Am off to bed having seen 30 minutes of the first US Presidential debate. Anyone who wants to watch more of it should seek counselling. In terms of content it is impossible to distinguish what either of them is actually proposing on taxation policy. What comes over to me is the lack of any divergence from a neo-liberal economic model.
But in terms of style and presentation, which I presume this is about, rather to my surprise Romney is coming over the better. He is glib whereas Obama is stuttering a lot; they are both achingly dull, but Obama’s phrases seem curiously disconnected and there are gaps when you can see the gears meshing in his head. Neither of them shows any evidence whatsoever of charisma.
Four years ago Obama was talking with apparent belief about the need for change and inspiring people to follow him. He may even at the time have believed much of what he promised, but given the speed of abandonment of principle in office, I doubt it. Now Obama is just trying to present as a more managerially competent neo-con; a managerially competent neo-con competition is about the only one Romney can actually perform in.
I don’t really care who wins – debate or election.
@mods @moderator Jon/Clark
please fix the broken dns records upstream. broken for at least 4 hours.
94.124.88.232 is still up and working, but needs a hostname to serve this site.
dig +trace “www.craigmurray.org.uk”
….
craigmurray.org.uk. 172800 IN NS ns1.expathos.eu.
craigmurray.org.uk. 172800 IN NS ns2.expathos.eu.
;; Received 87 bytes from 195.66.240.130#53(ns1.nic.uk) in 324 ms
dig: Couldn’t find server ‘ns1.expathos.eu’: No address associated with nodename
94.124.88.232, it is already done. We’re all just waiting for the refreshed record to work its way back into the various DNS servers.
I first noticed the outage at about 09:30 – 10:00 BST, and contacted the hosts. In the meantime, advise your friends to modify their hosts file. That’s how I’m accessing the site now. Add the following line:
94.124.88.232 w w w.craigmurray.org.uk
Edit: Remove the spaces between the Ws. I added them because otherwise WordPress displays it as a link automatically, and I don’t know how to get around that.
You are the one who asked the question!
clark 6 Oct, 2012 – 2:34 pm – “Whats going on?”
——————–
When you figure out if someone was inadvertently trying to “censor” you, please post a summary.
Perhaps you are waiting for someone in California to wake up?
dig +trace -t SOA +multiline expathos.eu
…
expathos.eu. 86400 IN NS domain.idotz.net.
expathos.eu. 86400 IN NS expired.idotz.net.
;; Received 81 bytes from 217.29.76.13#53(it.dns.eu) in 414 ms
dig: Couldn’t find server ‘domain.idotz.net’: No address associated with nodename
dig -t SOA +multiline domain.idotz.net
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
idotz.net. 1082 IN SOA ns2.intermedia.net. hostmaster.intermedia.net. (
2012051101 ; serial
3600 ; refresh (1 hour)
3600 ; retry (1 hour)
604800 ; expire (1 week)
3601 ; minimum (1 hour 1 second)
)
DOMAIN: IDOTZ.NET
RSP: iDotz.Net/iRRP.Net – Domain Name Registration Service
URL: http://www.idotz.net
created-date: 2002-07-22 19:34:42
updated-date: 2012-09-14 17:46:19
registration-expiration-date: 2019-07-22 19:34:42
owner-organization: BRS Media Inc.
owner-name: George Bundy
owner-street: 55 New Montgomery St. Suite 622
owner-city: San Francisco
owner-state: CA
owner-zip: 94105-3432
owner-country: US
owner-phone: +1.4156774027
owner-fax: +1.4156774025
owner-email: [Mod/Clark: e-mail address removed!]
Did my other post get sent?
PS. I was just trying to be politely helpful. Sorry if it reads a bit tersely, my mind is in “digging dns records mode” 🙂
oops, how did I get here…:)
who hasn’t paid up then? somebody has taken the light switch away….
94.124.88.232,so far as we know, it is not censorship. The web host was surprised and annoyed when his .eu domain name was cancelled a day before the expiry date, but, we are told, this is normal for .eu domains. (?) Anyway, the host has sorted that out, and now, apparently, we’re just waiting for the DNS record to work its way back into the system. I dunno if it going wrong early on a Saturday makes any odds…
Thanks for your digging. Remember to redact e-mail addresses!
