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[News] amiga.com up againANN.lu
Posted on 10-May-2000 06:57 GMT by Christian Kemp34 comments
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Many people wrote in to say that amiga.com is up again, after what seemed like taking the weekend off. When was the last time you saw a company website, or even a personal homepage, being down for two days?
amiga.com up again : Comment 19 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Joseph "Floid" Kanowitz on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
I'm not even going to get into the stability issue, since I haven't bothered to see what sort of platform the server is running on, and have no clue about AI's connectivity...
...but I'd say the "Downtown.com" mystery page says something about the professionalism (or lack thereof) of their webmonkey. At best, it's a plug for someone else's enterprise, at worst it's someone who doesn't have the sense to clean up after they've fooled around trying to make things work correctly.
Of course, Amiga is devoting more effort to producing product than brand image at the moment, so the website is not a high priority (they'd rather investors start caring after they have a product to show off), but it seems that Amiga has been cursed with the inability to produce a nice site.
Of course, when you look at Eyetech's site, you can see that the community as a whole seems to be a bit behind on the whole issue...
amiga.com up again : Comment 16 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
Check out this URL and read what problems they had whith their ISP
http://www.thebesite.com/1/news/?read=336
amiga.com up again : Comment 17 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Robert Simmonds on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Christian Kemp):
QUOTE:
In the two years that I've been with Dreamhost now, their longest downtime was little over a day, and they admittedly had major problems back then.
Well, I seem to recall another big amiga site having a rather nasty downtime with dreamhosts, about a week IIRC.
So It can, and does happen, and its not amiga's fault if it does happen.
Robert Simmonds, Editor of Amiga Showcase. http://www.amigashowcase.org.uk
amiga.com up again : Comment 18 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Eoghann Irving on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 15 (Michael Jantzen):
- Utter BS.
And which particular bit of my post was bullshit? That my
company suffered a week's outage? That outages of 2 days or more
happen to websites all the time? That Amazon has suffered 24
hour outages despite running on numerous servers?
- I have had a webserver on hana.maybe.net (its pretty
- dam slow, so it might seem like its down but its not...) for the
- last year and a half with NO down time.
And that proves that no websites suffer downtime? Talk about
bullshit.
- If I can do that with a leased ADSL line - Amiga Inc can do
- better with a T1.
1) A leased line relies on the provider. If the provider fucks up
you can only move. That takes time. Sometimes weeks, depending on
what you have to do. The fact that you personally have a provider
that hasn't fucked up doesn't prove a thing.
2) servers fall over, get hacked etc. It happens.
3) Amiga is NOT in the web business. The website is an extra. It
is not central to their business and I don't believe for a second
they are using it as their method of attracting business
partners.
You can puff and pout as much as you like. The fact remains that
websites DO go down for periods of several days. This happens for
many different reasons. Even running co-located servers is not
guaranteed to avoid it.
amiga.com up again : Comment 15 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Michael Jantzen on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Eoghann Irving):
Utter BS. I have had a webserver on hana.maybe.net (its pretty dam slow, so it might seem like its down but its not...) for the last year and a half with NO down time.
If I can do that with a leased ADSL line - Amiga Inc can do better with a T1.
Michael Jantzen ^_^
amiga.com up again : Comment 14 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Shaun on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Christian Kemp):
That's good to know Christian. I moved http://www.gofar-mtb.com - a mountain bike website to Dreamhost on the basis that I've never seen ann down and it's usually blazingly fast. Didn't know you got a percentage though. Oh and it's cheap and in the US so we don't fall foul of the latest UK Demon internet legal problems.
Perhaps Amiga Inc should do the same ;-)
Shaun
amiga.com up again : Comment 13 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Shaun on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Pierre Narcisse):
It's pretty rare that OS developers are also responsible for the website design and even more so for the maintenance and service provision. Sorry, but two days downtime on the site shows that the webhosting service has screwed up and that Amiga Inc had no contingency for such a situation. I'm firmly with Christian on this one.
Shaun
amiga.com up again : Comment 9 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Stuart on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Marc):
Here, here
amiga.com up again : Comment 10 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Pierre Narcisse on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Christian Kemp):
I Much rather have Amiga Inc work on developing a Kick butt Os/Oe and hardware that will soon be release then a Kick butt web page and no product. Look at what Viscorp did when it was opting for Amiga or Escom and Gateway. I agree totaly about the outage that is unacceptable. However the the web page can wait to be redesign when the new Amiga is release
amiga.com up again : Comment 11 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by alf on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
why should all companywebsites look the same.
you can always see that they are made with the same style.
