RIP, FREE REPUBLIC, ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE WEB SITE GETS OVER RUN BY THE RATS!?

Grampa Dave | 29 October 2002 | Grampa Dave

[BradyLS]

I thought that since an election is coming up, folks are tuning in to FR a LOT more...

[BradyLS]

Vanities dont hurt FR as much when John Robinson put paging in(1-50,51-100 at the top of each thread).

I LIKE that feature! It took longer threads forever to come up because all the posts were in one file and somneone always had to link a new one. The new pagination system is a lifesaver for me.

[Grampa Dave]

No not chicken little. This slowdown was one of the factors that CNS's site.

When you can't even log on and the error messages show a problem with the server, there is a severe problem.

Maybe you like staring at error messages that the server can't be reached or spending 30 minutes to post a reply, most of us will not tolerate that!

[Grampa Dave]

I have friends with high speed access, and they couldn't access FR during the off times yesterday.

From the feedback on this thread, a few people with high speed access were able to access FR. Many were not.

Not all areas of America can get high speed access. Out here in KaliGrayland, we are under the thumb of the thugs who control SBC. I been there and it was not worth the extra money.

[Grampa Dave]

You posted: I think the problem is some kind of virus, security breach, or scumbag Democrat sabotage. That's what I think.

How about all three of the above thanks to the Rats.

Thanks for your input!

[Grampa Dave]

Must be that stuff that makes you think that Free Republic is as fast as ever. You need to watch that stuff and not inhale it so much.

A whole lot of people are agreeing with me that FR is like watching snails move in maple syrup with super glue mixed in to really slow them down.

[Grampa Dave]

Well if your friend tried to join yesterday, he/she would not been able to. They would have gotten an error message.

[blam]

It's blazing fast for me right now. (?)

[hispanarepublicana]

It's blazing fast for me right now. (?)

Must be Free Gub-mint Cheese Day" (and voter registration) down at the welfare office. The DNC's minions must be standing in line there.

[berkeleybeej]

"airedaletwo91402" posted the following on yahoo's freerepublic2 yesterday. The URL's given below are very informative regarding denial of service attacks, even to someone like me who has just a basic understanding of networking and internet routing. Computer geeks will really like it:

-begin-

For a DDOS you need far more than just one computer. A hacker has control of many many computers because of trojans or lack of firewalls. Each of those computers which are under the total control of the hacker via bots sends packets to a specific IP address. The shear number of packets being sent by the 100+ computers overwhelms the pipeline into the specific IP address. If you want to read about how this works and see what can be done by someone who knows how find the culprits go to http://grc.com/dos/grcdos.htm and http://grc.com/dos/drdos.htm It reads kind of like a Tom Clancy short story especially the first one.

The main URL for Gibbson Research Company (GRC) is http://www.grc.com This is a internet security company and has a lot of other good stuff at it's site. Make sure you take a look at his free stuff like Leak Test, Unplug-N-Pray, Xpdite and the two socket locks (go to the free stuff section). Also they have some excellent newsgroups dealing with security (hardware & software), spam, and number of other topics. It's a great place to ask techie type questions. The level of people participating are from low level users through high level tech geeks and security pros. The information you get via these news groups is usually quick and correct. General tech problems are covered in the techtalk group. To get to the newsgroups you can either go through the website (it's at the bottom) where you can only read the newsgroups or add grc.com as a news server and subscribe to the groups you want. These are very active groups so there is a lot of message traffic. Also because of Steve's high profile he's often subject to DDOS attacks so there will be times when they aren't reachable or the service is slow. A number of times I have gotten the message that I haven't been able to reach the server in 60 seconds and should the newsreader quit or wait. I choose wait.

It's one of the best newsgroups sites on the Internet for people who have even the slightest interest in the subjects covered because of the quality of information provided.

-end-

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for your reply. This is very interesting:

For a DDOS you need far more than just one computer. A hacker has control of many many computers because of trojans or lack of firewalls. Each of those computers which are under the total control of the hacker via bots sends packets to a specific IP address. The shear number of packets being sent by the 100+ computers overwhelms the pipeline into the specific IP address.

[Grampa Dave]

FR is very fast today!

[ThePythonicCow]

high speed access ... not worth the extra money

For many uses, I would agree. I'm a serious computer nut, for many years. I spend probably 10 to 14 hours a day connected to the internet. Even I don't consider a high speed line essential -- nice, but optional.

There's been times when I've lost my high speed connect -- typically when I would get too pissed off at some big companies sorry excuse for customer service and order them to unplug it. I've gone back to a plain old dial up modem, for months at a time, and hardly missed the high speed line.

There are some specific uses that really benefit from a high speed line - such as downloading the Daily Dose, downloading programs or music, and some faster online games. Certainly if you are hosting a popular web server, you need one. But for most of us, it is not essential - many Dosers are running off dialups.

Anyhow -- that's getting off topic.

You are right that it is unlikely that the FR site slowness you (and others) are seeing would be fixed by a high speed line.

[ThePythonicCow]

FR is very fast today!

Yup - it is. See the thread: vanity thread to Jim/John Robinson ... thankx for getting FR running healthy again. In particular, on post #19 of that thread, Jim Robinson replies:

Ok, but please use your mouse keys with caution. Don't anybody make any sudden moves. This thing is super sensitive and you never know when it's gonna blow again.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

I donated 800 dollars last year...don't kill me, please!

DUCK FEMOCRATS!

[jriemer]

The very popular internet based Morpheus music "sharing" (stealing) freeware is well-known by the IT community to have trojan horse routines embedded within it.

Perhaps, these routines have gone active.

Millions of X-ers, Y-ers and younger use this software on internet connected computers from around the world to "share" (steal) digital music. This would serve as the perfect springboard for launching a DDOS attack.

As much as Grampa Dave would like us to think, this is not just a Freeper-specific problem.

jriemer

[Grampa Dave]

Now why would you think that I want you to just think what happened yesterday is a Freeper Specific Problem.

I only posted what happened on Free Republic yesterday as that was what I saw happening and have seen in the past on former conservative board sites.

[Grampa Dave]

I'm not the killer. Besides you would be one of the survivors as a regular donor.

[js1138]

Just an aside -- FR doesn't host images, so the speed of FR should be independent of picture posting. All that gets delivered by FR is the links to the images.

[Texas Mom]

Sorry but the any report of the demise if Free Republic are greatly exagerated...