a fantastic service.
Anyway, I always thought it would be neat if Netflix allowed you randomize your queue. After all, Netflix is lousy when you want to see a very specific movie RIGHT NOW. So, why not be surprised?
I realized today that although Netflix.com doesn’t provide this functionality, I could build this capability into my web browser via a “bookmarklet”.
I’ve only successfully used this in Mozilla 1.4 so far.
So, if you’re a Netflix member and want to give it a try, first drag this link to your Mozilla link bar:
Netflix Queue Scrambler
to your Netflix Queue and click the bookmark! Your queue will be randomized. You still need to manually click the “Update Your Queue” button, so no peeking!
I was kind of bummed that this didn’t work in IE, but bookmarklets are rather difficult to debug. All I get is a “click” and nothing happens. The code worked fine when I put it inside a page that contained a duplicate of the Netflix form. I’m guessing maybe IE bookmarks aren’t allowed to modify form fields. If anyone can get this to work in IE (or any other browser), send me the code! You’ll get a plug on the site and my eternal gratitude.
I will likely put this bookmarklet, and future code oddities like it somewhere more permanent in the near future.
Filed under General Computing, Web Development
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