I like the style of the graphics on ami's page (they are a little bit crude, ok)
I agree there are better one's but they are a small company so why act as a large one
now, do that when the time is right.
hope that's soon.
alf
amiga.com up again : Comment 12 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by cYB0rG on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
Yeah, two days 'down', is not really important, I know a lot of big internet/providing firms who have sometime some problems with their servers...
What's 2 days ? (the old website wasn't down , but not updated often)
Btw The new website is a bit lame ......
amiga.com up again : Comment 6 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by damocles on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
This is much to do about nothing. AI's server is located at their ISP and over the weekend, there was no one at their ISP to do physically touch the server (I would presume reboot) until Monday.
amiga.com up again : Comment 7 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Marc on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (damocles):
any ISP without 24/7 technical support is a joke.
amiga.com up again : Comment 8 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Christian Kemp on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (damocles):
> This is much to do about nothing. AI's server is located at their ISP and
> over the weekend, there was no one at their ISP to do physically touch the
> server (I would presume reboot) until Monday.
Then I would say, switch providers. Imagine you are running an e-business.
Imagine you are earning 100,000 USD per day. Imagine your server being down
for two days. Now, Amiga is not selling any products right now, so things
might be a little bit different. But what if a potential investor is trying
to get more information on them. He heard of their website. He can't access
it. Do you think he'll try again two days later? Imagine a major website
linking to them. Many potential developers. An hour later, the server goes
down. 10,000 potential developers stare at a 500 Server Error. Do you think
they'll return?
Of course I'm exagerrating in my examples. But I suppose you get my point.
As a company, you have to build up an overall image. A website that is down for
several days doesn't really contribute to that.
amiga.com up again : Comment 5 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Len Carsner on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
Perhaps they were hit by the "Love Bug"? Or they went offline temporarily to
prevent being struck by it?
amiga.com up again : Comment 3 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Erik Oftedal on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
So you mean that Amiga.com is a bad designed page?
amiga.com up again : Comment 4 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Christian Kemp on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Erik Oftedal):
> So you mean that Amiga.com is a bad designed page?
For the audience they are trying to reach, yes. Of course the current layout
is already better than the last version, but there's still a lot lacking both
in visual style and site structure.
Always bear in mind that this is just my personal opinion. :)
amiga.com up again : Comment 2 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Christian Kemp on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Eoghann Irving):
I tend to disagree. If you pay premium money for your connectivity, and I assume Amiga does that, it is your right to demand 99% uptime. Being down for two days means only 93.5% uptime for that month.
In the two years that I've been with Dreamhost now, their longest downtime was little over a day, and they admittedly had major problems back then. But I'm paying next to nothing, compared to more expensive hosting and colocation plans out there (which I assume Amiga are using).
I'm not sure who's to blame for the server outage. If it was the hosting provider, Amiga didn't really make a good choice when switching. If it was Amiga's fault, they definately should hire a dedicated webmaster who knows what to do in such situations.
If, like Amiga you attempt to gain a marketshare, get new developers on board, make strategic partnerships with large companies, you cannot have a website that's badly designed, and completely down for two days in a row.
Like I commented in the news article, it is strange how almost all websites thrive to have 99% uptime, and the large majority of them succeed; while Amiga goes on hiatus for two days for the second time this year (the first time due to a server change). If even my personal homepage that barely costs me 10$ a month has a more reliable connection and a better uptime than amiga.com, a company with budget of I-don't-know-how-many-millions, then something is definately wrong.
amiga.com up again : Comment 1 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Eoghann Irving on 09-May-2000 22:00 GMT
When did I last say a webserver down for two days? It happens all the time.
My own company was cut off from the net for a week a month or two back due to
problems with the company who provided our leased line.
Only very very large companies can keep their websites up all the time.
Even Amazon has been known to go down for a day.
amiga.com up again : Comment 27 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Robert Simmonds on 10-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 24 (J. M. Furtado Sr.):
QUOTE:
:It seems like old times with Commodore again.
:They promise us the World and give us the marbles.
:They promise us a bridge, but give us a clif.
For god sake! they have only had the company for 5 months!! How do you expect them to give you the world in 5 months? Even god took 6 days! ;)
Give them a chance. you cant expect people to suddenly bring out a machine capable of taking over the world in 5 months.
Amiga have actually been very open with us, and have told us MUCH more than other companies would do in the same situation. A dev box is now available, and they have announced (and confirmed) a lot of big partners.
