MSFT is using my bandwidth as a proxy?!

Someone in MSFT’s networking group has put a cached list of sites participating in Distributed Boing Boing , meaning that requests for some users over there use my bandwidth to pull BB’s pages…. 65.55.110.117 – – [02/Jul/2008:19:45:20 -0700] “GET /dbb.php?http://www.boingboing.net/2004/12/13/bionic-limbs.html HTTP/1.0” 200 23576 “http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=boing&form=QBHP” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)” I talked with the author of DBB this week and he took the list down once the folks at SmartFilter figured it out, but evidently some people made copies of the list of sites.

Excellent. Someone in MSFT’s networking group has put a cached list of sites participating in Distributed Boing Boing in their live.com results, meaning that requests for some users over there use my bandwidth to pull BB’s pages. And I seem to be on that list: requests for pages at BB.net that originate at MSFT go through me first.

65.55.110.117 - - [02/Jul/2008:19:45:20 -0700] "GET /dbb.php?http://www.boingboing.net/2004/12/13/bionic-limbs.html HTTP/1.0" 200 23576 "http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=boing&form=QBHP" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
# whois 65.55.110
OrgName: Microsoft Corp
OrgID: MSFT
Address: One Microsoft Way
City: Redmond
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98052
Country: US
NetRange: 65.52.0.0 – 65.55.255.255

I talked with the author of DBB this week and he took the list down once the folks at SmartFilter figured it out, but evidently some people made copies of the list of sites. Bad network engineer, no biscuit.

Time to pull the plug on this, in a more comprehensive way than URL rewrites or redirects.

That ought to do it . . .

< ?php
header("Location: http://boingboing.net/\n\n");
exit;
?>

annals of things I don’t understand

boy (age 8 or 9) inspects a watermelon his mother has put in their cart and remarks that there is dirt on it and wants to know why…. young woman putting packages of instant oatmeal in her cart, and then carefully adding their price to her total with a calculator.

  1. boy (age 8 or 9) inspects a watermelon his mother has put in their cart and remarks that there is dirt on it and wants to know why. she doesn’t explain where watermelons come from.
  2. young woman putting packages of instant oatmeal in her cart, and then carefully adding their price to her total with a calculator. perhaps she is a researcher, but if she is just a frugal shopper, why is she buying that stuff?

some small changes

The application-in-a-browser is pretty slick, given enough computer to run it (as with any app, of course), and this old 800MHz machine is right at the edge of obsolescence…. a small voice in the back of my head says there is a need for a small internet appliance that provides an functional spam-proof MTA a web server/publishing system (not to say a blogging platform) basic home networking services — backups, print service, wireless Something like a slug , perhaps beefier, but not as much as a Shuttle provides: maybe something like this ?

Not posting much, out of an effort to stop spending time on this. I only keep the blog running because people keep reading it. I see the same search queries, so I figure someone is finding it useful.

I made the search query zeitgeist the home page, since no one comes to read, only to follow Google results (apologies to both of you who have this site bookmarked). Most of the visits are drive-bys — one page and out . . . no need for a navigational interface or welcome page.

The automated posts from del.icio.us stopped working, so I am now using the Share option in Google Reader, since I use that instead of NetNewsWire. GMail, Google Reader . . what was that quote: “Netscape would “reduce Windows to a set of poorly debugged device drivers.“? Change s/Netscape/the Internet with broadband/g and it starts to look realistic.

The application-in-a-browser is pretty slick, given enough computer to run it (as with any app, of course), and this old 800MHz machine is right at the edge of obsolescence.
Adding some services on the back end as the Young People become more capable. Email accounts are sought after, and the looming presence of spam needs to be dealt with. For all the talk of Bayesian filters or payload detection, what seems to work really well is a very simple technique: greylisting. Since spam is not about conversations or even replies, a simple greylist tactic is for the receiving email server to ask the sender to resubmit the email in 5 minutes. Spammers don’t get or read replies, so those messages are never delivered. Legitimate ones from properly configured MTAs do get delivered and the address is stored for later comparisons, so the delay is dispensed with. Seems to work just fine. It all happens at the application layer, so the user never sees a delay. Sweet . . .

Still hoping to get bogofilter integrated as a belt-and-braces approach, but so far things are working well. Had to buy a second domain with no personal information in the name to protect the precious poppets, as well, but that was trivial.
I won’t be at all surprised to find I need an IM server . . . . a small voice in the back of my head says there is a need for a small internet appliance that provides

  • an functional spam-proof MTA
  • a web server/publishing system (not to say a blogging platform)
  • basic home networking services — backups, print service, wireless

Something like a slug, perhaps beefier, but not as much as a Shuttle provides: maybe something like this? Ah, forget it, Apple will roll out something that does all that — or all people will use — at a better price point.

in case I get disemvowelled . . .

It looks to me like the only ones to feel embarrassed are the boingers, for doing something that seems counter to their public personae and for failing to defend their decision convincingly…. I realize BB is not the anyone’s government of public utility and has no legal obligations to be open, but I suspect a lot of BB’s readers have expectations beyond the merely legal.

I don’t think I said anything that inflammatory . . .

Where I lose the plot is that these posts (and comments referencing them?) disappeared a year ago and only now does anyone notice. And in that time, no one thought of a way to communicate that to the teeming millions? Or that it needed to be presented in a favorable way? Does that seem believable?

And who will be embarrassed by the facts of the matter coming out? Violet Blue? One of the BB crew? It looks to me like the only ones to feel embarrassed are the boingers, for doing something that seems counter to their public personae and for failing to defend their decision convincingly. Like it or not, you have an audience and they have some expectations. As noted elsewhere, it will be hard to take you all seriously on issues of transparency after this, trivial as it may seem now. I realize BB is not the anyone’s government of public utility and has no legal obligations to be open, but I suspect a lot of BB’s readers have expectations beyond the merely legal.

[From That Violet Blue thing – Boing Boing: with over 800 1100 comments in 24 hours? Impressive. I think people are just trying to get it up to 1984. ]

And the possible reason for all this? Looks embarrassing for the BB crowd if it was something like this.