HDD Assault Cannon

Anonymous Coward writes "Check out what these crazy fools have done. One has to ask, exactly how much time these people have on their hands? Got a couple of old 2GB Hard drives. You too could join in on their madness. Hard Drive Assault Cannons for all!"

Comments

WHY BOTHER?

[stratjakt]

OK, you know that some guys private webspace on his dsl connected linux server is going to be slashdotted within seconds.

So why not actually put SOMETHING in the submission that describes, in some way, WHAT THE SITE IS ABOUT?

"Check out what this crazy guy did with his computer!!!11!!!!11ROFLOL!"

It's an absolute waste of everyones time. Why even put shit like that on the front page?

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[merlin_jim]

OK, you know that some guys private webspace on his dsl connected linux server is going to be slashdotted within seconds.

So why not actually put SOMETHING in the submission that describes, in some way, WHAT THE SITE IS ABOUT?

Ironically, "Anonymous Coward" who posted this story left as his e-mail address "hddassaultcannon@hotmail.com"... So even though the submission is in the third person, it was obviously written by the guy that did this.

I mean come on, he had to have some kind of idea what would happen, right?

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[stratjakt]

So what did he do?

Build a catapult or air cannon that fires hard drives?

Modify a hard drive to fire some sort of projectile?

Make a scale replica of a WWII era Howitzer using old hard drives?

Who knows?

It annoys me cuz this is the kind of geeky shit I actually like reading about and discussing. Who cares about the latest round of RIAA threats or MSFT hiring some goober? This could well be a neat lil project dude has going, but I'll never know.

When people submit something like this, why can't they submit a descriptive little write up, and why can't slashdot hold a jpeg or two in the story text?

And why can't editors just flat out refuse non-descript submissions like this, which consist of nothing more than a hyperlink to some guys little home server?

I mean, it's not hard to scope out a webserver and come to the conclusion that it's hosted on junk that isn't up to the task.

HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[Anonymous Coward]

Could slashdot just add a link next to articles called "mirror" and pre-cache these smaller sites *before* they get hammered? I'm constantly scrolling through comments to find mirrors to slashdotted sites. Seems like a no-brainer. You could even do a 15-sec stress test on the site to determine it's ability to be directly linked.

Several times, i've seen sites that have had to shut down their site with a "please check back later" message. An inconvenience to us, but surely a REAL inconvenience to their normal viewers.

Thoughts? Thank you.

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[1u3hr]

Most sites would probably have a Google cache.

Mostly useless in stories like this (picture galleries) as the Google cache only caches the text -- the images are still referenced from the original site. The Wayback Machine is always worth trying, they do cache images (though not all) but they spider much less frequently.

and the editors fault for letting that submission get by them.

You say that as if they actually had a policy not to link to such sites. They don't. They don't bother to run submissions through a spellcheck, let alone see if the links are stable, or even exist at all.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[gstoddart]

"Whoa" (also spelled "wo", "woa" or even "who") means "slow down horsey"

Or, in Keanu-speak, it is merely a response to any event happening around onesself, expressing shock, dismay, humour, joy, or any of a bunch of things which can happen to a person.

=)

Waste of perfectly useful hd's.

[DoraLives]

I cobble computers together from giveaway parts and 2gig hd's are PERFECT for putting into FREE machines to give to folks as their first computer (yep, there's still great shoals of people out there who have yet to take the FIRST step).

Sigh...