A little while back I wrote about NetSol nefarious domain front-running. Well they’re at it again. NetSol will put up parking page with their own adverts on your sub-domains that aren’t being used. Now it seems that unless you read the 59,000 word long EULA you wouldn’t even know about it and the fact that you can opt out.

This is an excerpt from their EULA:

You also agree that any domain name directory, sub-directory, file name or path (e.g.) that does not resolve to an active web page on your Web site being hosted by Network Solutions, may be used by Network Solutions to place a “parking” page, “under construction” page, or other temporary page that may include promotions and advertisements for, and links to, Network Solutions’ Web site, Network Solutions product and service offerings, third-party Web sites, third-party product and service offerings, and/or Internet search engines. You agree that Network Solutions may change the content and/or appearance of, or disable any of these temporary pages at any time, in its sole discretion, and without prior notice.

Edit: I came across this personally when looking at my position in the Google ranks. This site comes up before me and has an under construction page. You wouldn’t really know it was under construction except for a tiny little text box in the top right corner.

Source: The Register

Shady business practices abound at Network Solutions. The domain registrar is being accused of ‘front-running’. What happens is when someone goes to the Network Solutions site and searches for the availability of a domain name Network Solutions immediately registered the name for itself. Then the company forces the user to pay outrageous fees to buy the name from them. One client in the suit said $34.99 when the same domain elsewhere would have been $9.99. For anyone who’s been burned by this practice this is welcome news. The original filer of the suit also claims that ICANN is in on the deal as well.

Source: Vnunet.com

For those that don’t know Microsoft plans to stop sales of Windows XP, and force everyone into using Vista. Infoworld has a petition for those that don’t want this fate for XP. Apparently this is also the opinion of atleast 75,000 other people as well.

While I’m all for Linux and Open Source software, XP is still a good product that doesn’t deserve to die just yet. I can’t believe I just said that. Compared to the bloat of Vista XP feels downright good. It’s like that friend that really goofy and awkward yet you still hang around with them anyway.

Vmware has announced the beta of their virtualization product. I haven’t tried out the newest version yet but I use Vmware Server on an almost daily basis for testing with different operating systems. I have several distros of linux installed as well as different server environments.

Features:

• Web-based management interface: A new Web-based user interface provides a simple, flexible, intuitive and productive way for you to manage your virtual machines.
• Expanded operating system support: VMware Server now supports Windows Vista Business Edition and Ultimate Edition (guest only), Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn Server Beta 3), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Ubuntu 7.1, among others.
• Greater scalability: Take full advantage of high-end hardware with support for up to 8GB of RAM per virtual machine, up to two virtual SMP (vSMP) processors and up to 64 virtual machines per host.
• 64-bit guest operating system support: Run high-performance operating systems in virtual machines with support for Intel EM64T VT-enabled processors and AMD64 processors with segmentation support.
• Support for VIX API 1.2: This feature provides a programming interface for automating virtual machine and guest operations.
• Support for Virtual Machine Interface (VMI): This feature enables transparent paravirtualization, in which a single binary version of the operating system can run either on native hardware or in paravirtualized mode.
• Support for USB 2.0 devices: Transfer data at faster data rates from USB 2.0 devices.