invisibill.net

iPod Touch 2G – iPod2,1_4.2.1_8C148_Restore.ipsw
iPod Touch 3G – iPod3,1_4.2.1_8C148_Restore.ipsw
iPod Touch 4G – iPod4,1_4.2.1_8C148_Restore.ipsw
iPad 3G/WiFi – iPad1,1_4.2.1_8C148_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 3G – iPhone1,2_4.2.1_8C148_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 3GS – iPhone2,1_4.2.1_8C148a_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 4 – iPhone3,1_4.2.1_8C148_Restore.ipsw

Again, there isn’t an untethered jailbreak yet, so avoid this if you’re a jailbreaker and like to actually use your phone without carrying your laptop around with it. As always, avoid this for now if you rely on the carrier unlock as well. Upgrading the iOS will also irreversibly upgrade the baseband (modem firmware), which could permanently remove your ability to unlock the phone.

iPod Touch 3G – iPod3,1_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 3G – iPhone1,2_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 3GS – iPhone2,1_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 4 – iPhone3,1_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw

Remember, there isn’t a jailbreak for 4.1 yet, though the boot ROM does have a hole in it, which means it will be quite hard for Apple to close. 4.1 also updates the baseband (modem firmware), so if you rely on a carrier unlock, you’ll want to avoid 4.1. TinyUmbrella has an option to upgrade to 4.1 without upgrading the baseband, but it only works on the iPhone 4 and there is at least one report of it not always working. The safe move is to just wait on the upgrade for now.

iPod Touch 3G – iPod3,1_4.0.2_8A400_Restore.ipsw
iPad 3G / WiFi – iPad1,1_3.2.2_7B500_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 3G – iPhone1,2_4.0.2_8A400_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 3GS – iPhone2,1_4.0.2_8A400_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 4 – iPhone3,1_4.0.2_8A400_Restore.ipsw

I highly suggest saving your SHSH blobs for 4.0.1 using TinyUmbrella before Apple stops signing 4.0.1 requests. As it currently stands, you won’t be able to restore 4.0.1 (or older) on any iPhone 4 or 3GS once Apple stops signing it. Saving your SHSH blobs allows you to cache Apple’s response which will enable you to revert to 4.0.1 in the future if you so desire. This really doesn’t have anything to do with jailbreaking, though jailbreakers may have more desire to revert to an older version than regular users. If you think you may ever need to revert to an older iOS version (e.g. to use an important app which hasn’t been updated yet), you’ll want to cache your SHSH blobs. If you do have a jailbroken phone, Cydia can automatically do this for you with its “make my life easier” option.

If you want to manually download version 4.0.1, here are the links.

iPhone 3G – iPhone1,2_4.0.1_8A306_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 3GS – iPhone2,1_4.0.1_8A306_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 4 – iPhone3,1_4.0.1_8A306_Restore.ipsw

If you want to manually download version 4.0 of the iPhone OS (now called iOS), here are the links.

iPhone 3G – iPhone1,2_4.0_8A293_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 3GS – iPhone2,1_4.0_8A293_Restore.ipsw
iPhone 4 – iPhone3,1_4.0_8A293_Restore.ipsw

UPDATE: It appears the site is offline now. The people listed below (and possibly others) still exposed their information to an unknown number of people and should take the necessary precautions. However, no new victims should be able to fall for this now.

Today I received one of those typical “Your PayPal account has been locked and you need to submit all your personal information to us to reset it” phishing emails.  Because I’m a geek, I investigated it to see what it was trying to do with my info.  I found that the submitted information was stored in a plain text file accessible to the general public.  I found that 11 people had already submitted a bunch of their personal information (name, address, phone number, mother’s maiden name, date of birth, Social Security number, and credit card number).  While submitting this to a phisher is bad enough, this phishing site is so simple that anyone with a little bit of technical knowledge can see everything that was submitted.

ATTENTION:
James Sanders
Jose Gonzalez
Susan Townsley
Lisa Siders
Lejsek Antonin
Jonathan Donald
Fred Grothe
Judy Stump
John Howard Sanden
Valerio Varela, Jr.
Robert Hastings
Janice Dawson
Marc Farley
Julie Luckasen
Horst Albert Gunter Kranz
Mellie Cran
Steven Swift
Dave Smith
Miguel Montano
Ed Longanecker
Wesley Kitten
RoyAnne Neely-Morrison
Tom Niebur
Cristina Bernar
Verlee Sanneman
Mike Roark
Jeff Richker
Holly Fuller
Thomas Mannino
Kathleen Shea
Rick Bodenschatz
Judith Foster
James Zimmerman
Genie Bost
Elizabeth Smith
Ann M Condit
Pamela Clement
Priscilla Khanoyan
Gardner Brooks
Larry Thompson
Scott Smartt
Christina Gietzen
Lance Kepler
Dr. P. Rory O’Neill
Linda Nickell
Neil Yontz

It appears you received an email that looked like this:

The attached form looked like this:

The information you submitted is now in the hands of scammers, as well as anyone savvy enough to examine the phishing email. At the very least, those credit card numbers should be cancelled immediately. Unfortunately, the rest of your info can’t simply be cancelled out like that. You should follow the advice at http://www.antiphishing.org/consumer_recs2.html for taking care of the compromised information.

http://gaming.invisibill.net/wow/torrents/WoW-3.0.9.9551-to-3.1.0.9767-enUS-Win-patch.torrent is a link to the BitTorrent metadata for today’s 3.1.0 patch (enUS). Using this .torrent will cause you to pool with all users of the official Blizzard downloader, as opposed to pooling with only the users of a separate Torrent site’s users. For example, using a .torrent on TPB will cause you to pool only with other TPB users.

