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Sunday, July 31, 2005
The plot thickens: how close was Boost New Media to the Bloody Idiot website?
[Background information]
One of the Directors of Boost New Media, Tom Hovey, had this to say about the links between the now withdrawn Bloody Idiot website and his own company:
Here are two new pieces of evidence. I'll leave it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions. Note there are possibly only five employees at Boost New Media.
New evidence for your consideration
1. bloodyidiot.co.nz resolves to the same IP address as boost.co.nz: 207.44.196.59 (more to come on this).
2. The HTML of both the Bloody Idiot and Boost websites include the #bbinclude code, which is an instruction used by BBEdit to include external files within a page of HTML. BBEdit is an advanced text editor commonly used by Apple Macintosh users, but also available to people running Windows.
I should emphasize: the use of "#bbinclude" is not standard at all for website design. I regard this as a marginal fingerprint linking the authors of Boost.co.nz to Bloodyidiot.co.nz, as few New Zealand HTML writers could reasonably be expected to use a similar technique. However it is not definitive evidence.
Below are some screenshots illustrating use of the #bbinclude code on the two websites.
UPDATE: Gman says he has the site saved, but does he mean just an archive of the front page?
UPDATE2: Make sure you read Bernard Woolley's comment.
UPDATE3: The Wussell attacks! He's like a wet cake!
One of the Directors of Boost New Media, Tom Hovey, had this to say about the links between the now withdrawn Bloody Idiot website and his own company:
However, I didn't build the 'Bloody Idiot' site. But I do know the group of people behind the site and have asked them to take it down in light of the recent negative publicity from sites such as yours. They're very disappointed and have protested strongly!We already know Hovey registered the domain name, as reported by Aaron Bhatnagar. But is there any other technical evidence suggesting close links between Hovey and the Bloody Idiot website?
Here are two new pieces of evidence. I'll leave it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions. Note there are possibly only five employees at Boost New Media.
New evidence for your consideration
1. bloodyidiot.co.nz resolves to the same IP address as boost.co.nz: 207.44.196.59 (more to come on this).
2. The HTML of both the Bloody Idiot and Boost websites include the #bbinclude code, which is an instruction used by BBEdit to include external files within a page of HTML. BBEdit is an advanced text editor commonly used by Apple Macintosh users, but also available to people running Windows.
I should emphasize: the use of "#bbinclude" is not standard at all for website design. I regard this as a marginal fingerprint linking the authors of Boost.co.nz to Bloodyidiot.co.nz, as few New Zealand HTML writers could reasonably be expected to use a similar technique. However it is not definitive evidence.
Below are some screenshots illustrating use of the #bbinclude code on the two websites.
This is the HTML from the boost.co.nz homepage. Note #bbinclude highlighted in green.
This is the HTML from the Bloody Idiot page. Note #bbinclude highlighted in green.
UPDATE: Gman says he has the site saved, but does he mean just an archive of the front page?
UPDATE2: Make sure you read Bernard Woolley's comment.
UPDATE3: The Wussell attacks! He's like a wet cake!
11 Comments:
1. This just means that they were hosting it on the same server as boost.co.nz. Decent linux servers can host hundreds of websites on the one box. That still fits with his statement - we were just hosting.
2. This is a technique I've commonly used for including menus on multiple page. Store the menu in an inlcude file (in php this is usually *.inc) and include the contents into the page when it is served. I don't think the BBEdit connection is enough sorry.
The two documents use different types of encoding...
DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
vs
DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
bloodyidiot appears to be using BBEdit 7.1.4, and whilst it uses css like the Boost page, it also makes use of inline style css which suggests its more of a quick hack.
So, from what I've seen, I'd say its hard to dent that Boost hosted the website, but the links to them having active involvement in it are tenuous and deniable. Which is probably how they wanted it.
Next time let me know and I'll snaffle all the code of a site before its taken down :)
dent == deny
Yes, I regret not downloading the source.
Google cache of bloodyidiot.co.nz home page
Next time, let the site live for a few days, but as quickly as possible, submit it to this site, and it will be spidered with 24-48 hours, although it may not show up in the internet archive for 6-12 months it will turn up eventually :)
Hey, here's something fun we could try. We could do some political google bombing. Make links in our blogs - for example every time we mention smarmy, it is linked to Maharey - if enough of us do it, guess what a google for smarmy will come with...
LOL - the smarmy link, now that appeals to my sense of humour.
something like the following would do the trick
wget -nc -r -N -E -k http://www.sitetosnaffle.co.nz/
Gonna try and find out about other websites served from the same server.
We don't even know if its sitting on some server farm, or a box in Boosts own office.
Brilliant I think I will go back and edit all of my posts.
But I think we also need to do
Speedster=Mrs Peter Davis
Forger=Mrs Peter Davis
Fraudster=Mrs Peter Davis
Liar=Mallard, oh hell how do link to all of them
In my defense, my Linux box is currently a pile of components sitting beside me. And we know how powerful WinXP is for such things - not. No OSX machines plugged in either.
"But I do know the group of people behind the site and have asked them to take it down in light of the recent negative publicity from sites such as yours."
Translation: Bugger you found us.
If there isn't a problem with the content no amount of "negative publicity" would cause it to be pulled.
Unless we bloogers have suddenly aquired a lot more power than I was aware of.
Interesting thought.
If they Boost have done work for LTSA they would have a copy of the Standards Document...
All fonts and applications etc. But better still no room for pleading ignorance.
"Watch the needle creep up to the red....250 psi, 350....450..."
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