February 21, 2007
The other day, I talked about an extremely annoying problem I was having with my internet connection. Sites randomly wouldn’t load in Safari, but would in Firefox. The iTunes Store would only load on some computers. It reached a head when I realized I wasn’t able to commit changes to SVN for my work-related files. In short, a truly irritating situation.
Today, my DSL was activated, and I set it up with high hopes. I was a little bit skeptical that it could really be Mediacom’s fault, since the sites would still load in different browsers.
My DSL connection is working flawlessly. I’m having no trouble whatsoever navigating to any of the sites I had trouble with. I can commit to SVN was ease. The iTunes Store loads in a snap.
Just for kicks, I tried hooking up the DSL modem and cable modem to the two ethernet ports on my Mac. When I was using the DSL connection, things were fine. I’d switch to the cable modem, and the same old problem would rear its ugly head.
I have absolutely no idea what caused these problems with Mediacom, but I know that I’ll be calling to cancel my cable internet connection first thing tomorrow morning. That should be fun.
February 20, 2007
First off, I’m no fan of the DMCA. Unfortunately, it seems like nowadays you can’t get the attention of a hosting provider when your content’s being stolen unless you hit them over the head with a DMCA request.
Yesterday, I noticed that the contents of my recent article, The most frustrating computer problem I have ever had, had been scraped and re-posted on somdaj.com. It’s a very typical case of stealing content and re-posting it with copious advertising, trying to make a quick nickel off of someone else’s work.
So, I wrote to Dreamhost—I even used their contact form, and selected “Abuse Department” as the recipient of my email.
Hi there.
The domain somdaj.com is being hosted by Dreamhost. There is a spam site located at [url].
My content has been republished there without my permission: [url]
My original post is located here: [url]
I’ve received no response from the site owner, so I am requesting that you
remove the offending material from the site, per your Terms of Service.
Today I received the following response from sales@dreamhost.com:
Can you please get back to us with full headers and messages from what you believe to be spamming coming from this domain. We have yet to receive any further reports and without specific examples we can’t evaluate them versus our anti-spam policy.
If you believe that a DreamHost customer is engaging the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, please have the copyright owner (or their legal representative) file a formal notification of claimed infringement as described in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (512©(3)(A)(i-vi)). The copyright owner should be sure to provide detailed and specific URLs/links to the content in question, not including any non-infringing material.
Once it is drafted, the DMCA Notification (text only and no attachments) should be sent to us at abuse@dreamhost.com. Upon receipt of a valid DMCA Notification, we will commence with the removal of such content in an expeditious manner.
I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more immediate assistance, but we are only able to respond to notifications sent to us from the impacted copyright owners themselves. You may, of course, feel free to contact them and have them contact us directly. If you have any questions, please let us know.
Well, a few things.
- A response from sales? WTF?
- I understand the importance and usefulness of a good automated reply for support requests, but it’s a bit too obvious when your first paragraph has nothing to do with the issue I’ve described.
- The second paragraph was fairly relevant. Of course, it’s pretty clear from my original email that that’s exactly what I was doing—I provided direct links to my original article, and where it’s being hosted on the offending site. I guess I didn’t throw the DMCA around, so it wasn’t weighty enough.
- While the half-hearted apology at the end is a nice touch, it should have been completely obvious from my email that I am, in fact, the original copyright holder.
- If the person had even bothered to look at the two links I gave them, they could have discerned in less than ten seconds what the problem is.
Alright. So, next up, I re-compose the same original email, copy and paste the initials DMCA around a few times, then fire it back off to see if I have any better luck the second time around.
UPDATE: Aha! The trick was an impeccably-formed DMCA notice. Thanks to Shaun for pointing me toward a nice legalese template. Guess I’ll have to save it for the future, because it seems to work.
Thank you for submitting a formal DMCA notice to us regarding this content. I have taken the website offline until the owner can remove the named article. They have been given specific instructions not to place their site back online until they have removed your copyrighted material. If they place this content back online, please let us know. They have also been put on notice that if we continue to receive complaints of this nature their account will be closed. If they continue to violate copyrights in the future, please be sure to let us know with another DMCA notice, and appropriate action will be taken.
If you’d like, I’ve made my DMCA notice template available for the taking. And so no one sends me a DMCA notice, the original is available here and marked as “free to copy and use.”
February 19, 2007
I don’t even know where to start with this one. For the past few days, I’ve been having this problem. For the most part, everything’s working fine. But, say, one out of every ten sites I go to won’t load in Safari. Sites that have always worked before. It’s not a coding issue—Safari simply won’t load the page, then times out saying that the network connection has been lost.
What’s really infuritating about this is that the sites will still load in any other browser. Firefox, Camino, Opera—they all work. Traceroutes to the hosting server work.
Sometimes individual pages on a server will load, and others won’t. For instance—certain Google searches will load, but some will not.
I’ve tried disabling all my Safari plug-ins. I’ve tried turning off my relay AirPort base stations. I’ve tried stepping down my network from 802.11n to 802.11b/g. I’ve tried visiting the sites on my laptop, instead of my desktop. Some sites work on the laptop. Some work on the desktop. Sometimes a page won’t load, but then it will load a day later. I’ve tried doing away with the wireless network altogether, and simply connecting the computer directly to the cable modem. No change in behavior.
The iTunes Store won’t load on my Mac Pro, but it will load on my MacBook.
The most pound-my-head-on-my-desk part of the problem is that I have no idea who to complain to, or what to say. Do I tell Mediacom? They’ll hear ”...but the sites work in Firefox,” and claim the issue is with my computer. If I called Apple, what would I tell them? “Some sites are randomly not loading in Safari, but sometimes they do, but sometimes only on certain computers, or at certain times of day?” I feel like a support request like that would be met with a deafening silence, then a 10-step tutorial to resetting my PRAM and then re-installing OS X.
In a last-ditch desperate effort, I’ve actually signed up for DSL service. Once it’s turned on, I’ll see if my problem is resolved. If so, I can blame Mediacom and cancel the cable modem—but I’ll also be throwing away a much faster internet connection. But then, what’s a fast pipe worth if I can’t rely on it?
I guess what I really want to know is… why the hell would a web site only fail to load in certain software? This is driving me mad.
