So, you should expect problems when you move your server to a new IP and don’t bother to update the InterNIC registration for your nameservers. It’s an area where I don’t have much experience, so I had to go looking for the solution.

Paul Woutrs gave some tips to get started in his short document on the subject. But the real lesson there was that I had to go back to the registrar where I’d originally registered the nameserver objects to change the registration. In Paul’s case that meant going back to Verisign, and in my case it meant Dotster. Fortunately I still have an account there, and Paul’s tips gave me the language I needed to navigate Dotster’s FAQs.

It was in thos FAQs that I found a link to the Verisign Whois Search, which has a little-used option to look up nameserver info. For some reason, that was more successful than my attempts at the command line with whois 'host ns1.maisonbisson.com'.

Also of note is the previously mentioned, and free, DNS Report service.

dns, dns problems, domain name system, glue records, internic, nameserver, nameserver registration, problems

Things went whacky with Dotster’s hosted DNS services last night. Though the problem now appears to be fixed on their end (and I’ve actually move elsewhere in my attempts to get back online), it could be a while before the bad data is flushed from caches around the world.

In the meantime, let me mention that Ryan shared with me a useful tool I’d not seen before: DNSReport.

dns, dns problems, dns report, dotster, hosted dns, problems

Benjamin Stephan and Lutz Vogel at Lafkon bring us this wonderfully engaging animated story of Trusted Computing. There’s lots more to the story at AgainstTCPA.com, and I need to thank David Rothman at TeleRead for alerting me to both the video and the site.

I haven’t had much to say about TCPA, but I think of it like technology politics…politics where I have no say, no vote, no power.

against tcpa, against-tcpa, againsttcpa, animated story, anti tcpa, anti-tcpa, antitcpa, lafkon, problem, problems, problems with tcpa, risk, risks, risks of tcpa, tc video, tcpa, trusted computing, video

Jenny Levine, over at The Shifted Librarian, is telling the latest chapter in her long-running struggle with DRM.

Now, I’ve installed a lot of Windows software in my day, so I feel pretty confident in my ability to double-click on an installation file. However, when I try to install [Yahoo Music Engine], I get three screens into the installer (oh the joy of accepting the license agreement over and over) before I get an error message that says, “The file c:\downloads\ could not be opened.” That happens to be the folder where the file is located, so I find it odd that the installer can’t find the folder it’s located in, let alone the file. I’ve tried rebooting the computer. I’ve tried redownloading the file. I’ve tried lighting a candle and chanting. Nothing seems to get the installer to, you know, install. The computer meets all of the system requirements and then some. So either I’m just not destined to live the happy, DRMed life the entertainment industry waxes on about, or our house is built on an ancient technology burial ground. While I readily admit there is a lot of dead technology in the basement, I’m leaning towards the former.

Previously: DRM stories at MaisonBisson.

tags: ancient technology, drm, entertainment industry, error message, jenny levine, music engine, problems, windows software, yahoo music