Rogue Science was down today?

[knowledgehungry]

Roguesci has been down for me all day, (from around 9 or so on) I checked it one last time before going to bed, and here it was up! Not only that it appears that it has been up all day(judging by posts):confused: .

I am not the only member here who was unable to access this site today either. When I tried, I got the general server not found, and yahoo search told me that the site did not exist or was unavailable.

Did anyone else have this experience? I must admit I panicked a little, with Sciencemadness down and xinventions also down in the course of a few days. I am not a regular at xinventions and only checked the website after RS was unavailable to me, so I do not know when xinventions went down, all I know is that I got a page saying that they had a worm and hopefully the server should be up in a few days.

The worst thing was that I realized I had almost none of the senior members emails so I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to contact them. I feel kind of stupid for overreacting :o .

[c.Tech]

It was also down for me and 3 others I talked to. I have accepted that at any time any useful website could die, that’s why I'm doing my best to save them bit by bit. When something like roguesci goes down I will do my best to get it out there, but with little forum members msn's its hard to find people worthy.

I will be abandoning my email if things get too tense for safety reasons.

[LibertyOrDeath]

This site was inaccessible to me as well when I tried a couple of times Tuesday afternoon, KH. I got a little spooked by that.

[Alexires]

Same here. Interestingly enough, I was having internet problems at the time. The account I was using first dropped out, so I swapped over. I could access everything (google, hotmail, etc) but not RS.org. When I swapped back, I could access it again....

[chemdude1999]

It was down for me as well. But I figured if they had gotten to NBK, I would have heard about it on national news. "Dozens of Federal agents were killed..."

[TreverSlyFox]

Yup, was down for me since yesterday afternoon about 4 CST.

[nbk2000]

There was a problem with our host, but it's been resolved. :)

[Chaosmark]

But I figured if they had gotten to NBK, I would have heard about it on national news. "Dozens of Federal agents were killed..."

I nearly died laughing when I read that. Perhaps nbk could enlighten us on exactly how that sentence might end?

[Gerbil]

I feared the worst for a moment :p

[nbk2000]

"Dozens of Federal agents were killed..."

Delta Force, supported by a battalion of Army Rangers and an AC-130 gunship, storm NBK's 'compound', only to find an Washu doll. ;) :D

It always happens that people get freaked out when we, and any other similar site, goes down at the same time.

'ITS THE CRACKDOWN!!'

Not today. but someday...

[random136]

Whenever I have difficulty accessing the forum, I immediately assume the worst. What saddens me most is the fact that, should this site ever vanish into thin air, I would have nothing left to prove it ever even existed (apart from my backup of the immense library of knowledge accumulated here, of course). Despite the fact that most of the older members here are self proclaimed psychopaths in real life (and I do mean that in the most positive way), we all sometimes long for reunions and reminiscing the good times. Unlike conventional academic institutions or clubs, we have no centralized system for contingency communication purposes. Worse yet, asking other members for their contact information may arouse suspicion concerning your intentions.

This forum has attracted quite a number of talented individuals who seem to work well with one another. Never before have I witnessed such a beautifully orchestrated social system, we all seek to accomplish our own selfish goals, yet when we come here we learn to put that aside, respect regulations, and aid one another. In effect we still accomplish our own goals by bartering information with others, but in doing so we implement a new social system unlike any other I have seen before.

Any suggestions on how to ensure the survival of this community beyond the lifetime of roguesci, or would such preparations only make members more vulnerable to persecution? Perhaps another, equally anonymous meeting spot would be in good order. A chat room, another forum, or some other form of web based communication could be used to serve as a meeting spot. Should this pack of wolves ever have to split up, any communication would beat having to fend for one’s self as a lone wolf.

[sdjsdj]

I, for one, came AMAZINGLY close to torching my hard drive . . .

Whilst I appreciate the value of the forum, its best defence seems to be the anonymity and isolation of its members and the ease with which it could cease to exist - no offence, people, but if the proverbial hit the fan I'd be out of here like a shot. The best anyone could do, in the event of serious trouble, would be the same.

Whilst there may be causes worth dying for - and I have yet to find one - the forum itself is a means, not an end in itself.

On a lighter note, at least it's back!

[knowledgehungry]

I have some ideas for a back up meeting point, but posting them here would be rather counterproductive.

[nbk2000]

That's the problem...any alternate meeting point (virtual or real) that enough members know of to make it worth bothering iwth, will also be surely known by Them, making it a moot issue.

[wst50]

'Them'?

