name.com is very usable and otherwise handy; I don't like this policy, but I wouldn't wish GoDaddy on my worst enemy.
(OK, maybe I would)
EDIT: I really don't understand your thinking; I am the opposite. I respect name.com for being forward about it and not acting like a politician (treating me like a child).
> I really don't understand your thinking; I am the opposite. I respect name.com for being forward about it and not acting like a politician (treating me like a child).
I respect them for sharing their reasons. I think it is professional.
My issue is two fold:
- This kind of activity "breaks the internet" on the purest sense possible. It is against spec' for a very good reason, IT IS STUPID. Going to a null domain should give you a null reply. It breaks software and it breaks user's expectations (e.g. if you hit that page because you typo-ed the domain you might assume the domain has gone out of business or been "hacked").
- Their work-around(s) are silly. They are essentially "then use someone else" or "register every single possible sub-domain." No opt-out.
They might be very good at business and marketing but they fail on every technological ground you can fail. Someone who fails that badly at understanding the internet isn't someone I want running my DNS of all things...
> - Their work-around(s) are silly. They are essentially "then use someone else" or "register every single possible sub-domain." No opt-out.
"Use someone else" is the opt-out, whether you take it to mean "use another registrar" or use "other, non-gratis DNS services.
Your other option is to use a wildcard, as I think you understand (though your "register every single possible sub-domain" is a bit misleading).
This behavior sucks, but if it's something that bothers you, you're probably the type that should be using a better DNS provider, anyways. That said, I'm a happy customer of name.com.
I just shipped my first AR app to a customer, and I have been having serious Snow Crash moments in real-life, lately. As a mobile developer, all I can think about now is the death of the native interface, and the new age of the rule of Augmented Reality. Yikes, I've slipped and fallen into the digital hole that is: reality with overlays.
For example I've quite literally got a little 3d animated ghost that sits in the corner of my favourite hangout, which only I can see through my phone when I point its camera in the right angle, which tells me the name of the track being played on the house speakers .. it really is a moment like Snow Crash, played out in real life, I have to say..
Nope, its only in my AR app, which has a very specific set of ImageTargets only I have any interest in. ;)
But! Its an awesome tech, and I'm pretty sure its going to hit the store soon enough. I'm currently working on ways to embed tons more stuff within the target matrix .. its mind-boggling to think that any recognizable surface can be the human interface mechanism, now.
Verisign "dongles" can come on smartphones of all types, and on many operating systems. I even believe they have browser plugins, meaning even linux would be supported. That is, if you think two-factor is necessary for university systems.
As far as email, there are several things to consider: One, that I would think it a rarity for a student, or even a teacher! to need to send a single email to more than a handful of /external/ email addresses at a time. Put an email firewall in place between your internal and external systems, and have IT security monitor that system for peaks in traffic. Single users sending outbound mail a lot. Obviously, there should be a spam filter going in AND out.
And yes, spam email does trickle in sometimes, and from different SMTP servers, but from the bit I've dealt with them, there are definite patterns that a person can pick up on when they're watching for it.
To me, it's a check against a teacher making an obscenely hard test that even the smartest students can't pass. The logic would be that if the best and brightest can only get a 60, then the exam should be curved.
This assumes that the best and brightest are actually really smart and knowledgeable.
It's not obvious until you try to create a test yourself that creating a fair test is hard. Particularly for an intro course, since it's material that you know so well that you barely think about it consciously anymore. I took the same approach, and I was cognizant of the fact that some of my students came in with prior programming experience.
I had a professor once (for modern physics, i.e. relativity and quantum mechanics) who said that if anyone could get 100% on his test, they'd saturate the "sensor" and make the measurement less accurate; he wanted to see the bell curve centered low enough that it didn't get clipped by the maximum score. He calibrated his tests so the highest scores would typically fall in the 50s or 60s, and then applied a curve. Actually getting 100 would require knowing all the material for that course in advance and then some.
An interesting, if nerve-wracking, philosophy. :) It's the only time I've ever left a test and not known for sure what grade I'd get.
