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MethLabs Shuts out PeerGuardian
Lost&Confused writes to tell us Slyck News is reporting that most of Methlabs.org administration and development staff have been forced out of their own website. For the time being PeerGuardian is being hosted on sourceforge. However, users are advised to stop using the Methlabs.org and Blocklist.org hosted blocklists in favor of the Bluetack list until they can sort things out.
Do they get forced out of their server? Couldn't they just fire the guy if he worked for them?
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
What a guy^h^h^h gal!
...they don't tend to be very big on the business accumen. Any enterprise where stuff like this can happen, needs to have contracts in force that head them off. The big business closed source world lives and dies by contracts and legally binding agreements. The licenses on the code produced should not be where the thoughts of legalities end. Internal legal matters are perhaps far more important.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
What possible reason would Mr. Erwin want with methlabs.org? I can't believe he would pull this shit. He needs a good ass kicking for stepping out of line.
Take this web site to....hmmmm....wait....
I have gotton various things, at methlabs.org it says to ignore e-mails I get from anyone about PG unless it is from @methlabs.org. In an e-mail I got from someone else saying to go to the Sourceforge site. So for the time being, I probabaly will not download anything from either place since I don't know who to believe.
Not really. But it sounds almost exactly the same as what Michael Sims, the Slashdot editor, did to the Censorware Project.
Expecting a bitchslap in 5... 4... 3...
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
This kind of thing happens all the time in real methamphetamine labs across the country.
A group of like-minded people pool their resources within an abandoned house to create something and inevitably one of them puts a padlock on the formerly abandoned house to keep it all for himself.
I'm a big tall mofo.
For the uninformed among us (myself included), what is PeerGuardian?
Go, and never darken my towels again! -- Rufus
Does it really cut down the number of connections by listed IP addresses? I heard it doesn't stop them.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Indeed. We (Methlabs) had an admittedly stupid setup and were working to change it. Obviously, we worked too slow. It's a shame that small groups of friends even have to think of legalities but I guess that's reality.
Anyone have advice on keeping this from happening again, to us or other OSS groups?
I'm reluctant to update my lists using either source at the moment until it's cleared up. The plan for me is to keep the status quo until told otherwise from a reputable source.
I have a problem though; I have two main computers I use regularly and one of them was last updated on the 11th of September, the other on the 14th of September. The $64,000 question is:
Which of my computers, if any, are using reputable blocklists?
I don't know when this coup was started and thus I don't know at what stage we were supposed to stop trusting the auto-updating. I've already turned off my auto-updating for PG2 on both computers but I'd like some info on whether my current lists have been 'tainted.' By the sounds of it, this was a bit of a 'slow mutiny' so I'm somewhat paranoid that the lists may have been compromised far earlier than say, a week ago and thus this is all null and void. Needless to say, we just don't know at the moment.
Any info from some reputable PG2 personnel (I've seen you guys post here before, PS - love your work! I donate!) would go a very, very long way.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=913
Methlabs Update
September 16th, 2005 by Administrator
"Dear Methlabs and P2P Community,
Recently, we had several former staff members revolt against the entire P2P community as a whole. They tried to sabatoge Methlabs and attempted to wipe the Methlabs server of all its data.
Unfortunately, they gained access to site backups. In doing so, your passwords may have been compromised, although they are MD5 encrypted. We would like to you login to the Methlabs forums (http://methlabs.org/forums/) and change your password. We sincerely apologize for this issue. As of right now, the Methlabs site is back online, although forum posts from the past month have been lost.
Since all the data was stolen by former staff members, YOU MAY RECIEVE FAKE EMAILS that look like they are from Methlabs. If they do not come from the Methlabs.org domain and from our email servers, DO NOT BELIEVE THEM.
We assure you that Methlabs development will continue, and ALL OFFICIAL PROGRAMS MUST be downloaded directly from Methlabs.org . Assume that all other sites contain spyware or malicious code which may not be directly trusted.
