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August 12, 2004 6:47 AM   Subscribe

Dotster has its wicked way with Cory Doctorow. Any more horror stories involving them, or is he just unlucky?
posted by PinkStainlessTail (31 comments total)
 
Not to be rude, but would this be as interesting if it had happened to Rich Harwick?
posted by luser at 6:57 AM on August 12, 2004


I don't get it. He switched registrars but didn't want to switch DNS? Wouldn't the DNS usually be with your hosting company? Seems like "I did something unusual and it didn't work out like I expected it so bitch, bitch, bitch."
posted by smackfu at 7:00 AM on August 12, 2004


Dotster has messed up Rich Harwick's DNS? Shit... Someone should post that to the blue!
posted by humuhumu at 7:00 AM on August 12, 2004


having seen this sort of thing happen all the time in hosting situations, I'd have to say its SNAFU. Dotster could have tried harder to make amends it seems. Still, par for the course.

Please excuse me while I re-enter the 140 aliases that mysteriously disappeared when I moved to the new server.
posted by petebest at 7:13 AM on August 12, 2004


Your generous gift of $10, $50, or $100 will help to sustain research so that future generations are free of the scourge of blue/green MeFi-color-blindness.
posted by stonerose at 7:13 AM on August 12, 2004


Yeah, this sort of thing is about par for the course with DNS hosting.

They all have their own quirky and poorly implemented interfaces that do odd things like break .sld.tld domains, or IDN, or die when confronted with unexpected TLDs like .jp, or drop the DNS entries on the floor when they're not listed as the primary, or won't let you have TXT for SPF records. Etc. With hilarious consequences.

The moral of the story: if you want DNS done properly, do it yourself. Bind may be a bitch, but NSD ( http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/nsd/ ) is dead easy to set up if you happen to have root on a server somewhere.

You're still always at the mercy of your registrar of course, but it's one fewer point of failure.
posted by BobInce at 7:14 AM on August 12, 2004


It's interesting how Cory regularly uses Boing Boing to deal out negative whuffie, posting about every bad corporate experience he suffers, even though it feels completely out of place on Boing Boing.
posted by rainking at 7:53 AM on August 12, 2004


Wouldn't the DNS usually be with your hosting company?

No, in fact you really shouldn't have your DNS registered with your hosting provider, unless you love and trust them completely. If they fall off the 'net, you're screwed.

BobInce, doing it yourself is one option, but if you do you probably want to set yourself up as a stealth primary and have the public primaries at one (or more) of the DNS providers for uptime's sake.
posted by nicwolff at 7:56 AM on August 12, 2004


The cashier at Key Food was rude to me the other day.
posted by sad_otter at 8:16 AM on August 12, 2004


I've never had a single problem with Dotster in the past five years (at least) that I've been using them, and I've got ten domains or so registered. Moved all my stuff to them from NetSol, and haven't looked back.

Of course, I do my own DNS hosting; Dotster is just the registrar of record for my domains.
posted by mrbill at 8:22 AM on August 12, 2004


i've been using dotster for about 6 years, with 9 domains registered with them, and haven't had any probs with them so far. i also do my own dns hosting, altho' i didn't always.
posted by t r a c y at 8:31 AM on August 12, 2004


It's interesting how Cory regularly uses Boing Boing to deal out negative whuffie, posting about every bad corporate experience he suffers, even though it feels completely out of place on Boing Boing.

Isn't Boing Boing just his (rather popular) blog, though?

I'd have thought it better placed there than here, FWIW.
posted by Blue Stone at 8:34 AM on August 12, 2004


Not to be rude, but would this be as interesting if it had happened to Rich Harwick?

Exactly... Everyone wants to hang with the cool kids.

I'm eagerly awaiting the next FPP, letting us all know what Cory thinks about social networking or ukuleles...

