Slashdot Mirror
Google Mistook Jackson Searches For Net Attack
Slatterz writes "Web giant Google has admitted it thought the sudden spike in searches for Michael Jackson on Thursday was a massive, coordinated internet attack, leading it to post an error page on Google News. The company's director of product management, RJ Pittman, explained that search volume began to increase around 2pm PDT on Thursday and 'skyrocketed' by 3pm, finally stabilising at around 8pm. According to Pittman, last week also saw one of the largest mobile search spikes ever seen, with 5 of the top 20 searches about Jackson. Google wasn't the only site caught out by the extraordinary events. The Los Angeles Times web site also crashed soon after it broke the news of Jackson's death."
If any other news "event" has ever caused there to be such a massive amount of searching - it worries me that it is a celebrity causing this and that people aren't this into any "real" news that actually impacts them.
It's Sunday; the death occurred on Thursday and Google blogged on the "attack" problem on Friday.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
This is all so confusing!
If Google had read Google News, they would have known about MJs death. But Google didn't and thought they were being attacked...which led them to shutdown their news site...which would have told them about MJ.
What if this had happened in Soviet Russia?
a smooth criminal.
How awesome is this video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmN0dwDR1wo
Michael Jackson lives!!
I've seen it reported many places that Google was one of the websites that was overwhelmed by traffic resulting from Jackson's death. The fact that this is not true, and that the traffic merely activated Google's self defense mechanisms, is rather enlightening - it reveals just how much more serious Google is. However, we should hope that Google's self defense mechanisms stay this benign, else we may be in trouble when McCartney finally kicks the bucket.
As much as everyone might think this is a big boo-boo by google, I say its a great job done by automated software. All systems should protect themselves from massive peaks in internet traffic in order to provide a base-line service. Twitter even pulled selected services off to keep up a minimum working level. The fact that it classified it as a "net attack" is a matter of terminology, not importance.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Welcome to last week Slashdot, I was really hoping for you guys to drum up a connection between Billy Mays and technology news. Maybe a scientific study on the effectiveness of oxi clean, or the possibility of a law limiting television volume.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
No big deal. Google'd be stupid not to have a procedure to deal with a real attack. The only real consequence of a false positive is that they lost a little revenue, and they got to test their response in exchange. They sorted it out in less than half an hour. Probably they'll try to improve their detection systems as a result, I guess. I can't get excited about one search topic being blocked for half an hour as a result of heavy inquiry unless that topic is "directions to the nearest bomb shelter".
The media is just overreacting. He's just on Betelgeuse with Elvis.
That's it? That's all it takes to bring Twitter to its knees? A measily 18 tweets per second? Do they manually transcribe the messages after having read that an air gap was the most effective security you could get? Or is the article plain wrong.
Seriously confused here.
zombies.
Michael Jackson was a fairly formative musical influence to a lot of modern music. The importance of "Thriller" can't really be overestimated.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Nope.
The government can't save you.
I think current events prove it can be. Or at least overhyped. He was a talented guy, but he was a musician. He's not Einstein. His contribution to society is really not that significant.
/. is cashing in on it.
In 10 years he'll fade, just as Lennon and Elvis have too.
I like music as much as anyone, but it's important to put it into perspective. It's important always to remember it a commercial product and owned by one of the most unethical industries on Earth. All commercial music is overhyped. Most musicians are overrated. You may like them, I may like them, but most of them are only good at what they do and are far from masters of their instruments. Most music does not stand the test of time.
Jackson's music will last longer than most of his peers. But he isn't Wyld Stallions, he won't be creating world peace and new harmony. It's just music.
It's truly astonishing that (considering his legal history too) he has created this much hype in death. So much so that, even
It makes me realize that there's something fundamentally wrong with how things are valued, and how page views and impressions are the currency of the net. Waves of hype like this are not truly as valuable as people seem to think they are.
if you type Jackson into Google, you can break The Internet.
They were so close to the truth!
Michael Jackson was a fairly formative musical influence to a lot of modern music.
Maybe that's why I pretty much stopped listening to American music in the early 1990s.
I thought he was a crazy, drugged-out pederast. My wife was in tears.
I'm not particularly dismayed by the reaction of some here - to each his own. I *am* dismayed that Farrah Fawcett, who died on the same day, never got any mention here.
I find it fascinating that with all his debt issues, he was surrounded by Nation of Islam financial advisors, the same as Kareem (who ended his Hall Of Fame basketball career broke).