To update everyone on the current situation, there has been some news going around the Internet of a revolt which happened in Methlabs. This is hearsay. The current real news is that PeerGuardian development and Blocklist development is on schedule, and Blocklist should be out of Beta within the next week or so.
Please spread the word that Methlabs.org is ALIVE and DO NOT believe or TRUST any emails that do not come directly from Methlabs.org and our mail servers. These emails are from disgruntled staff members trying to hurt the P2P community as a whole.
We apoligize for the current situation. Please visit http://methlabs.org/ for OFFICIAL updates, and help us spread the word!
- The Methlabs Team"
Slyck.com, Zeropaid.com, UniteTheCows.com, p2pnet.net, p2pconsortium.com and many others are saying the same thing... even the person who started the whole thing and who the domain name is named after has been locked out.
Officially, according to the founders of the community, their lead article writer, almost all senior administrators and the software developer of PeerGuardian 2... methlabs.org was hijacked.
peerguardian.sourceforge.net IS trustworthy.
(it's where the developers, founders, etc. are saying to go for new releases.)
Without knowing any details, it's hard to know which party in this situation is the malicious one (possibly both). But this message on the methlabs.org blog is causing the Lost-In-Space-Robot in my head to wave its arms madly:
If the webmaster is telling the truth, this is an innocuous request. [Of course, sufficiently strong passwords will survive precomputed hash attacks, and it's still pretty hard to brute-force MD5 hashes (even given recent weaknesses).] However, if the webmaster is malicious, this is no different than a PayPal phishing scam: "Come visit our website (the legitimacy of which is, at best, in doubt) and enter your old password on a Web form. Go ahead, enter a new one, too. Thanks."
The right thing to do in this case, where you have multiple parties which may all be malicious and some of which may have your passwords, in plaintext or hashed format, is probably to stop using those passwords immediately. If you use that forum password elsewhere, change it elsewhere. As for methlabs.org, the safest course of action is probably to wait and see who the good guys are before typing any passwords in, old or new.
We are the PeerGuardian Robots
We are here to protect you
We are here to protect you from the terrible secret of PeerGuardian
Do not trust the Methlabs Robot. He is malfunctioning
Do not trust the Sourceforge robot. He is inferior.
Form an LLC (couple hundred dollars).
Give all assets that you want to protect to the LLC.
Distribute ownership of the LLC among ALL memebers, and require license changes/ownership changes/policy changes/domain changes, etc, either unanimous consent or a 2/3 (maybe 3/4) vote.
Fundamentally, the purpose of a business 'shell', in any small organization, is to put your assets in one place so that no one can legally mismanage them.
If, for example, methlabs.org had been the property of methlabs, LLC, and the administrator tried to boot you off, you could send an e-mail to your registrar from the 'director' of the LLC, indicating that the administrator was not acting in the interest of the LLC. You send them the *signed* (can be signed electronically, using the US gov't standard, which is a bit silly \ \ ) LLC articles of incorporation, showing either that the administrator member had no right to do that, OR that he wasn't a member of the LLC.
Then they hand you the 'keys' to the castle, so to speak.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I noticed this just last week. The forums went offline and there hasn't been hardly any moderator updates made to correct the mistakes in the IP DB.
Many of the mistakes can be put down to them assuming whois.sc IP location is current, when in fact much of it's historical.
I was getting frustrated trying to get a couple of updates done, but there are 100's of mislabelled/ named IP ranges yet to be addressed. It's now obvious why nothing was being done.
If the blocklist isn't going to be updated regularly and with reasonable accuracy, then there's not much point to it.
As the article states time to source your blocklist elsewhere...Just another CDDB type fiasco.
Area51 - We are watching...
Happened to the uklinux Guy:
http://www.jasonclifford.com/uklinux.html
BTW, if you are in UK stop using UKLINUX, use http://www.ukfsn.org/ which is what Jason started after the take over of his first ISP.