Just stay off their case, and let them do their job.
Robert Simmonds, Editor of Amiga Showcase. http://www.amigashowcase.org.uk
amiga.com up again : Comment 26 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Shaun on 10-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 25 (Eoghann Irving):
"Its very excessive and we were furious about it. But there wasn't anything we could do.
Thats the point I'm making. It takes time to move a network. You need to sort out
a provider, IP addresses etc. "
This is what is wrong. Anyone whose done any system management will tell you that you're supposed to have disaster recovery plans in situ before a disaster occurs. Disaster happens, you invoke plan B which gets you back up in a minimum of time - a planned minimum too. eg. a second web server, backup isdn line should the T1 get cut etc.
Linux, Apache or whatever is irrelevant - you can't (realistically) protect against floods, lightning, drunken truck drivers crashing through your server room...
Now either Amiga Inc thought it unimportant or their service managment sucks is the impression I get when a public facing website is down that long.
Shaun
amiga.com up again : Comment 23 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Rippetoe on 10-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Christian Kemp):
This is the point I have been trying to get anyone at amiga inc to realize.
Bill, Gary, Randy,and Fleecy each know of the problem which is simple to fix. Broken
links are just as bad as the site being down. especially the developers link.
on front page it is linked to www.amiga.net which times out.on the other pages of
amiga.com it is linked to amiga.com/developers/ file not found..
I can butcher html but I am not a multimillion dollar corporation.
I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but:
Keep It Smiple Stupid KISS for short
Get fancy after you have all the html working.
amiga.com up again : Comment 25 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Eoghann Irving on 10-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Michael Jantzen):
- What find is bullshit is that Amiga Inc. would have any downtime - I'm not really talking
- about your company - howeve 1 week of downtime is a tad bit excessive.
Its very excessive and we were furious about it. But there wasn't anything we could do.
Thats the point I'm making. It takes time to move a network. You need to sort out
a provider, IP addresses etc.
- I'd trust my life to my Linux servers for not only security, but also reliability.
More fool you. Linux is neither indestructable nor 100% secure.
Linux CAN crash. Apache CAN crash. Its very easy to set up a Linux server with dozens
of security holes in it.
Simple point is this. We don't know what happened, so getting on a high horse
about this issue is plain daft.
amiga.com up again : Comment 24 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by J. M. Furtado Sr. on 10-May-2000 22:00 GMT
It seems to me for the time I've beem following this compamy Amiga Inc.
It seems like old times with Commodore again.
They promise us the World and give us the marbles.
They promise us a bridge, but give us a clif.
There site goes down for a long time and guess what, nothing from them not even a peep, give us a sign that you are still alive.
I hope they aren't taking us for a ride just like all of the other companies that said Follow us, you shall find Amigas in the desert.
They talk about all of these new things that will make Amiga great Again, I would like to see it sometime in my lifetime.
And Oh' yes the bridge for us old Amigans, The overpriced dead elephant the BOXER...????.
With all of this hype about the new Amiga do you think they are smarth enough to emulate my old but great Amiga 3000, or are they going to do what commodore did and let us the people, the users, come up with a solution again.
Amiga Inc. Commodore is dead, but you are starting to remind me of them.
Petro if you are somewhere in there,(Amiga Inc.)please say something I'm still interested in what you had for a vision for the Amiga.
J M Furtado Sr.
jmfboing@aol.com
amiga.com up again : Comment 22 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by John Shepard on 10-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Christian Kemp):
I remember an early Dreamhost outage that was caused by an exploding video card! Took them 2 days to swap machines.
I forgave them back then, because I knew they were growing. A year and a half later they forgot how to administrate quotas, and their knowledgable tech staff had been replaced by patronizing cubicle drones, so we left after spending a week trying to explain to them what caused our outage.
Anyway, there's many ways for a site to go down, and many reasons for it not to come back to life immediately. It could be a lousy ISP who can't reach the guy who has the keys to the server room. It could be a blown part and there's no way to get a replacement until Tuesday. It could be a 'supply chain' problem, wherein the ISP is timely but they need something from someone else who isn't available till Monday, like a consultant for a particularly rare OS/hardware combination. It could be a technical problem that really does take 48 hours to fix. It could even be an evil ISP whose original contract only provides for 90% uptime and no support on weekends - the last company I worked for got suckered into such a contract by letting our idiot salespeople talk to their idiot salespeople. It could even be an idiot driving a backhoe up the road who didn't read those "call before you dig" signs and thus tore right through a buried T1 - and replacing such lines is usually the job of the phone company, and if they're anything like Ameritech it could take them weeks to figure out how to do the job.
amiga.com up again : Comment 21 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Wilson on 10-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 17 (Robert Simmonds):
Reply to Comment 17
QUOTE:
"In the two years that I've been with Dreamhost now, their longest downtime was little over a day, and they admittedly had major problems back then."
