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Decepticons Are NOT Attacking the .US Registry

Posted by michael on from the competence-not-required dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes "According to this story in the Washington Post, NeuLevel, the operator of DotUS and DotBiz, has issued a clarification that the Decepticon transformers were *not* attacking their webservers, despite their previous claims to the contrary." It's good to know that .us is in such good hands.

13 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Transformers are unprofessional? by Phleg · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hell, last I checked, Mindspring's DNS servers were Itchy and Scratchy.

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    No comment.
    1. Re:Transformers are unprofessional? by hagardtroll · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Its not unusual for me to put strange coded messages in my code I am testing or debugging. I don't think its 'Unprofessional' just a mistake that it made it out onto a production machine.

      How else can you entertain yourself while sitting in a 6x8 foot cubicle 8 hours a day.

      All Decepticons come to the aid of the prowler!

    2. Re:Transformers are unprofessional? by PolyDwarf · · Score: 2

      All Decepticons come to the aid of the prowler!


      Actually, there was an Autobot named Prowl (A policecar), which is the Prowl that the message was talking about, I believe.

      Sorry to nitpick, but the Transformers nut in me had to respond.
  2. Transformer video game?? by eugene+ts+wong · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Gary Osbourne, a computer programmer in Vancouver, Canada who stumbled upon the misconfigured site
    Wednesday, posted a message at the ICANNwatch.org site about the incident, noting that Prowl and the
    Decepticons are characters from the "Transformers" computer games and line of Hasbro toys.
    I'm sure that a lot of people are aware of the video game, but more of them should be aware of the comic and show. It would be like saying, "...Prowl and the Decepticons are pictures on a t-shirt that this guy in my city wears". It just seems so out of perspective. No mention of the tv show?? No mention of the comic???

    Not trying to rant or troll or anything. It just makes me kind of laugh. That's all.
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    testing out my trending skills
  3. I've been there. by snubber1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I had the *exact* same thing happen to me. I am the web developer for subaruparts.com. I have one function to connect to the database that is used universally throughout the site that happens to generate a particualar error message when the database cannot be found. When the database server goes offline most pages will say something like "Mr. Database was killed by Colonel Mustard in the Study with the Knife." It randomly picks the items in clue when generating the message. I thought it was funny at the time.

    Well, Last week some meat-headed security camera techs managed to unplug my database THREE times (twice by network, once by power) while installing some equipment. All the visitors saw the message and thought we had been haxx0red. I had to go visit a bunch of car boards and explain that we hadn't been breeched.

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    I don't really mind double posts on //..
  4. If it wasn't the Decepticons... by Snafoo · · Score: 2

    it must've been that wench Circuit Breaker.

    Even Prowl can be wrong, sometimes.

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    - undoware.ca
  5. Wow. by Wntrmute · · Score: 2

    it must've been that wench Circuit Breaker.

    Congrats, you get the "obscure pop-culture reference of the day" award. :-)

  6. What's wrong with a sense of humor? by EvlG · · Score: 3, Interesting
    From the article:

    Even if this was just an in-house configuration error, that's still very unprofessional. It's just pretty lame.


    Why can't businesses retain a sense of humor and have a little harmless fun? Especially in this economy, when everyone deserves a break?
    1. Re:What's wrong with a sense of humor? by daoine · · Score: 2

      And even funnier...

      It's amazingly professional to follow up a remark about being unprofessional by describing it as "lame".
      Pot. Kettle. Black.

      Optimus to the rescue...

  7. Decepticons Are NOT Attacking the .US Registry by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 5, Funny
    Sometimes the replies write themselves:

    They're too busy moderating on Slashdot.

    Then fire their lazy asses!

    But they ARE attacking a pizza in the server room.

    Insert your line here:

    --
    If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
  8. isn't .us grand? by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Some NeuLevel customers who viewed the notice concluded that the company's sites had been vandalized by attackers.

    But as it turns out it was just a publicity stunt to try to get people to care about the .us registry. "Hey, we got on slashdot, that's an accomplishment" beamed a reputable NeuLevel employee who wished to remain anonymous.

  9. Attack succedes! Decepticons conquer .US! by Alsee · · Score: 2

    AllYourBaseAreBelongTo.Decepticons

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    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  10. Obligatory Simpsons Reference. by Havokmon · · Score: 2
    "Even if this was just an in-house configuration error, that's still very unprofessional. It's just pretty lame," said Osbourne, who reported that NeuLevel's sites were unreachable for several hours as the company apparently worked to correct the problem.

    That's really just a 'sound bite', the original quote was (in the voice of Comic Book Guy):

    "Even if this was just an in-house configuration error, that's still very unprofessional. It's just pretty lame. I mean, anybody who's anybody would use 'Hulk' for their main server and 'The_Flash' for their web server, denoting both power, and unrivaled quickness."

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    "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)