This and other injustices perpetrated by slashdot's editors are documented within the pages of Anti-slash: Sacred Jihad Against Slashdot. We invite you to join our community and force slashdot's editors to answer for their crimes.
In Sacred Jihad,
jihadi_31337
Also, 2 more points ;-)
.), and its a fun way to stick it to him.
;-) ) and use this as additional proof (even though small claims doesn't set a precedent) for your cybersquatting claim.
1. Form the LLC anyways. Use the name, MethLabs LLC
File a cybersquatting request. Even if you loose, its not a bad way to go. If you can show you started the project, you'll be in *really* good shape, I think. As far as I know, if you have a business name, you are virtually guaranteed the domain name. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Emphasize that its a *security* site. ICANN generally frowns on people trying to subvert security software.
2. Trademark the term "Peerguardian". This costs about ~$400. You may have to take a collection for this. Then, you can pretty reliably prevent him from using that term on methlabs.org.
A trademark will help you achieve number 1, above, and virtually guarantees number 3, below.
3. Sue in small claims court. Make sure to sue in *his* state, but not necessarily his jurisdiction. Even if you don't get the domain back, claim the maximum (usually $3000) in damage. The loss of your projects domain name is easily worth much, much more, but $3000 should be fairly easy to start up again with (pays Domain fees hosting fees LLC fees, etc. .
Small claims court usually only takes a day of work, and the filing fees are pretty small, too. Even if he doesn't pay, you can enter a judgement against him, have the pleasure of actually employing a creditor FOR you (not against
Plus, small claims judges are big on practical issues. They don't like to see people get screwed, and generally side with the abused party.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
PeerGaurdian isn't about spam email blocking. It's about blocking IPs that belong to MPAA/RIAA/DOJ/Government/BSA and other organizations that flood p2p networks, looking to gather information on you and send you a lawsuit.
and oddly, both sides are encouraging people not to use the other sides list.
These are just blacklists aren't they? Having both will - at worst - mean that too many IP addresses are blocked. Why no tuse both lists until we can find out what's happening?
...is that we really don't know who to believe, especially since nobody has bothered to the things journalists do. Like go out and interview people, corroborate stories, and so on.
We get:
"However, after speaking to the Methlabs team and various connected members of the community, P2Pnet, SuprNova and Slyck can all confirm that the original story that the domain has been hijacked is genuine"
So "Slyck News" is claiming they've done so- but they haven't given any names, quotes, or details as to how they arrived at this conclusion?
The whole thing is one Big Internet Drama, and pardon me if I just don't care.
Please help metamoderate.
... to bang against the wall, as the cut-throat world of business leaves you in the dust.
No honour amongst thieves.
Okay, I'm NOT saying that ALL P2P users are thieves, but I don't think ANYONE in their right mind is going to argue that copyright violations is not the majority use of P2P networks.
So... EVEN IF a handful of folk in a group are using P2P software for utterly and totally legitimate purposes, the majority aren't, and of THOSE people, their sense of ethics is at least tainted, and most likely totally horked.
So... takeover of a P2P-related group by one of its members? No surprise there. Roll in the next drama please.
"Dear Member,
The majority of the Methlabs.org administration and development team have been forced out of their website following a series of threats and incidents. The member of the group that had been trusted to handle the finances and servers slowly managed to take over each individual part of the web site's assets, eventually claiming control over the entire group and locking out the majority of staff.
The organisation's founders, Tim Leonard and Ken McKelland, as well as the majority of the organisation's staff and developers (including the main developer of the PeerGuardian2 application, Cory Nelson and the staff members responsible for auditing the PeerGuardian Blocklists) have all been forcibly removed from the servers that were funded from donations given to the organisation by happy users, and from text advertising placed on the websites forum and project pages.
The money, which was to have been used to help fund the development and hosting costs of the group is now unavailable, stolen by the one who was trusted to keep it.
