MORE TWEETING

Sunday, August 9. 2009

I've been reading Ms. Aura's Twitter postings from the human side of the portal with great interest. It still appears that she's unaware that anyone outside her immediate circle can access them. (I hope to keep it that way!)
My first question is, her immediate circle of...what? Humans, I assume, but humans who originated on this side of the portal? Or is she in a league with actual humans? (Besides me and Danielle, that is.) At any rate it seems to be a large and influential grouping with a wide range of resources at their disposal.
I now know that she has transformed herself and Nigel from dolphin to human. I can only imagine which combination of portals brought about that result. Fenton and I were lost among the portals at one point, and perhaps we didn't know how lucky we were not to end up as who-knows-what. (What we did end up as were humans...briefly.)
This week's question is rather specific. The Twitter service experienced a cyber-attack a few days ago. Did it affect the human version of Twitter, too? (I gather from Ms. Aura's tweets that it did.)

Posted by Lindesfarne at 02:48 | Comments (17) | Trackbacks (0)

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Yes, some jerk thought it would be cute to carry out a denial-of-service attack on Twitter over here. Facebook was hit, too. (I can't remember what your version of that is called.)

#1 Seanette on 2009-08-09 05:17 (Reply)

Denial of service attack, also nicknamed 'a digital stampede' by some. Or did you mean Facebook? Here it's a preditor site where you display your trophy heads.

#1.1 Bioman on 2009-08-09 12:08 (Reply)

LiveJournal and Google Blogger were apparently hit too.

Not sure what caused it on your end, but an ABC online article claimed this mess was because of a "cordinated online attack" on a blogger from the ex-Soviet state of Georgia.

This wouldn't be the first time the Russians have supposedly made mischief online. In May 2007, a number of websites from the Baltic country of Estonia came under attack, and their government named the Russians as the cause.

The Russians aren't the only ones causing troubles. I occasionally hear stories about online attacks on the Pentagon's computers and corporate ones traced to China.

Stories about hackers over here in the US or Western Europe seem to be less common than they used to, though they still happen. One man is facing deportation to the US for breaking into the Pentagon's computers supposedly looking for information on UFOs.

#2 Bixyl Shuftan (Link) on 2009-08-09 11:30 (Reply)

Actually, the man was simply looking in old US computers that he obtained because the government threw them out. All the info was unprotected, and thus, legally obtained.

#2.1 Akaduur on 2009-08-12 17:32 (Reply)

Some... person or persons... decided that it would be 'fun' to launch a 'denial of service' attack on Twitter and other 'social networking' sites. Since I don't Twitter, it did not have any impact on me. I paused before 'person or persons' above because the words I would personally use to describe them would singe your quills.

P.S.: You apparently have some very unintelligent predators over there. According to today's strip, the Bodies exhibition was stolen, with the clear implication that it was done for food. I guess they thieves didn't realize that these exhibits are loaded with preservatives to keep them fit for display. There may be a lot of predators in the Emergency Room for stomach pumping in the near future...

#3 CharlieG on 2009-08-09 11:30 (Reply)

Actually, the process to "preserve" the bodies is a complicated process that literally replaces all organic material with a type of Plastic. They'll never decompose nor give off foul odors. The exhibit had visited the Science Museum in Minnesota the other year.

All those predators really did was make off with some very realistic squeaky toys.

Unless the bodies actually were preserved with chemicals and not turned into plastic. It's so difficult to get an understanding on how certain processes are performed when I know so little about Domain and the overall mindset of scientific practices.

#3.1 Osprey Cee Hawk on 2009-08-12 08:08 (Reply)

Yes, I doubt there were many nutrients left in the Bodies on display after the preservation process.

#4 Lindesfarne Dewclaw on 2009-08-09 12:46 (Reply)

I was not referring to nutrients, I was referring to toxins...

#4.1 CharlieG on 2009-08-09 13:40 (Reply)

I thjink Miss Dewclaw was useing a euphemism. Death by poison is not a pleasent subject, and less natural deaths can be touchy for some.

#4.1.1 Bioman on 2009-08-10 00:49 (Reply)

Something odd about Mrs. Aura's Twitter account... though she says that her image is a photograph, for everyone I know, it shows up as a drawing... and it's the same drawing style as the human she's investigating! Does it show a photograph on your side of the portal, or does that side also show a drawing?

#5 TuxRug (Link) on 2009-08-09 13:26 (Reply)

Irrelevant question. I was just listening to "Blue Moo" by Sandra Boynton. With songs like "Rabbit Tango", "When a Hippo can Dance", "Your Personal Penguin", and "Speed Turtle", what kind of critter IS her domain-analogue.

#6 Robin on 2009-08-10 01:21 (Reply)

Well, I don't listen to her, but with song titles like that, I'd guess a carnivore of some kind (then again, I may be prejudiced); a lot of carnivores like to sing about food. Then again, the best-known critter over here for singing about food is Weird Al Yakovic, who is, of course, a yak, so I suppose there's no telling.

#6.1 Terri the Tiger on 2009-08-10 10:36 (Reply)

Oh don't tease them. Weird Al is, as stated before, a Mockingbird, still not a preditor though. Realy, all the humans would have to do is look at the older posts to see that, so it's a rather poor lie.

#6.1.1 Bioman on 2009-08-11 01:55 (Reply)

snicker Okay, you got me on that one; thanks for keeping me honest. What can I say? I know this works best when you do keep things honest, and I usually do, but every once in a blue moon the urge to play is sooo strong (especially for something that seems like such a little thing, relatively speaking; even Weird Al would have been amused, I bet)...guess I'm still a bit of a kitten.

#6.1.1.1 Terri the Tiger on 2009-08-13 11:11 (Reply)

Ah playing with food, got it. Never did that as a kid. Then again when your food is poisonous scorpions, play is kind of discouraged.

#6.1.1.1.1 Bioman on 2009-08-13 23:11 (Reply)

While it is easy to think of this strange bridge as acting between two sets of Universes, we have to reason out that we're in contact with an unknown number of them. Human world has many reflections upon ours as we may have amongst others.

Besides, I'd love to confirm that rumor that Weird Al actually had built a mechanical Yak to 'mingle' with fans for purposes of unbias feedback. It was something that came up amongst the tabloid feeds, some years back.

#6.1.1.1.2 jup-reindeer on 2009-08-14 06:26 (Reply)

The big thing about the D.O.S.A on Twitter and Facebook and other social sites is that more often then not it is preformed by a small group of rather bored hackers with nothing else to do. As one who has partaken in a event like this before (I'm reformed!), we often laughed about it later because people got so frusterated about it. We often said that we did it, 'For the Lulz', which is a joke off of the 4chan image boards, though I don't know what they are called in Domain.

#7 Adam on 2009-08-10 17:05 (Reply)

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