Slashdot Mirror
When Users Attack
AdmiralKit writes "Ever wonder how much damage some users can inflict on their computers? This site documents the cream of the crop of parts that have been returned because they are "defective" or "broken." Pretty amazing what people can do to computers in the middle of the information age."
I can't get the "Index of the pictures" page to load fully, but the pictures are loading slowly for me via the Google caches:
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
I'm not sure how many pages there are in total, but these ought to get you started.
Obligatory Google cache, though it seems to be largely a picture collection, so it's not too helpful.
According to the news on this page, the URL posted originally belonged to jonnyguru.com. But, unfortunately, the Wayback machine's archive for that site goes back to just after it was displaced, so it appears we're SOL until the server comes back to life.
Oh well...
So he came to me with a question about causing a break or failure in the computer that looked like an accident.
I told him flat out, that the best thing about computers is that if one thing breaks, that component can be replaced. It's also the main problem with what he was trying to do.
In the end, I told him to just live with it. Thats the best he could hope for in that case. Tech support might sound like they were picked up off the street, but when money's involved they look really close at what caused the accident.
Wow. That was a whole lot of nothing. Cool.
| - | - |
I think you mean 32k.....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Main
Index 1
Etc..
There are not images, and in this page images are very important.
Google has a few of the pictures here.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
get em a new mac
if they manage to break that, I will give them a cookie.
I'm quite serious, if there is such a thing as idoit proof, I think these beasts qualify.
(that us until they rm -rf / accidently or something...)
I live in a giant bucket.
ITS A LIE!! :) I've had this link for a while, look here, the broken coffee mug holder" urban geek myth debunked
It does work in certain cases -- namely, the cases where the platters themselves are okay, but the other parts of the HD (ie. the electronics) is broken. It's probably a lot better than doing nothing anyway...
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
www.thetechboard.com/mishaps/index.html: HTTP 404 - File not found
www.thetechboard.com: The website for thetechboard.com is Coming Soon!
For more information, please click here to contact us.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
I sure appreciate the link....but apparently my provider didn't. The canceled my account this morning: Hello, Please be advised that your hosting account thetechboard.com is in violation of our Internet Service Agreement at http://www.webmasters.com/agreement.htm due to consistent 73% CPU usage by your website. Your CPU usage must not exceed 33%. Your website has crashed our server two times today, and this cannot continue. Due to the severity of this problem, we have decided to permanently close your account. To receive a refund of any pre-paid hosting fees, please go to https://secure.webmasters.com/cancel.php3. Sorry, our decision to terminate your account is final and cannot be appealed. If you need to arrange a time to download your files, please contact us at support@webmasters.com within 24 hours. Thank you for your understanding. Best regards, WEBMASTERS.COM Security Department That was the first e-mail. Here is the second: Hello, If it helps any, the cause of your traffic flood was a link on the front page of http://www.slashdot.org a very high traffic site probably run with multiple dedicated servers. In situations like this, it is great to get all that trafic, but you must have a dedicated server to handle the load. The amount of traffic sent to your site is equivalent to 100,000+ unique visitors per day. We are sorry to have to close your account, but we cannot take a chance of having 299 other users be down because of your domain. Thank you for your understanding. Best regards, ----Name Removed---- WEBMASTERS.COM Support Supervisor Man-oh-man. My day really sux now. :(
-Melmac
TheTechBoard.com Administrator/Owner
Too many files to mirror somewhere... at least not one that would not suffer from another /. effect.
:(
/. before. We know the effects. We try to avoid it if possible. :p
The site was hosted at webmasters.com in Tampa. After the traffic crashed the server twice, Webmasters sent a nasty email stating that they were permanently closing the account.
Of course, this is getting fought. But consider TTB, at least for the time being, a dead link.
For the record, no one at TTB submitted the link. We've been
"The mishaps page was hosted on http://www.thetechboard.com (aka "TTB").
The site was linked from the front page of http://www.slashdot.org.
Typically when a site gets linked by slashdot, also known as "slashdotted", it tends to encounter large bursts of traffic.
Due to the gross incompentence of the hosting service http://www.webmasters.com, the server crashed twice under the pressue of being "slashdotted".
The complaints of the other clients that were using the same server and therefore also experienced outage prompted Webmasters to threaten to permanently close the TTB acount.
Of course, the account has always otherwise been in good standing, but the folks at Webmasters don't even have the mental capacity to limit bandwidth for a particular site so it does not bring down the entire server, so why would they take TTB's otherwise "good behaviour" into consideration?
Please forward any hate mail to: security@webmasters.com (this is from whom the mail about the account cancellation came from).
Thank you.
Jon "jonny" Gerow (pronounced muck like "Guru", hence the handle)
"
Which creates an interesting side story about when Hemo talked for my college's local ACM chapter. He was scheduled to start at 6pm, and at around 6:01 according to Slashdot, he "posted" a story. Obviously, editors can tell stories to appear at a later time!
Actually, that really isn't secret. It's a well documented feature of Slashcode. Another feature is to accept a story but not post it at any time (I think). This would easily allow CmdrTaco (synonym for "Slashdot editor") to send off an e-mail altering the site owner to a potential overflow of hits. If after one day there's no response, then just post the story - it's a free Internet, and if you don't want the hits, there are ways of ensuring you don't get them.
But I'm really sick and tired of interesting content being permenantly removed off the web because it was posted to Slashdot and those hosting the content could not afford to keep it online. Implementing a caching feature and then asking the sites being hit if they wish to cache the content seems not only like a good solution, but also the polite and courteous thing to do.
But I've posted this before... I suppose the next thing to do is to actually code up a caching module and send it in as a patch to Slashcode. Maybe then things would change.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Go to Dreamhost. They're awesome. All Debian and really great support.
-J
The opposite of progress is congress
I run a web hosting company. Send me a zip of the site (brian@tobinhosting.com) and I'll mirror the stuff.
:)
Temporarily, of course.
The provider bent the rules for me and put us back online today after about a 12 hour outtage. I still wish the way it all happened was a bit different, but after I spoke to the man in charge,I am satisfied.
BTW - to anyone e-mailing them:
Thanks for the concern, but please stop. We negotiated and got it fixed, but now they are getting slammed with e-mail complaints. Funny and flattering yes - but until I finish the transition to my dedicated server, I have to keep them from cancelling me again. Thanks again everyone, and the Mishaps section is hilarious - and WILL BE BACK!!!!
-Melmac