Development of PeerGuardian will resume, and the website will temporarily move to http://peerguardian.sourceforge.net/ until a new domain is registered and a new server found. The intention of the group is to register a non-profit organisation to handle the development of Methlabs applications and to promote open source projects that aid both security, privacy and peer-to-peer technologies, in order to prevent a repeat of this incident.
The team wish all their users the best through this difficult time, but promise that development will continue. Please visit http://peerguardian.sf.net/ for news as we make progress. All other sites, including http://methlabs.org/ and http://blocklist.org/ are under control of the rogue member and should not be trusted for safe updates to our applications or lists.
A new build of PeerGuardian will be released soon to reflect these changes. Until then we ask you to continue using Beta 6a but with caution as the update servers are no longer under our control.
All staff are available in irc.freenode.net, channel #methlabs if you wish to chat.
Thanks, The Methlabs Staff (looking for a new home) -----
Adam Hoier, Cory Nelson, Eric Mayuk, Fox Lowe, James Shanelec, Joseph Farthing, Ken McKelland, Steffen Tuzar, Tim Leonard
aka
braindancer, D3F, fox, FuRiOuS1, JFM, KuKIE, method, phrosty, r00ted"
[methlab_member]: Wanna hijack my server?!?! well guess what, its gonna get slashmeleted!
-Alex. http://bit.ly/1iVPtfA
FTFA:
"UPDATE: William Erwin, now confirmed as the hijacker, has posted news on Methlabs.org, claiming the hijacking news is false and stems from a revolt by former team members.
However, after speaking to the Methlabs team and various connected members of the community, P2Pnet, SuprNova and Slyck can all confirm that the original story that the domain has been hijacked is genuine."
The reporter has "heard from both sides", and said that the Methlabs team is correct. That's what real reporters do: they find all the sides of a story, decide which version is the most correct, and tell the story. They don't just report "he said / she said", which reduces the reporter and the publication to puny PR outlets for anyone with a version of the story, no matter how self-serving.
That's not to say the reporter's version is the most correct, or even correct at all. But that's what separates good reporters from bad ones: their skill at finding the most accurate story version. And then telling it so readers get the most accurate version of the story in our heads. Good journalists back up their judgements with representative quotes and descriptions of evidence to bolster the reader's confidence in their version. Really good journalists make good judgements and back it up, earning the ongoing confidence of their readers.
We still all need to take any story from where it comes. Which is why it helps to read some reporters for a long time, to understand their track record, their blind spots, biases, vested interests, and insights. We've watched "journalism" turn into a farce precisely because we no longer expect the journalist to use good judgement in reporting, highlighting what they find to be true. We expect journalists to be "objective" to the extent that the journalist disappears, acting only as a stenographer for whoever gets access to them as a channel for that interested party. Which is worse than useless.
This reporter, on this little story, in a little tech backwater, is exercising exactly the professionalism that most of the people in their industry wouldn't recognize if it faced them across an interview desk.
--
make install -not war
Peerguardian has nothing to do with spam, primarily its designed to keep the RIAA and MPAA (and thier slimy bloodhounds) from connecting to your PC whilst you are using P2P file sharing software. Of course, you can add known spammers to your list of Ip's to block, but this really isnt an RBL system for e-mail.
r ameset.html has a good article on such things. By and large though, you are right, RBL's fall down because they are not Realtime enough. They don't adapt to false negative or positive conditions fast enough to be relied on as a anti-spam measure.
As for the flaw of RBL's, I do agree that they are not perfect. A much better blacklisting scheme is to generate your own local temporary blacklists based on mail (and mailservers) which appear to be spamming. http://www.acme.com/mail_filtering/introduction_f
PeerGuardian is not for e-mail, it's for P2P networks.