Now, get off my lawn and take that "King of Pop" trash with you.
If we take a step back and see what Sept. 11 did to CNN and now The Times website, we can see that the internet can suffer from its own major over-subscription of users to servers/services. Particularly in times of significant current events when almost every connencted user demands information from authoritative sources.
And I'm sure the audience here is no stranger to the Slashdot/Schumaker-Levey effect?
There needs to be a blend between the ability of peer to peer protocols (bittorrent?) to service and distribute massive amounts of content and HTTP. Such technology would permit the audience (or data sinks) to service itself in times of major crisis and permit the important information to reach people.
Michael Jackson was a fairly formative musical influence to a lot of modern music. The importance of "Thriller" can't really be overestimated.
Well, I suppose that depends on how you estimate the importance of modern music, doesn't it?
sic transit gloria mundi
I guess so. Did your parents lock you in a cave as a kid or something?
He's a 7 digit, my friend. MJ hasn't made any new truly popular music for a long time, so GP has only seen the mutilated face, the pedophilia, and the baby-dangling.
"The Los Angeles Times web site also crashed soon after it broke the news of Jackson's death."
It was actually TMZ.com that "broke" the news, many minutes before anyone else. The other news sites waited until someone they considered "legitimate" reported it before accepting it as fact. I guess they were trying to avoid a "Dewey defeats Truman" moment...
Our great computers fill the hallowed halls
Regardless of your personal opinion of the artistic merits of Jackson's work, there's no denying he had a massive effect on American pop culture, and tens of millions of Americans.
All a foreign gov't has to do is to kill a few big-name celebrities via snipers or poison, and our infrastructure is crippled.
Table-ized A.I.
I thought of him as just another has-been celebrity fuckup.
Now let's see if all the infomercials crash tonight due to the sudden death of Billy Mays.
Of course, I'm not trying to deny that at all. I'm just saying that if it wasn't him, somebody else would've won the "superstardom" lottery, it's not like we'd end up with no music to listen to.
sic transit gloria mundi
Aspergers peeps take things literally without looking past face value and by all accounts, at face value Michael Jackson was a celebrity fuck-up.
He did make great music though.
- Dan
When the BBC announced it over in the UK, they kept playing the video on repeat of him holding the baby out the window on BBC news, I'd actually forgotten about that incident until it had been rammed into my brain again!
- Dan
First, twitter didn't fail; twitter removed trending topics from the sidebar. You could still search but it was not giving you trends. I strongly suspect that this is because of the load on their database server trying to load in the new entires while serving data. While you may consider trending topics to be the end all be all of twitter it should at least be noted that it is a relatively new feature and twitter does have a tendency for very slow development.
I cannot even begin to describe how utterly nice it felt to know nothing more than he's dead and I don't have to be inundated with inane television coverage.
I do think his funeral is going to be a bigger circus than the pope and Reagan combined.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
i will be glad when michael jackson is buried and forgoten, i am tired of the damn media coverage of some dead popstar/pedophole
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Ok, couldn't resist.
Just eat it. Your table manners are a crying shame... just eat it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyfcOriVKBM
TMZ broke the news of his death, not the LA Times. Let's give credit where credit is due.
I keep reading comments that it is "a sad state of affairs" that news of a celebrity's death has garnered much more response from the world then, say, news of a recent scientific breakthrough.
The fact of the matter is, Michael Jackson is one of the most recognized persons in the world, and for quite a long time too. So what if he has contributed nothing/little to science? You think without music, art, and other culture we would be the same human beings? Art and music define us and advance us as much as science - why else would cavemen draw?
So what if so-and-so was responsible for inventing solar-power, or discovered water on mars. That isn't affecting the majority of the poor population in Bangladesh. Yet, they ALL listen to Michael Jackson.
Get over it.
Loban Amaan Rahman ==> Anagram of ==> Aha! An Abnormal Man!
but don't blame me for lost connections
take, take, take what you need
but don't tweet about me in the same second
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Have you ever even heard his music?
Yes, and your point is? Have you ever heard the music of TAKAHASHI Mariko, or Regine Velasquez? They have voices that sound like angels, to my ears. Sadly, Regine is headed down the same road Michael Jackson apparently took.
I heard his music and I didn't like it. My wife loves his music and there is no bloody way I'm going to kick her out of bed for that.
I liked "We are the world" the first time I heard it, though it grew tedious after awhile. It took on a whole new meaning after his trials in California, "We are the world, I sleep with your children".
