Mamadou Diallo still, inexplicably, using my email address all over the internet

June 18th, 2013

For some inexplicable reason, some guy who identifies himself as Mamadou Diallo, a.k.a. Bouba Diallo, has been creating accounts all over the internet using my email address for over two years now. I’ve written about this several times before.

It’s still going on… I just got email indicating that he created a Yahoo! account (“m.diallo76″) on May 6 using my email address. Needless to say, as has been my practice, I took over the account and closed it.

I wish I knew what the hell was going on here or what the perpetrator hopes to gain by doing this. I’ve wracked my brain but haven’t been able to come up with any ideas for how this might benefit him. Someone purporting to him posted a comment on my blog in November 2012, but it just made things weirder, without shedding any light on what’s going on. That comment probably really was posted by him, since the IP address it came from shows up as Dakar, Senegal in GeoIP lookups, and that’s where he claims to live in the accounts that he creates.

If anybody has any ideas about what might be going on here, I’m all ears.

 

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Johnny Monsarrat link round-up

June 11th, 2013

Following up on my earlier posting, some interesting reading on the Johnny Monsarrat lawsuit. The ones in bold are the juiciest. Read the rest of this entry »

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Dyn jumps the shark, tries to strong-arm free accounts into paying

June 11th, 2013

I’ve used Dyn, Inc.‘s free dynamic service for many years to maintain a DNS entry for my home internet connection. Their free account allows you to create one or two dynamic DNS entries underneath those domains. They provide software that updates your dynamic DNS record automatically when your IP address changes, usually because your ISP changes it.

In the past, free DNS entries have remained active as long as they were updated at least once every 30 days. The software they provide is configured to send an update every 25 days even if the IP address hasn’t changed, so in the past, as long as you installed and used their software to keep your DNS record up-to-date, you were golden.

Alas, Dyn recently decided to change the rules in a transparent attempt to make more of their free users pay for service they frankly don’t need. Now, using their software to update your dynamic DNS record automatically at least once every 30 days is no longer sufficient; now, you also need to log into their web site at least once every 30 days or your DNS records go away. They’ve claimed that this is to avoid “dormant” accounts, but that’s just stupid. If my account were dormant, then I wouldn’t have software updating its record automatically.

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MA Supervisor of Records denies my appeal based on specious legal reasoning

June 2nd, 2013

To: Shawn Williams, Massachusetts Supervisor of Records
Cc: Lori Sullivan,  the staff attorney in Williams’s office who research my appeal
Cc: Susan Krupanski, the MBTA employee who denied my legitimate public records request
Cc: Will Brownsberger, my state senator and an all-around good guy
Cc: On the Media
Cc: The Boston Globe
Cc: The Boston Herald

Dear Mr. Williams,

I have received your letter dated May 28, 2013, in which you denied my appeal of the failure by the MBTA to provide me with records I requested under the Massachusetts Public Records Law. A copy of your letter is attached for reference.

The legal justification you provide for denying my appeal is specious. Furthermore, your denial of my appeal flies in the face of available facts. Finally, on a purely common-sense level, your response is simply absurd.

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MBTA obstructs public records request, Secretary of State drags feet

May 25th, 2013

A side effect of my attempts to get information from the MBTA about toxic fumes in the passenger compartments of their buses (I will write more about that later, after a followup meeting I’ve been invited to by the MBTA) was my discovery that the MBTA is not terribly good at responding to public records requests within the time frame required by law. Since I view that as a serious problem in its own right, I attempted to shine some sunlight on it in my February 13 letter to the MBTA:

I would like to add an additional item to my request, or if you wish you may treat this as a new, separate request under the public records law. Please tell me how many public records law requests the MBTA has received in 2013, the date on which each was received, and the date on which an initial response was sent. There should be no significant cost for satisfying this request, since there could not have been that many requests so far this year (mine, after all, was only the ninth) and all such requests are presumably handled through your office.

In a letter dated February 22, the MBTA lawyer who handles public records requests informed me that, “… after a thorough and diligent search of files, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has no existing, responsive documents.”

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MIT Peeps: Have you heard what JonMon is up to nowadays?

May 6th, 2013

This post is mostly for the benefit of my fellow MIT alumni.

Remember Jonathan Monsarrat?

If so, then you may have gotten the same impression of him back at the ‘tute that I did, to wit, that he gave off creep vibes.