Ugh.
posted by SweetJesus at 9:04 AM on August 12, 2004


cory is just being a petulant dick. again.
posted by quonsar at 9:05 AM on August 12, 2004


Well as long as anyone's using Mefi to air Better Business Bureau complaints: I always find Cory's presence on the Internet intensely, almost unlikably bitchy. I'm sure he's a good writer, but whenever I've seen him in person on a panel or anything, he's really condescending to his panel-mates and interrupts. He was very good debating against Bruce Sterling, though.

Ha, you know, for the Internet I share this opinion, because that is where it belongs.
posted by Peter H at 9:09 AM on August 12, 2004


I like zoneedit.
posted by swift at 9:19 AM on August 12, 2004


Interestingly, I had a roommate who worked as a code-monkey for Dostster about a year ago. He stayed at the company about 6 months before realizing the majority of Dotsters management had their heads up their asses and were driving the (rather small) company into the ground and left.

That's not to say Cory has a good excuse to bitch about DNS registrars. They all fuck up from time to time.
posted by Parannoyed at 9:27 AM on August 12, 2004


Isn't Boing Boing just his (rather popular) blog, though?

If I understand things correctly, the Boing Boing blog was started by Mark Frauenfelder (and was based on a print zine?). Cory and the other editors joined later on. That's not to say Cory isn't the dominant voice at Boing Boing for the moment though.

I wasn't bitching about Cory's bitching. I just think that if you look at his other posts (which could be divided into geek stuff on the web, copyright issues and promo stuff), these bad corporate experiences are the only "diary like" things he posts, so I assume he's following some kind of strategy there. Coupled with the system of whuffie (reputation based economy) he developed in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, that struck me as kind of interesting.
posted by rainking at 10:04 AM on August 12, 2004


Metafilter.com is registered at Dotster, so I hope they don't mind this thr%~
posted by theora55 at 10:46 AM on August 12, 2004


I've used Dotster for four or five years now... in that time I've had three or four instances where their servers were unreachable. No biggie seeing as how I'm not running any sort of professional site.

I will say that I've had semi-constant email problems with Dotster... mainly from their relays being blacklisted. For instance, I can't respond to anything at Craig's List using my dotster hosted account because Craig's thinks I'm spaming its members... luckily I have other email accounts at different hosts, but I'd be pissed if I had to rely solely on Dotster.

My advice to professionals or corporations seeking web hosting, seek a professional (read: accountable) hosting firm.
posted by wfrgms at 11:37 AM on August 12, 2004


It's interesting how Cory regularly uses Boing Boing to deal out negative whuffie, posting about every bad corporate experience he suffers, even though it feels completely out of place on Boing Boing.

I'd probably do the same thing in his position. It would be nice to have an outlet for my otherwise impotent consumer rage. Given the number of people who read Boing Boing, he's guarenteed to cost any company he badmouths at least of few sales...
posted by mr_roboto at 11:44 AM on August 12, 2004


I will say that I've had semi-constant email problems with Dotster... mainly from their relays being blacklisted.

Yep. Lost a couple domains because Apple had blacklisted Dotster's mail servers and I never received the renewal notices. (This was when a mac.com e-mail address was free and I was using it for all my domain-related correspondence.) Probably Apple's fault more than Dotster's, though.
posted by kindall at 11:51 AM on August 12, 2004


I use Dotster too, and haven't had any complaints. In fact, several years ago, I undertook an ardurous mission to move from six different registrars to them, and - knowing how easy it was to move from Dotster elsewhere (I sold a few domains) - I was apalled at how hard other companies made it to extricate your domains from their grip.

On the other hand, I definitely don't rely on automated renewal notification, nor their "let us bill your credit card automatically!" deal. My PDA is full of domain name expiration dates.

