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November 24, 2008

Who’s behind Macserialjunkie?

Thankfully for Mac developers everywhere, Macserialjunkie (aka MSJ) has been down for quite a few days now.

Interestingly, though, I notice that it’s now being hosted directly in IP space belonging to Infinite Technologies. For those who don’t know, Infinite Technologies are colluding with the people running MSJ. How do I know this? Well, because we complained about MSJ to the ISP that they were using, who told us that it was being hosted by one of their clients and passed on our complaint.

In response, I got an e-mail from Ganesh Rao, who styles himself “Head of Network Operations/Network Architect”:

Seems friendly enough, right? Well I explained what MSJ was and what id did and that I didn’t think that any ISP that claimed to be supportive of copyright should be hosting such a website. Ganesh replied:

I found that quite offensive—basically Ganesh Rao was calling me a liar—and I said so. Eventually the conversation ended with

Notice that the tone has changed completely. Originally Mr. Rao was trying to make it seem as if he had no relationship with Macserialjunkie. But in this final e-mail the relationship is obvious. He talks about how “we” have connections with multiple Swedish ISPs, and about how easy it would be to transfer the data over to one of them.

Anyway, after forwarding this to the upstream ISP, it seems that action was eventually taken to kick MSJ off the servers they were using. It has, of course, resurfaced, but this time at 94.100.27.140, which (surprise surprise) is registered to none other than Infinite Technologies and in particular Mr. Ganesh Rao:

OrgName:    RIPE Network Coordination Centre
OrgID:      RIPE
Address:    P.O. Box 10096
City:       Amsterdam
StateProv:
PostalCode: 1001EB
Country:    NL

ReferralServer: whois://whois.ripe.net:43

NetRange:   94.0.0.0 - 94.255.255.255
CIDR:       94.0.0.0/8
NetName:    94-RIPE
NetHandle:  NET-94-0-0-0-1
Parent:
NetType:    Allocated to RIPE NCC
NameServer: NS-PRI.RIPE.NET
NameServer: SEC1.APNIC.NET
NameServer: SEC3.APNIC.NET
NameServer: TINNIE.ARIN.NET
NameServer: NS.LACNIC.NET
Comment:    These addresses have been further assigned to users in
Comment:    the RIPE NCC region. Contact information can be found in
Comment:    the RIPE database at http://www.ripe.net/whois
RegDate:    2007-07-30
Updated:    2007-08-07

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2008-11-23 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.
% This is the RIPE Whois query server #2.
% The objects are in RPSL format.
%
% Rights restricted by copyright.
% See http://www.ripe.net/db/copyright.html

% Note: This output has been filtered.
%       To receive output for a database update, use the "-B" flag

% Information related to '94.100.27.0 - 94.100.27.255'

inetnum:        94.100.27.0 - 94.100.27.255
netname:        INFINITE-TECH
descr:          INFINITE-TECH
country:        NL
admin-c:        ITGR-RIPE
tech-c:         ITGR-RIPE
org:            ORG-ITPL2-RIPE
status:         ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:         ITECH-MNT
mnt-lower:      ITECH-MNT
mnt-domains:    ITECH-MNT
mnt-routes:     ITECH-MNT
source:         RIPE # Filtered

organisation:   ORG-ITPL2-RIPE
org-name:       Infinite Technologies
org-type:       OTHER
address:        Postbus 964
address:        5000 AZ, Tilburg
address:        The Netherlands
remarks:        +--------------------------
remarks:        Abuse Complaints = Email Only
remarks:        Technical Support = Email & Phone
remarks:        +--------------------------
abuse-mailbox:  abuse@infinitetech.in
mnt-ref:        ITECH-MNT
mnt-by:         ITECH-MNT
source:         RIPE # Filtered

person:         Ganesh Rao
address:        PO Box 964
address:        Tilburg, 5000 AZ
address:        The Netherlands
phone:          +31-(0)13-2202617
fax-no:         +1 (408) 856-2445
abuse-mailbox:  abuse@infinitetech.in
remarks:        +--------------------------
remarks:        Head of Operations
remarks:        Technical / Sales / Abuse Dept.
remarks:        +--------------------------
nic-hdl:        ITGR-RIPE
mnt-by:         ITECH-MNT
source:         RIPE # Filtered

% Information related to '94.100.16.0/20AS35017'

route:          94.100.16.0/20
descr:          PL-SWIFTWAY-20080709
origin:         AS35017
mnt-by:         swiftway-mnt
source:         RIPE # Filtered

Their new upstream ISP appears to be Swiftway, a Polish firm that for some reason uses a UK domain name for its site. It seems unlikely that hosting MSJ is something that is allowable under Swiftway’s Acceptable Use Policy, since it (MSJ) clearly is used “to distribute…material in violation of applicable law…in a manner that will infringe the copyright…of others”.

Posted by alastair at 1:10 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 17, 2008

OpenRadar

OpenRadar (via Rentzsch) looks like a great way for us developers to share information about bug reports we’ve filed with Apple.

Or it would be if it weren’t falling foul of the limits on the Google App Engine beta :-)

Posted by alastair at 11:53 AM | | Comments (0)

November 4, 2008

Perverse

For some time now the government has been banging on at the banks to pass interest rate cuts on to consumers.

This, it seems to me, would be perverse (as indeed are interest rate cuts in the first place). We arrived in the current economic mess as a direct result of interest rates that were too low over a sustained period because of a failure to take into account the boom in the housing market, both here and in the United States; had the banks not been busy shifting the risk onto others, perhaps money would not have been lent inappropriately even under those conditions, but the combination of the two has turned out to be a disaster for the world economy.

The fix for these problems is twofold. It was clear that the only way to solve the crisis in the banking sector was recapitalisation, whether through mergers, takeovers, outside investment or—preferably as a last ditch alternative—state investment in banks. The alternative would be to allow banks to go bust, taking peoples’ savings with them; this is political suicide and therefore unthinkable to the modern political class, not to mention terribly unpleasant for the people whose money would be lost.

But the underlying problem of the overheating housing markets on both sides of the Atlantic can only be tackled by taking real estate prices into consideration when setting interest rates. And, to date, the Bank of England has still not been instructed to include house prices in the measure of inflation it is supposed to be working to keep at a low rate.

We should not be making rate cuts at the moment, let alone forcing lenders to pass on those rate cuts to consumers. To make rate cuts when the problem is excessive debt and when housing is still significantly overpriced is simply madness.

Posted by alastair at 1:43 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

McCain spam

Is anyone else receiving spam from the John McCain campaign? Thus far, my company has received no fewer than three spam e-mails from johnmccain.com (and yes, I’m pretty certain they originate with the McCain campaign itself, and not with some spammer out to discredit the Republican presidential candidate).

This is annoying for three reasons:

  • The e-mail address to which these are being sent cannot have been collected in a legal manner. Why? Because it’s one of our customer contact e-mail addresses, that’s why. We don’t give it out to people so that they can send us marketing e-mail.

  • We aren’t American. i.e. we don’t even have a blasted vote!

  • It’s illegal to send spam into the European Union. Yet here we have an example of the American establishment flouting E.U. law.

Anyway, Mr. McCain, whoever is doing your e-mail campaign is doing you and your party a disservice. Spamming people isn’t going to make them vote for you; it’s going to make them vote for someone else. Probably Barack Obama.

(Of course, some may say, well, so much the better. I don’t really have an opinion on who the United States should elect as their next president. I suspect it will be Obama, and I hope therefore that he turns out to be a good choice for the American people.)

Posted by alastair at 1:16 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)