Tag Archives: firewall

Jason Fortuny update

Ironic quote:

You are sending me direct contact information that is sensitive. I protect your privacy in the following ways: (1) I will never sell, rent, or give away your address to any outside party, ever; (2) I will never send you any unrequested e-mail, besides e-mail in the regular course of business; and (3) Your information is stored behind network address translation and a software firewall.

That’s Jason Fortuny’s privacy policy, as stated on his web site before his prank.

At least one marriage has been ruined by the prank. I’m not going to name or link to the victim, for obvious reasons. Again, if you really want to know, read Fortuny’s web pages; he seems delighted, as it turns out it was someone who had thrown him out of an online community for previous anti-social behavior.

Lots of people seem to be focusing on a few of the victims who were married and cheating on their wives, like that justifies humiliating all the others.

Meanwhile, Fortuny has started scrubbing his contact details from his web site, removing references to past clients and employers, and deleting his résumé from the web. Perhaps he’s worked out that a reputation for hoaxing people and posting private e-mail to the web isn’t the best career move for a system administrator.

It also seems to me that Fortuny’s posting of sexually explicit photographs on the web places him squarely under 18 USC 2257 record-keeping requirements. Clearly he hasn’t complied with the law and obtained 100+ model release forms, and that could result in up to 5 years of jail time if the authorities choose to make an example of him.

I’ll end with another nice quote from his LiveJournal:

“I’m just going to quickly and quietly say that the refugees in New Orleans are human trash who don’t deserve to live.”

—Jason Fortuny

It’s nice to know the TrollJournal abuse team are so relaxed about the whole thing. Publishing public information may be grounds for dismissal, but linking to illegally published private information from your journal is just fine, apparently. If only I’d known, eh?

BT Broadband query

Update: There’s a happy end to the story. My dad managed to get hold of a BT Voyager 2100 ADSL router. For some reason it didn’t pick up the DNS settings; however, once I helped him configure DNS on his Mac, everything worked. In particular, iChat AV worked fine for video chat, with no configuration needed on the router.

So: if you’re looking for a good Mac-compatible router to use with BT ADSL, a Voyager 2100 will probably float your boat.

And it was extremely cool to video chat with my parents. Most of the rest of the family live in Bournemouth too, so I’ll doubtless get to talk to them as well over the next few weeks.

Update 2: Someone else with a Netopia wrote to tell me that he eventually got it to work, via the following steps:

  1. I switched off uPnP on the router (iChat loading actually caused the router to crash/reboot with uPnP enabled!).

  2. I switched the firewall setting to “Low” (although “Off” works, as well)

  3. I’m not positive it was necessary, but I also upgraded the router firmware to 7.5 (from the Netopia site).

  4. I left in place the various iChat port-forwarding settings.

Check his site for more info.

Previously:

We got the parents online from the Mac, but their router doesn’t seem to want to do the port forwarding thing, even when configured to do so. (With the Mac configured as DMZ, I still can’t ping them.)

The router that doesn’t work is a Netopia 3347NWG-VGx, in case anyone out there is considering buying one and finds this page.

Router madness

My router decided to crap out. It’s an SMC. It was over $200 when I bought it, back in the mists of time, but a few years later you can pick them up for $30. Mine suddenly decided that it would be a good idea to lock up (a) every time there was an incoming SSH connection, and (b) any time I attempted to log in to change its settings or reboot it.

So I stomped off to Staples and picked up a new router. This one’s a Netgear, it was the fastest and most reliable in PC Magazine’s tests, and it happened to be on sale locally.

In a glass-half-full kind of way, I must admit that router technology has improved a lot in the last couple of years. I plugged this one in, and was rather startled when it detected the cable modem, worked out the right settings for Comcast, and just worked. I disconnected the SMC, used the iBook to configure the Netgear to have the same SSID network name the SMC used to use, and all the other Macs kept working. No reboots.

Then came Linux. That seemed more reluctant to accept change. There were probably cache files for dhcpcd that I could have found, but it was easier to reboot and have everything just work again.

Then came Windows. It seemed to be confused by the sudden loss of base station, and wouldn’t renew a DHCP lease to get a new IP address. So, I tried rebooting it. Once I did that, it decided it didn’t have a network connection at all. I tried running the wireless card control panel, which told me I had the wrong driver version installed and that I should reinstall it.

So, I downloaded the Orinoco driver software on the Mac, wrote it to a USB memory stick, transferred it to the PC, and reinstalled. The installer seemed to finish, but when I rebooted there was no change.

Next I used Add/Remove Programs to remove the Orinoco software, rebooted, and installed it again. Still no change.

Finally I removed the wireless card, rebooted, removed the software, rebooted, and plugged the card in again. Windows helpfully started installing something it had found lying around somewhere. It got as far as installing Net Firewall, and complained that the code wasn’t signed by Microsoft. I told it to go ahead anyway, and it told me that a file was missing and the install had been cancelled.

Then it started the Net Firewall install again. And again. And again.

I rebooted again, pulling the wireless card as I did so. This time no spontaneous install. I plugged in the wireless card… and wonder of wonders, it worked this time.

So, I tried running the VPN software… and that’s broken. It just goes into an infinite loop of trying to set up the connection. Tech support can’t help. I’m gonna fiddle with it some more, but right now it’s not working, so I might be spending Monday doing a full Windows reinstall.

IP in the garden

I have the IBM VPN client working across my home firewall and cable modem connection, without interfering with the Macs. Now I can work at full speed at home, wirelessly from the laptop. Come springtime, I’ll be able to sit on the back porch… I am 31337 h4x0r.

Router suckterfuge

Got an SMC7004AWBR 4-port Wireless Broadband Router.

It’s broken.

It works, except that there’s no way to get to the main configuration screen. All the other navigator links work; I can set up firewall options, define a DMZ machine, and so on. I just can’t actually tell it my ISP or anything useful like that. I can plug it into my existing router and use it as a wireless access point, or alternatively it’ll do as a doorstop.

I’ve sent e-mail to SMC. Maybe they’ll have a simple solution by tomorrow night. If not, back to Micro Center it goes…

Oh well, at least I now know my Airport card works.

Airport

My Airport card arrived. Installed it in the G4, which was tougher than I expected. Getting the machine open was easy, though I had to unplug a couple of the cables. It also didn’t take me long to work out that the piece of green PCB attached to the Airport card had to be some kind of extra part for use in other computers (iBooks maybe?) and not something I had to use.

The bit that took the time, though, was working out why the card wouldn’t go in the slot. It turned out that the manual showed it being inserted the wrong way up, and there’s a pin which is invisible from the angle I was looking, which prevents you from doing that.

Anyway, I now have IEEE 802.11b support. Tomorrow evening I’ll go to Micro Center and get a wireless router and firewall.