Between this update and the last, EMPTV received its first legal threat ever. I think we wonz.
KHAAAAAAN!!
I got into a very vocal argument with the idiot from the last update. Read about it on 17chan.
I don't know who made this, but it's incredible.
Administrating an internet forum with over 27,000 members has taught me certain things. One of them being that anyone with the following phrases in their username is invariably worthless. If you have any of these in your username, it's highly likely you're a dipshit:
- sheep
- Mel
- 69
- xX or Xx
- retard
- Sarah
- demented
- zeeky
- monkey
- skate
- sk8
- 4 ever
- Beth
- gurl
- psycho
- huggles
Seriously, it's like a flashing sign that says "BAN ME".
VenusBlue and jski and appLe wanted to be on this update.
My Dinner at Applebee's With White Supremacists!
Last but not least, the first installment of
Ask a gay man, provided by Cubehead and the members of #emptv.
Oh, and Coinstar is really really cool.
Hey everyone, happy Valentine's Day. The server has been doing fine over the past week or so. In fact, it's much faster. Unfortunately, a lot of other people who weren't as lucky are currently waiting to be transferred to Oktagone's new Australian datacenter, which seems to be taking quite a long time, and all of Oktagone's US servers have been reformatted. They're certainly doing well.
Koz found this blind spot demonstration. And ThrowThisAway's friend's dad makes brain music.
Orisinal has a bunch of cool Flash games, but Dismount is better if you enjoy pushing people down stairs and ramming trucks into walls.
Is glass a liquid? A solid? Both?
Ovens discovered Hell, one of the greatest forums on the internet. It has rims.
Arthur Ganson makes awesome machine art.
Oh, and I got promoted to admin on ABS. And then worik_brown tried to pronounce my name but just slaughtered it.
Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Next update will have #emptv comics by mousse.
Hi everyone! You may have noticed that the sites have been down for a little while. And by a little while, I mean several days. To be honest, I'm not quite sure about what exactly happened, but what I do know is that this was caused by Oktagone Publishing Network's truly heroic incompetence.
In case you're not aware of the Internet Webhosting Hierarchy, this is how it all works. We're addon domains on Jaketeck's account, because he's cool like that. He buys webhosting from IdleServ, a very good and helpful host. Now, until a few days ago, I was not aware of Oktagone's involvement. I thought IdleServ just bought from Ezzi, an incredibly huge provider. But as it turns out, the IdleServ webserver we're hosted on, CP4, is actually provided by Oktagone, and Oktagone buys from Ezzi. And this is where problems start to crop up.
On Monday night, I came home and discovered my sites were down, and I was told they had been down for a few hours. No problem, I just emailed IdleServ's support and went on with my life. Next morning? Whoops, it's still not up! So I checked WebHostingTalk's downtime forum, and found this thread (registration required). Contained within the many pages are reports from Ezzi's tech support that Oktagone hadn't paid their bill, and was shut down. Oktagone then stated that they were moving to a new datacenter in Perth, Australia. They also stated that some core switches at Ezzi's New York datacenter went down, and that they were flying a network engineer halfway around the world to fix them. I'm pretty sure this was just a bunch of lies, and Ezzi stated in the thread that Oktagone's servers will be permanently shut down as of 8:00PM EST Friday.
Where does this leave us? Well, I've made a complete backup of all the sites and databases. Ezzi was generous enough to put the servers back up for a day so everyone could back up their data. Ezzi, you rock. IdleServ has stated that if Oktagone cancels their Ezzi account, they'll take over the server, but with a different IP. So, it's quite possible that we'll have a bit more downtime soon. Or it could be a seamless transition, I don't know how this shit works. We'll see how this turns out. Worst-case scenario, I'll just have to upload all the data and move all the domains to a different host. I'm just glad I have all my files back.
Musophobic illustrated Oktagone's self-defeating business practices:
He also illustrated the Hierarchy: server.png
So yeah, never ever ever buy from Oktagone. They lie to their customers and pull shit like this. Bad, bad business.
I was going to post this earlier, but then all this shit happened: SpikeTrap, a PHP script for trapping email harvesters. Nowhere near perfect, but I've tested it with encouraging results. 17chan discussion thread · ABS Forums discussion thread
Thanks for the internet!
UPDATE: Oktagone logged into their switches and shut off the server ports, rendering the sites inaccessible again. Ezzi then replaced Oktagone's switches with their own, so they couldn't do that. Also, it would seem Oktagone is actually a one-man operation, run by Greg Macsok. Thanks for trying to fuck over your customers at every opportunity, Greg! You stupid piece of shit.
IdleServ says they'll be taking over CP4 tomorrow, and they set the TTL on all our domains to 5 minutes, so when the IP changes, downtime will be miniscule. I really cannot express how grateful I am to IdleServ and Ezzi for being so helpful during this debacle.
UPDATE UPDATE: IdleServ now owns CP4, and the IP has been changed. We are no longer run by incompetent Australian webhosts. Thanks, IdleServ!
