Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

In my day, never was longer.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread – Site Issues

Open Thread – Site Issues

by | 193 Comments

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Here’s an open thread for those of you who can still access the site.

The balloon-juice.com domain name registration expired yesterday, and most of us can’t get to the site because the registrar turned off DNS resolution for www.balloon-juice.com

Those of you who can still reach the site are here because your ISP hasn’t updated its DNS cache, or because your browser has cached the DNS lookup of the site. At some point the cache will expire and you won’t be able to get to the site anymore.

For those of you who know what this means, the IP address of the server is 63.247.142.103. You can put an entry in your hosts file of

63.247.142.103 www.balloon-juice.com

and you’ll be able to get to the site that way.

DougJ and I are trying to get hold of John, who’s apparently traveling, to get him to renew the registration.

Update: I just paid to update the domain, thanks to pseudonymous in nc for pointing out that could be done. I’ll bet 20 other people did, too, so this is probably paid until the next Mayan apocalypse.

Reader Interactions

193Comments

  2. 2.

    Corner Stone

    I just figured Tunch had ate the hosts file since I could ping the site but not see the front door.
    Guess this place is all mine now.
    [soft extended evil chuckle]

  5. 5.

    dan

    Yeah, he should have put a reminder on the fridge or something. Milk, eggs, make sure entire website is operational.

  9. 9.

    Corner Stone

    @mistermix: My web registrar bugs the absolute shit outta me to renew. They start about 60 days before then increase their bullying emails right up til zero day.
    Or at least I’m assuming they would since I never let it get that close. I’m too scared of what they may do if I took it to the edge. Probably horse’s head in the sack territory.

  15. 15.

    PaulW

    They should make it so that these things automatically roll over, instead of forcing you to update every year. Cause some years, obviously, you’ll forget…

  24. 24.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    I have my domains and my site at GoDaddy. They hound me about renewals and if I don’t respond someone actually calls me on the phone about it.

  25. 25.

    askew

    @SatanicPanic:

    That’s a relief, I thought my computer had another one of those rootkit viruses.

    Any suggestions on how to get rid of a rootkit virus. I’ve got one hell of one right now that I’ve been trying without success to get rid of.

  26. 26.

    Corner Stone

    Talk about OMG. The Vice Chairman for the website reputation.com, an online brand management company, is named – Howard Bragman.
    That’s like when Obama had a fund raiser at that guy’s house I think was named Rich Richman.

  27. 27.

    kindness

    I wondered. I tried logging in very early this am & it came up ‘not found’. But then I tried from work & it’s fine.

    Soooo….you mean I can plunk down $45 and steal the BJ website now? What should I turn it into, a reichtwingnutz site or a porn site? Hmmm, I figure both.

  29. 29.

    elm

    @askew: For an actual rootkit? Nuke the site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure. Back up your data, reformat, and reinstall the O/S and all your software.

  30. 30.

    different-church-lady

    How the hell long you guys been doing this?

    (Yeah, like you need any grief from me at this point…)

  31. 31.

    different-church-lady

    @kindness:

    Soooo….you mean I can plunk down $45 and steal the BJ website now?

    Thankfully it’s not that simple — there’s a kind of buffer period and if you catch things soon enough you get to have it back.

    But I had a friend who didn’t catch it soon enough, and some squatter scooped it up. Two years later it’s still being squatted on, and she just changed her original domain from .com to .net and moved on with her life.

  33. 33.

    eemom

    hmm….misanthropic curmudgeon blog owner town, “forgets” to take simple ministerial action required to prevent massive freak out among hundreds of people upon whom he frequently heaps derision….nah, nothing to see here.

  34. 34.

    Todd

    Does this mean that I have to do anything to my ipad or android? I notice you’re shut down there, but not here on my desktop.

  35. 35.

    mistermix

    @kindness: You get some days of grace from a registrar – surprisingly many, actually.

    I looked it up – John’s registrar gives you 40 days.

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    And here I thought it was our router acting up again. I guess I’ll have to do actual work at my job today.

  39. 39.

    cleek

    @different-church-lady:
    many years ago, some asshat in Turkey sent a fax to Network Solutions and got them to give him my biz’s domain. then he started demanding money from me to get it back.

    the FBI said “have you lost more than $5000 in business yet?” i said i didn’t know. they said to call back when i had because they weren’t going to help otherwise.

