Wikipedia Hasn't Forgiven GoDaddy 190
netbuzz writes "The fact that a month and a half has gone by and Wikipedia still hasn't followed through on Jimmy Wales public threat to remove its domain name registrations from GoDaddy over the latter's early support of SOPA has some concerned that the online encyclopedia may have had a change of heart. After all, GoDaddy did withdraw its backing of the controversial antipiracy legislation, at least publicly. But fear not, SOPA foes, as Wikipedia says its days with GoDaddy are indeed numbered and that number is getting very small."
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I'm aware, Wikipedia does not depend on GoDaddy for anything other than domain registrar services. They don't use them for DNS. They don't use them for hosting of any kind. So actually, yes, they literally can switch to another registrar on the turn of a dime. I've seen it done with corporate sites fielding millions of page views a month, and downtime should be precisely zero. Nothing changes aside from the registrar name in the whois info.
Re:SOPA isn't the only reason GoDaddy sucks (Score:5, Informative)
I finally quit godaddy this week (Score:5, Informative)
And this costs GoDaddy what, $2.95? (Score:5, Informative)
And this costs GoDaddy what, $2.95? It's just domain registration. Wikipedia isn't hosted by GoDaddy.
There's a hierarchy of registrars. At the top is MarkMonitor, which registers domains like "ford.com". If you have to ask how much their registration costs, you can't afford it. This is where you register a "must stay up" domain. If anything goes wrong with a MarkMonitor registration, alarms go off and teams of DNS admins and lawyers swing into action.
Network Solutions is a reasonable registrar for corporate domains. They have "amazon.com", for example. If something goes wrong, you can usually get them ont he phone and get them to do something.
Much further down is GoDaddy. But they're not the bottom. Below GoDaddy are the bulk registrars, like Enom. That's where you register junk domains for link farms, domaining, and other dubious activities. At the bottom are the registrars in the ICANN list that don't even have valid contact information. It's not clear what they're doing, but it's probably not good.
Have you ever tried to switch from GoDaddy?? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SOPA isn't the only reason GoDaddy sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Have you ever tried to switch from GoDaddy?? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Informative)
It's still not political and I am delusional, ignorant, or refusing to accept reality.
Political, in the contemporary sense, and in this context, means that it is an argument about laws, regulations, policy, or a school of thought on how society should be administered to the benefit of the society. There can two or more sides to the argument, but what they all have in common is at least the pretense that it is beneficial towards society and serves to protect it.
I deny SOPA that status. While politicians may be involved in it, there is no valid discussion, no valid arguments, and no valid sides supporting SOPA. That is why it is not political. It is entirely one-sided. No other argument in government can claim such distinction. Not FISA, not the Patriot Act, not Abortion, not Gay Marriage, etc. Every single one them has some sort of basis to support it. Some sort of rationale in which the American Way of Life (tm) is protected and allowed to flourish, even if I may disagree with it.
SOPA is pure corruption and abuse in its most distilled form. It is the most direct assault on intelligence, liberty, and common sense that I have been witness to in my entire life.
I don't know of any stronger terms that I can state just how evil SOPA *is*. For me to acknowledge it as political means that it there is some sort of public interest served in the debate. I just can't see that or say it.
Re:forgivness (Score:4, Informative)
You can't back that up (1), I don't believe it to begin with (2), and the argument from continuity suggests it's not even logically possible (3), not to mention the problem with induction (4).
1. Yes, I can, through experience and basic knowledge of how people tend to approach politics. I know, I know, "problem of induction". We'll come to that.
2. Clearly, but your belief is not required for it to be true.
3. You're misusing the continuity argument. Clearly there exists some threshold at which third party votes matter. In practice, that threshold is far above what we're currently capable of reaching. The continuity argument only applies when you can reach both endpoints.
4. The "problem" of induction is a philosophical one. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem proves that no numerical system can be both consistent and complete, but that doesn't stop me from using math. Likewise, while the "problem" of induction means that my never having seen the Cubs win a World Series does not make such an event impossible, I'm sure as all hell not gonna bet on them.
Your recursive stack of "dullards", while cute, misses a key point. It assumes that as you progress in levels (j, k, m, n4, n5, n6...), as your level approaches infinity the threshold will drop to zero. Maybe instead the threshold asymptotically approaches 10%. Below that level, even the infinitely non-dullardly don't care about the third party vote. And before you raise yourself as a counter example, note that we can have also have a class of double-dullards (don't complain about the offensive terminology -- you picked it) who always care.
In short, you're trying too hard to apply simple mathematical reasoning to a process that is far more complex than you have accounted for. I don't doubt that it is theoretically possible to model human behavior in such a way, but your name's not Hari Seldon, and you're not going to perform a psychohistorical analysis of American voting trends in a Slashdot comment.
Re:forgivness (Score:3, Informative)
Fuck that shit.
The UK has it's first Green MP a year or so ago because people actually voted for the candidate they wanted, rather than who they thought had a chance of winning.
If you keep voting for primary Democrat/Republicans, guess what, that's what you'll keep getting!
This is not like moving your blog's DNS (Score:4, Informative)
People don't seem to get that for a seriously popular site that must not go down, it's just not the same class of phenomenon as picking a registrar more or less at random (the same process by which people ended up on GoDaddy in the first place) to move your blog's DNS to. It's literally taken weeks to make absolutely sure that the transition damn well will go smoothly. This on top of, like, the actual work the WMF is supposed to do. AIUI, there should be an announcement next week or so.
Re:SOPA isn't the only reason GoDaddy sucks (Score:4, Informative)
REGISTERING DOMAINS FOR WHICH YOU HAVE SEARCHED ON GODADDY AND THEN PARKING THEM AND DEMANDING YOU PAY MORE THAN DOMAIN REGISTRATION FEES TO GET THEM.
Sorry about the all caps, but that is far and away the most evil thing GoDaddy has ever done, because as a registrar their job is to register domains, not speculate on them. I hope they all get ass cancer.