Welcome to tumbleweeds town Nevermind.
Well expathos.eu is hidden behind a capcha etc… so be my guest to look at that at http://www.eurid.eu.
The other option could be that we are waiting for an update to be made to ns*.nic.uk. to point them to a working dns.
Curious why it is not simply pointing them to ns*.cj2hosting.nl.
In recent weeks lookups would time out, so perhaps only a few dns caches have been working since quite a while.
whois -h whois.eu expathos.eu gives:
Registrar:
Name: Key-Systems GmbH
Website: http://www.key-systems.net
Name servers:
domain.idotz.net
expired.idotz.net
The actual machine seems to be hosted here:
Domain name: cj2hosting.nl
Status: active
Registrar:
CJ2 Hosting & Development
Zernikepark 1
9747AP GRONINGEN
Netherlands
DNSSEC: no
Domain nameservers:
ns1.cj2hosting.nl 194.50.163.20
ns2.cj2hosting.nl 91.192.36.2
ns3.cj2hosting.nl 62.4.86.125
Record maintained by: NL Domain Registry
—–
PS fasthosts.net.uk have a SOA which does not inspire confidence …
nor does the level of service at iDotz.Net Support:
“Please NOTE: DNS updates can take up to 48 hours for full propagation.”
iDotz.Net – Domain Name Registrar: Cool Domains @ Great Prices
Clark, indeed, it is not isolated to this site but the whole ns*.expathos.eu. You have so many layers of web hosts involved here it is not obvious which one you are referring to, or who is cancelling the .eu – idotz, or their wholesale provider …
Technically, being under these dns servers in the US etc. means they could be co-opted to monitor or affect those accessing the site, as well as giving the spooks a bit more traffic to see…
Anyway, it seems like a good time to consider a simpler arrangement, and given the potential of parties wanting to interfere, or legal entanglements in multiple countries, to look at consolidating it in one locality.
My other sincere hope, given all the great efforts your community put into their postings, is that you have a well worked out, tested, frequent, off-site backup that you are in personal control of. i.e. not just the word of your hosting provider, or a mirrored disk.
Anyway, it is your ship, so I hope I’m not sounding anything but simply helpful. Please delete any or all of these 94.124.88.232 posts as you wish.
Is Craig aware of the street address info being public on the whois for this site (and a mis-spelling as Craif)?
94.124.88.232, can’t you pick a name please? I feel daft calling you that. Not exactly my ship, but I may as well watch and learn what I can.
That’ll be at weekends, then.
Would you advise me to delete any of your comments? You obviously know a lot more than me. I just blanked the e-mail address ‘cos publishing them attracts spam. Is anything you posted not generally publicly available?
Sounds convincing to me, and simpler is generally better. Please explain further on any of your earlier points, ‘specially the more ‘terse’ ones.
Yeah, I’d spotted “Craif”
Site was accessible for me for a while and was seeing all the messages of you few who were like feint figures behind a frosted window, waving frantically to an outside world; this amusing circumstance was due to my local dns cache still resolving correctly. Now even that has expired and the upstream dns server draws a blank, so some hosts file jiggery-pokery (actually a line in my dnsmasq config ‘address=/craigmurray.org.uk/94.124.88.232’ and we are good to go once again. I’ve grown so used to this site as a sort of digest of what is interesting and bordering on the truth (or not) in the mainstream or alternative media, that I’m quite at a loss. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do …
Could somehow play some sort of forum tv-game tennis
¤
¤
I I
Thanks for the IP Clark.
94.124.88.232 at 6 Oct, 9:40 pm
I’m away from home and I couldn’t concentrate before. I barely can now. Sorry. Thanks for your advice about domain names and backups.
94.124.88.232, “tumbleweeds town” seems about right. You still here?
ttya = 94.124.88.232
Clark and Jon,
I’m just back now – the info is all public, I just started writing in a few places as a way to let you and anyone still here my take on the situation. So when you responded here I’ve been writing like email, which is really O/T for Craig’s blog here and the other topics. So feel free to clean it all up and just post something for the general readers once you are back. Or sideline these into some tech-corner?