Judging from what has been written about him online since then, he’s done other things to reinforce that vibe, but this just about takes the cake… He has recently filed a lawsuit against several people, including Ron Newman whom many of you probably also know, alleging that they defamed him in discussions that took place in various forums on LiveJournal almost three years ago.

The lawsuit is clearly baseless and doomed to fail if it makes it to trial, but it seems likely that JonMon isn’t so much interested in prevailing in court, but rather in scaring people into removing their LiveJournal postings by raising the specter of an expensive legal defense.

Ken White has put up the Popehat signal asking for pro bono legal help defending against this attempt to suppress people’s free speech.

I’ve known Ron online for over two decades. He’s a good guy, and if he ends up needing financial help defending himself against this suit, you bet I’ll be contributing to his legal defense fund.

If there’s anything you can do to help — whether it’s providing pro bono assistance yourself, hooking Ron up with somebody who can provide such assistance, or just kicking in a few bucks to his legal defense fund if one is set up — then I encourage you to do so. And if you’re an MIT alum, make sure to mention it when you help…. It’s important to let people know that JonMon’s conduct is considered neither normative nor acceptable to most of the MIT community.

 

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Hack of the day: Pulseaudio / Bluez: Switch headset between A2DP and HSP automatically

April 23rd, 2013

If you’ve always wanted the Bluetooth headset you use on Linux to switch from high-fidelity (A2DP) to HSP/HFP Telephony automatically when you start using the microphone, and switch back automatically when you’re done, see this project which I just published on Github. Enjoy!

 

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Ohio company “Med Express” SLAPPs customer for true eBay feedback

April 15th, 2013

Here are the appalling facts in a nutshell (the full story is here)…

A woman buys a product on eBay from “Med Express” of Medina, Ohio. The product arrives postage due. She posts negative feedback about Med Express because of the postage due. Med Express sues her for defamation. When contacted about the lawsuit, Med Express explicitly concedes that the suit has no legal merit and their goal is to bully the customer into taking down the negative feedback, because Ohio has no anti-SLAPP statute and it’ll be too expensive for her to fight the lawsuit in Ohio.

If you are a lawyer with bar privileges in Medina, Ohio, or you know someone who is a lawyer with bar privileges in Medina, Ohio, and you or the person you know is willing to donate some pro bono time to give Med Express the legal ass-kicking they so roundly deserve, please get in touch with Ken White at Popehat (his take on this story is here).

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Comics aggregator supports King Features again, sort of

April 3rd, 2013

Recently, I wrote about why my comics aggregator stopped supporting comic strips distributed by the King Features Syndicate. In a nutshell, King Features changed how their comics are distributed in a way that (a) makes it much harder for my aggregator to scrape them, and (b) makes it 100% clear that they don’t want people scraping their comics.

They’re the copyright holder for these strips, so it’s their right to decide how people are allowed to view them. Aside from the ethical concerns with intentionally bypassing their restrictions, I frankly don’t want them to sue me. So free access to their strips through my aggregator is no longer an option.

However, all of their strips are available for your viewing pleasure at Daily Ink for the low, low price of $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year. With a paid subscription to Daily Ink, you can get King Features strips daily on your smart-phone, tablet or computer, as well as in email.

If that’s good enough for you, then you can go sign up there now and stop reading. However, if you’d like to get strips from Daily Ink all in one place with the other strips you read through my aggregator, then read on.

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MA RMV no longer emailing reminders about license renewals

April 3rd, 2013

A public service announcement for my readers in Massachusetts…

Several years ago, the Massachusetts RMV stopped mailing out paper letters reminding people to renew their driver’s licenses. Not mailing these letters supposedly saves the RMV about $600,000 per year; if that’s true, then stopping them seems like a reasonable thing for them to do.

Because this is the digital age, and people really do need to be reminded to renew their licenses, the RMV offered an email reminder service to replace the paper letters… You could go to the RMV web site and enter your email address and license expiration date, and the RMV would email you reminders as that date approached. Great idea, right?

Well, it was a great idea, until they silently discontinued the service this past winter without notifying the people who had signed up for it. If you were one of them, you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for a renewal reminder from the RMV.

If you are a AAA member, you can use the service offered by the AAA to replace the discontinued RMV service. Alternatively, Attorney Brian Simoneau is offering the service for free to anyone.

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