"Well, I seem to recall another big amiga site having a rather nasty downtime with dreamhosts, about a week IIRC."
Yep Amibench (I dont know if this is the site your on about :) had a downtime of about 4 and a half days where Dreamhosts screwed everything up, and then spent ages replying to emails.
It left us with a dead server for 2 days, and then a webserver with no cgi access.
I would only say "you get what you pay for" Pay little, get sh!t service, pay alot, and you get backup servers for backup servers, so you can backup.
I also think that Amiga should invest in webmaster who can actually use the same font for all the text on the images.. I seem to notice that its changed, from one style/type to another.
But anyway, Who cares, Its only a website. Its not like it was full of amazing new press releases, and shots of bill clinton naked! :)
Mark 'tecno' Wilson : team member of AmiBench (which has been up and down about
as much as bill & monica...:)
amiga.com up again : Comment 20 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Michael Jantzen on 10-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (Eoghann Irving):
What find is bullshit is that Amiga Inc. would have any downtime - I'm not really talking about your company - howeve 1 week of downtime is a tad bit excessive.
Listen I work for an ISP d00d. No offense intended to anyone who works in the industry, but I've seen why a lot of websites/isp services go down - and it usually has nothing to do with people breaking into computers or equipent failures. It has more to do with,
Whoops I didn't leave enough trailing ...'s to seperate reverse naming schemes from network names (so someone's dns gets scewed up...).
or
Whoops - That beta Kernel/OS I installed hanged on me over the weekend
or
Whoops - I don't have a clue what I'm doing because my company is too cheap to hire someone who does...
or
Who cares about that latest security update - what are the chances someone is going to mess with my machine anyhow (I've seen this one more often then you can posibily imagine).
or
Whoops - I didn't install a fan on that Cyrix 6x86 running our webpage (this actually happened at a place I worked at).
Amazon might be different - they use Digital Unix - and anyone who has ever used it knows I need not digress (just to give everyone else a clue - we had a script running on our Digital Unix machine to reboot it every week because the memory would get fragmented and crash the machine... and it had 1024 megs of ram...)
I'd trust my life to my Linux servers for not only security, but also reliability.
Michael Jantzen ^_^
amiga.com up again : Comment 31 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Jofre Furtado on 11-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 29 (Jofre Furtado):
My apologies to Fleecy and Bill- I know mt last message is rather harsh, but people are awaiting something that still doesn't exist. The Amiga OS as we know it, is now dead. We are now Tao Elate with an Amiga-esq GUI (which will be only because they will release it- nothing to do with the classic- and it's changeable through 3rd party software).
It just seems that more should be accomplished especially since they are ONLY working on Software- even less, really- it's only the OS! They aren't making programs!
All this time- all that was done was a developer box that contains hardware and software that already existed and were thrown together- so, "here, take it, develop for the Amiga"- just like it's always been. Where is this innovative progress? All these people being hired- strategic relationships being formed (mind you that Red Hat has nothing to do with Amiga as a partner, or SUN Microsystems for that matter). The only thing I know is that Motorola and Sony and Sun are all investors in TAO, who is an investor in Amiga, the Main Linux software that the New Amiga OS will be optimized for being hosted on will be Corel's version of LINUX, but Corel has no real partnerships with Amiga.
These "partners" will barely recognize the Amiga...
Bill, Fleecy, Petro--- where are you??? Throw us a freakin' bone, here...!
We want to know what is happening... Will we see Amiga's soon? (Real ones?) No more pictures of empty boxes, please... Gateway already did that...
amiga.com up again : Comment 30 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Byron on 11-May-2000 22:00 GMT
I've run across several WEB sites that have been down for longer then a weekend, no big deal. Everyone has a bad day sometimes.
amiga.com up again : Comment 29 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Jofre Furtado on 11-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (Michael Jantzen):
What is the big deal, everyone?
