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It has become ridiculously easy to pull the wool over the eyes of ZUG visitors.
Over the past few months, John Hargrave and I have been conducting a series of experiments to find out what sort of idiots you all think we are. When you are done reading this article, you'll know exactly what sort of idiots we are.
EXPERIMENT #1: RANDOM THREAD ANCHORS
John and I were perusing the message board GAB on ZUG when we noticed a certain contentment or complacency, if you will, with the users. It seems that people had gotten far too comfortable with the way everything worked: when you read a thread, the server would store a little bit of information, so the next time you click on the thread, you would be taken to the last post you read via the magic of HTML anchors.
Anchors Aweigh! |
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if ($user != "johnhargrave") {
$anchor =int(rand($numRecords + 1));
# This'll put a little sand in their vaginas. -js
}
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We threw in a few coarse heuristics that would randomly take you to the bottom of unread threads or to the top of threads with sixty posts. Still most people weren't bothered. So I artificially increased the possibility of getting a random or broken anchor to 100% to see if anyone would notice.
Number of complaint e-mails: 11
Average amount of time wasted per user: 9 secs
Funny factor: 2
Hardly a peep from anyone! Time to increase firepower...
EXPERIMENT #2: N00B INFLUX
We noticed that whenever new people (n00bs, to the GAB community) joined, they were met with a mixed feeling of resentment and hatred, especially when they cant speak rite and use abbrs alot u kno what I mean?? ... ahem ... sorry about that. So, we wrote a couple of AI bots. We named them "Dur I'm a fish" and "gorckat" and set them loose on the community.
They passed the Turing test! No one could tell they were bots and not real morons.
Number of complaint e-mails: 4
Average amount of time wasted per user: 61 secs
Funny factor: 6
We thought perhaps we had gotten too good, so we unleashed a much more powerful adversary...
EXPERIMENT #3: INTERNAL SERVER ERRORS
This is the ZUG server. Powerful enough to serve up all of John's famous pranks and then some.
But this one is a specially commissioned TRS-80 used to power the message board, GAB on ZUG.
It was purchased at a Salvation Army superstore just outside a Haitian slum for five bucks. The appropriate Apache software was loaded onto it and in the middle of the night all the GAB CGIs were switched over. No one noticed. Well, no one but a couple of New Zealanders.
500 Internal Server Error |
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Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or
misconfiguration and was unable to complete
your request.
Please contact the server administrator,
jay@zug.com and inform them of the time the error occurred,
and anything you might have done that may have
caused the error.
More information about this error may be available
in the server error log.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden
error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.0.40 Server at www.zug.com Port 80
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Look familiar? |
The new server was fast enough to handle up to eight concurrent users, provided no one tried to post at the same time as anyone else. In that event, it would trigger an internal server error, seen at right.
We also decided that random crashing wasn't enough, so I had a special "panic" button installed. This would ensure that we could cause misery to our eight concurrent users anytime John or I wanted. Of course, it was a big hit at parties. Everyone delighted in pressing the button, then watching as several dozen server requests were denied with a big 500 error. Even grumpy ol' Al Natanagara joined in the fun and pressed it.
At first, only the chronic F5 users were vocally annoyed. Then people started getting snippy in their posts, clearly becoming more and more frustrated. Some enterprising people began to try to use it to their advantage, blaming the error for their post screw-ups. Others weren't fooled.
But this was truly our piece de resistance, if you'll pardon my French. It took something as big as crashing the server multiple times daily to really get your goat(se).
Number of complaint e-mails: 17893
Average amount of time wasted per user: 14.5 mins
Funny factor: off the charts eh!
EPILOGUE
Now that we've completed our experiments and seen exactly what kind of people we're dealing with we'll go ahead and put GAB on the main server. There's only so much you can learn from people freaking out about a site going down, much like there are limits on what aliens can learn from anal probing.
Jay "newwave" Stevens, the man with the master plan, is a programming genius who should probably not be let out in public. Roofie Raccoon contributed to this article. Number of internal server errors encountered while submitting this article: 4
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Like This? Rate It!
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Side-splitting
54 votes
5.0
/live?func=new_user&msgid=1200715
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15 Comments on "The Zug Internal Server Prank"
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0 votes
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/live?func=new_user&msgid=1200719
Big Irish Guy 203,956  21
05/19/2005 04:10 PM
This looks familiar.
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0 votes
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Chi Chi Felipe: Operating Thetan 161,353 14
05/19/2005 04:11 PM
Sorry about that earlier, folks. I wanted newwave to get his clickies.
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0 votes
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DemoMonkey, Vaultmaster. 166,252 10
05/19/2005 04:12 PM
I'm not clicking this. It's a complete ripoff of an article someone else did earlier today.
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0 votes
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Senior Destructor: Retired Supervillan 60,724 12
05/19/2005 04:13 PM
Demo, I am finding a random comment of yours elsewhere to clickie for that.
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0 votes
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Big Irish Guy 203,956 21
05/19/2005 04:14 PM
All earned clicks will be given once the comments made the first time this was posted are returned.
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0 votes
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I Am Straw 97,995 37
05/19/2005 06:03 PM
Either the pulling and reposting of this article because they screwed up is sweet, delicious irony......or this is another joke at our expense.
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0 votes
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Scorpion 4,080 9
05/19/2005 08:07 PM
This still doesn't explain the broken swearbot.
Froster.
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0 votes
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Hammerhead the Great 59,399 14
05/19/2005 10:38 PM
This also doesn't explain the fact that when you enter the main page as someone posts, all the threads dissapear. And if you refreShakespeare may take three or four times to get the threads back if the board is taking multiple posts.
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The Rockin' Donkey 77,546 17
05/19/2005 10:50 PM
Jay's just making excuses for his sloppy code.
</Mike Moon>
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0 votes
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Ditdah, only 58 days away 123,110 14
05/19/2005 10:55 PM
Hey Donkey - Dweezel says that you should have your ass on IM. I just wanted to pass the message along.
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0 votes
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The Rockin' Donkey 77,546 17
05/19/2005 11:24 PM
I don't know anyone named Dweezel.
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Just Ducky 10,666 13
05/19/2005 11:39 PM
It's funny they bring up issues with Zug.. it pisses me off that it takes you right to the bottom of a thread when you click on it.
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Dogs Akimbo 211,574 32
05/20/2005 12:59 AM
newwave's a guy?
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0 votes
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EllaPhant 800 8
05/20/2005 01:18 AM
See, the anchor thing pissed me off, but I just figured it was my computer Frost-ing up.
It's like my friend Alec said "God Ella, I could probably rape you and you would just say 'oh well, maybe he was feeling really horny today. too bad for me'".
I'm such a pushover.
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0 votes
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TEDphat 6,408 9
05/20/2005 02:12 AM
Yea, if by pushover you mean rape victim...
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