I *will* feel some sadness when Regine Velasquez dies of a drug overdose or something along those lines, but I will not be surprised and neither will it bother me. It's her life as Michael Jackson's life was his own.
Yeah, Farrah Fawcett, the red swimsuited, long blonde haired beauty in the poster that all of us older nerds had pinned up on our bedroom walls in the 70s died the same day.
She died of cancer, *not* drug overdose/addiction.
My wife is prettier than she was, but it does not kill the memory.
One of the most depressing things about aging is seeing professional athletes around your age or younger being called too old to play. Pinup girls that you (secretly) fantasized about in your youth dying of old-age type diseases is another. The latter is worse - I feel so old ...
When the MJ news first hit, one of the early sites handling the rumor was TMZ.COM. I was on the page before CNN and other sources had reported MJ dead. The TMZ page automatically loaded a streaming video window with live reports of the ongoing story. I left the page open while I attended to other matters, and other than the video blanking out now and then, the stream was stable for hours. I was thinking to myself that surely this story would overload their servers, what with the home page automatically generating a live video stream, but it just never happened.
Sheeple? "The Masses"? If Gates or Linus croaked one day you would all be Googling the shit out of it, but when something happens outside of your comfort zone you mock and deride it. Sheeple indeed.
News media web sites may have crashed under the strain, but all I had to do was wait a few hours and read the news on paper. Paper doesn't crash.
Can't wait a few hours? Okay, switch the TV on and find a 24-hour news channel (even here in the channel-starved UK we get a choice of two). TV doesn't get slashdotted.
Old media WINS in these situations. Sure you can't write comments for all to see at the end of a news bulletin, but then you don't have to read the inane rantings of the masses after every news bulletin. See what I mean about WIN?
He was a talented guy, but he was a musician. He's not Einstein.
See, this I find disturbing.
I understand this is slashdot where the sciences are valued above the arts, but that doesn't mean that the arts aren't a significant part of societal development as well.
In 10 years he'll fade, just as Lennon and Elvis have too.
And so too will Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Liszt, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovitch, Joplin, Sousa, and so on.
Oh wait.
Yes, I am comparing them with those composers. The music is different and less complex. Doesn't mean it's not good stuff.
I literally *hid* from the news from first report through this weekend. I knew the bullshit would be enough catastrophically raise the ocean levels once it all got flushed. All I saw was a quick shot of two girls who were weeping over Jackson's death as if they just witnessed their entire families, every friend and their pets get killed in a giant fireball. Seriously, being *that* emotionally invested in a media figure has *got* to be some sort of mental illness.
So, I'm a bit out of sync. Did North Korea nuke Maui yet? ;-)
Oh, and I was on amazon looking for a book and I saw everyone was rushing to buy his albums. WTF? A musician dying makes you suddenly want to buy his album? WTF is that ghoulishness? Seriously! What mass hysteria or delusion is happening there? There's a PhD thesis waiting for someone there.
"His contribution to society is really not that significant." Define significant. Did the Mona Lisa solve world peace, discover electricity? No, but it was significant, from both a cultural and artistic viewpoint. The human condition drives us to find heroes, those who we feel deserved to be revered, Michael was someone who deserved this hype. Michael's dance and music was, and is significant, there was something about it that attracted and mesmerized millions of people. Don't belittle him. I assure you he has accomplished more than you ever will.
My wife was in tears.
That grounds for divorce in my book. ;-)
I'm tired of the "king of pop" thing, too. Am I the only one who remembers that the title did not evolve naturally, but that Jackson *demanded* he be called that? The media, of course, opened wide and took every inch of that one.
A sane media with a spine would have blinked and said, "Hey, buddy, you do decide how to do the singing and we'll decide how to do the reporting. Capisca? Now go back to that creepy amusement park you live in."
I wonder whether Google will develop, or have developed, a cached response mechanism for situations such as this. There would seem little point, during a massive spike, in actually loading the servers with the search element of these queries. I know it's what I would do. why would you not do so? I ask because, as a designer, I would be interested in what the /. ers would think to be the pros and cons of that.
now they have a big excuse to make money ...
At the record company meeting
On their hands - a dead star
And oh, the plans they weave
And oh, the sickening greed
At the record company party
On their hands - a dead star
The sycophantic slags all say :
"I knew him first, and I knew him well"
Re-issue ! Re-package ! Re-package !
