Re: Cheaters

On Oct 11, 5:50 pm, blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It *is* interesting that apparently whatever is/was wrong is/was
somewhat localized.  I did notice someone complaining recently
about what sounds like a similar problem in a rec.* group where
I lurk.

Where a flamewar was going on?

I'm not sure about the group in question (rec.arts.sf.fandom), but
in another group I follow (alt.folklore.computers) there are also
reports of something wrong ....

And indeed, based on a quick look at Google's archives for
alt.folklore.computers -- something is broken, all right:
Some groups of posts that should show up as a single thread
are instead being displayed as if there were multiple threads.
And no, I don't notice anything especially flame-ish about the
threads/posts in question.

So it's collateral damage, rather than similar but separate attacks.
Attacks by "somebody" who wanted to forcibly prevent me from hanging
replies off their attack posts so that people who found the latter
would think the attack had gone unchallenged. That somebody must have
done something exceptionally crude and simple, with false positives,
such as altering Google's threading code to not insert new posts into
a thread in its internal data structures if that thread had over 3000
posts, or some such simple numeric-threshold-based thing.

Of course, we both know exactly who it must be, and which of the
affected threads was the target. There is only one thread after all in
which one of the participants would be motivated to do such a thing,
given your observation that none of the other affected threads is
"flame-ish". So we know which thread was the actual target and which
were just collateral damage. That just leaves which participant it
was.

The timing tells us that. The timing was maximally disadvantageous to
my side, instead of advantageous or some intermediate state, which
proves both that it wasn't just a random glitch and that it wasn't me.
Additionally, you and I don't seem the type to engage in such a
dishonest and underhanded tactic.

And only one other participant remains at this point.

The most shocking thing is that I am now hearing that Google Groups
had a major outage from Oct. 3 to Oct. 5 or so, which is exactly when
the thread-splitting attack code was uploaded. Apparently, the
attacker's klutzing around inside Google's systems caused some serious
problems even beyond the effects of the attack code itself. Talk about
collateral damage! Not to mention reckless disregard, vandalism,
abuse, sociopathic/narcissistic behavior ...

Whoever did it (and we all know who) ought to be strung up and made to
confess, then thrown into the deepest darkest cell that can be found
for him, preferably somewhere within the sewage system of Calcutta.

With no net access.

I'm more and more inclined to suspect that whatever is wrong
is a result of error rather than malice.

The timing proves otherwise. See above.
.

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