[Illiad] ESCAPING A BLACK HOLE: ARCOR USERS IN .DE Posted:Mon Aug 18 14:04:43 2008

A LOW MEASURE ON THE FUN METRE: Earlier this year, an annoying, destructive script-kiddie started pounding on UF's servers, sucking down content, deliberately being evasive and overall behaving like a jerk. Our hostmaster worked mightily to stymie this charming example of human d*ckishness but eventually had to give up because of the number of IPs being used in the attack. All of the attacks came from a single German ISP, Arcor.

We contacted Arcor's abuse department many, many times, to no avail. When we did actually get a reply, we brought them up to speed on the abuse, but never received a response. As the attacks were continuing, I instructed our hostmaster to blackhole Arcor as a whole.

I hated having to do that, because ultimately the ones paying the price are UFies who used Arcor. I had hoped that they would pressure Arcor into doing something about the abuser, and many (dozens? hundreds?) of Arcor-using UFies did indeed make the effort to get a response from Arcor's NOC. Sadly, the response they received was similar to the one we received: nothing. Dead air.

We investigated a number of solutions, and had several very good ones suggested to us by some German UFies, but pretty much all of them required significant development or tech time, time we could ill-afford considering what other things we had on our plate. Months later, we think we have a few realistic ideas of what we can do, are now doing them, and as a result we're lifting the Arcor blackhole.

The blackhole should be lifted in a few hours after the timestamp on this post. Note that if you know of a fellow Arcor user who still has trouble accessing UF, please ask him or her to send us a note along with their IP address so that our hostmaster can investigate. Please use our tech **atthisdomain** email.

Please note that if we encounter large-scale scripting or DOSing again, we'll have to slam the door shut right away. We're really, really hoping that this isn't necessary.

To the UFies who use Arcor: you have my heartfelt apologies for dropping you in a hole for the past months. I also appreciate and thank those UFies who took the time to offer (in some cases very) clever solutions to our dilemma, and to those who tried very hard on our behalf to communicate the abuse to Arcor.

[Didactylos] World Community Grid 200 MILLIONTH RESULT CHALLENGE Posted:Wed Jul 30 06:22:58 2008

World Community Grid will shortly pass 200 million results. This means that since the launch of World Community Grid, every second of every minute, approximately 2 to 3 results are returned to World Community Grid, and one in every hundred of those results was returned by a Team UserFriendly.Org member.

To celebrate this epic milestone, two things are happening:

This is a perfect opportunity for me to thank all our members. You're doing a great job! It's also an opportunity to remind ourselves why we do this, and why it is so important. Our current projects work on cancer, AIDS, dengue fever, malnutrition and many other humanitarian issues. We are making a difference! A number of scientific papers have been published, showing advances in our understanding of how to combat these diseases. More practically, the first cancer project we tackled has resulted in a new diagnostic tool that can make a real difference in the outcome for cancer patients today.

If you haven't joined already, please join Team UserFriendly.Org now. If you signed up before, starting to contribute again is easy. Just reinstall the software and go. If you forgot your username or password, you can recover them.

The race is on!

_{Note: as a Community Advisor, I'm not eligible for any of the team captain prizes.}

[Illiad] IN HONOUR OF THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER: FIRE 'ER UP! Posted:Fri Aug 1 12:28:23 2008

[Illiad] ONI UPDATE: A SAD DAY FOR HARN FANS Posted:Thu Jul 24 08:58:57 2008

UPDATE: I just learned from a couple of sources (including UFie 'meatball') that N. Robin Crossby, the creator of Hârn passed away on the 23rd of July, 2008, from cancer. I met Robin in the mid-80s when I did some writing for the product line, and enjoyed the times we discussed and debated medieval history. He knew a lot more than me, so in the end I learned a great deal from him. I wish his family solace and extend them my condolences.