No Such Weblog

$ nslookup Default Server: localhost Address: 127.0.0.1 > server 195.158.131.2 Default Server: issv0099.isis.de Address: 195.158.131.2 > ls -d rotten.com [issv0099.isis.de] $ORIGIN rotten.com. @ 1D IN SOA issv0099.isis.de. webmaster.isis.de. ( 2001072601 ; serial 13h23m20s ; refresh 2H ; retry 1W ; expiry 1D ) ; minimum 1D IN NS issv0099.isis.de. 1D IN A 195.158.131.132 * 1D IN CNAME www www 1D IN A 195.158.131.132 @ 1D IN SOA issv0099.isis.de. webmaster.isis.de. ( 2001072601 ; serial 13h23m20s ; refresh 2H ; retry 1W ; expiry 1D ) ; minimum > Note, in particular, that they are not just blocking web access, but also e-mail and all other services offered under that domain.

More information on the Düsseldorf web blocking attempts is available from CCC Düsseldorf.

District authorities of Düsseldorf have been trying to get ISPs to block certain harmful web sites (including rotten.com) for quite some time. According to this report at Heise Online, Düsseldorf ISP ISIS has implemented such a block by tampering with name server records for at least rotten.com, effectively redirecting surfers to a web page at the Düsseldorf district authority (this was reported on FITUG‘s debate mailing list; the report should show up in the web archives later today). Today, ISIS ended their blocking attempt, saying that it had been initiated by a single technician without proper authority, and was inefficient anyway, according to this news item. The district authority, in a press release, regretted ISIS’ latest step, and noted that 12 other (as of yet unnamed) ISPs continue to block the various harmful sites.

A press release from the Chaos Computer Club is available here.

I’ve finally come around to have a look at a few Euro calculators for the Palm. Of course, there are quite a few of these around, of varying quality. My recommendation is Currency by H.M. Martins, who seems to have disappeared from the net. However, Stefan Braunstein has made copies of the latest versions available, and also continues to provide the public with currency update PDBs for currencies with floating exchange rates. His download site is here.

The At Large Study Committee has official presented its final report. (PDF version / PalmReader e-book)

(Not that I want to, normally.) Trying to connect to MSN.com‘s web site with, say, a current Mozilla, you’ll be asked to download some current version of Internet Explorer for Macintosh or Windows. Just try it yourself.

The draft report is available here. There is also an archive of the comments-dotorg@dnso.org mailing list created for the submission of comments.

This is almost too good to be true: There’s a Reuters News Photo which shows protesters at a demonstration in Dhaka. The photo includes a Bin Laden Poster where you can see Sesame character “Bert” just besides Bin Laden. Quite a bit discussion on this is on Lindqvist.com and at Slashdot. Also, in a FoxNews article, Reuters and AP claim that the relevant photos were not doctored. The most plausible explanation for this so far is that a Google image search for “bin laden” turns up a doctored photo showing Bert and Bin Laden on the very first page of search results, and that these photos were used to quickly build the poster. (Of course, all this could still be a hoax…)

I’ve just released the next mutt beta. This version fixes a bunch of bugs found during the last weeks. Some of the more interesting changes, in no particular order:

• MH sequence names are configurable.
• Mutt will hunt down maildir messages even more aggressively.
• There are various fixes to the address book menu. It’s not that easy to crash any more. 😉
• .mh_sequences files which don’t pre-exist are created on the fly now.
• You can now print rfc/822 attachments from mutt without problems. Also, some inconsistencies with respect to printing these attachments have been fixed.
• Various other fixes.

Download: binary / patch

Zero-Knowledge Systems is about to shut down their freedom anonymizer network on October 22 according to this announcement from ZKS. See also an article from SecurityFocus.