T w e n t y S i d e d
I mentioned a while ago that I’ve started blocking traffic from a few places that were spamming me. I still get a couple of spams a day, but nothing like the hundreds I was getting before. Whenever I get more than one spam comment / trackback from the same address, I add them to the deny list. Something I noticed about the list:
213.33.239.9 85.140.58.133 212.193.63.1 85.64.93.115 85.64.64.66 85.64.25.197 204.15.134.196 85.64.88.226 85.64.244.243 85.64.111.186
What’s with all the 85.64.x.x entries? 60% of the IP addresses that spam me come from 85.64.x.x, which is odd. I wonder where that is. I googled around a bit, and there are several sites that will convert IP addresses into geographical locations, but they all want me to pay for and download software. Geeze. I don’t want to know that bad.
Here is another idle question: Why are IP addresses expressed in decimal and not hex? I can’t think of any reason to express them in base 10 as we do now. You don’t need to do math with these things. They are sort of like street addresses. You need them to be easy to remember. Changing them to base 16 would reduce the 12-digit number to 8 digits. In addition, the letters would make the thing more memorable. For example, which would you rather memorize: 204.15.134.196 or CC.F.86.C4? I suggest that the latter is a little more handy.
The No Politics Rule
Here are 6 reasons why I forbid political discussions on this site. #4 will amaze you. Or not.
Crash Dot Com
Back in 1999, I rode the dot-com bubble. Got rich. Worked hard. Went crazy. Turned poor. It was fun.
Games and the Fear of Death
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
What is Vulkan?
There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?
Revisiting a Dead Engine
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.
Looks like Israel according to http://www.dnsstuff.com/
The 85.64’s all seem to be Barak Online (http://www.barak-online.net), which appears to be an Israeli telecom provider.
http://www.maxmind.com/app/locate_ip
Thanks to both of you. I was considering a ban on all of 85.64, but that seems pretty extreme. I think I’d rather play whack-a-mole with these spammers as opposed to blocking an entire Israeli telecom.
Copy and save the following:
ARIN
RIPE
APNIC
LACNIC
JAPNIC
AFRINIC
Always begin with ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. They’re the authority which grants blocks of IPs to others. Some large blocks have been granted to regional authorities like RIPE (Europe), APNIC (Asia Pacific), LACNIC (Latin America), JAPNIC (Japan), and AFRINIC (Africa). If you need to consult one of those, ARIN will tell you.
For instance, ARIN says that 85.64.93.115 is assigned to RIPE. RIPE says “Barak I.T.C.” in Israel.
Why are IPs entered in decimal? So you can enter them with a ten-key pad — or so that you could, back in 1970 when all this was being created initially. Sure, hex would make more sense, but that’s not how they did it.
(That’s what I get for pressing the submit button too soon.)
Ethernet was designed later, and ethernet addresses are expressed in hex. (They’re also 6 bytes rather than 4.)
Thanks a bunch.
Free IP Address locator: http://www.geobutton.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation
oddly, IP addresses are only submittable to DNS machines in binary, the decimal is only for convenience. But it’s what you get when you combine the defense department and academidia: that is, the worst of both worlds.
IPv6 Uses hex notation, they must have learned from their earlier error