Honestly, even though I was the first person to point out that the Amiga, Inc. website went down, I mentioned it for the general good of the listening community- I couldn't really care less anyway because there isn't anything new for us to read on it anyway (as usual). If you want my opinion, if you want Amiga news, go to Tao Group's website and read about Elate/Intent's development because that's all we are now anyway. The so-called Amiga/Tao OS will be great and all, but it's got no news or coverage or comments, etc... The new Amiga Operating kernal will be the work of TAO and the only thing left that Amiga will throw in will be the ability make it an "Ami-universe"-basically, an empty Networking-based OS with a customizable GUI (courtesy of another outside developer as well I might add).
The Amiga team is doing nothing but making deals, the Amiverse is the ONLY concept they have developed, and they STILL have NOTHING to show for it???
What the hell are they doing there? 3rd party and community development will do it again just like before- you'd think that "being a software only company" now they'd have the time to actually make some software.
How long did it take to move two existing OS's (TAO ELATE and Red Hat LINUX) into an x86 machine with a piece of the A1200 in it??? And it's just a developer box? Come on, now!
amiga.com up again : Comment 28 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Michael Jantzen on 11-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 25 (Eoghann Irving):
Let me give you my linux track-record. My RHC (Rural Health Connections) machine was on for 2 years, the only reason we took it down was because the hospital canceled the project.
Then there's a machine at my former college which is still online I believe (running a very very old version of linux) for the last 3 years straight at narwhal.southwestern.cc.or.us and humpback.southwestern.cc.or.us.
And finally my home system at hana.maybe.net which has been online for more then a year and a half with NO downtime which is amazing because its built out of garbage parts...
Yes - I'd trust my life to Linux - coz so far I have yet to see it crash.
Michael Jantzen ^_^
amiga.com up again : Comment 32 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by MAS on 12-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 31 (Jofre Furtado):
Did you read my old post on the unmoderated ANN about 3 weeks ago? It seemed
like Bob Young of Red Hat fame did more than acknowlodge Amiga Inc. I heard
Bob was going to be on a call-in computer radio show so I decided to call in
and ask if there was in fact a relationship. If you look in the comments, a
guy named Martin Baute put up a WAV file he got off the Real Audio archive
(the Real Audio archive of the show only stays up on Broadcast.com for a
week), so you might be interested to hear what he said. You may still be able
to check it out at:
http://www.baud.de/solar/index2.html (if it's still up)
You can find the old post at:http://www.ann.lu/index.cgi?start=71&range=10&unmoderated=true
amiga.com up again : Comment 34 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by Jofre Furtado on 13-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 33 (J. M Furtado Sr.):
I would like to reitierate my father's point in the previous message. He is (and I am) awaiting the wonderful things that Amiga has to offer in its come-back; however, we have heard of these things "things to come" for long enough- Users are living off the Amiga on the Internet like it's there or something and the truth is, I'm sick of being led through the desert with a promise of an Oasis- where I'll actually be drinking the sand. To make a long story short, I don't care anymore about what MIGHT come- I care about the fact that I'm now typing this message on an IBM compatible- and sucks balls, guys...
This is FACT... I want something in front of my face (and I don't mean a developer system that merely integrates hardware and software that already exist). You see, "it's only been 5 months" doesn't cut it with us anymore. You hire a huge team of programmers to do ONE task and ONE program, the OS. So far, there is nothing from AMIGA, INC. at all. Any news or updates at all related to Amiga in any way are merely TAO-Elate/Intent or Corel/Red Hat LINUX updates.
amiga.com up again : Comment 33 of 34ANN.lu
Posted by J. M Furtado Sr. on 13-May-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 27 (Robert Simmonds):
Again I say where's the beef, If you work on a project at home for five months I think you could show something for it. I am not looking for miracles just the honest truth from Amiga Inc.. I don't know how long you have been around the Amiga, but I have been around since the VIC-20 and to date have owned six Amiga's and still have two A3000's working, and I love them. I have all of the Amigas top of the line programs, everything made for the Amiga I have, I am an Amiga user from the begining to the end, and fight for that machine. All I want to understand is, why do they keep on telling us something and doing another, if you check news clippings from Amiga Inc. you will know what I mean. I keep track of everthing they say and do, I have heard it before .I really feel for the classic Amiga users i'm one of them, and I also feel for those companies that hung in there for us, one of them being GVP, and others- too many on hardware and software to mention. Do you think I don't have the right to say what I say? We are a group of people like no other in the computer world, the Amiga lived not by any company but by us users willing the spend time programming for our Amiga . I hope Amiga Inc. is smart.
To anyone reading this message ...
The Amiga will always live with or without any company.
The machine for the creative mind
J. M Furtado Sr.
N.E.A.U.G. (NorthEastern Amiga Users Group)
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