  40. 40.

    mistermix

    @Todd: Your desktop either uses a different DNS, or the browser or operating system caches the DNS entry. iPad and Android are memory-limited devices so they aren’t going to cache as much.

  41. 41.

    Tokyokie

    It’s been hit and miss with me, but I figured it was the fault of my ISP, which goes out for a few seconds every 15 minutes (and is annoying as hell).

  43. 43.

    Dan

    @askew: rootkits are the hardest to get rid of. You really need to process it externally to be sure it is gone. If you have another machine, you can take the infected hard drive out of the machine and put it in another as a second drive and work on it. Or, you can try Kaspersky’s rescue disk. See here: http://support.kaspersky.com/8093. You can also check out Kaspersky’s TDSSKiller: http://support.kaspersky.com/5350

    I have not tried either of those methods but have heard that they can work.

    I have removed one rootkit (VX2) by using the Windows DVD rescue disk, but I am well-versed in how Windows works (former ‘softie) and was prepared to reimage the disk in any case.

    The surest and safest way is to save your data and such and then wipe the disk during a complete reinstall of the OS, then restore your apps and data after you get it fully updated and protected.

    Finally, get rid of Java. Period. I have had to clean my brother’s computer several times in the past few months simply from drive-by Java exploits.

    Dan

    PS: If you are in the Seattle area, I would be willing to help you out in person. I only charge a nice bottle of red wine. Or highland single-malt Scotch. :)

  45. 45.

    Citizen_X

    DougJ and I are trying to get hold of John, who’s apparently traveling, to get him to renew the registration.

    After all we’ve paid the guy? I want my money back!

  46. 46.

    AnonPhenom

    Sooooo…
    If I went out right now and registered ‘balloon-juice.com’ then all your base would belong to us?

    Hostage!

  48. 48.

    Dan

    It looks to me that TUCOWS has updated the registration:

    Domain Name: BALLOON-JUICE.COM
    Registrar: TUCOWS DOMAINS INC.
    Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
    Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net
    Name Server: NS.HMDNSGROUP.COM
    Name Server: NS2.HMDNSGROUP.COM
    Status: clientHold
    Status: clientTransferProhibited
    Status: clientUpdateProhibited
    Updated Date: 18-jan-2013
    Creation Date: 17-jan-2003
    Expiration Date: 17-jan-2014

    >>> Last update of whois database: Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:10:39 UTC <<<

    balloon-juice.com is still in my DNS (not cached) so perhaps all is right and true again.

  49. 49.

    handsmile

    @eemom:

    Answers re arrival and Inaugural weekend activities (black tie? white tie?) awaiting you at the unspooled end of last night’s “Open Thread.”

    But unless John Cole can be swiftly tracked down at his undisclosed location, your proposed gathering of the tribe may be moot, “All communication links broken, Captain!”

    I am planning to be on the Mall Monday morning, however. Maybe I”ll see you there. I’ll be the one wearing the Obama buttons.

  50. 50.

    Corner Stone

    It’s a little late now because the delightful Thomas Roberts is on MSNBC but Chris Jansing had on some shiny/transparent top during her segment and the lighting made it look like her boobs were glowing.

  53. 53.

    AnonPhenom

    @mistermix:
    Just go get it and have John cover your expenses later. I have no Idea what the cost is, but if it is more than you can swing alone then put up a paypal button & we few, we happy few can kick in a few shekels each.

  54. 54.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    My registrar has an auto-renew option. I get email reminders once a week for the month before the renewal date.

  59. 59.

    Amir Khalid

    By the way, I just checked my ISP account; a third of my monthly download quota remains, with only two days left in the billing period. You’d think that was plenty; but no, I’m now “running low”, and should “top up” because it would be a shame if P1 Wireless had to choke my bandwidth.

  62. 62.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @cleek:

    I regularly visit a site that lists domains that have become available. If any of them have a catchy name I register them. A few years back I saw that undergroundmusic.com was available. A good friend of mine had run a music site there for years so, figuring that he’d forgotten to renew, I gave him a call. He had tired of running the site and given it up. I registered the domain because I liked the name and then I forgot about it.

    A year later my registrar sent me an email stating that someone had approached them about buying the domain name and was I interested in selling? Sure was. We got in touch and I sold the domain to them for five grand.

  66. 66.

    askew

    @Dan:

    Thanks for the offer and the advice. I am too far away in Minnesota though.

    I think I may just have to abandon this computer. I got it when Vista first rolled out and it has all sorts of other issues anyways.

