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Slashdotting hurts

A few days ago, my article on GMail vs. Pine was posted to Slashdot. Soon after, it was posted to Digg, Reddit, and other geek news sites.

The torrent of traffic quickly brought my poor little server to its knees. I tried bringing it back up, but the flood of visitors put it right back down again. I had no choice but to wait until the story ran its course and fell off the Slashdot front page. My hosting company was not amused.

So, apologies for the outage. On the plus side, it generated a lot of comments. Digg user oltompic posted my favorite:

IT’S JUST E-MAIL !!!

read your e-mail and send your e-mail. holy shit.

Eloquent in its simplicity. I can only hope to achieve to such a Zen outlook on life, liberty, and the pursuit of email nirvana.

Standard

5 thoughts on “Slashdotting hurts”

  1. Guest

    heh, nice work Ryan!

    this was my favorite comment:

    by this great guy
    I suggest we all start using "snarfed" as a synonym
for "slashdotted". As in "we have figuratively
stolen your server('s bandwith)" == "we have
slashdotted your server" == "we have snarfed
your server". I like this word better anyway.
Thank you, OP, for your contribution
to the /. subculture language !
    PS: Don't worry about your server, it will be back
up online soon when the story will leave the front
page.

    – Maulik

  3. Guest

    aww, the price of popularity … so sad. At least you hosting company did not terminate your service contact. I have heard of that happening in extreme situations.

    – Dan

  5. Guest

    I hope your hosting company won’t termitane your service contact at all.

    ~~- Liz Vicious

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