I know this question has been asked before in a number of threads, because of reports that MIT plans to shut down its computers for the rollover.

Sysops, would you please so kind as to provide a final answer on THIS thread?

Thanks!

:)

-- FM (vidprof@aol.com), December 27, 1999

Answers

FM,

We've asked Phil Greenspun, the "godfather" of all of these discussion forums, on several occasions. He continues to tell us (most recently this morning) that he has no plans to shut down the server that runs his software, and he is not aware of any plans by other authorities within MIT to require him to shut down.

Keep in mind that that decision could change quickly, unilaterally, and without any notice to any of us -- not only because of power outages, but also because of viruses, hackers, terrorists, or a bad hangover.

However, even if the forum is taken down for a few hours, or a day or two, I suspect that it will come up again as quickly as any other part of the MIT computing environment does...

Ed

P.S. All of this assumes, of course, that the Internet stays up, and that all of us have the wherewithal to access the Internet.

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), December 27, 1999.

Well, of course, that makes sense.

I seem to remember, however, that America Online has something to do with the Greenspun forums' technology backbone.

Elaboration would be welcome. (Should we plan on rolling dice? Educated guesses?)

Thanks!

:)

-- FM (vidprof@aol.com), December 27, 1999.

;-D

Ditto to what Ed said, FM.

Phil was a terse as usual, in this morning's communication...

Subject: Re: One Last Double-Check On Greenspun.com
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 11:34:39 -0500
From: Philip Greenspun < philg@zurich.ai.mit.edu >

[snip] ... I assume that if someone were going to shut down Xolas8 they would tell me.

###

The technical support person I phoned at Arsdigita (the place Phil told me to call if there were server problems to report), this morning said No, the servers will be up. And he mentioned that they are Y2K compliant.

Never heard of any AOL connection. They run their own stuff.

So... we "assume"... pending events beyond anyones control... that we will still be here. Sorta.

Diane

(Also working on a back-up list... in case).

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 27, 1999.

Diane,

Could you post the ping link for the "recent answers" page? I've had all kinds of problems (server busy, database error, etc.) getting in here today. The ping for the "new questions" board sometimes gets me in when I can't get in the front door. When the forum was having the "server busy" problems before, sometimes I could get in on the "recent answers" page when I couldn't get on the "new questions" page. Wondering if this might work with the ping link, too? Thanks!

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), December 27, 1999.

Well, that's good to know. I'ld much rather be here, than stuck on csy2k or yahoo!

RUOK,

You can skip the net DNS look-up for any page on this site by changing www.greenspun.com to 18.24.3.72, as in the following, for recent answers:

http://18.24.3.72/bboard/q-and-a- new-answers.tcl?topic=TimeBomb%202000%20%28Y2000%29

Happy Holidays! <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), December 27, 1999.

Thanks! And, wishing a bump in the road for you and yours

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), December 28, 1999.

NOBODY KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN!!!!

-- !!! (!!!@!!!.COM), December 28, 1999.

Re an AOL connection: back a year or a year and a half ago, I had the system stop doing the thing where it sends me all the traffic via email, because I was getting swamped. I thought I remembered the email always coming via an AOL mail server, so I just went and took a gander at the headers from a random bit o' traffic from last year, and saw this in an SMTP "From" header:

AOLserver (web04g.farm.aol.com [152.175.33.7])

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), December 28, 1999.

The AOL connection - Greenspun uses open source AOLServer software. No other connection to America On Line

-- kermit (colourmegreen@hotmail.com), December 28, 1999.

FM:
Also consider that every hop along the way (from wherever you are to greenspun.com) must have power and be functioning correctly in order for you to reach this forum.

-- Mori-Nu (silkenet@yahoo.com), December 28, 1999.