    I did uninstall Java though and I’ll try the McAfee Rootkit killer app that was recommended above to see if that works for now.

    I haven’t had a virus in 3 years or so. I forgot how much they suck.

  68. 68.

    Corner Stone

    @Joshua Norton: He’s been running a ten year con and he finally hit his FU Money target?
    All those “ActBlue” fundraisers and blegs to help an “animal charity” were nothing more than fronts for his nefarious intent.
    The bastard.

  71. 71.

    Dan

    @askew: I don’t care for MacAfee or Norton, but if it works, great!

    You can send me your hard drive after you back up and remove your personal info and I’ll clean it for you and send it back. I have the equipment to do it externally as long as it is a modern SATA hard drive. That’s only half in jest. I like the challenge. :)

    Also, try GMER from http://www.gmer.net/. It looks promising if TDSSKiller and Kaspersky don’t work.

  73. 73.

    Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn

    I, for one, can’t wait till Cole’s back to cuss us all out over this.

  74. 74.

    Jebediah

    @Liberty60:

    Now excuse me while I seek out Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter to hear the lamentations of their women.

    Please report back – I have a delicate constitution and can’t take that nastiness first-hand.

  75. 75.

    JPL

    @Dan: Thanks for the info..
    TUcows…really what kind of domain name is that. I sure hope Tunch attacked him and said speak for yourself bub…

  79. 79.

    cathyx

    Doesn’t anyone have John’s phone number? I bet ABL does. Sheesh.

    ETA: Never mind, I read they are in contact.

  81. 81.

    Tone In DC

    @Imani Gandy (ABL):

    ROFLMAO.

    I need some caffeine right now, too. And I’m on the east coast. Just sayin’.

    Maybe the resident trolls are confused and have gone to thenation.com or the GOS.

  84. 84.

    Villago Delenda Est

    What this means is John Cole is as smart as Microsoft.

    Just let that sink in for a few minutes.

  86. 86.

    askew

    @Dan:

    I’ve tried TDSSKiller and Kaspersky and neither found anything. I used AVAST Antiroot key and it found a virus in AppData\Local\Temp\DNS.exe but couldn’t fix it.

    I think if McAfee can’t find it I am just going to get a new computer. I really need one anyways. Thanks for the offer though.

  87. 87.

    Elizabelle

    @handsmile:

    I’d be up for a DC area meetup. Have been thinking about heading down to the Mall, although back burner idea is doing a brunch with some neighbors.

    Keep us posted.

    The Dubliner would be a lot of fun, albeit packed. (It’s near Union Station and the old Post Office Building.)

  88. 88.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Corner Stone: I think Ranaiah Tuiasosopo has been putting us on. “Hey, funny favor to ask, can I borrow your fat cat and hyper dog? I need to take a picture for this friend of mine who’s into that sort of thing.”

  90. 90.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Liberty60:

    The best part is trolling the rightwing freakout at having the Military turning against them, and accusing them of being Terrists.

    Well, it’s what these maggots are.

    Hunt them down and take no prisoners.

  94. 94.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @mistermix: No problem. I heard about Hover being able to do no-login renewals on one of the 5by5 podcasts, and whois showed that they were the registrar of record, so it all lined up nicely.

    It’s a really good feature: domain registration bites people on the arse so often, because it’s infrequent and separate from hosting costs. I ought to move my domains over there at some point.

  95. 95.

    Poopyman

    Hey! It’s back! After I dropped a couple of comments up top the thing rebooted and I couldn’t get back on until just now.

    Guess somebody paid their internets bill.

  96. 96.

    AnnaN

    Travelling? I had a mental flash of John, wearing an ascot, in a convertible, Lily and Rosie front seat soaking up the scents and Tunch in a cat carrier on the rear seat floor, spitting up a storm. Ah. Good times.

  97. 97.

    jibeaux

    @Litlebritdifrnt: I saw that, happily, in the paper this morning. Good on him! What the hell kind of deterrent is it supposed to be against hospitals screwing over Medicare to say, “well, if you should happen to get caught, you will have to pay a small percentage of the money you bilked them out of and nothing else”? Sheesh.

  98. 98.

    replicnt6

    @mistermix:

    I just added 4 years. I couldn’t stand the thought of this happening again in a year.

    (My sister recently advised me that if you’re annoyed at someone else’s lameness, just take matters in your own hands if you can. I do everything my big sister tells me to do.)

