Denial of Service Attack on FR?

You were saying ...

If FR needs more money then its still a small price indeed to pave the Freedom Highway.

Well, it might be worth it in theory, but what many different people, organizations and non-profits find out, is that many times people's statements don't match up to their billfolds ... :-)

I think if you ended up tripling or quadrupling in order to have a "hardening" of assets, all equipment, making them all high grade (like "server graade equipment) and then also offsite backup (or perhaps even onsite, but "hot" and ready-to-go) -- you would find a lot of previous donors balking at it ...

But, you could try and see what happens ... :-)

You were saying ...

How safe is it to download from Pirate Bay? Any spyware or worse? How would freerepublic use it to communicate?

It's not the actual servers on Pirate Bay that are the problems. All they have is a "link" which gets you started to downloading at other people's computers. The "material" (that you download) is as good as the person who first puts it up there. See the BitTorrent protocol ...

But, with Free Republic and our own members, you'll know and recognize who is putting it up (you sign-up and you get an account name and that particular account name will be the one who first has the original material available, and they are the ones who will be the first "uploaders", so you are trusting a "FReeper" for that). So, you'll be getting the material from a "known source" -- that is, someone on Free Republic.

In addition to that, if something is detected and something is wrong (i.e., some virus or problem; let's say that a user was infected, unkknowingly himself and inadvertently was uploading bad material), that material can be deleted immediately, because that "link" has "comments" on it. The first few people who have downloaded it can do a "check" for viruses or worms and can "verify" it for all the others (that's what happens already there). So, again, it's very difficult for something like that to get going on Pirate Bay.

In regards to how Free Republic would use it to communicate ... it's like I said earlier -- it's "not a board" ... it's for files -- like documents, lists, video, audio, even entire websites. That's what it's for. And for that purpose, if you have to disseminate material to FReepers that it's impossible to get any other or -- or else -- it's being blocked by the government -- this is the way you can bypass all "blocks" and get it disseminated through the Pirate Bay ... :-)

Even though we're back online again (after our down time today), here's another one from Jim Robinson ...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freerepublic2/message/43618

> From Jim Robinson - Mon Jun 21 15:38:26 2010
>
> One of our primary servers crashed. We now have
> the main system running on a secondary server
> until John repairs or replaces the one that
> fried. We have several servers at FR all
> performing various functions. Each server has
> its own IP address so that's why you may now
> be seeing a different IP.
>
> It was not a DOS attack. Nothing nefarious.
> Just a hardware crash.
>
> We usually have two servers serving web pages
> and two serving the database and others doing
> various tasks. Usually a server going off line
> wouldn't crash the entire system but this time
> it did and John had a bit of a problem getting
> it all running again.

Breaker,Breaker 19 !!!

Lookin’ for a west bound 18 wheeler,,,

S`Port City Louisiana,,,

Ya’ll got a copy on this weak Mobile,,,

Need to get a message through to that LA,LA Land,,,10-4 ?

Come On,Come On,,,

Breaker,Breaker...!...;0)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.