Re-evaluate the songs
Double-pack with a photograph
Extra Track (and a tacky badge)
A-list, playlist
"Please them , please them !"
"Please them !"
(sadly, THIS was your life)
But you could have said no
If you'd wanted to
You could have said no
If you'd wanted to
BPI, MTV, BBC
"Please them ! Please them !"
(sadly this was your life)
But you could have said no ...Couldn't you ?
If you'd wanted to
You could have walked away
I touched you at the soundcheck ...
You had no real way of knowing
In my heart I begged "Take me with you
I don't care where you're going..."
But to you I was faceless
I was fawning, I was boring
Just a child from those ugly new houses
Who could never begin to know
Who could never really know ...
Oh
Best of ! Most of !
Satiate the need
Slip them into different sleeves !
Buy both, and feel deceived
Climber - new entry, re-entry
World tour ! ("media whore")
"Please the Press in Belgium !"
(THIS was your life...)
And when it fails to recoup ?
Well, maybe :
You just haven't earned it yet, baby
I walked a pace behind you at the soundcheck
You're just the same as I am
What makes most people feel happy
Leads us headlong into harm
So, in my bedroom in those 'ugly new houses' ...
I danced my legs down to the knees
But me and my 'true love'
Will never meet again
At the record company meeting
On their hands - at last ! - a dead star !
But they can never taint you in my eyes
No, they can never touch you now
No, they cannot hurt you, my darling
They cannot touch you now
But me and my 'true love'
Will never meet again
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Uh, the article is about Google, not about Michael Jackson.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
From now, your servers will have been "Jacksoned".
Deleted
"It is not that Michael Jackson died. It is that he died suddenly and unexpectedly."
People of around his age, particularly those who might be on continual medication, are dying 'suddenly and unexpectedly' all the time. Although he is at the young end of the coronary heart disease spectrum he is by no means the only 50 year old to die of heart failure. The only reason that this made the news is because of who he was. And, as many of us have pointed out, how important or influential he might be considered to be is an individual thing. Will I wake up in a month's time thinking 'Oh no - Michael Jackson is dead'? Nope - nor do I often think of John Lennon or Elvis. I acknowledge their contribution to the music industry but there are many, many, many things far more important in day-to-day life than the death of a popular musician.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
LA Times??? I thought TMZ broke this news
Just launch a topic into the internets that is so interesting that the server[s] you wish to attack will presume that a DoS attack is in progress. Maybe via some sort of semi-popular forum....
Oh, c'mon. Zombies would not be nearly as ubiquitous in modern culture without MJ's groundbreaking documentary on the subject.
Yes. It made news because he was a famous musician.
It made BIG NEWS because it was a sudden and unexpected death - particularly for someone who slept in an oxygen tank and danced like he did.
And 50 years is by no account an age at which one is expected to just die.
I mean look at Gary Busey. Today is his 65th birthday.
Now, if there is one person (besides Amy Winehouse and Keith Richards) you would expect to be long dead from all the drugs and booze - that would be him.
Not Michael Jackson. At least not yet.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In 10 years he'll fade, just as Lennon and Elvis have too.
I see you've never been to Las Vegas where you can make a good living as an Elvis impersonator. You and I many not be keen on his music, but somebody sure is.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
One thing that I've noticed here and elsewhere is that most people have difficulty recognizing talent if the talent is not expressed in a way that they personally enjoy.
I was at a restaurant a few months back and one of the staff was doing a rather operatic rendition of Happy Birthday to a customer. The people I was with were dismissive of her singing ability. Now, opera is not my thing, but she did have a remarkable voice and ability to use it.
I went to a superbowl party this year. I told some people that I now know what an atheist at a revival meeting feels like. Football is not my thing. But I can recognize that the players have genuine talent, even if I don't think that they're using it very productively.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
(Yes, when I first heard, I thought it was a variant on the classic Stephen King troll.)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Amadeus are you okay, Amadeus are you okay, are you okay Amadeus...
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Why not nuke Kansas or Ohio? THat'll improve the IQ and educational system while only killing 2 men and a donkey.
One man and a donkey. I moved.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
When I added the article to a hobby project I've been working on, it choked the page indexer. Not only was MJ dead, but the HEAD was missing, and still is:
http://blog.lolyco.com/sean/2009/06/26/la-times-reports-michael-jackson-dead-head-missing/
Surely you understand the lack of real news reported, and the public's lack of interest in it,is by design?