Also, I don't know how you can believe that blacklists are useless. I'm down to only about a spam a day, despite my current primary e-mail address being listed all over the internet for years now. Obviously, your choice of blacklists is important, and using other metrics as well helps.
Besides that, the forces at work in P2P spam are completely different than that of e-mail spam. I can vouch for the PeerGuardian blacklist being extremely effective at blocking probably 99% of P2P spam, and making that last 1% look far less legitimate, and far less likely to be selected.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Anyone who contributed money to PG support should be suing the person who forced the rest of the team out for fraud and theft. I would expect them to have standing in court to pursue such a claim, and could make life very difficult for this apparent criminal.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Could the admin have been influenced (via loads of cash) to cause this confusion. Remove or modigy all MPAA/RIAA ip addresses, and make sure they do not go anywhere else for updates? If I was one of the above orginizations, that is what I would do.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
And this is certainly one thing to consider when you think about why someone would do this - The government and big business and slimy groups like the RIAA and MPAA (who think it's okay to have your computer to ensure that you're aren't doing anything they consider wrong, and don't think shey should be liable if they happen to damage it) have a lot of money and many forms of coercion, bribery and inteimidation to accomplish their goals. THey'd like nothing better than to take over something they know people depend upon to keep p2p free of shams. Just reading that Erwin guy's response, to me it seems fairly obvious that he is using fear based tactics to try to scare people from even really looking into the situation....
That would be my old chem teacher. He wrote a paper on how to make cleaner metamphetamines with fewer side effects.
Hmm, are you saying you're using PeerGuardian's blacklists against spam? Or just giving another example of blacklist usage?
:-)
If PeerGuardian doesn't block spam, just connections to you via IP ranges, I'm interested in an open source e-mail client independent solution (i.e. like a proxy?) for spam blocking via common blacklists. Anyone know such a product?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Could someone tell me who the hell methlabs.org and PeerGuardian are? I've never heard of them before.
Now that they're divided, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the ??AA swoop in and compromise at least one of the two (or more) sides. Sounds like this is over money, which the ??AA has in abundance. How long before the blocklist has just a tiny little hole in it waiting to be exploited?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not to be too particular, but since I'm currently going throught the LLC application process, it might be useful to point out that it's not "articles of incorporation" but "articles of organization". "Articles of incorporation" is reserved for a corporation.
The difference between a corporation (Inc.) and limited liability company (LLC) is subtle but important. A corporation is a perpetual entity, so if a founding member dies, no problem. But if a founding member of an LLC dies, that pretty much ends the LLC. Taxes are a lot easier to handle, along with determining profit. Also, you don't have to have annual meetings where the minutes recorded, etc. However, with either one you get the benefit that your personal assets are not at risk. If the company fails miserably and owes a million dollars in debt, you still get to keep your personal car, your house, your money, etc. Thus the term "limited liability".
peerguardian.sourceforge.net has always been the location to download the PeerGuardian software, that hasn't changed. It's the only place that the 'hijacker' couldn't take over.
It may depend on locale, but in my state, it costs more than a "couple hundred dollars" to start an LLC. It was closer to $600 once everything was done.
Right before i noticed this story, I updated PG2. It had a new blocklist and program update. Anyone else notice this?
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
Here is the front page of methlabs...not so much data, just a few hints all is not kosher...
I really like the first sentence, saying some member revolted against the whole P2P community...
Either the poster is really trying to cover his back, or he is rally in the middle of something...
"Methlabs Update
September 16th, 2005 by Administrator
Dear Methlabs and P2P Community,
Recently, we had several former staff members revolt against the entire P2P community as a whole. They tried to sabatoge Methlabs and attempted to wipe the Methlabs server of all its data.
Unfortunately, they gained access to site backups. In doing so, your passwords may have been compromised, although they are MD5 encrypted. We would like to you login to the Methlabs forums (http://methlabs.org/forums/) and change your password. We sincerely apologize for this issue.
As of right now, the Methlabs site is back online, although forum posts from the past month have been lost.
