January 17, 2005
Panix is back (sorta)
Seems that the folks at Melbourne IT went and did the right thing. Sad it had to wait until 9a on a Monday morning for them to do it.
[Gulfoss:~] samer% jwhois panix.com
[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.melbourneit.com]
[Querying whois.melbourneit.com]
[whois.melbourneit.com]
Domain Name.......... panix.com
Creation Date........ 1991-04-22
Registration Date.... 2005-01-15
Expiry Date.......... 2006-04-23
Organisation Name.... Public Access Networks Corp
Organisation Address. 15 West 18th Street
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. New York
Organisation Address. 10011
Organisation Address. NY
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES
Admin Name........... Panix Hostmaster
Admin Address........ 15 West 18th Street
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ New York
Admin Address........ 10011
Admin Address........ NY
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... hostmaster@panix.com
Admin Phone.......... +1.2127414400
Admin Fax............ +1.2127415311
Tech Name............ Panix Hostmaster
Tech Address......... 15 West 18th Street
Tech Address.........
Tech Address......... New York
Tech Address......... 10011
Tech Address......... NY
Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
Tech Email........... hostmaster@panix.com
Tech Phone........... +1.2127414400
Tech Fax............. +1.2127415311
Name Server.......... NS1.ACCESS.NET
Name Server.......... NS2.ACCESS.NET
Alexis sent this note to NANOG. It seems that things are finally getting back to normal.
Posted by Samer at 12:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 16, 2005
Panix.com Hijacked
It's been over a day now since one of the oldest ISPs in the nation has had its domain hijacked.
This thread on /. has the information, this particular comment from tjls is pretty damned eye-opening:
What seems to have happened is that somehow the Australian registrar "melbourneIT.com" yanked the fully paid-up registration away from Dotster (where Panix had it) without any notice whatsoever (this violates all the relevant RFCs for the Shared Registration System and the current ICANN policy *and* seems to indicate a severe bug or security problem somewhere in the registration system).
What's particularly scary is that melbourneIT.com isn't open on the weekends, period (though oddly enough they transferred the domain first thing on Saturday, hmmmm) and won't do anything to help. There are lots of ugly details in the NANOG mailing-list archive [merit.edu], particularly in this message from Perry Metzger [merit.edu], this message from Richard Cox [merit.edu], and this message from me, which includes a slimy note from some customer-service flack at Verisign [merit.edu].
This has clearly happened to others in the past, and highlights a serious flaw in the current registry-registrar system. We are not 100% sure how the domain was transferred between registrars with no notice to anyone (though I have some hunches I won't go into here right now) but consider this: a rogue or penetrated registrar can effectively put you out of business for the duration of the ICANN complaint and appeals process, with no notice, and there may be nothing you or anyone else can do about it short of extremely expensive legal action, even if you get law enforcement involved. Yuck.
If this sort of thing can happen to Panix, it can happen to anyone. Clearly, from reading the NANOG list, this seems to have been a serious and well thought out attack intended to cripple Panix for some reason. I'm boggled by Verisign's lack of response, and boggled more that this has happened more than once with MelbourneIT.
If you do need Panix, reach them on Panix.net, instead.
UPDATE: This is Alexis' note to NANOG.
Posted by Samer at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 30, 2004
Lava Lamp Kills Man
I don't know if I should cry or laugh, but apparently a Kent, WA man decided to heat his lava lamp on the stove top. It blew up, sending glass everywhere and killing him. Herewith is the police report:
Death caused by exploding lava lamp ruled accidental
Kent, WA - November 29, 2004
At about 8:00 p.m., Sunday, November 28, 2004, an Auburn couple found their 24 year old son dead in his south Kent trailer home. Kent Police Detectives examined the scene. It appeared that something had exploded on the stove top sending shards and splinters of glass in all directions. Remnants of a lava lamp were found around the kitchen area. It is believed that for some unknown reason the deceased placed a lava lamp on the stove top to heat it up which led to the explosion of the fluid container part of the lava lamp. The deceased has several lacerations and one large shard of glass embedded in his chest.
The young man talked to this father on the phone about 9:00 a.m. Sunday. His parents were called by his girlfriend about 7:30 pm when she had not been able to contact him all day. His parents drove from their home in Auburn to south Kent to check on him. On entering the trailer home they turned off the burner on the stove and then discovered their son in the bedroom.
The medical examiners office determined that the flying shard of glass caused his death and ruled it to be an accidental death.
A contender for a Darwin award, perhaps?
