OK, Dreamhost has had two outages due to power outages this week. Lots and lots of people are mad. Luckily this is the only site I host with Dreamhost, and this site doesn’t really matter so it doesn’t really upset me.
However, there are lots of people who try to run a business with Dreamhost. They either use Dreamhost to serve their company website or they resell web hosting. In either case, having two large periods of unexpected downtime in two weeks will have a negative impact on business.
There has apparently been another power outage at the datacenter. One of the generators caught fire and they were taken offline. We’re waiting for more information and we’ll post here as soon as we hear anything.
I posted some stuff about the outage on the Slackware Blog, including some links to some comments made by some upset customers:
Lotsofcustomers are pissed off, as they probably should be. Those links are to customers comments on the most recent post at the DreamHost Blog. I’m lucky enough that the only sites I have there are personal and don’t really matter. I feel for the people trying to run a business with Dreamhost. I had problems at work with Bluehost, but nothing like this.
One customer thinks Dreamhost should demand compensation from the datacenter in LA for the recent downtime:
I think Dreamhost should look at demanding compensation from the datacentre – and passing that onto affected customers.
A datacentre which says it provides “one of the most sophisticated, redundant power systems in all of Los Angeles” should never have this sort of problems. Sure – I can understand one power outage disaster (accidents happen), but TWO in the space of a week is just unacceptable.
Sounds like a good idea to me. There’s lots of interesting comments at the most recent post on the Dreamhost Blog. Most of the comments are pretty negative and a fair number suggest they’re going to drop Dreamhost and go elsewhere.
AjaxWp is a lightweight JavaScript enhancement that adds AJAX functionality to WordPress blogs speeding up load times, increasing the responsiveness of the user interface and giving the blog an overall cooler look.
It’s supposed to work, with minimal configuration, right out of the box. This plugin could be interesting, I’m gonna see what it can do this weekend.
Techcrunch has a good post discussing the recent decision made (lastnight) by the US House. House Resolution 5319 (the Deleting Online Predators Act, or DOPA) was passed lastnight with a vote of 410 to 15. If the resolution does indeed become law, schools and public libraries will lose federal internet subsidies if they don’t block social networking sites such as MySpace and Newsvine.
Now, I’m all for keeping MySpace out of schools, it has no place there. But every social networking site shouldn’t be targeted, that’s just insane. That’s like banning all light bulbs because one manufacturer has problems with their light bulbs exploding. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I’m very upset by this decision. Go over to Techcrunch to read more about it. They’ve also got links to many other sites that discuss HR5319 in greater detail.
If you are running WordPress as your blogging platform and if you have been trusting enough to leave User registration enabled for guests, DISABLE IT IMMEDIATELY (in wp-admin >> options: make sure “Anyone can register” is not checked).
Additionally, delete or disable ANY guest account already created by people you are not sure about.
Leaving it open and letting people sign-up for guest accounts on your WordPress blog could lead to incredibly nasty stuff happening if anybody so desired. And trust me I am not exaggerating this. So don’t wait a second to disable this option and please relay the message.
Now, the WordPress development team was apparently notified a “while back”. They supposedly haven’t done anything yet to rectify this problem. Dr. Dave has received a lot of questions due to his initial post. In turn, he’s made another post in which he addresses some of those questions.
Hopefully we’ll see WordPress 2.0.4 out within a few days.
UPDATE:WordPress 2.0.4 Beta is out. It should be safe to open user registrations under WordPress 2.0.4. I’d expect to see the final 2.0.4 release next week.
[via Ryan Boren]
The PC De-Crapifier is designed to remove a specific list unwanted software in an unattended fashion. Before running, the user may select exactly what software should be removed. Currently, it is targeted for use on most Dell machines; however it will theoretically run on anything that has the software listed below.
That’s just too awesome. Every time we get a new Dell machine here at work, I spend about an hour cleaning all the crap trial software out. This tool should greatly reduce the time needed to remove all the crapware.
