Fri, 24 Sep 2004

Defensive fuckery

Let’s pretend that some fucko has setup a zone and pointed it at your nameserver without asking you first. Let’s say that it pisses you off. What to do?

Play defense.

First, setup a zonefile that looks like this:

    $TTL 7D
    @           SOA localhost hostmaster.localhost 42 3600 1800 604800 3600
                NS  localhost
    localhost   A   127.0.0.1
    *           MX  0 localhost
                A   127.0.0.1

and save it into db.smackdown.

Note that this zone is general purpose; it doesn’t matter what the zone that’s being pointed at you is called. Then, in the named.conf, add something like this:

    zone "fucko.com"
    {
        type master;
        file "master/db.smackdown";
    };

That’s all you have to do. Any query that anyone sends to your server for that zone will get bounces to their local machine. Eventually, the zone owner will realize that this is hurting them, and they will (hopefully) stop. If not, you can at least rest easy, knowing that you’re fucking with the foolish.

Again, this was Paul Vixie’s idea; I just wanted to keep a copy.

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Skype

I just tried out the Skype MacOS X Beta, and the SkypeOut service. Wow. I just talked to Lilli (in England) for a half an hour for less than US$0.50, and the sound quality was pretty solid. It took all of 10 minutes to download the software, install it, setup my account, and buy a 10 euro block of talk credit.

Pretty sweet. If I end up using this a lot, I think that it would be worth experimenting with a headset instead of the laptop microphone and speaker, and there are probably some settings that may improve voice quality or bandwidth usage.

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Pitch/Sap Remover

I foolishly parked Solid under a pine tree the other day, and ended up with a ton of pitch all over it. Getting pitch off of a car is a total bitch. Google suggested that oil or mayonnaise would help, but all that did was make a mess. Besides, I hate mayonnaise, and refuse to believe that it could serve any useful purpose.

However, all is not lost! After much research, I found what appears to be a very good (and cheap) pitch remover: rubbing alchohol and an old t-shirt. Just soak the t-shirt in alchohol, and then polish off the pitch and sap. Works like a charm.

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