I may have inadvertantly launched a robot on this website. I downloaded a offline browser called ECATCH from ZDNET.COM and then tried to download several sites (Timebomb 2000 being one of them) The program locked up, so I rebooted and tried again. (it locked up again) so I quit. I am quite sure that all the program does is copy files...it doesn't change passwords or anything. Anyway, I don't know if the ECATCH program did it or not but it makes sense. (I ran this program before 5 PM yesterday) I am in the midwest (Indiana)

-- Mikel Johnson (mej023@earthlink.net), December 29, 1999

Answers

Mikel,

Thanks for letting us know. It appears that there were four or five such robots running concurrently last night, which caused the server to be overloaded.

Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), December 29, 1999.

I tried to access and read this site after midnight last night and was surprised to see it down. I did not make the correlation till this afternoon. I was actually peeved at the hackers that crashed the site (and if it wasn't my doing, then I still am peeved) I am an accomplished programmer and I consider computers the greatest toy every invented and I cannot conceive how anyone would want to deliberately damage any computer. Anyway, I apologize if I was in any way responsible. I deleted the ECATCH program after it locked my machine the second time.

-- Mikel Johnson (mej023@earthlink.net), December 29, 1999.

Looks like TB2K may have gotten killed with kindness.

An interesting scenario: too many very well-intentioned people trying to do something good and inadvertantly causing a problem. We should add this to the list of ways in which things may get hosed in the next few days.

-- Mac (snaek@lurk.hid), December 29, 1999.

Message to Ed.......

Okay.....you had a problem.

The big problem and mystery to me is why in the last 15 hours could you not put a link to where this new site is where that idiotic message about wanting a new Server sits now.......

YOu could put an actual link or better yet, a redirect........

The way it sits now, *deliberately* or not, you have excluded most of the participants of this forum because they do no know where to find the new location.....

What is the reason for this??

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), December 29, 1999.

Craig -

Why so cranky?

That "idiotic message" is from the gracious host of this absolutely commercial-free site, Philip Greenspun, and succinctly and rather lightheartedly explains why TB2K was taken down.

The current absence of a link to a new Forum seems to provide an useful exercise in deductive reasoning, as well as a small reminder that "things can go wrong and you just have to cope."

-- Mac (snaek@lurk.hid), December 29, 1999.

Craig has been a very bad boy again today. (*Wavin' at Craig*)

BTW, Craig, WWJD?

-- (TrollPatrol@sheesh.now), December 29, 1999.

I've already been in several rounds of communication with Phil.

Phil chooses not to post a link at this time, because he feels the same thing will happen again. A group of people almost trashed his server. He is protecting it and other forums that operate on Greenspun. He wants a Pentium to handle "our" archives, because that server is full, on a "free" service, and we take up about "900% of the space..." his words.

Shift Happens.

Be grateful we have this Back-up Forum, for now.

Got ideas on manifesting that Pentium for him anyone?

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 29, 1999.

Craig..."most of the participants in this forum" have not been excluded. They are intelligent enough to "work around". How ironic...just goes to show you how adaptable people are in an emergency. I wish this holds true for the whole world in the days ahead. The severity of problems might be lessened if people would work as quickly as the forum members did to get an alternative site going, and communicating that info to all interested parties.

-- TM (mercier7@pdnt.com), December 29, 1999.

Diane,

Can anyone say "Pass the hat"? I'm game.

-- TM (mercier7@pdnt.com), December 29, 1999.

I'll chip in $20.00.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), December 29, 1999.

Hey, bardou, maybe Infomagic could chip in a few wooden nickels! 8^)

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), December 29, 1999.

From b>penguincomputing:

The Penguin 4400 packs up to 4 Intel Xeon processors into a low 4U (7") enclosure, providing high-performance computing in package managable enough to easily integrate into any existing server configuration.

The 4400 is an excellent choice for database serving, mail or web serving, or for any processor-intensive computation.

AMI Quad Xeon Motherboard

One 550 MHz Xeon Processorwith 512 KB Cache

3 400W Redundant Power Supplies

3 LVD Drive Bays (One LVD Backplane)

512 MB ECC EDO RAM

32X CD-ROM

Intel 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Adapter

1.44 MB Floppy, Keyboard, Mouse

Penguin Computing Three Year Warranty

Price: $8,900
*gulp* This may take a while...

-- Mac (snaek@lurk.hid), December 29, 1999.

$8,900 divided by $20 is only 445 - we probably have that many accessing TB easily- and some can spend more than $20-

-- farmer (hillsidefarm@drbs.com), December 29, 1999.