That's a touch impersonal, surely :p

On the other hand, I'm going to have nightmares tonight. You just reminded me that my face is all over CCTV, my IP is everywhere, including a few Proxies... , My Fingerprints and DNA are on record, as it's easy to take prints, and they had a massive bundle of it available without my knowledge when I was in hospital a lot in my very early youth.

Sometimes I just want to emigrate, somewhere a long way away.

Darn, they know everything thing about me. Those satellites and stuff.

I'm gonna have a bad night tonight, I can tell.

On the other hand, who says that we can't make a special handshake, much like the Freemasons? Hehe. That would make it easy enough to find other people, and it would be unspoken, so unheard...

Aak, I wish I hadn't read your post, nbk. Paranoia is setting in fast...

[megalomania]

If you are going to download The Forum, be sure to exclude all the minor thread parts like the newreply.php, editpost.php, reputation.php, report.php, showpost.php, and all the dozen other php snippets that only display the same info in a dozen different ways.

I have been trying to build a text only based view of The Forum and incorporate an auto generated PDF copy of a thread that can be downloaded. I also want to make my own version of an offline download available for people to snag.

Keep in mind we do have a complete text archive of every thread at http://www.roguesci.org/theforum/archive/index.php that is much easier to copy. There should be a link on every page, but it seems to have vanished into the ether...

Obviously there is considerable interest in this. I can't stop anyone from leeching the entire Forum, so I might as well facilitate it the best I can to keep bandwidth spikes from occurring. I do ban excessive bandwidth users obviously engaged in wholesale site ripping.

[c.Tech]

If you are going to download The Forum, be sure to exclude all the minor thread parts like the newreply.php, editpost.php, reputation.php, report.php, showpost.php, and all the dozen other php snippets that only display the same info in a dozen different ways.


I have been wondering how that could be done, I've been looking through the options on WinHTTracker and couldn’t find anything useful. Any ideas?

[akinrog]

I have been wondering how that could be done, I've been looking through the options on WinHTTracker and couldn’t find anything useful. Any ideas?

Just add minuses before the links (like www.roguesci.org/theforum/newreply.php) and types (like *.some_stupid_file_extension) you want to exclude in the options section.


Regards.

[FUTI]

This is maybe stupid...but anyway for those of you guys who live close to each other those mobilephones with bluetouth connection is maybe an answer for exchanging encrypted messages. They can't charge you for driving in the same bus once a week in a certain time right? ;)

EDIT: I just saw Gerbil post but since I still can edit this post I choose to add this here. I don't want to add another post on the subject that will reitterate this thing. Yes that was something like Gerbil's dead letter box...just techno version. I was acctually inspired by recent spy affaire in Moscow where FSB stated it caught people working for some UK intelligence agency exchanging info in public through hidden server/reapeater of some kind. I didn't pay attention at that time but this bring the subject up again.

[Gerbil]

FUTI: For exchanging information, wouldn't a dead letter box be better?

[megalomania]

I actually use Offline Explorer Enterprise which includes features to selectively include and exclude different areas of a website. I find it best to run a download for only a few seconds to find out what crap it is downloading, stop the download, and enter the restrictions. Why oh god why does it always always always ALWAYS download what you don't want first?!? There are tons of areas of The Forum that you do not want to download simply because it multiplies content you already have. A full download would be something like 20GB if you didn't exclude all the extraneous data, whereas a good download of all the content is something like 300-500 MB. Guess which one gets you, and your entire continent, banned?

[c.Tech]

Thanks for your replies.

Mega what restriction on the download rate should I put? How many connections at a time maximum?

I’m surprised other websites hadn't banned my IP yet hehe. I once overloaded the bandwidth of a geocities site for about 10 minutes after I got half their site.

If my rougesci archive is less than 1gig I may even split it up and upload it to Rapidshare.

[Frunk]

If my rougesci archive is less than 1gig I may even split it up and upload it to Rapidshare.

Maybe you should rip the site, get rid of all the techno-useless crap like newpost.php and then post it on Bittorent so we don't have to waste Mega's bandwidth doing the same.

[Gerbil]

FUTI: I was thinking about that earlier- the incident where MI6 allegedly had a file server disguised as a rock in a Moscow park, and agents would upload/download from palmtops when they walked by.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4639758.stm

If someone could set up something similar that was connected to mains electricity (stray cable or similar), in an unobtrusive location, then it might work very well as a backup point. Due to the short range it would be difficult for anyone to intercept the data, and even then, encryption would help.

