Article written by Adam

6 responses to “Web Apocalypse: Twitter DDoS, Kill IE6, Paid Online News, and Facebook Issues Oh Noes!”

  1. Denver Engagement Photographer

    Being a computer engineer I can imagine that the developers over at twitter were freaking the Eff out. Although there is a part of me that half gets a little giddy inside thinking about how much traffic you would have to send to take down a site like twitter. I’m sure 10’s of thousands of computers must have been sending requests all at the same time. O and I seriously doubt paying for content is ever going to catch on. I just don’t think people are ever going to put up money for something that they can get elsewhere online for free. If all of them did it at the exact same time then maybe it would work,

  2. Adam Pieniazek

    Yeah, I bet yesterday was not an easy day for the Twitter server admins. When you consider that during normal usage, Twitter is firing out tons of requests it must have taken an epic amount of zombie requests to take it down. I wonder if they targeted a high volume account so that it would piggyback off some of the regular + attack traffic.

    The Boston Globe just announced they’ll start charging for online news too. It’s a trend we’ll likely see pick up, but at the end of the day it’s going to be really tough convincing people to pay up for a product they’ve not only been getting for free but have also been receiving diminishing quality over the past few years. Very tough sell and I bet we’ll see other alternative revenue attempts come up after the paid content model doesn’t deliver.

  3. Leopold

    That do sounds a bit apocalyptic, the way you put it) But I think this is just another turn of internet development. Changes are always good, even if they sound disturbing at first.

  4. Bryan Lee

    I work for one of those companies that for some reason are still using the very much outdated browser IE6. As we all know this browser has been around since 2001, making it over eight years old. You don’t see too many software packages that are that old still being supported out there. In my opinion it is way past time for IE6 to be gracefully retired in favor of browsers that are more in sync with the current web standards, such as IE8, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome.
    While I personally use Firefox 3.5, I am not advocating any one browser, they all have their merits. It is frustrating to have features available such as tabbed browsing and then be forced to open a new window when you click on a link on a website. I realize that in the current economy that most if not all companies are seriously watching how expenses affect their bottom line, but it would seem to make more sense to me for their IT departments to keep abreast how things are changing and make the appropriate changes to their in-house sites to keep up with the constantly changing world of software and technology. I am not saying that they should be making weekly or monthly changes as this would not be a never-ending battle. I am however saying that they should keep things flexible and up-to-date enough that when a newer version of browser comes out, that it shouldn’t be a major, cost-intensive undertaking to make the switch to the new application.
    Tying your in-house applications to one specific version of a software application or browser is just asking for trouble. You will find yourself with more headaches and costs down the road as you scramble to bring yourself up-to-date when the application is no longer supported by those who created it in the first place.

  5. Justin Wright

    I can’t wait for the day when IE6 dies for good! In the mean time, we’ll have to settle on awesome IE6 footer messages lol.

  6. Andrew Keir

    I think that days a looooong way away still Justin. So many companies etc don’t upgrade anything the the machine falls to dust.