Posted by Samer at 08:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Beatles
I was listening to Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) from the album "Rubber Soul" by The Beatles and it is my favorite song of theirs. But I got to thinking about how astounding it is that the music they created, those four mop topped guys from Liverpool, how it still reverberates.
I love listening to them, songs so familiar and still fresh after all these years. Maybe that's why they endure decade after decade, and no one can really remember a thing by any of the boy bands and so on.
Posted by Samer at 06:39 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 10, 2004
Keep up with my travels
Okay, so you don't read the blog all the time, but you want to know when I post something new... I've got just the solution for you...
Over on the left hand side of the main page is a "Stay Updated" box. Enter your e-mail address and this nifty software called Notifier will, well, notify you of any new posts I make.
Posted by Samer at 09:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 07, 2004
Google Goes Wireless
Anyone who knows me must know how much I love Google. Well, I love them a little more this morning.
They have a new service in beta called Google SMS. It allows you to send a text message from your phone and get Google information back via SMS. You want to find out local chili parlors, just send an SMS to 46645 with the text "chili xxxxx", where the "xxxxx" is the zip code you want. You need a price check on something you are about to buy? Just send a message with the UPC code (ISBN in the case of books) and it comes back with the Froogle best price matches.
So head on over to the SMS page that Google has set up and check out the FAQ and the examples that they provide. And get txting.
Posted by Samer at 12:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 30, 2004
Zoom zoom
I recently got the nifty Canon S60 camera, and I have been playing around with it. It is a very nice camera and capable of creating some amazing images, like this one of a Metro train zooming by.
Posted by Samer at 05:54 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 09, 2004
Fun with Spam
When you get as much as 3000 pieces of spam a day, it starts to get on your nerves. Some of us just wear out the delete key on our keyboards, others, well, they get creative.
Spamusement is a great site where this guy takes a spam subject and then creates a drawing with the subject as punch line. They are oddly amusing and funny.
And, like that was not enough, you should check out the "why donate" link. I'm sure you will be quite familiar with the style of writing.
Posted by Samer at 01:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 14, 2004
Tunak Tunak Tan!
No, really. "Tunak Tunak Tan!" is possibly the best song ever written. What, you don't understand Punjabi? Here's a fine translation.
This made my day, it did.
Posted by Samer at 10:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 22, 2004
P800
I'm borrowing my boss's P800 for a couple of weeks. What a nice nice phone. I got it set up with internet access and I can use it to check and send e-mail, make calls, surf the web, IM, even SSH into a Unix host!
The downsides to this phone are few, but they tend to be of the annoying type: the e-mail client is not the best, and does not keep the status of a mail message off the server; the phone is generally slow and occasionally an application will freeze up and the phone will need a restart.
Bluetooth support is really good, and it syncs with my Mac flawlessly. The calendaring application is really well done and useful. The camera is not great, but it works. And you can send e-mail with voice, pictures, and other media files.
There's tons of software for this phone, and a lot of it can be found at the my-symbian site under the UIQ section. Even PuTTY is available there. Amazing, really.
This is a pretty nice phone, and I wish I owned the thing.
Posted by Samer at 08:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 29, 2004
Can You Hear Me Now?
The Pokia is here. Uh huh, that's right: An old phone handset grafted onto your mobile. I want a Bluetooth one. Really, I do.
Posted by Samer at 09:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 27, 2004
Best Bumper Sticker.
Ever.
Get your Apocalypse now!
Posted by Samer at 11:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 30, 2004
Ride like the radioactive wind
I came across this site today, and let me tell you something: This is what the internet should be about.
It is a first person account of a bike ride through the dead zone near Chernobyl. Lots of pictures, a very unassuming commentary. Just brilliant.
Go look... You will be moved.
Posted by Samer at 09:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 20, 2003
Words
When I am feeling low, when I ache and hurt, I always look to the words of Gibran Khalil Gibran.
While The Prophet is his best known work, The Wanderer has my favorite entry:
THE PEARLSaid one oyster to a neighboring oyster, "I have a very great pain within me. It is heavy and round and I am in distress."
And the other oyster replied with haughty complacence, "Praise be to the heavens and to the sea, I have no pain within me. I am well and whole both within and without."
At that moment a crab was passing by and heard the two oysters, and he said to the one who was well and whole both within and without, "Yes, you are well and whole; but the pain that your neighbor bears is a pearl of exceeding beauty."
Sometimes, the right words can have a very therapeutic effect. Thanks to 'A' for bringing him up last night.
Posted by Samer at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 11, 2003
Friendster
So I joined Friendster a little while ago.
It is an interesting concept. Sort of a six-degrees of separation for normal people. I add friends and my personal network grows to include their friends. And their friends' friends. And you can click on all these people and get in contact with them.