Since all the data was stolen by former staff members, YOU MAY RECIEVE FAKE EMAILS that look like they are from Methlabs. If they do not come from the Methlabs.org domain and from our email servers, DO NOT BELIEVE THEM.
We assure you that Methlabs development will continue, and ALL OFFICIAL PROGRAMS MUST be downloaded directly from Methlabs.org . Assume that all other sites contain spyware or malicious code which may not be directly trusted.
To update everyone on the current situation, there has been some news going around the Internet of a revolt which happened in Methlabs. This is hearsay. The current real news is that PeerGuardian development and Blocklist development is on schedule, and Blocklist should be out of Beta within the next week or so.
Please spread the word that Methlabs.org is ALIVE and DO NOT believe or TRUST any emails that do not come directly from Methlabs.org and our mail servers. These emails are from disgruntled staff members trying to hurt the P2P community as a whole.
We apoligize for the current situation. Please visit http://methlabs.org/ for OFFICIAL updates, and help us spread the word!
- The Methlabs Team
"
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
For this sort of thing you want a not-for-profit/non-profit corporation (This is not necessarily a charity). It's a corporation with a charter which forbids it to distribute any money to those who founded and/or control it. It is normally run by a self-perpetuating board of directors. This is how commercial trade associations are usually organized.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I think "bloggers" are "journalists", in that they keep personal "journals" - if not "daily", then at least along those lines - of a story. Maybe just their own story. Related, but not in a sub/superset, are "reporters", whose recording of their versions of a story is not defined by frequency.
Then there are "sources", which can be primary (in the events), secondary (interacted with primary), or tertiary+ (records or consumers/repeaters of records of the story). Sources can be humans, or even machines - the machines provide versions of a story partly defined by their designers, implementors, installers, operators, and selectors downstream.
All of those roles feed into "publishers". We have become used to defining our sources, reporters, journalists by their relationship to the publisher, rather than their relationship to the story, or even to us. For example, some journalists are "columnists", which connotes more than their formatting into a consistently placed column in the publication. So many of these terms and roles are artifacts of newspapers, further debased by bad translation into TV news. Maybe they should all be different kinds of "correspondent", to be completely accurate to their actual function.
OTOH, honesty would probably require a lot more business cards printed with the titles "spokesmodel" and "bloviator". But perhaps we could finally get a chance to refactor the redundant "commentator" to "commentor", which has less hype about their mundane role commenting, until we actually get someone who "commentates" for a living, publishing their "commentation" for consumption in our "commentary" facilities.
--
make install -not war
One wonders how they determine, just from the IP, which clients belong to those organizations and which don't. Because they're just going to get connected through a major ISP (and get assigned an IP from their pool and not a pool that could be traced back to RIAA.com) and become completely indistinguishable from normal clients.
Also, one might consider using the "Forgotten Password" function on the site in order to set a new password without revealing the old password, thereby allowing you to access the site without giving away your old password and enabling you to remove the MD5 hash of your old password from the server (although it's likely to be backed up).
Yes, but those are more expensive :)
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Sorry, I'm not very particular in my terminology. I believe, however, you might be able to call it articles of incorporation, since an LLC is sometimes refered to as a Limited Liability Company, and others as Limited Liability Corporation.
p ia2005.pdf
For example, this state revenue document, in Illinois, refers to Limited Liability Corporation on page 13: http://www.revenue.state.il.us/LegalInformation/u
IIRC, depending on the state, you can define what happens to the LLC when a member dies in the articles of organization.
In the past year I've formed 5 LLCs, IIRC. They are significantly easier to run than an S corporation.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
At legalzoom.com, you can incorporate a Nevada LLC (with registered agent) for ~205, IIRC
I've done this many times.
You'll have to find/pay a registered agent unless you can find an address/phone number in state. This is usually under a hundred dollars per year.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
The truth is out there.
