News Sites Slammed By Michael Jackson Traffic 387
miller60 writes "Major news sites struggled to remain online yesterday evening as news of Michael Jackson's death triggered huge waves of Internet traffic. TMZ.com broke the news and was quickly overwhelmed, while Twitter turned off features to handle its load. They weren't alone. Keynote Systems reports that ABC, AOL, CBS, CNN Money, MSNBC, NBC, and Yahoo! News all experienced performance problems between 6:15 and 9 pm Eastern time, when the average availability of news sites tracked by Keynote dropped from almost 100% to 86%. The cloud computing crowd immediately jumped on the traffic jams to argue their case. 'Not have a cloud bursting strategy in the age of cloud computing isn't just wrong — it's idiotic,' wrote one cloud blogger."
Last.FM was hit hard (Score:5, Interesting)
According to this graph [flickr.com].
Its Princess Diana all over again (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi,
when Princess Diana died in 1997, we were supplying support services for one of the biggest news sites here in germany. It hit the site like a Tsunami. Unluckily someone reported in an IRC channel, that the news site would display pictures of the dying princess. So there was a real frenzy. It started early in the morning and we were called to fix a server malfunction. Unluckily the server malfunction turned out to be 99+% TCP SYN packets on the incoming side of the internet connect. That was at a time, when major news sites were connected by 2mbps lines :-). We were so fixed on locating a technical problem, it took us some minutes to connect the symptons to an event in the real world. Luckily the cab driver who picked me up had his radio on.
CU, Martin
Re:*sigh* (Score:3, Interesting)
Society rewards greatness in competitive, valuable fields. Writing music may not be as valuable as curing cancer, but no one in this comment thread could write/sing a song as well as he. So that's why we reward him, despite his personal shortcomings.
Re:"cloud blogger"? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Four-hundred years ago, on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threatened by automation, flung their wooden shoes, called sabo, into the machines to stop them . . . hence the word: sabotage."
Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
Its sad really... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Last.FM was hit hard (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how these events affected the output of a few random number generators [princeton.edu].
Re:Poll results (Score:3, Interesting)
"Michael sold 750+ million albums."
Probably 75% of the sales go to teenage girls who love overdubbed, synthesized music and guys who look like girls.
The jackson 5 didn't use synth's or much, if any, dubbing. What I take issue with is that MJ was someone who clearly was never happy with himself - so much so that given his resources he did everything possible to alter his self-image. I think there are many people out there that can relate to what MJ displayed publicly, only most people have the luxury of dealing with most issues privately. Granted MJ was paid well for his life in the spotlight, but what is different about MJ from other celebs is that he lived his entire life in the spotlight - he knew nothing else. MJ is someone that excelled at entertainment but failed at life, and it wasn't his fault - it's all he knew.
That thing with the molestation/extortion? Look at his interview with that reporter - MJ honest to god didn't think there was anything wrong with sleeping in a bed with kid(s). He looked at that reporter like a dear-in-headlights and couldn't figure out why the reporter was making an issue of it. MJ was naive: that doesn't make him bad, it makes him a target.
RIP MJ. Hope you found happiness.
Re:Poll results (Score:3, Interesting)
He may have had a huge effect on the music industry, but he didn't have much effect on the rest of the world - which amounts to quite a lot.
750M albums sold and about 6B people on the earth now plus no doubt hundreds of millions more singles sold, dvd's, videos viewed on mtv and every other channel in the world, countless radio station plays and of course the internet.. I'd say he had an effect on a VERY significant portion of the worlds population.
I'd hazard a guess and say there are very few people anywhere in the world that don't know him, even in the remotest, most backwards regions.. he's probably more famous than god and can moonwalk better.
It certainly wasn't "the music industry" that bought his music, they just profited from it.
Just to show how popular he still is - his new shows set to start next month in London sold out within hours - 50 shows, 1 million tickets.. and thats just for concerts in one country. That is impressive!
Like him or not, good or bad, he did have an effect.