With this, you can use your own existing BitTorrent client to download the patch files directly from the Blizzard swarm. All the benefits of the BitTorrent protocol without the flaws of Blizzard’s downloader. No need to open a ton of ports that might be in use for other things or other PCs, just use your regular BitTorrent client’s settings.

If your BT client asks where to save it, choose C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Patches\ to have it use your existing pre-downloaded data. If you installed WoW in another location, you should obviously use that location instead of C:\Program Files\.

Note that with BitTorrent, your download speed is limited only by the total of everyone else’s upload speed. Downloading the patch from a hundred cable modems will be much faster than fighting a million people for a regular HTTP download off a single file server. The more people you have using BitTorrent, the faster it becomes (the exact opposite of regular file servers).

If you just want a fast, secure download, click on the link at the top and start sharing your bandwidth. If you’re interested in the technical info behind this (and some general BT tips), http://gaming.invisibill.net/wow/patcher.html is a page I made in 2005 explaining the issues with the Blizzard patcher. If you don’t know what BitTorrent is and don’t have a BT client installed, either read up and install one, or find another download method. =(

Disclaimer: I created this .torrent file containing metadata related to the WoW patch files. My file does not contain any parts of the patch itself or other Blizzard files.

After a very long wait, it appears that invisibill.net has been migrated to a new Site5 server hosted at ThePlanet. The migration was not without its issues.

I received the first email Tuesday around 11 AM stating that they were starting the migration on my server. The email stated that I would get another email when they started on my own account, and that I should avoid changing things after that point until I received the third “all clear” email. I received the second email around 1 PM. I got my IP changes ready with my DNS provider, just waiting on that third email before I submitted the changes.

And I waited. And I waited. I checked the new IP Tuesday evening and it seemed to be functional, but I waited for the final email. And I waited. Before going to bed Tuesday night, I changed my DNS to point to the new IP, to avoid having new mail sent to the old server.

Wednesday morning, the main website which was working Tuesday night had stopped working. I checked the Site5 forums which stated that only by submitting a ticket to Support could you find out if your migration had actually been completed. I submitted my ticket around 11 AM. I asked if my migration would be finished soon, and explained that the site seemed to be working the night before, but was now treating PHP files as downloads and returning the default Apache page for subdomains.

I received a response a few minutes later stating that they had updated my DNS to point to the new server. After giving it some time for the change to propagate, I should let them know if I still had problems. Huh? I’m pretty sure that my PHP problems in Apache aren’t related to my DNS settings. My first message implied that I used external DNS (as people using the default Site5 DNS don’t need to make any manual changes) but didn’t explicitly state that, so I replied and let them know. I waited for an hour or so, but had other things to do.

Approximately half an hour after that (based on the system-generated email), they stated they were doing an emergency DNS overhaul and that I would be able to access my sites again after the DNS refreshed. This morning when I got the message, my site still didn’t work, trying to download the PHP file rather than displaying the HTML.

I compared my settings on the old server to the new server. Both servers had an Apache handler and MIME type of “application/x-httpd-php” specified for .php files, which is what the download was showing as. I removed the MIME type on the new server, and the downloaded PHP file started showing without a MIME type. I removed the Apache handler as well, and I started seeing an old HTML file rather than the current PHP file. I renamed the HTML file, and it properly displayed the current PHP as the default file. I then went into my .htaccess file and used the DirectoryIndex option to give the .php file priority over the .html file.

To sum all that up, it appears that my account was transferred over bit for bit, but that my existing settings didn’t match up perfectly with those on the new server. Things that were needed on the old server for proper operation actually made it not work on the new server. Site5’s support was pretty quick to respond, though I ended up fixing it myself in the end. Other than a disk failure one time, I never really had any problems with the old server. My site isn’t exactly huge, so I doubt I’ll notice much difference on the new server’s beefier hardware. In the end, it feels like a lot of work for no real gain.

Out of all of this, Site5’s communication seems to be the weak point. That’s unfortunate, as Site5 has always been pretty good about letting users know what’s going on. I have yet to receive the final email notice, or even verification from Support that the migration was completed. There was no recent notice that they were even planning to migrate my server, so this caught me off guard (away from home without my personal laptop). Their support was quick to respond, but ultimately not very helpful. I still think Site5 is great. I’ve been with a number of webhosts and so far Site5 has been the best for what I need. I just wanted to point out that there’s still room for improvement (just like everything else out there).

