+ 9 - 11 | § ¶Goodbye GoDaddy
So for the past number of years I have used GoDaddy as a registrar for this domain. Why? Because it's cheap (though now there are many competitive registrars) and has offered good enough service to suit my purposes.Well, no longer - though I always knew that GoDaddy was a little suspect (the founder maintains a blog where he occasionally regurgitates rightist propaganda), I never thought they were downright spineless. That is, until now:
MySpace asked GoDaddy to pull the plug on Seclists.org, a site run by Fyodor Vaskovich, the father of nmap. The site hosts a quarter million pages of mailing-list archives and the like. MySpace did not obtain a court order or, apparently, compose a DMCA takedown notice: it simply asked GoDaddy to remove a site that happened to archive a list of thousands of MySpace usernames and passwords, and GoDaddy complied. Fyodor says the takedown happened without prior notice.
When asked about their general policy for this sort of thing, GoDaddy responded that it's a "case-by-case basis" - or in other words, if it's a big nasty corporation they'll give in immediately.
Well, I just switched my registrar for this domain (it was up for renewal in March anyway). I'm now using ZoneEdit as both a registrar and DNS server management service, and yeah. It really doesn't matter much, it's only $8-9/year that GoDaddy is missing out (and it won't affect you, the reader, in the least - the site will still be here, same as always, with the same url), but I still feel better for not supporting such a spineless company. If you happen to have domains registered through GoDaddy, I encourage you to find yourself a different registrar.
+ 11 - 6 | § ¶... And They're off!
Via CNN today, I find an article by the Washington Times' (read: Reverend Sun Myung Moon's) Insight Magazine saying Barack Obama attended a Madrassa. The gem? The source is supposedly a staffer for Hilary Clinton's campaign. Well, there's actually two gems. The other is, according to CNN, the article is entirely false; Hilary's campaign never said anything of the sort, and the schools Obama attended are actually secular.So, let's see. We have an article in a paper owned by a right-wing loonie accusing Hilary of sniping a potential opponent, while simultaneously insinuating that said opponent is (*GASP!*) a Muslim. Now, never mind that both claims are false - such things really don't make much of a difference in the end, as the Swiftboating of Kerry demonstrated. What shocks me is not that such falsehoods are being printed, it's that they're being printed so long before the primaries even begin. The smear campaign is starting more than a year early. Be prepared for a bumpy ride, folks.
+ 10 - 7 | § ¶The Most Incredible Thing Ever to Happen to Proles Has Just Occurred!
Aaron has invited me to join!
Now who is this interloper you might ask? Well my name is Clarence Hardy to those who don’t know me and Trey to (some) of those who do. I’m from Southwest Louisiana but now I live in the great state of Virginia. Aaron and I went to college in New York together and after much kung fu we somehow managed to graduate and go on to better things. I for one used the magnificent game theory skills I acquired in the Empire State to venture to the District of Columbia and take it by storm; K Street (where I work) has already fallen to my expert manipulation of public policy.
Anywoo, a bit about me. I’m an Objectivist…that’s right Ob-jec-ti-vist. I follow the teachings of Her Holiness, the Most Exulted Alisa Rosenbaum better known to you proles as Ayn Rand. I work for these good folks here; at the Atlas Society and Objectivist Center. My job there is to set up and manage events (conference, talks, etc), manage our webpage, and handle correspondence with people wanting to know more about the philosophy…it pays the bills.
If you know anything about Objectivism (or like Aaron you just hung around me for four years) then you pretty much know where I’m coming from. If not let me spell out some of my policies.
- I’m for free market, no holds barred, laissez-faire capitalism. I want the separation of
- state and economy the same as church and state.
- I reject altruism by any means and hold the individual as my highest value.
- Defending individual rights and protecting the sovereignty of the individual is my
- paramount objective.
- state and economy the same as church and state.
Politically, I’m a small “l” libertarian, I can’t stand the Libertarian Party, bunch of blue-faced potheads; I’d vote democrat before I would vote for them. Now while there’re some Republicans I’d consider voting for, the only one that ran in the previous election would have been Michael Steele…and of course he lost. As for anything to the left of that, well you get the picture. And Aaron can tell you I’m a notorious commie hater, like I said before I’m a bit uptight about individual rights. Speaking of those, there is a .38 about three feet away from me right now under my bed, and I ain’t playing when I say “my cold dead hands”.
Something you will notice about me is that although I love discussing policy, morality is always at the top of my mind. When you make a comment about what I’ve written or whatever, try to keep in mind that my principle defense will be from a moral standpoint. For instance, if you want to critique me on capitalism you might as well be kicking a brick wall if you argue that it doesn’t work (although it does). I don’t support capitalism because it works but rather because it’s the only moral economic system there is.
So why am I here? What the hell was Aaron thinking?
I dunno.
Perhaps it’s to shake things up, get a little debate going. Personally however I believe he wants to steal my ideas, try and co-opt my plans on taking over the world. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.
So…how bout them Saints?