If the delay goes on, can you keep open the comments in topics which will close please. Maybe simplest to add a few lines and delete later, or change some number of days in your wordpress?
Terse = my tone of initial posts.
Did the one I sent in the contact form get turned into an email to you or craig? Sorry I don’t want to give out an email or start getting drawn into admin here… Maybe the occasional handwaving to suggest if you set tack to certain climes you may find good sailing and avoid a few reefs… 🙂
One such reef is the personal and reputational fallout for Craig and yourselves and disruption to the community should you suffer a disk failure or malicious damage to the content. I know it is hard to balance that with running on a shoestring volunteer basis. Oh and for outages worse than this one, it helps that there is some known ‘meeting point” where you can at least post and update a few lines of status info. And get a search engine seeing that.
Right now there are a lot of people out there presumably getting angry and frustrated and wondering what is going on and if you are all ok etc. SO get prepared once the dns goes back up. If that lasts too many days, it can break up the comunity goodwill, or they find somwhere else to go. A few may even go out into the sunshine for a change 🙂
Technically better to consider the web-server semi-secure, and have a more secure machine which holds backups and that it logs into the web server to somehow get a feed of content changes or incremental + full backups etc. That way, if the web server is breached, they cannot log into the backup one.
Beyond that save to DVDs or whatever to put somewhere.
Look around and I guess there are FAQs and tools etc for doing all this.
And I’m not even going to start on the reality of keeping any info on the web server or logs or Craig’s email securely private. (do you and Jon really want to display your level of know how in posts like I saw last week?)
OK. I had a few more reflections on the dns consolidation.
I guess if you started in the UK it is partly historical.
A Caveat- I’m really not up with current day business/law arrangements for dns/hosting. It used to be so much simpler in the old days when we ran all this without the leeches wanting to squeeze every last dollar for doing so little. 🙁
First question may be – does Craig have “title’ to his domain, or is he beholden to “leasing” it from Fasthosts Ltd. So that then concerns the arrangements with multiline org.uk
Then, as it is his main asset here, it could well be he prefers to keep that registered through a UK company, so any disputes on that fall under UK law and locality. So that already complicates my earlier idea, which was more to have cj2.nl take care of it if it can be transferred to them (if you are happy with them).
Now, technically, I’m not quite up on who runs the NS ns1.expathos.eu – i.e. the actual machine at whatever ip it is sitting at (anybody know that?) – is it cj2’s or fasthost’s or ??
Please post it’s http://www.eurid.eu whois if you’ve gotten past the captcha. (sorry for my copy past of email, not that he doesn’t deserve it …)
Perhaps post what you are ok with re the dns ip config from your fasthost control panel.
Whomever runs expathos.eu and cannot keep tabs of renewal dates for the dns would appear to be lacking in the diligence department … Ditto for using idotz with 48h delays.
Anyway, stay calm for now and rest and write some welcoming message to greet readers once it is back and use it as an occasion to draw attention to the large effort you both put in as moderators / administrators, and how vulnerable a web site is to all the layers of commercial players with little accountability on their arrangements nor competence.
Clark,
yes, see a long message awaiting mod. Anything in particular?
For the historical record, we are still waiting for idotz to fix it so that expathos.eu is not an “expired” “domain”.
expathos.eu. 86400 IN NS expired.idotz.net.
expathos.eu. 86400 IN NS domain.idotz.net.
;; Received 85 bytes from 195.66.241.178#53(uk.dns.eu) in 336 ms
dig: Couldn’t find server ‘expired.idotz.net’: No address associated with nodename
94.124.88.232, speak to me! It’s lonely and sort of spooky here.
Why do you ask about Fasthosts.net.uk? I don’t see that name in your dig output.
Ttya, thanks, I see our posts crossed.
Ttya, comments are set to remain open for three days beyond the last comment, and there were comments submitted yesterday, so 48 hours should be OK. I’ll change that setting if needs be.
Would you link please? Should I redact something? Any advice appreciated.
ok. Firstly, who do you deal with for the dns record for this domain? I was presuming fasthosts. Technically, you are right, fasthosts.net.uk is not in the dns lookup chain. I just happened to look at them and the SOA looks crazy.
