h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

They don't; they just want to make sure you pay for the overpriced hardware at the same time.

I've installed Ubuntu on my old pc, all I need now is a mouse and a table to put it on.

"Poundland" do a usable USB scrolling mouse, if you don't mind it having a "ball". It's worth getting one as a spare anyway.

They are at it again, if I could get decent drivers for linux/nvidia AMD I would install Ubuntu on this. They don't do 3D or physX or Cool and Quiet yet.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/12/microsoft_big_security_hole_in.html?nav=rss_blog

You can download and install "Cool & Quiet" drivers directly from AMD - that's what I did with Suse 10 before they included them as standard.

This is a tangle, I don't know if it's up your street.

I bought a couple of .co.uk domains at Lycos for nearly £10, but they've decided I'm not spending enough and are shutting down their domain hosting business.

They have arranged free transfer for free hosting at another company, I checked and it's NOT free. It is £8.50 per month plus arrangement fee, for redirection or a web page. So you can only have it free if you don't point it at anything.

So I looked to transfer to a really free registrar, but Lycos haven't got any facilities for transfer except to their chosen host.

I complained to Nominet, but they said Lycos isn't my registrar anyway, but some German company with a web site only in German and no email facilities. They can only be contacted by fax.

Going into my members area, I found nominet can do the transfer for me, but my domain names had been split into different accounts and it costs £10 per account. So I merged them.

Curiously someone elses name and address is associated with my domains, I'm the administrator only, a German is responsible for everything else.

Is this normal with .co.uk names?

Why am I messed around so much

Lycos should have registered you as the owner, not merely as the administrative contact. That way you could freely transfer them to any host who will have you. In theory you still can - as administrator you just tell ICANN two new nameservers to point the domain at. If you have "proper" hosting anywhere you want to attach the domains to just look up their FAQs to find out what the nameservers are. In theory at least this should cost you nothing.

A friend of mine got screwed around by a company who offered a "free" domain name if he paid for hosting. He did so, but when he wanted to move his (thankfully, not-too-popular) site to another host he found the name was registered to the hosting company, not to him, and when he let his hosting lapse they pointed it at one of their "search gateways" to cash in on his existing search rankings and traffic.

I've actually got eight nameservers in Scottsdale Nevada, and since I was able to merge the accounts and change the password, I expect to be able to move them or delete them.

If I delete them, how long before I can buy them back through go-daddy. Because the other bloke is in billing will he get emailed, if he doesn't I could get them back for the same price as the transfer to a British site.

"If I delete them, how long before I can buy them back through go-daddy."

I have no idea why you would do this. If you currently control them, which in order to delete them you would have to, what possible difference would it make who you had them registered through?

Some German called Johann is in control of billing, so he controls them in so far as he can say no to a transfer or sale.

But he is most probably in control of thousands of domains, and is rather busy trying to screw the real owners. So he might not notice.

On the other hand I'm sure godaddy who own all my nameservers might have something to say if I just notify ICANN to point these names at them. I already asked godaddy to transfer and they say they can't.

Neither can DYNDNS, and the only one I can find that is free is Heartinternet.co.uk

Sounds silly but I'd rather completely mess them up than let a crook get hold of them. Never buy anything British if you can help it, you are sure to be ripped off.

Have a read through this page and see if it helps: http://www.nominet.org.uk/registrants/maintain/faq/

I see that all transfers now incur a minimum £10 charge, presumably to discourage "nusance" transfers. When I first paid for a domain name I could just transfer it by logging in as administrator and submitting a form with the new nameservers, but that was something like six years ago.

£10+vat for each account, that's why I merged them. Everything can be changed as far as I can see including the TAG, in this case changed to HEARTINTERNET, for some reason has to be in capitals.

But why then do I have to ask, I could ammend the billing details or try to, I am going to look at some legal stuff.

Very useful, the only thing I can legally do is cancel them both and they will be removed at midnight.

This will cost me 18p for renewal plus Nominet fee of £10+VAT, or I could go with godaddy who I know is ok even though their website is really slow to use, full of adverts.Much more expensive though.

Or I can ask Nominet to transfer in the absence of an email showing the registrar is unwilling to allow the transfer.

Actually I can't get in touch with the real registrar because they have to have a signed fax, and I don't have a fax machine or access to one.

Do you have a scanner?

http://www.efax.co.uk

30 days free trial - lets you send faxes by email.

I can already send fax by email but I haven't got a scanner or printer. I didn't want to buy one either, expensive ink.

You have to download forms:

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.united-domains.de/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dunited-domains%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4GGLL_en-GB

I've been looking at the contract and it was possible to transfer when it was Lycos and Verisign.

They appear to have broken a contract full of broken links except for the catchall 'and can be varied at any time.'

What a mess, I should never have gone with a .co.uk company and I only want to stop STRATO from hosting them.

If I refuse transfer don't nominet get them, surely they can't be transfered without my consent.

They only need the consent of the person listed as the administrative contact, afaik.

2 month notice required, the domains are set to revert to nominet or strato by January 31. Therefore normal means of transfer rendered useless.

Godaddy will help secure the domains at a cost by starting to enquire about their availability one hour before they are released, but they say this is still not a guarantee since the present registrar may already be doing this, they get a warning.

But surely this is good enough reason for nominet to intervene at a cost of £10+vat

I've changed the TAG manually with the help of NOMINET, and informed HEARTINTERNET of the transfer. Fingers crossed.

If that was not the only thing I have to deal with I had a threatening letter from Royal Mail about the non delivery of cpu cooler, which is still working fine by the way.

I would put the letter up here for your amusement but it has a lot of names in it and I haven't got the energy.

It is a thinly disguised threat.

My broadband speed is crap, it was ok for months but now I'm lucky to get 50kbps, AND IT ISN'T MY COMPUTER, it's the same on the old one and shows full strength signal turbo broadband.

If heartinternet fix my domains ok I still have to change details for technical and billing.

The change of TAG took one microsecond, the two months notice is the rule I'm using since Lycos is in liquidation and will cease trading before a change could be made.

I just seen my domains in heartinternet and I got rid of Johann, or whatever his name was.

WHOIS sometimes get it wrong; according to

http://whois.domaintools.com

I've got 4500 domain names

But you have to pay to find out what they are I didn't even have an internet connection when most of these were registered.