How Easily Things Could Fall Apart

[Hamen Cheese]

Okay, fine, that's a bit of an exaggeration hehe.

 

I logged in early yesterday to spend an hour checking recent forum post updates and just to find out what everyone else has been up to. I did this only to find that GA was in Offline Mode due to some hard drive failure. *Awww... oh well.* I checked anyway when it would be up again. According to the estimate it would be about 12 hours later which was still plenty of time to check the forums later on and update my story.

 

Fifteen hours later, I log in to find the forums working *hooray!* but as I posted my latest chapter update I discovered it wouldn't update the story. It simply sent me back to the Forums page again. *Awww... oh well... again*.

 

It made me realize how easily things could disappear with the simple malfunctioning of a piece of equipment probably smaller than my printed financial records at work. How all this *waves hands around at the whole GA website* could just one day disappear like all of civilization in a zombie apocalypse. All it would take is one virus, one tiny little explosion away in some lab (or in this case, Myr's house?), and everything could be gone. It would leave us in the dark unable to reconnect with those we're already familiar with and the place we've grown accustomed to. Where would that leave me? Where would that leave everyone else who finds comfort and fun in sites like this?

 

I suppose it's not said enough but thank you to everyone who's been keeping this site running, making sure it works, and ensuring that the zombies receive a swift bullet to the head. You are our Mila Jovoviches and Woody Harrelsons. Thank you for GA and making sure that the world we have here is safe and operational.

[Sara Alva]

Okay, that's exactly what popped into my head yesterday afternoon. Weird. Reminded me of that show Dark Angel, where "the pulse" wiped out all the technology.

 

It would certainly suck if this website disappeared. Thanks to those who keep it running

[TalonRider]

Gay Authors is on a dedicated server somewhere at one of Invision Powers sites. Fortunate for us, they have Tech Support available on the weekend so they were able to get the site back up fairly quickly. To minimize the loss of data, Myr took the site offline.

 

Once a backup copy was uploaded, Myr then spent time repairing the glitches that were found.

[JamesSavik]

How Easily Things Could Fall Apart is fodder for quite a lot of speculative and dramatic fiction.

 

While we laugh when we bring up a zombie apocalypse, think of it as a metaphor for some new threat/disaster that the human race has never seen before and tests our survival.

 

In the future there will be a anthology category called a rider on a pale horse. I plan on taking anyone who cares to go deep into the subject without a life jacket.

 

If the Great Blackout is any indicator, civilization ends when the power goes out.

[One Cheap Suit]

I really hope that Myr and team are seriously considering moving to another host, or at the very least, getting some dough back for a failed promise from them. I work on highly-available server farms and this kind of "drive crash" is inexcusable in this day and age. It *should* take about 15 minutes to replace a failing hard drive in a redundant array, and *no* downtime. If a redundant array is in stress, it should take no more than about an hour to replicate the sites from that array to a new one, again with no downtime from the client side. And in any case, it should not fall on the site owner/customer to restore the site from his own backup, that should be on the host to do, it's *their* gear, isn't it? Isn't that what an SLA is for?

 

Really sorry to hear you had to give up a Sunday (and spend a pile of time mopping up afterward) to deal with this kind of nonsense, it's so easily avoidable these days.

[PrivateTim]

Mmmm, "Things Fall Apart," one of my all time favorite books that is in turn from a favorite poem, "The Second Coming."

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

 

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

 

[myself_i_must_remake]

along with privatetim:

 

[Rilbur]

I really hope that Myr and team are seriously considering moving to another host, or at the very least, getting some dough back for a failed promise from them. I work on highly-available server farms and this kind of "drive crash" is inexcusable in this day and age. It *should* take about 15 minutes to replace a failing hard drive in a redundant array, and *no* downtime. If a redundant array is in stress, it should take no more than about an hour to replicate the sites from that array to a new one, again with no downtime from the client side. And in any case, it should not fall on the site owner/customer to restore the site from his own backup, that should be on the host to do, it's *their* gear, isn't it? Isn't that what an SLA is for?

 

Really sorry to hear you had to give up a Sunday (and spend a pile of time mopping up afterward) to deal with this kind of nonsense, it's so easily avoidable these days.

 

Depending on the webhost, that may or may not be possible. I know the private webhost I work with runs under a similar principle... so long as my website stays under 10GBs. Once I hit 10 GBs, they have a contractual line item in their terms of service that lets them get away with not doing it.

 

Why? Because they want me to pay more for that privilege

[ToddYoung]

I must admit I have little understanding of how the web works, though I understand that there are massive servers located all over the planet. Something that bothers me, though, is that it could somehow all just disappear -- a total web meltdown.

 

Is this totally out of the realm of possibility?

[JamesSavik]

I must admit I have little understanding of how the web works, though I understand that there are massive servers located all over the planet. Something that bothers me, though, is that it could somehow all just disappear -- a total web meltdown.

 

Is this totally out of the realm of possibility?

 

 

The Internet evolved from from research done by ARPA (Armed Forces Advanced Research Agency) during the 50s and 60s. The idea was to build a wide area data network that was redundant and survivable if large parts of it got nuked.

 

The Web as we know it now was born by researchers working in hypertext- specifically at CERN around 1990.

 

Yes- it's possible to loose large parts of the Internet.

 

No- it's not going to die because it is redundant and survivable.

 

Over the last few decades millions of miles of fiber cable has been run in the United States alone. Now there are hundreds of alternate paths to get from any one city to another.

[Raijen]

I'm glad Hamen Cheese posted this thread. The thought of not being able to access GA had not crossed my mind beforehand, so it's always nice to have a moment of gratitude for what we have.

 

Thank you, everyone who makes this website possible. A toast to your continued successes!

[Dark]

Thank you, everyone who makes this website possible. A toast to your continued successes!

 

Hear! Hear!