I imagine all registrars have their goofs, and big ones like Dotster will have a good share of horror stories. Frankly I'll take almost anyone over Verisign. But I like their prices, their administrative setup... and when they introduced the totally ridiculous but "perfect for anal retentive twits like me" feature called DomainSync - where you can pay incrementally to move the expiration date of individual domains to coincide with others (rather than having registrations dying all over the calendar) - I knew I was their bitch.
posted by pzarquon at 12:01 PM on August 12, 2004


Cory Doctorow had burrito for lunch, is constipated. Has anyone else had a burrito for lunch and gotten constipated?
posted by xmutex at 12:07 PM on August 12, 2004


rainking: "It's interesting how Cory regularly uses Boing Boing to deal out negative whuffie . . ."

Wouldn't that be "Left handed whuffle" Awwwww
posted by DBAPaul at 12:34 PM on August 12, 2004


He switched registrars but didn't want to switch DNS? Wouldn't the DNS usually be with your hosting company?

The DNS server for your domain can be anywhere. It is a completely different item from your domain name. Basically:

- Network Soutions / Verisign / Whoever has a database matching the IP address of a set of DNS servers for each domain (you must have a minimum of 2).

- You set up a DNS server to provide real IPs for that domain, or sub-DNS servers for subdomains of your domain.

So, if you want ask.metafilter.com's IP, your computer first asks your ISP's DNS server what ask.metafilter.com resolves to. If it doesn't remember, your ISP's DNS server asks the root servers (Network Solutions) who to ask for the IP. Network Solutions says to ask ns1.turlyming.com, ns2.turlyming.com, ns1.zoneedit.com, or ns2.zoneedit.com.

Since, for some odd reason, there's no IP entries for these on metafilter.com's registration, now your client does another lookup with your ISP for ns1.turlyming.com. It isn't there. Your ISP asks the root servers and finds out 67.119.7.91 (pacbell ADSL) hosts the DNS for turlyming.com. *NOW* your client asks your ISP to ask 67.119.7.91 for the IP for ns1.turlyming.com. turlyming.com says 207.44.144.7 (ev1servers.net) is the IP address for ns1.turlyming.com.

Finally, your client can tell your ISP to ask 207.44.144.7 what the info for "ask.metafilter.com" is. 207.44.144.7 tells your client/ISP that 209.10.108.201 is ask.metafilter.com, and that ask.metafilter.com is, in fact, just metafilter.com.

[I could be off a bit on the client < -> ISP interaction, there may be less work happening on the clients end, and more happening on the ISPs end. I only remember this from setting up djbdns... the best DNS server in the world. Period.]
posted by shepd at 3:39 PM on August 12, 2004


Oddly, I am the first person to say it--

CoryFilter.

Let me also suggest that many of us don't read Boing Boing because we don't give a flying cahootie's ass what happens to Cory Doctorow.

Okay, I take that back. If he gets eaten by the Loch Ness Monster, that might be worth a FPP.

I say this sadly, with great respect for PinkStainlessTail (whose nick always makes me think of Jeff Koons bunnies). Don't let the CoryCult get you, Pink!
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:44 PM on August 12, 2004


I haven't had a problem so far with Dotster, after three or so years of using them. I did have a few problems with Melbourne IT, who I used prior to that.
posted by lucien at 7:00 PM on August 12, 2004


cory is just being a petulant dick. again.

That may be so, q, but if it is true, he's being a dick who is also a talented writer with several well-received books in print, whereas you and I, well, we're petulant dicks, with, well....

...fuck all other than the soapbox that is Metafilter and our own ego-stroke websites, basically.

I'd have to say he wins.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:39 PM on August 12, 2004


Well we can all agree he dresses like a dork then, right?
posted by Peter H at 7:44 PM on August 12, 2004


Dotster is still my favorite registrar, but I never use their DNS "services" for anything but parked domains. Any nameserving you really care about should be done through a service like ZoneEdit or UltraDNS.

I like the current mix at BoingBoing. Say, where are your complaints about Xeni? hehe
posted by anser at 5:19 AM on August 13, 2004


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