The Glade 4.0

Microsoft obviously classified the fansite as a threat so they sent their bots to eliminate the threat. The real question is whether doing so violates Khross's patent on "Sending multitudes of robots to eliminate a threat".

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What this seems to be boiling down to is a set of classifications for professional use versus a term used largely by lay persons for news reporting. It reminds me of, say, spring systems. To most of you, a spring system must involve a spring, right? Yet the term is applied to just about any system that generates a second order differential equation, because the techniques for solving them are identical. Likewise, linear does not simply mean "produces a graph that is a straight line."

This is a common problem in math and physics. We say things that have a specific meaning, like work or energy, and the typical person does not understand because those words have a different meaning in common usage. This problem is exacerbated every time we attempt to explain something using the language of the common man, and end up intentionally misusing our own vocabulary to translate.

The best interpretation I can draw is that distributed means the path matters. It is a phenomena separate from the number of hosts. To most people, including those working as network admins, the path will never matter, because you have limited control outside your own node. Therefore, the extra D is a dummy letter for all intents and purposes, and is in no way relevant to what you are doing.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

It's not very useful outside the group, that's true. That's also the case with all jargon. Legally, are you able to explain de minimis non curat lex?

As to your quotes, you realize you're attempting to use them out of context and both are concerned entirely with zombie hosts?

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Well, DDOS vs DOS matters to a network admin, even putting aside the idea of routing and ip address ranges. You're still taking a DOS and multiplying the intensity of the attack by the number of hosts. That's still significantly worse than a single DOS.

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And that's my primary objection to shuyung's definition.

Yes, shuyung, I'm aware that the quotes I referenced were in regards to zombie attacks, as that's the most common way to implement a DDoS. Surely, voluntary zombies (as I would assume one would classify such things as Anonymous' LOIC) would also apply. From there, I think it certainly fits the metaphor of jesting that MSN's spiders were a botnet, especially since we've all pretty well agreed that it sounds like the fansite in question was not very rugged.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

This entire thread reminds me of when I tried to explain to my father that a 240V home air conditioner is single-phase.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Midgen, very true. And that is a point that Taly addressed. I was speaking more metaphorically when considering it an attack. Though some do consider things like celebrities tweeting a website, which floods it and brings it down, a form of non-intentional DDoS attack.

Kaffis, I think you are spot on about your comments. The definition that shuyung is using is a short-hand definition. In my job as a software engineer, we use such definitions all the time.

Maybe a better way to say it, is that it is a contextual definition. In the context of a network administrator trying to defend their network, a DDoS that is not significantly more difficult to defend against than a regular DoS attack (such as the one above) is not really what they are worried about when they say DDoS attack. But that contextual definition does not change the actual definition of the word.

This must be what black people feel like when white people steal their culture.

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