Tag: stealing

blog on blog, five song friday, tragic, venting, well?, wtf?!

major bandwith theft and the fate of the 5SF

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It seems that it is always the few that have to ruin it for all of the others. So you may have noticed that as of this morning, none of the audio links work on this site anymore. This is a direct response to an email that I received from my hosting company that said that I was about to exceed my 400GB bandwidth quota for the month. Naturally, I was quite surprised, because I rarely ever approach 60GB transfer a month for the entire site, so I went to see what was going on.

Apparently, some people in another country, specifically the sites listed at the bottom of this post, think that it’s okay to just steal bandwidth. Well, unfortunately, since they have been stealing from me, and specifically from the mp3s that I used to do the 5SF, you guys are going to suffer; I am not going to offer audio anymore until I figure out a way to do it without leaving the back door open for these motherfuckers.

I didn’t know it, but the application that I use(d) for embedding audio gives you the URL of the file if you do a view source, a fact that I was unaware of until today. I don’t know how I missed that before, but apparently, I did. I don’t know a everything about permissions, but in order to use the plug in, you need to enable execute; which allows you to just steal the bandwidth if you know the file’s URL (which again, the plug in stupidly provides). Blocking the access to the folder is not enough it seems, and as such, drastic action had to be taken.

So what does this all mean for you? I’m extremely pissed off, and very sad to say that it potentially means the end of the 5SF. If I can’t find a way to block the use of my files elsewhere, while still making them available here, I won’t be able to post audio anymore; and what’s the point of doing a post about music if I can’t make it available for you to listen to? I don’t see youtube as a viable option, especially since I stopped using it early on in the 5SF because of the stupid rules about embedding certain videos and not others.

I really don’t want to stop doing the 5SF, so please, if you have ANY way that I can post the audio without having assholes steal my bandwidth, step up to the mic; the fate of the 5SF seemingly rests with you. The plug in that I was using was the pixelout audio player plug in, and as of writing this post, I haven’t been able to spot a way that I could hide the URL of the file; which would obviously be necessary to continue using it in the future. Again, any and all help would be most appreciated.

Here are the sites that were stealing my bandwidth: Fuck you, assholes!
http://blog.rayli.com.cn
http://img.kaixin001.com.cn
http://blog.qooza.hk/keng029
http://220.181.38.82/

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excuse me, is that YOUR blower?

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I didn’t think so!

Yesterday evening, I went outside with Sydney to watch him while he went potty, and I noticed that the handles on the shed were broken off, and hanging on by a little piece of plastic. Naturally, I thought, “well James has gone and broken this damn thing!”, so I asked him. Nope, turns out, he had just been in the shed about an hour before, after which, he went to the gym, leaving me and Sydney at the house.

While he was at the gym, someone came around the back of the house, jumped over the fence, and used a huge pipe to smash the handles off of the storage shed. We looked, and all we could see that he had taken was our leaf blower. Naturally, we were pretty freaked out, and we went back and looked at the footage of the theft from the security cameras. We got a visual of the criminal, and mulled over whether or not to go through the process of filing a police report; because when things have been stolen in the past, they have been very “oh well” about it.

We decided against filing a report at that time, and instead, James headed to Lowes to get some materials to make a new lock and securing mechanism (since the handles had been completely smashed off). Before he came home, the phone rings, and James quickly tells me that I need to call 911, because the guy is back! I had all of the lights in the back of the house off, so when I called 911, I walked back there, and sure enough, I could see him right at the fence (on the outside at this point), getting ready to jump into the yard!!! Needless to say, I was REALLY freaked out, and the 911 operator was listening to the whole scenario. I described the guy to her, and she relayed that message to the cop that was on the way.

The guy must have seen James’ car, because right as James came up the road behind our house, the guy stopped his plan of breaking back into the shed, and bolted. I couldn’t see where he went, and James took off (against my wishes) to find him. I stayed on the phone with the 911 operator until the cop arrived a good 20 minutes later. By then, James had seen a local man in the neighborhood that is well known for cutting people’s grass, and asked him if he knew the guy; and he did! Now, we know the guy’s name, and we relayed all of that information to the police.

You would think with that much information, they would act on it, or at least follow up, but nope; all he did was take a police report. While I am glad that the guy was “caught in the act”, and wasn’t able to steal anything else, I am still a little mad that he got away with it scott-free. I was also surprised at how ballsy it was for him to come back the same day, especially considering that we now know that he lives nearby. Hopefully, it is the last we will see of him; but if he does come back, the lock will be a lot more difficult for him to break this time around.

Things like this really freak me out, because it just makes you realize that there are people out there that will just take whatever they want, and they don’t care that it doesn’t belong to them. It was also creepy that I was home BOTH times he came to the house. I am just glad that it was only a petty theft, and that the whole thing is (HOPEFULLY) over.

In other news, my tivo has been shipped, and should arrive in 6 business days. ROCK! Speaking of ROCK, I beat the medium mode on GH: Encore last night where I got 5 stars on each song on the first try. WTF?! Either it is much easier than the other GH games, or I am a lot better… or both. Either way, it is a fun game, and I look forward to getting into the Hard mode next. I am disappointed that you can’t buy new songs, but GH:III is right around the corner, and hopefully, not to far out. I can’t wait for that game!