  100. 100.

    Corner Stone

    @FlipYrWhig: Reminds me of a saying my great grandfather used to always caution me about when I was a child, “Never trust a Mormon Samoan American who goes to a Catholic school if there’s a chance he may be gay and you’ve never met his girlfriend.”

  102. 102.

    jibeaux

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Also, I think but am not sure, that Judge Boyle was the one who, a number of years back, telegraphed some serious skepticism about the OLF project. He brought a map of North Carolina into court and pointed out where on it there were little airplanes and had the Navy fully considered expanding in a place where there were already little airplanes on the map? Good stuff. I think that’s when the fizzling out of the OLF really picked up steam.

  103. 103.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Raven:

    One of the commenters at the site wins the Internets for the day:

    Also: if all the parishioners had guns none of this would have happened.

  105. 105.

    Corner Stone

    I think we’re all kinda missing the bigger picture here:
    Creation Date: 17-jan-2003

    Does that mean that yesterday was the official 10 year anniversary for B-J?

  109. 109.

    SatanicPanic

    @askew:

    Any suggestions on how to get rid of a rootkit virus.

    I wish. I tried all the virus removal kits that other people mentioned. None worked. Finally just stopped using Internet Explorer and switched to Mozilla. It’s probably still on my computer but it hasn’t touched my bank account, so oh well. I’m getting a MAC next time.

  111. 111.

    Tonal Crow

    @cleek:

    i fully expect this URL to turn into a Russian porn site before the week’s out.

    This isn’t a Russian porn site?

  112. 112.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @SatanicPanic:

    IE is, frankly, a piece of shit. I had the same problem a few years back, and after a full system reinstall I switched to Chrome and never looked back.

  117. 117.

    Mike E

    @Litlebritdifrnt: “The deferred-prosecution agreement being proposed, Boyle said, was used “99.9 percent of the time” in that federal court district for teenagers caught with marijuana at national seashore parks such as Cape Hatteras.”

    Boyle was a Republican nominee, and totally kicks ass.

  120. 120.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @mistermix

    I just paid to update the domain, thanks to pseudonymous in nc for pointing out that could be done.

    Thank you!

  121. 121.

    Tonal Crow

    @Dan:

    The surest and safest way is to save your data and such and then wipe the disk during a complete reinstall of the OS, then restore your apps and data after you get it fully updated and protected.

    True, but it’s not a guaranteed fix. Some malware inserts itself into your data files. When you open those files while running as administrator, it’ll take advantage of flaws in the opening program(s) and infect your system again.

    The best cure is prevention. And top ‘o the list on prevention is:

    1. Don’t install anything that’s not digitally signed. That includes browser extensions and the like.

    2. Run all net-facing software (e.g., browsers) in limited user accounts, not in administrator accounts.

    3. Use a good virus scanner and keep it updated.

    4. Don’t install anything that’s not digitally signed. That includes browser extensions and the like.

  123. 123.

    DH

    My worry was that maybe we had been Catfished. ;)

    However, when I thought about it, I realized the amount of computational calculation power necessary to show a fake Tunch in all his Tunchness remains beyond the power of the Earth’s computers.

  128. 128.

    The Dangerman

    Well, looks like my old XP box, long since donated to the Parental Units, is finally giving up the ghost; not sure where the problem is. It reboots, almost like a power failure, but the power supply is fairly new and the memory checks out fine and I thought motherboard failures were far more ugly/permanent. Anyway, someone (me) is now out shopping for a new box. Not at all thrilled about buying Win8 (for either me or my Folks; I’m still running happily on a newer XP box).

    So, Box Builders of BJ, any recommendations on a low end box I can build for the PU’s (perhaps I can do some scavenging from the old box)? I still have the XP install disk, which I assume I can use again since the box it is on is rolling over and dying (not sure how that works with MSFT). That way I keep mine (perfectly happy) and they don’t get Win8 (which makes me even happier).

    Shit, it’s Friday, and I need some serious Joe to think this one over; looks like I have my weekend project.

    ETA: Slovak women = yum

  129. 129.

    ADS

    Glad you’re back. When I tried to access on Chrome, I was offered a Google cache of each page, and it was actually up to date and a half-decent way to read the site in that dark hour.

  130. 130.

    askew

    @SatanicPanic:

    I wish. I tried all the virus removal kits that other people mentioned. None worked. Finally just stopped using Internet Explorer and switched to Mozilla. It’s probably still on my computer but it hasn’t touched my bank account, so oh well. I’m getting a MAC next time.

