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Millions of .de Domains Unreachable For Hours
An anonymous reader writes "Due to an error on behalf of DENIC, the German DNS registrar for second-level .de domains, millions of .de domains fell over the edge (auf Deutsch) of the Internet today. The cause of this GAU (GröYter anzunehmender Unfall = maximum credible accident) is still unknown, as DENIC officials haven't answered any questions from journalists at the time of writing."
Actually, we reserve the term "Super-GAU" for that. "GAU" translates to "most severe expected accident"; it's still something you design your facility to handle. Consequently, a Super-GAU is an accident that exceeds what you planned for. An important point is that nuclear plants are required not to emit any radioactive material even in case of a GAU. Therefore, any accident during which the plant does release radioactive material is a Super-GAU.
Three Mile Island is a good example: Back than it was a Super-GAU as nobody designed reactors to handle gas buildup. With modern reactors it's a regular a GAU since modern designs are required to consider that failure mode and mitigate it.
In short: A GAU is "well, I guess after we're done decontamining and repairing the plant we'll need to do quite a bit of lobbying to get it back online". A Super-GAU is "we just contaminated how much land?".
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
so a GAU is a SNAFU?
.jp, obv.