As many will have noticed, On Line Opinion was "off the air" for most of today. It was due to a problem with the server that has not been properly diagnosed yet. However it has been sufficiently diagnosed to get us back online.

Apologies to those who had their daily routine upended as a result.

We have been planning to move OLO to a new box for a while, and would have done so apart from the fact that we are currently upgrading our Linux server for our commercial clients.

We hope that a new server will solve the problems.

My thanks to Jay and Andrew for getting the site back-up. Jay put in some out of hours work as well as fitting it around his lecture timetable and Andrew juggled advice to me with two university exams.

G'day All,
Just like to say thanks to Jay & Andrew then Graham
Have a great life From Dave

JL Deland, in her comment of Wednesday, 9 September 2009 at 8:45:05 PM to Legal Eagle's article 'Nobody Loves Me' (see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9398#150349 ) briefly entertains the idea that the legal fraternity may have been responsible for a denial of service attack upon OLO before dismissing it on the basis that she "[Didn't] think the lawyers would have the know how."

I don't think GrahamY is taking this being off line seriously enough. Hang the upending of OLO users' daily routines. The whole country could have come to a grinding halt with this interruption to the constant steady flow of opinionating upon which the political establishment has come to depend, had it gone on much longer! So what did the geeks say was the cause?

With a DOS attack by the lawyers out of contention, I'd be more concerned that Ziggy Switkowski might be a little peeved by the way in which his 'feel good' article 'The march of (technological) progress' ( http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9367&page=0 ) has been received. Now Ziggy would know who's who in the Teltra infrastructural zoo, and who can croak loudest in Frogpond, wouldn't he? He could arrange to have a few wires pulled, surely. Even arrange for OLO to contract a case of domain poisoning, if he wanted.

Then again, it could be Sol Trujillo, dissatisfied with both the effect of his 'racism' spray and the paltriness of his severance pay, striking right at the insular heart(?) of Australian public opinionation: at OLO itself! He'd know how to do it too.

Here's a report on Whirlpool re internet service yesterday: http://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1847&show=replies

Perhaps there were several problems, not just one. The connection was timing out when trying to bring up OLO as early as 8:15 AM. I did not run into problems getting other sites until 2:11 PM when I got a 503 message 'No available server to handle this request' trying Twitter.

Old problem revisited.

Have other OLOers had difficulties posting today? I have had to try many times to post comments on the Animal Breeds and the Overweight topics. Get the usual message in its little grey and red box that the problem has been reported to staff, but I rather doubt it has.

I think the day OLO took off, and went on strike, simply illustrates the enormous influence that computers have had on all facets of Australian life. I am a radical, a free radical I hope, in more ways than one, but my opinions are not popular with many people, not the least the aristocracy in Australia.

OLO is one place where freedom of speech is seriously important, and the day it went down, packed its bags, and stopped working, caused me some consternation. In the six months or so since I started to enjoy your company, in cyberspace, I have thrown out some rather radical ideas, get some feedback that has been enormously helpful, and been both inspired and awed by the breadth and scope of the audience, that reads what is posted here. We do not know who is reading what we say, but we can be sure if it is B**l someone will tell us.

So OLO please keep in good with the techies who maintain our lines of communication. To me it is like alchemy, I don’t know how they do it, but I have a couple of whiz kids with computers who keep me online, and we should never underestimate the importance of this technology. Onya OLO