    I never use IE and got infected using Firefox. I got the initial virus from visiting a site called Awards Daily. I had been using AVG as anti-virus software and it didn’t catch the infection in time.

    My concern now is if I wipe the whole computer and install OS again or if I buy a new computer, do I have to worry about my router being infected?

    Luckily, I backed up my personal files on an external hard drive before I got infected so I don’t have to worry about being reinfected with data files.

  133. 133.

    Corner Stone

    @different-church-lady: Great Granpappy only had a couple hard and fast rules in life. But when he settled on one he made sure it counted.
    And to this day his wise words of wisdom have repeatedly saved our family from entanglements with possibly gay religiously confused football playing Samoans involved in long distance relationships.

  134. 134.

    Steeplejack

    @The Dangerman:

    Cole had a recent thread about doing his own system upgrade, and the comments were invaluable.

    As long as you’re building a new box, you might consider upgrading to Windows 7. You can probably get it for cheap now.

  135. 135.

    srv

    Malwarebytes has a beta anti-Rootkit.

    http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/mbar/

    Most people probably really don’t need something that extreme. Worst I’ve had is malware that took over the screen and would take up most of the cpu, with a popup to “download” their “product.” Turns out there is a trick to take the malwarebytes exec (I think mbam.exe?) and rename it iexplorer.exe. Tricks windows into running it at a high priority because explorer is set up that way.

    Covered in here I think:
    http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/how-to-use-malwarebytes-anti-malware-tutorial

  136. 136.

    The Dangerman

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate:

    If it’s a not-too-old Intel then you can probably get a new mainboard for cheap at Newegg.

    It’s AMD; I forget what’s on board in detail. I’ll have to get Belarc on it and check. Also, the soon to be dearly departed is a Compaq box and hell if I know at this caffeination level (Defcon 1 approaching rapidly) if the screws would line up (course, I could get a generic box, I guess).

    West coaster here; I know it’s almost 10a local, but feels like I got into the decaf this morning. I may have to toss it to prevent such tragedies in the future.

  139. 139.

    handsmile

    @Elizabelle:

    By the bowels of Christ, “The Dubliner” is where Joe Scarborough is moving his frat party for the Inaugural weekend!

    Unless you’re thinking about re-enacting scenes from the Easter Rebellion, please let us keep our distance from there!

    (I trust you’ve now seen eemom’s #124 above.)

  140. 140.

    AA+ Bonds

    @The Dangerman:

    It reboots, almost like a power failure, but the power supply is fairly new and the memory checks out fine and I thought motherboard failures were far more ugly/permanent.

    I know you’re committed to buying something else, but have you checked your power switch/button?

    I.e., disconnected it from the motherboard and completed the circuit in some other way?

    I just mention because something similar happened to me and I was able to move said PC from a brick to a media server for home . . .

  142. 142.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @The Dangerman:

    Compaq may be a bit of a problem. They used to have a proprietary layout for the mainboard screws. I believe that they gave that up after the HP buyout. The good news is that AMD is slow to change its socket layouts so you may be in luck with the MB.

    ETA: And they’ve never given up using only two channels in the RAM.

  143. 143.

    AA+ Bonds

    @LurkyLoo2:

    For all of the techies, how do you know you have a rootkit?

    My first step for someone not tech-inclined would be GMER. Then take the results to someone more tech-inclined to make sure you don’t have a false positive.

  145. 145.

    Hill Dweller

    It looks like the wingnuts are going to pass a temporary 3 month extension of the debt ceiling, and use another extension as a bargaining chip in the budget fight.

  146. 146.

    The Dangerman

    @AA+ Bonds:

    I know you’re committed…

    Not committed yet, but, perhaps I should be (padded walls some rather comfy right now).

    Good tip on the power switch, but, another issue is the thing is slower than Tunch on a really cold winters morning. That’s why I looked at memory, but even that is fairly new (well, I forget if all the sticks are new; did I add or replace and I can’t recall right now).

    ETA: Tunch post breakfast, I mean; I bet that bugger is fast to the morning kibble.

  147. 147.

    GregB

    Breaking news! John Avlon reports that the GOP is far more diverse than the Democrats if you exclude the vast bulk of the country and their party affiliation, the President, his cabinet, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, the only African-American Governor, and also if you dismiss Senator Menendez from being Hispanic because he possibly has ethics issues and also exclude considering women, gay and Jewish Americans when tallying diversity.