I guess this means that Peer Guardian is not so secure after all, if you can't trust the folks who make and host it. But then, I would have thought that hosting it on a site called "methlabs" in the first place would have clued people in.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The administrators/authors at slyck.com, zeropaid.com, p2pnet.net, unitethecows.com, p2pconsortium.com, digg.com, etc. are all saying the same thing as we are.
...and yes... we are looking into legal action.
:(
The founder, co-founder, developers and the majority of staff are saying:
Methlabs.org WAS hijacked.
PeerGuardian 2 in itself is fine, just read the FAQ about turning off auto-updates from blocklist.org - you've nothing to worry about.
We just can't vouch for the lists from blocklist.org any more. People who had abused it recently are now fully in control of it, as such it's our duty to report that fact. - If you wish to use those lists despite our warnings that's your decision.
If it helps to confirm who I am... and if it's possible. Please feel free to get a slashdot admin to check the email I signed up here with as it correlates with who I claim to be and will hopefully help validate my post.
Sorry for all the confusion this crap is obviously causing, it's the last thing we wanted to drag our users through.
Bottom line: peerguardian.sf.net is okay, that's where we're using as a temporary home for now, if you'd like more confirmation on any of the details regarding this... feel free to drop by the site or our IRC channel on freenode. Again, sorry for all the drama. It's not what we wanted to happen at all.
No, you're certainly not going to nail down every IP reliably that is used by these organizations - but you can get the obvious and not-so-obvious ones none-the-less. After all, why do I want doubleclick or BayTSP any access to my machine via P2P (or even to be able to ping my machine, for that matter). There is absolutely no reason I would ever want anything to do in the slightest with either of those groups. That's just an example.
Considering how many hits I see from the listed IPs, it's clearly not for nothing, even if not perfect.
Ok, maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that journalism was supposed to be reporting the facts, including opinions and statements from parties on both sides of the story, and presenting it in an objective manner that allows the reader to draw their own conclusions. I thought that the editorial page was where the journalist was supposed to explain which side of the story they think is more accurate and explain their judgements on the issue.
Far too many "news" media don't even try to distinguish between reporting and editorializing anymore.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Keep in mind, Nevada is the "new Delaware" when it comes to corporations.
Very business friendly laws and NO STATE CORPORATE TAX. (only 4 states can say that).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
OK, as you and others have pointed out, I was totally ignorant about PeerGuardian. mea culpa; I should have RTFA more carefully.
As far as email blacklists go, though, I can show you to set them up so that even your one spam a day is gone. :-) Seriously, performance metrics for spam filtering of any kind are hard to get right. I've never seen a blacklist where the false-positive rate was acceptably low and the filtering on hard spam was usefully high, but I'd love to find out I was wrong about that too. What are you using?
Because there is a hijack going on here. Why do you instantly assume that the author of the story has only heard one side?
Because the author of the summary was Scuttlemonkey, who I highly doubt is that clued in to the thing. And even if he was, he doesn't give us enough evidence in the summary, nor does the story give us enough evidence (i.e., a back history of who the players actually are) to make an informed judgment about whether a hijack was really going on. All the reader knows is that there are two competing stories, yet we are only told that one is true and one is not without any evidence.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
It's an article summary, not a novel. There isn't enough space to detail all sides of the story, analyze them, and give a final (hopefully unbiased) synopsis. That's what the links are for.
http://methlabs.org/forums/login.php?do=lostpw you can recover your password there
I found this comment very interesting. It is the only evidence I've seen of the other side of the story being posted on slyck.com.
It sounds like to me that these idiots tried to covertly take over the server, only to find out that the admin caught them and fixed the problem. I hope google goes after them for stealing the adsence account.bl.spamcop.net
cn.rbl.cluecentral.net
korea.services.net
sbl.spamhaus.org
l1.spews.dnsbl.sorbs.net
Those lists cover the majority of the spam I recieve.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant