ARMM n.
[acronym, `Automated Retroactive Minimal
Moderation'] A Usenet cancelbot created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls,
Ohio. ARMM was intended to automatically cancel posts from
anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for
anonymous postings triggered on its own automatically-generated
control messages! Transformed by this stroke of programming
ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke
loose on the night of March 31, 1993 and proceeded to spam
news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over 200
messages.
ARMM's bug produced a recursive cascade of messages each of which
mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other
headers of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in which
each header took up several screens and each message ID and subject
line got longer and longer and longer.
Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological
messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying
line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM
debacle as "instant Usenet history" (also establishing the term
despew), and it has since been widely cited as a cautionary
example of the havoc the combination of good intentions and
incompetence can wreak on a network. Compare Great Worm;
sorcerer's apprentice mode. See also sof
network meltdown.
[acronym, `Automated Retroactive Minimal
Moderation'] A Usenet cancelbot created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls,
Ohio. ARMM was intended to automatically cancel posts from
anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for
anonymous postings triggered on its own automatically-generated
control messages! Transformed by this stroke of programming
ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke
loose on the night of March 31, 1993 and proceeded to spam
news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over 200
messages.
ARMM's bug produced a recursive cascade of messages each of which
mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other
headers of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in which
each header took up several screens and each message ID and subject
line got longer and longer and longer.
Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological
messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying
line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM
debacle as "instant Usenet history" (also establishing the term
despew), and it has since been widely cited as a cautionary
example of the havoc the combination of good intentions and
incompetence can wreak on a network. Compare Great Worm;
sorcerer's apprentice mode. See also sof
network meltdown.
Related:
- sorcerer's apprentice mode: [from Friedrich Schiller's "Der
Zauberlehrling" via the film "Fantasia"] n.
A bug in a protocol where, under some circumstances... - robocanceller /roh-boh-kan'sel-*r/
A program that
monitors Usenet feeds,
attempting to detect and elimnate spam by sending... - spam vt.,vi.,n.
[from "Monty Python's Flying
Circus"] 1.
To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer... - despew /d*-spyoo'/ v.
[Usenet] To automatically generate
a large amount of garbage to the net,
esp. from an automated posting program gone wild... - despew: /d*-spyoo'/ [USENET] v. To automatically generate a
large amount of garbage to the net,
esp. from an automated posting program gone wild... - sorcerer's apprentice mode n.
[from Goethe's "Der
Zauberlehrling" via Paul Dukas's "L'apprenti sorcier" the film
"Fantasia"] A bug in a protocol where,
under some circumstances, the receipt of a message... - kremvax /krem-vaks/ n.
[from the then large number of
Usenet VAXen with names of the form foovax]
Originally,
a fictitious Usenet site at the Kremlin, announced... - IRC /I-R-C/ n.
[Internet Relay Chat] A worldwide "party
line" network that allows one to converse with others in real
time.
IRC is structured as a network of Internet servers... - IRC: /I-R-C/ [Internet Relay Chat] n. A worldwide "party
line" network that allows one to converse with others in real
time.
IRC is structured as a network of Internet servers...