    Political Wire.

  149. 149.

    AA+ Bonds

    @The Dangerman:

    Good tip on the power switch, but, another issue is the thing is slower than Tunch on a really cold winters morning.

    Hmmm. Now we’re really far beyond my power to diagnose at a distance. Have you run anything to monitor temperatures? Core Temp or anything like that? That’s probably a long shot but worth trying.

  150. 150.

    YellowJournalism

    @Corner Stone: Reminds me of this:

    Cop: Sir, were you born Nathan Huffhines?

    Arizona: Yeah, I changed my name. What of it?

    Cop: Can you tell us why?

    Arizona: Yeah. Would you buy furniture at “Unpainted Huffhines?”

  153. 153.

    Corner Stone

    At this rate, how long until we find out that the #ChuckStrongs was all a fake too?
    Pretty soon you’re going to try telling me Capt Sully really didn’t glide that fucker down safely into the Hudson.

  156. 156.

    catclub

    @askew: In the day, the response was a link to redhat. Now I guess it is ubuntu.

    I remember slackware, and sls floppies

  157. 157.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Corner Stone: A friend of mine let her business website expire, and someone else bought it. Luckily, they were able to get it back. It could have been a lot worse.

  159. 159.

    Corner Stone

    @AA+ Bonds:

    Have you run anything to monitor temperatures? Core Temp or anything like that? That’s probably a long shot but worth trying.

    Some things are just old. Some times it’s just their time.
    I mean, it’s a freakin’ CPQ box for goodness sake.

  162. 162.

    Corner Stone

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent): I’m reminded of the time my friend Carly lost her website. First to a rabid fan and then that fan was tricked into signing it over to a ruthless archenemy of my friends Carly and Sam.
    That little bastard played hardball and sought to extract a terrible price to return the registration.
    It was an awful time.

  163. 163.

    notgonnahappen

    Has Wrong Way Cole Praised Fat Bastard Christie yet for getting his backwoods swamp blog back online? Or defended Lance Armstrong against the haters trying to blame him for the site going offline. Or swooned over Glenn Greenwald over his helpful advice on how not to forget to renew your fucking domain!

    I guess Cole was just too busy finding something else to be wrong about to check his renewal date on his domain.

  166. 166.

    Ruckus

    @The Dangerman:
    You probably don’t want to hear this. (buy apple)

    I have an old xp box(7-8yrs) and trying to keep it up is not worth the aggravation. I have, over the years, reformatted a couple of times, replaced parts, replaced anti virus software and on and on. I just don’t have the desire to keep doing this any longer. Bit the apple(which by the way is not a completely safe environment either, there are rootkits for mac and unix) but it is better.

  167. 167.

    Southern Beale

    Woopsies.

    House GOP idea to pass a 3-month increase in the debt limit will include a provision cutting off congressional pay unless both houses pass a budget. Sadly, that idea is unconstitutional:

    Before Cantor gets too excited about this plan, however, he may want to familiarize himself with the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the Constitution:

    No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

    Oh, owie. And the Republicans are always the ones screeching about the Constitution and Obama being unconstitutional in everything he does? LOL.

  169. 169.

    Liberty60

    OK, indulge my enjoyment of the rightwing freakout over being labeled as Terrists, but this is classice from NRO’s Corner:

    The staffer then asked: “The $64,000 dollar question is when will the Combating Terrorism Center publish their study on real left-wing terrorists like the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front, and the Weather Underground?”

    The Weather Fucking Underground?

  170. 170.

    Eric U.

    @The Dangerman: you probably have some bad capacitors on that motherboard. Unfortunately, it seems that low price trumps longevity for system builders. I have saved a number of motherboards by replacing caps.

    I would get parents an Atom ITX system or one of the AMD E350 or E450 machine. Low power and probably just as fast as whatever it is replacing. Some of the Atom boards have a weird graphics chip that doesn’t support XP.

  174. 174.

    AA+ Bonds

    @Liberty60:

    The Weather Fucking Underground?

    There is an entire bloc of the right in the United States dedicated to teasing out a supposed decades-long conspiracy by which the Weather Underground infiltrated and then dominated every slightly-left-wing movement since, up to and including the Obama campaign. The evidence for this is usually that so-and-so who used to be part of the WU visited the ’90s protests in Seattle, etc.