Near the end of last week, T-Mobile offered the Linksys WRT54G-TM router for $19.99.

I ordered two on the 13th, with plans to upgrade my and my girlfriend’s routers.

On the 17th, I received an email stating that the router I had ordered wasn’t available and that they were sending me a different router instead.

Subject: Your T-Mobile order
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:44:12 -0800
From: Orders <Orders5@T-Mobile.com>

Dear T-Mobile Customer,

Thank you for ordering the T-Mobile @Home® Linksys router. Due to high demand, this router is currently out of stock.

We will be upgrading your order and shipping you the T-Mobile @Home® HiPort™ router instead. You should receive your order on or before Tuesday, December 23. We’ll send you an e-mail once your order has shipped, so you’ll know it’s on its way.

We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,

T-Mobile Customer Care

When I got home from work a few hours later, I replied that I only wanted the specific router I ordered.

Subject: Re: Your T-Mobile order
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:28:19 -0500
From: Bill XXXXXX <invisibill@invisibill.net>
To: Orders <Orders5@T-Mobile.com>

I was looking for that specific model of router. If the router I ordered (order XXXXXXXXX) is no longer available, please cancel my order rather than sending a different router in its place.

Thanks,
Bill

On the 18th, I received a shipping confirmation email for the substitute router.

Subject: T-Mobile Shipping Confirmation
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:19:45 -0800 (CST)
From: T-MOBILE <service@T-MOBILEORDERS.COM>
Reply-To: T-MOBILE <service@T-MOBILEORDERS.COM>
To: William XXXXXX <invisibill@INVISIBILL.NET>

Dear William XXXXXX,

Your order from T-Mobile has been shipped.

Items Shipped
The following items from your order number XXXXXXXXX have been shipped.

Item

Quantity
LKS KIT RJ11 T-MOBILE @HOME HIPORT

2

If any items from your order are not listed above, please follow the link below to check the status
of your order number XXXXXXXXX for more information.

>> https://securecheckout.t-mobile.com/b2c_tmoc/tmoc/orderstatus.do

If this link doesn’t open in a new window, please copy and paste it into your browser.

The package tracking shows that it will be delivered on the 22nd. My card was charged on the 19th. Throughout the week, the order status page has shown a number of different totals for different people, including the full price of the substitute router and upgraded shipping charges. Mine showed only upgraded shipping charges and tax, with no actual product listed, making the total less than that of my original order. However, the charge on my card was for the originally stated total, and there was only one charge. Others have reported multiple charges, often with different amounts.

Here’s where it gets bad for T-Mobile.
A Business Guide to the Federal Trade Commission’s MAIL OR TELEPHONE ORDER MERCHANDISE RULE

When you learn that you cannot ship on time, you must decide whether you will ever be able to ship the order. If you decide that you cannot, you must promptly cancel the order and make a full refund.

Ok, they should’ve cancelled the order. But they’re sending me an “upgraded” router (which won’t actually do what I want it to)…

Q: If a customer orders an item which is backordered, can we substitute an item of similar or better quality without the customer’s consent?

A: For backorders, the Rule provides only two ways of responding to a properly completed order for mail or telephone order merchandise: obtain the customer’s agreement to delayed shipment or provide a full and prompt refund. Unless the customer expressly agrees to the substitution beforehand, you do not have the option of substituting merchandise that is materially different from your advertised merchandise. The term “materially different” means that the merchandise differs in some manner that is likely to affect the customer’s choice of, or conduct regarding, the merchandise. Any product feature would be deemed material if it is expressly mentioned or depicted in advertising. Differences in design, style, color, fabric, or promoted end use also would be deemed material.

Oh. Guess they can’t do that. Oops.

Some people have stated that T-Mobile reps have said that the packages will include return shipping labels, so that the substitute routers can be returned if you don’t want that one instead.

However, since the merchandise wasn’t actually ordered, it might be legally considered a gift.

Whether or not the Rule is involved, in any approval or other sale you must obtain the customer’s prior express agreement to receive the merchandise. Otherwise the merchandise may be treated as unordered merchandise. It is unlawful to:

1. Send any merchandise by any means without the express request of the recipient (unless the merchandise is clearly identified as a gift, free sample, or the like); or,
2. Try to obtain payment for or the return of the unordered merchandise.

Merchants who ship unordered merchandise with knowledge that it is unlawful to do so can be subject to civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation. Moreover, customers who receive unordered merchandise are legally entitled to treat the merchandise as a gift. Using the U.S. mails to ship unordered merchandise also violates the Postal laws.

How they treat me once I actually receive the package will determine how I handle this.

I just put up a bit of a HowTo on getting iTunes 8 installed on XP x64. As linked from the HowTo, http://yukichigai.googlepages.com/iphonex64 deserves most of the credit for the magic to make the installer work. However, I couldn’t find a direct download link for iTunes864Setup.exe and I did spend quite a bit of time on that part of it. Hopefully it will help someone else out too, even if it’s just getting the direct download link.