Would you mind posting the whois/dns info I’ve requested on expathos.eu, since that is what matters at present.
—-
The http://www.nominet.org.uk/whois/ gave:
Domain name:
craigmurray.org.uk
…
Registrar:
Fasthosts Internet Ltd [Tag = LIVEDOMAINS]
URL: http://www.fasthosts.co.uk
Relevant dates:
Registered on: 15-Mar-2005
Expiry date: 15-Mar-2013
Last updated: 01-Mar-2012
Registration status:
Registered until expiry date.
Name servers:
ns1.expathos.eu
ns2.expathos.eu
WHOIS lookup made at … 07-Oct-2012
Ttya:
Do you want your contribution hidden? So far, I feel it shows some record of what happened, it’s interesting, informative and educational, and I’d rather leave it. If Craig considers it O/T he can delete it later.
Ttya,
I’m out of my depth, Ttya, so I won’t post something you couldn’t find publicly. But I’ll ask elsewhere.
Clark, 12:17 pm
OK. just hoping you can keep or re-open them if needed.
There are some I was thinking of that now say
Comments will be closed on October 9, 2012
under http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/09/
(and is that meaning the end of the day GMT time?)
It will be nice to get this on a new page as the 200 posts take a long time to refresh! (can I use any &view=50&start=150 type url options?)
Hard to give a reference, I think it was in a very long thread in which quantum physics and complex numbers were mentioned if that helps, and you and Jon were exchanging general remarks about trust and security and privacy that indicated how far down the path of learning you are, which may be revealing. But then some of you are happy to reveal all sorts of personal history here too. These are all large topics and the great paradoxes of the modern online world. If you look around EFF or ACLU, Schneier, etc. you will find various indications on the extent of dragnet style surveillance of whole 10 gigabit fibre pipes going on, and the HBGary “leak” reveals more about the pointy end of targeted hacking and the tools like Palantir for mining the info and the “persona management” software for manipulating blogs etc for political motives.
Ttya:
Would you do ma a favour and post a comment on each? I have a steady flow of e-mails about the site being down, and I’m away from home and my hosts would like to use their own system!
Clark 12:38 pm,
If you are in an ok browser and are ok with google/captcha, then
it IS public, just not easy for me right now, so please see if you can get some whois info for expathos.eu from the web based whois at http://www.eurid.eu
What I’m asking is to find out this if the registrar has a valid or expired record for expathos.eu, renewal date etc. and to try to see if it is run by cj2.nl or alternatively by some other group connected to Fastpath Ltd., but now you seem to imply you do not deal directly with them either. Are you only dealing directly with the cj2.nl providers for everything and then this is all subsidiary to them?
If we know where the machine formerly known as “ns1.expathos.eu” is (ip number), then we know if it is cj2’s, or who else it may be.
So please check with Jon or Craig and give me some feedback with some info, so we can get this sorted out and I can find time and motivation to write much more, and get a little back in education about typical hosting business practices.
——–
The questions were:
Now, technically, I’m not quite up on who runs the NS ns1.expathos.eu – i.e. the actual machine at whatever ip it is sitting at (anybody know that?) – is it cj2′s or fasthost’s or ??
Perhaps post what you are ok with re the dns ip config from your fasthost control panel.
Clark: “Would you do ma a favour and post a comment on each?”
– Jon also FYI
– re zzz posts are not spam really.
Well that is a lot of effort after all my typing here to start finding them all, but I started to look in the 2012/09/, where some were expiring on Oct 7, so I’ve put in some “keep-alive” posts with the user zzz. I hoped you had some global setting to temporarily change. It is too much to check them all or any earlier ones.
Ttya, thanks for the keep-alive comments.
You’re not using a browser?
I’ll check out the whois info soon… (e-mail, e-mail…)
eh?
Keep alive comment – (I’ve modified my hosts file)
It is a poor state of affairs when the head of Amnesty USA, Suzanne Nossel, is a confirmed warmonger whose greatest heroes happen to be amongst the world’s biggest war criminals:
Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of Amnesty USA
Ttya, I’ve sent on your suggestions. Some parties have said that your digging is O/T, so I’m hiding it like you and they suggested.