  175. 175.

    AA+ Bonds

    @Corner Stone:

    Some things are just old. Some times it’s just their time.

    I’m a consummate cannibal. Like I said before, I slid a pin into the fried power button of an old PC to get a dedicated media center.

  176. 176.

    liberal

    @Eric U.:
    As long as you’re dispensing free advice…I’m looking for a low-power small desktop box to use as a low-throughput Linux server. It mainly runs sshd, apache2, and postgresql. No really big files or tables or anything. Right now the stuff is running on Centos 5.6 on a Dell Precision 490 in my office (I save the taxpayer money by only using surplussed computers, and the surplus guys gave me that, seems pretty reliable but it also reliably dumps a lot of heat into my office).

  177. 177.

    liberal

    @AA+ Bonds:
    A much more interesting(*) conspiracy I saw, coming from Teh Left, was that Obama (and maybe his mother or grandparents or something) was a CIA guy from early adulthood. Or something.

    —-

    (*) No, not that I give it any credence, but WU? Passe’.

  178. 178.

    RobertB

    Not as painful as letting your domain name expire, but letting your certificate expire will cause you a bit of grief as well.

  179. 179.

    Maude

    @The Dangerman:
    I got an XP refurbished laptop at Amazon. It worked like a charm and looks new. Came in two days regular shipping and it didn’t cost a lot. The old XP desktop still runs. I wanted a newer machine.

  180. 180.

    Ash Can

    LOL. When I couldn’t access the site this morning, the first thing I thought was, “Hey Cole, pay yer light bill, har har.” Little did I know that it actually was something along those lines. Damn, would I love to have been a fly on the wall when Cole got the call that the site was gefuxx0red. That would be one for the books, I’m sure.

  181. 181.

    Another Halocene Human

    @GregB: The spinning by GOP loyalists in the comments is up to a fine hum.

    As they move the goalposts they attempt to say that Black Dems are only voted in with majority-minority Dem primaries. I wish I had a login there. (So much stupid, so little time.)

    Newton, Mass (Mayor Setti Warren) may be a lot of things, but it is MAJORITY WHITE. Oh, and so are the Dem primary voters in Mass who voted for DEVAL PATRICK.

    But Mass voters put the first African-American in the Senate after reconstruction in the 1960s and were one of the ONLY states to have a majority of old white men vote for Obama in 2012. The Mass presidential exit poll demographics are the Dixie-GOP’s nightmare.

    The stupid poster probably thinks the politics of a deep-red Southern city like Jacksonville, which just elected an African-American, D (suck it!) mayor are the politics everywhere, when they’re not. Looking nationally, they’re the frigging exception. Even Tejas has liberal city governments. Lame.

  182. 182.

    Another Halocene Human

    @AA+ Bonds: Wow, that’s special.

    If the Obamas were in the CIA, did they meet George “New World Order” Bush?

    Because he really was a spook.

    Unless that was a false flag operation and the Kenyan Usurper, Sr. was the real head of Washington’s Most Ridiculous Money Pit.

  187. 187.

    Origuy

    @The Dangerman: As far as installing Windows XP on a new system, it depends. This page says that if you have an OEM version, you cannot activate it on another system. If you have a retail version, which I thing means you have the CD key string, you can move it.

  188. 188.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Corner Stone: Sorry, I missed that comment. I wonder if Carly’s arch enemy will finally get his own show. And what about Freddie?

  190. 190.

    Liberty60

    @AA+ Bonds:

    I’ve always thought it was more that the current conservative movement is headed up by aging Boomers who were on the wrong end of the 60’s culture wars, and are still fighting The Other Lost Cause, the one to relitigate the Vietnam War, civil rights, the sexual revolution, feminism, and Stonewall.

    I bet more than a few still have their Abbie Hoffman dartboard, and dogeared copy of None Dare Call It Treason.

  192. 192.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @liberal: about 20-30W max in regular use for both of the little boxes I linked to. (Example.) You’re sacrificing a bit in terms of oomph, but today’s nettops are pretty decent for low-intensity LAMP stuff. (He said, SSHing into a Raspberry Pi.)

    You could just go with a microITX format like a Shuttle barebones, but the microITX cubes seem to come with 250W PSUs minimum. This one’s new, though: 60W PSU, LGA1155. Stick in a i3-3220T and max out the RAM, and you’re probably matching that 490.

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