Obviously it would need some robust security measures, including some kind of self destruct mechanism (digital or physical). And knowledge of it would need to be limited to very few people, 4 or 5 as maximum.
But there's no reason why several couldn't be set up independently.

[chemdude1999]

...post it on Bittorent so we don't have to waste Mega's bandwidth doing the same.

Good idea. I was actually thinking about doing this with some of my larger rips and then posting the torrent file only here for the members.

I need to get a second hard drive for more space, so it may be a month or so before I get some torrents going.

[c.Tech]

Maybe you should rip the site, get rid of all the techno-useless crap like newpost.php and then post it on Bittorent so we don't have to waste Mega's bandwidth doing the same.

A better idea would be to do what mega said and not even get the useless files in the first place by just scanning the links, and you can scan the links instead of starting the download.

I would rather use Rapidshare or other file sharing client, it would be available for longer and wouldn’t have a constant connection to my computer. People could also download it when they like and not just when I’m seeding.

[FUTI]

FUTI: I was thinking about that earlier- the incident where MI6 allegedly had a file server disguised as a rock in a Moscow park, and agents would upload/download from palmtops when they walked by.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4639758.stm

Thanks for the link man. Even Wiki mention this incident under dead letter box term.

If someone could set up something similar that was connected to mains electricity (stray cable or similar), in an unobtrusive location, then it might work very well as a backup point. Due to the short range it would be difficult for anyone to intercept the data, and even then, encryption would help.

Today with small power consumption of those devices and short range that they had to transmit data you could probably make device that "drain" enough energy by just being near place where large cable line go through. Encryption is must I think since you aren't the only guy in town with handheld device.

Obviously it would need some robust security measures, including some kind of self destruct mechanism (digital or physical). And knowledge of it would need to be limited to very few people, 4 or 5 as maximum.
But there's no reason why several couldn't be set up independently.

Something that could fry the circuitry can be made easy. Wipe-out routine even easier. But for true destruction of evidence you need something like thermite (yes I know kewlish) to destroy the device if found/tampered with, but also to destroy all evidence that can lead to the guy who made it since put together all those electronic parts can lead good investigator in right direction. Unless he/she adopt Unabomber routine and scavenge through the junkyard:). Dead letter box is for lower rank spy operatives so your projection of number of people is about right (I would say the max number should be 12 - as in my post I think in thread dealing with RS country cells;)- and minimum number should be 6).

I will in this year try to start one long postponed project of mine. Linux based bootable USB for connecting to "rogue" places from cybercaffes. It should contain browser, mailer, chat-client, cryptography tools, RSS reader, firewall, IP switching script, crude AV tool, unauthorised mount/unmount wipeout and few extra portable programs just for fun.

I will explore the WiFi LAN after that, but that will have to wait longer.

The subject we talk Gerbil isn't mainstream I think since guys here talk more in the line of regrouping (collect the remaining troops and know-how somewhere in cyberspace) while two of us talk more in line of knowing we can't beat the system directly so we better start developing "asymetric civil disobediance".

[Frunk]

I would rather use Rapidshare or other file sharing client, it would be available for longer and wouldn’t have a constant connection to my computer. People could also download it when they like and not just when I’m seeding.

Once a few people have the file, you don't need to keep seeding. As long as one person seeds it works. If the entire DIY science community of the internet wants to own their own Roguesci.org archive, there are going to be a couple hundred seeders. Rapidshare is awful, there's max of 1 download/30 mins unless you pay up.

[megalomania]

Hmm, why don't you just let me make the archive eh?

I am running it now. Downloading the text only archive is less problematic and would make for the smallest filesize.

[chemdude1999]

Hmm, why don't you just let me make the archive eh?

Now, that would make way too much sense. :p

I look forward to it. :D

I wasn't going to do it for fear of bandwidth abuse. I think 4hv.org has IP banned me. I had HTTrack going at unlimited download speed. Unknowningly, of course. Dammit.

[nbk2000]

Don't forget to include the attachments into that archive file, as that's half the content.

[megalomania]

I was just thinking that adding the attachments would be very difficult since the way the forum software works, and how I do the rip, but I just remembered I yanked all the attachments from the database to their own server file a few months ago. All I have to do is download them all directly from the host and zip them up...

I am done downloading the files, now I have to delete the "login" pages that accidentally got downloaded (there is ALWAYS some extra crap that sneaks in), but windows really hates working with thousands and thousands of files in the same folder. I always have this problem with siterips.