0x7D5 December 0xF: Tonight, I registered a domain. In theory, this should be a fairly quick procedure. One feeds in a domain name, unselects the pile of checkboxes wherein the registrar decides that I of course really wish to buy the same domain in every TLD they work for, feeds in some nameservers, contact information, and billing information, no? I used to use DirectNIC, Dotster, and OpenSRS. However, if I recall correctly, the last time I bought something through them, they had a list of customer credit card numbers to choose from. I don't _HAVE_ a credit card; on those rare occasions when the use of one is called for, friends and/or people who owe me money supply the requisite numbers. I don't want a slip of the mouse a year later to wind up doublecharging my friends, so I haven't registered anything new from them since noticing that. A while back I found a registrar in Monaco called Namebay; however, the last time I tried to order something through them, their webforms were completely unusable. So this time, I decided to see how Joker was. The first thing one notices upon visiting their site is that Konqueror has never heard of the authority who signed their certificate. As the leading certification authority, Verisign, is run by incompetent twits of prosimian parentage, I go ahead anyway. Their interface, while lugubrious, was intuitive enough that I could figure out the navigation in spite of their stylishly unreadable buttons. Having run the gauntlet of Joker's webforms (at least, so it appeared), I finally reached the point at which it asked for the relevant credit card details. Feeding them in, I am presented with something along the lines of 'Your order is almost done! To continue, turn off any popup blockers, enable Javascript, click on the link below, and enter some information to confirm your purchase. Visa and Mastercard now require us to ask for all this.'. And a request for most of the customer's SSN, along with some other identifying information. Sigh. So either Joker has been replaced by cracklets, or the credit card companies actually have come up with the STUPIDEST IMAGINABLE response to widespread phishing. The good news is, Namebay works again. Even if the process of ordering does inexplicably switch over to being in French partway through...

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