It has a lot of potential, but the interface sucks and the site takes forever to load. And things work and then don't work. It needs some work, but I think you should join and add me as a friend. Mostly because I want to up my numbers, and partly because it is kind of cool.
Posted by Samer at 08:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 12, 2003
Love Is a Burning Thing
Since we are on the subject of Mr. Cash's amazing music, I have to ask: What's "Ring of Fire" really about anyway?
I mean, here are the starting lyrics:
Love is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring
and it continues:
I went down down down
And the flames went higher
And it burns burns burns
I should probably let you make your own conclusions, but could he be singing about sexually transmitted diseases?
Nah, that can't be it...
Posted by Samer at 07:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Cashing Out
Johnny Cash is dead. His music lives on.
Go listen to him again.
Posted by Samer at 07:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 04, 2003
Clipping Service
Google News rocks. Now, Google Labs have gone and created Google NewsAlerts.
Basically it is your own clipping service. Go do a news search and then create an alert out of that. You can set them up for topics that interest you or for competing companies or for products that you like. I've got one set up for "beer" right now. Check out the FAQ, it answers some questions.
I'd love to see this turned into an RSS feed service. You could set up channels for whatever news interests you and then put it up in your blog.
Again, I must add, Google rocks!
Posted by Samer at 11:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 31, 2003
I Don't Know, I Just Don't Know
What the fuck is a Boohbah? And why oh why is it so strangely addictive?
My mind can barely fathom the kinds of people who come up with this stuff.
Posted by Samer at 08:28 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 28, 2003
Another Stormy Day
There was another storm Wednesday night. Fantastic, fast, furious.
But just as it was overhead I could see a break in the clouds in the distance. The sun was setting. The sky turned a bright orange. It was surreal. Like something out of a painting.
Awe inspiring.
Posted by Samer at 12:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 26, 2003
Stormy Weather
Some of you might know my weather geekiness, but today surprised me. Two storms, both taking almost the same track. One was at around noon and was fairly quick and small.
The second was a monster.
The sky darkened, the wind was blowing fast. The rain came down so hard you could barely see a couple of blocks. And the lightning. Wow.
Kind of like I would imagine Armageddon, only without the locusts.
Posted by Samer at 08:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 21, 2003
Search Terms
Every now and again I look through my logs to see how people find me. Erik does this monthly and posts the results, but I can't be bothered. But what I can be bothered about is spending a couple of hours trying to see where Google ranks me on some of the terms.
It is not all that surprising to see that people find my site by typing "samer" or "farha" or "www.farha.com" into a search engine. Google ranks me third for "samer" and further down for "farha". But why do people search for "www.farha.com"? I mean, can't you just put that into your navigation bar?
On a side note, typing that into Google gets you this page, where you can click on "contain the term" and see a lot of interesting things.
I readily understand why I might be the second entry for "Harry's Tap Room" (after their own website) or the number one entry for "Chez Antoine"*. But why I rank as highly as I do for terms such as "the best laid plans of mice and men" and "bruce dickinson iceland express" is a bit beyond me.
What I really really don't get is why people are searching on terms like "why metro sucks" (number 1 in Google, I should do something with that phrase). Or "souped up defender land rover". Isn't there something more productive they could be doing? Isn't there something more productive I could be doing?
*These rankings are as of today, who knows what they were yesterday or will be tomorrow. We are all at the mercy of the Googlebot.
Posted by Samer at 11:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 30, 2003
I. Can't. Breathe.
I am laughing so hard, I am crying.
Go. Read. Do not have liquids in your mouth. You have been warned.
Posted by Samer at 10:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 15, 2003
Violins on a flute?
A friend of mine is going to the Kennedy Center to see this.
It looks to be delightful evening, but here's something I just don't get:
"[Itzhak] Perlman leads the [National Symphony] Orchestra in the overture to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's comic opera 'The Marriage of Figaro' and Antonin Dvorak's exuberant and rhaposdic Eighth Symphony, while [Emmanuel] Pahud performs Aram Ilich Khachaturian's stunning Violin Concerto, in a unique transcription for flute."
So this guy is going to play a violin piece on the flute? "A unique transcription" indeed!?
Posted by Samer at 09:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 11, 2003
What a great world (wide web) this is...
According to Skarlet, if you are looking for me in 2004, and you want me hot and sexy, you might just find it here. Or so AltaVista thinks.
Google concurs, but at least it does not prompt you to "correct" the spelling of my name.
Gotta love the web.
Posted by Samer at 02:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack