I just found this picture again

Ruben has now officially been computing for nearly 8 years. He was around two in this picture, and playing Tribes 2 !

The beer, I believe is mine. I think.

Sometimes a song is just so good that you have to give the middle finger to copyright enthusiasts. But hey, maybe because I’m now a “radio station” it’s ok ? I’m “streaming this”, and thus am now a legitimate “radio” right ?

Make no mistake, I think artists deserve the money that is due them. It’s just that whenever I even mentioned the word “mp3” on my website, I’ve had visits by the thought police. Namely some record label that thinks that the free advertising and glowing reviews I’m giving the fringe bands I review on this website is somehow damaging. Of course, serving out an MP3 to support the argument is a no-no, but a Youtube video is somehow OK ?

This caused the eventual shutdown of my “musical education” section — a topic on which I have blogged voraciously. The time has thus come once again to provide the middle finger.

Anyway! Lucyfire’s Annabel Lee, is the shit. Here for your high fidelity pleasure — press the button. I have cunningly hidden it within a .xspf file, which then refers to an MP3, and thus, I am ALL LEGIT! Since if you manually read the .xspf file and then download the song, then you are circumventing my broadcasting mechanism, and then I am no longer liable, hint hint. So just press the play button below.

Lyrics (the correct ones)

It feels like masturbation
It feels like a rubber maid
When all I ever need is first aid

It fees like walking a straight line
With a cloven hoof
After hundred liquid proof

Who will be my Annabel Lee
Be my Annabel Lee
Be the one loved by me

It feels like a good old friend
Like plastic surgery
In this stinking surrogate country

It tastes like powder milk
You’re biting your own tail
However damned hard you try you fail

Who will be my Annabel Lee
Be my Annabel Lee
Be the one loved by me

Finally if you want, observe the live performance (audio is a bit out of sync)

Lucyfire reminds me so much of the Sisters of Mercy, and aside from some corny lyrics here and there, I actually think it’s better.

Mistress of the Night, is just as brilliant a song.

Chorus
We’re here to see you dance and
We’re here to get in trance when
Red lights are burning bright and
You’re the mistress of the night

Recall, when I registered sentechsucks.co.za and their legal firms sent me some nasty letters?

Shaun Dewberry, out of principle, at that time registered suckmywireless.co.za and fucksentech.co.za. I’ll show some solidarity and support Dewberry this time around.

He’s been served with a “takedown” notice, and given six hours to remove his “defamatory” content in the NetDynamics and Online Radio statistics lies saga.

Dear NetDynamics: Screw you. Serve me with a takedown too please. I’ve mirrored Shaun’s opinion piece at https://rodent.za.net/files/dewberry/ , including your takedown notice, and I will continue doing so in various places on the Internet until such time as you get your shit in order. A technical rebuttal is much more effective than legal threats.

Some NetDynamics network facts:

• The main portion of their “CDN” is hosted with PlusServer AG, a brand of the German company Intergenia
• This portion of the “CDN”  is a single /27 netblock (85.25.164.32) wide for a total of 32 hosts.
• Their other cdn hosts are scattered around the 188.138.0.0/17 subnet.
• All transit is by Intergenia’s AS8972, a well connected European AS.

I thus support Shaun’s argument that it is unlikely that they’re serving out to 100k+ users,  just from the size of their CDN infrastructure.

In fact, some Netflow stats from two medium sized networks (that I cannot name) show that traffic from AS8972, is <300kbps across both networks and has been for a long time. This traffic does not match with the claims made, from a pure back-of-napkin calculation, but hey, stats are always dodgy right ?

The only point that they could contend in Shaun’s assessment of their CDN is that they “anycast” their CDN IP addresses which would make it bigger than what it looks like. Some BGP lookups and traceroutes on  local public route servers show this not to be the case. And whilst it’s possible to anycast a single IP address, the typical practice is to anycast a /24 since that is the smallest size that will be generally accepted by a BGP peer, so it’s unlikely in any event.

The bottom line is that Websites and online publications have created associations  that force it’s members to use standardised measures such as Nielsens to verify readership, so that there is a verifiable baseline for online content impressions, and to verify reader uniqueness.

These organisations have not yet caught up with Internet Radio, and thus, failing a standardised measure for online listenership measurements, they’ll have to rely on the old school mechanisms that regular stations such as 702 and others use to measure listeners. The SAARF, which measures commercial and community radio listeners seems to be an option.

Ballz and 2Oceans don’t seem to feature there at all.

The only thing Netdynamics could possibly claim is that 100k+ unique IP’s have accessed their servers, and that would probably include portscans, and considering the dynamic nature of IP allocations amongst consumers. I would estimate that 10-20% of 100k IP’s are unique individuals (from experience). That would put NetDynamics served unique customers at around 10k+ unique, which seems more plausible.

The bottom line is that if a Streaming CDN is reporting listener numbers, and if a Radio station is claiming listener numbers then the basic assumption HAS to be “lies, lies, and more fucking lies” because it is in their own self-interest to inflate numbers.

The DMA Don’t Contact database is a bit of an oxymoron, and a joke.

But after the recent weeks’ spate of machine dialed spam, and human dialed spam, I’ve decided to give it a whirl.

• The oxymoron is that the Don’t Contact me Database, contacts you.
• And then the joke is that they cannot fucking spell.

I summarily reported the validation link as SPAM, so let’s hope that keeps them busy a while.

After tearing my hair out making my Thinkpad’s Ericsson Business Mobile Networks BV F3507g Mobile Broadband Module work like it should I found the solution.

Without some magic initialization strings, whenever you create a PPP connection using pppd, you will simply get some cruft like the following

Connect: ppp20 <--> /dev/ttyACM1
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1 ]
rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x2 ]
sent [LCP ConfAck id=0x2 ]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1 ]
sent [LCP EchoReq id=0x0 magic=0x7ee90359]
rcvd [LCP EchoRep id=0x0 magic=0xd1304c29]
rcvd [CHAP Challenge id=0x0 <4c95aa9b38117677e44d021350494e6f7c055a8b6881266714bdb20380b9fe5fac750a7b98f1d657442d62f3b029ae4fdce5ba6bc8618647749d12e3e0995e>, name = "Kermit"]
sent [CHAP Response id=0x0 <068d69fa57a15daa762f3d4ea548e605>, name = "xxxxx"]
rcvd [CHAP Success id=0x0 "Congratulations!"]
CHAP authentication succeeded: Congratulations!
CHAP authentication succeeded
sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x1 ]
rcvd [LCP TermReq id=0x1]
LCP terminated by peer
sent [LCP TermAck id=0x1


The key being “LCP terminated by peer”. This modem seems to be faking a lot of stuff on the PPP layer, and the termination is actually initiated by the modem, and not the actual network itself, causing one to do some serious headscratching.

The magic, is in the following initialisation string, that you add to your chat script.

OK AT+CFUN=1


Yes, that’s right, lets have FUN=1 !

Without that bit in the init string there is no PPP to be had. Your connections will always report “Congratulations!” and then summarily disconnect.

You can also use AT+CFUN=5 for GSM/GPRS only mode or AT+CFUN=6 for 3G only mode.

Herewith a complete /etc/ppp/peers/fuckyouericsson chat script

ABORT BUSY
ABORT VOICE
ABORT "NO CARRIER"
ABORT "NO DIALTONE"
ABORT "NO DIAL TONE"
ABORT "NO ANSWER"
ABORT "DELAYED"
ABORT "ERROR"
ABORT "+CGATT: 0"

TIMEOUT 12
"" AT
OK ATQ0V1E1S0=0&C1&D2+FCLASS=0
#REQUIRED TO MAKE THE MODEM ACTUALLY DO PPP
OK AT+CFUN=1
#set the APN
OK AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet","0.0.0.0",0,1
OK ATD*99***1#
TIMEOUT 22
CONNECT ""