“THOUSANDS OF HITS CRASH COLEMAN WEBSITE”
ST PAUL – Information recently added to the Coleman for Senate website, whereby people can find out which Minnesota voters the Franken campaign is trying to disenfranchise, has resulted in the website being inundated by tens of thousands of hits today – temporarily crashing the website.
They’re completely lying. Here’s why:
1. colemanforsenate.com has handled much, much more traffic before. (Note that each “visitor” generates numerous “hits.”) Why is it a problem now?
2. Their website has been configured to point at the IP address “1.1.1.1,” which goes nowhere. This isn’t a mistake. They also set the “time to live” on that for only 600 seconds, which means when they choose to switch it back, most servers should only take 10 minutes to refresh. It’s an intentional move so they can manage their timing of the switchover. Most records like this have a much longer time to live. In short, they have configured their website to intentionally point at nothing. This does not happen by mistake and it is clear what they are doing. Reporters: ask any IT professional.
3. It’s extremely fishy that Ryan Flynn is posting what appears to be an internal administrative IP address instead of the Coleman for Senate website. On the post on MDE, click on that Coleman for Senate link. It goes here:
http://65.121.0.101/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.colemanforsenate.com/
UPDATE: My pal Bill points out that the IP address above is owned by FLS Connect. Why would Ryan Flynn be copy/pasting out of an email on a server owned by FLS Connect? Is Ryan Flynn of Minnesota Democrats Exposed using resources paid for by Norm Coleman to push Norm Coleman’s message out via a blog? There’s a lot of questions to be asked here.
UPDATE 2: The post on MDE has been changed to say “Coleman for U.S. Senate Press Release” in front of it and the URL in question has been removed.
4. As the Coleman for Senate website is being pointed at 1.1.1.1, which goes nowhere, they have no way of tracking how many “hits” they are getting. They had to have made up the “thousands of hits” number because it is technically impossible to track traffic they aren’t receiving.
This stunt is a completely fabricated lie.
UPDATE: Fox 9 basically copies and pastes the Coleman version of the story without fact-checking Fox 9 updated their story.
UPDATE: Minnesota Independent has some more insight on this story.
More links: City Pages, MN Progressive Project, Huffington Post, Secrets of the City, East-Lake, tons of people on Twitter.
funny stuff. i wonder if they’re angling for some sort of hail-mary undue harm claim for disenfranchised voters that tried to rectify their status on the website but weren’t allowed to.
The Coleman campaign has become on of the most pathetic in modern history, beating out even Saxby Chambliss or Michele Bachman. And that’s tough to do.
Wow, nice try guys.. This is laughable.
LOLercopter!
It’s amazing what a little digging can uncover. Great work!
Hmm, interesting. Why are they faking the crash?
Publicity stunt, or for a need to shut down? Are they trying to avoid negative callers (viewers who look up Coleman’s number or contact us?)
Just to play devil’s advocate, isn’t this something they might have done after the fact, to direct traffic away while they deal with the problem?
And second, I know that’s not a very normal way to handle a traffic spike, but regardless of the answer to the first question, isn’t it likely they’re going to use that as their excuse anyway?
MNGOP candidates misrepresenting tech issues? I’m….just….shocked…
You should include a link back to the MN Publius take down of the Fake Kennedy Site Take Down in ‘06
I hear you loud and clear, but why do you think they would lie about that? That’s strange.
Snark aside, could their site crash be actually tied to cycles being run on their server related to people actually using the database? Having this occur on the same server would not be wise but could this be an explanation in lieu too much traffic?
Scandal!!
Sounds like Noah is a brainiac.
Everyone should use tigertech.net, I’m telling you. Even brainiacs.
Noah - while that could cause a server crash, I think the fact that the result I get when I do an nslookup on the domain is 1.1.1.1 is pretty good indication that too much traffic ISN’T why people can’t get to their site right now. It’s because the domain goes to an IP of 1.1.1.1
Ah, memories…
When did they change the DNS records? A direct link to Coleman’s site has been on Drudge Report since at least 10:15 this morning; it’s certainly conceivable that the traffic from that link, as well as publicity for the site elsewhere, could have led to a traffic spike. The increase in hits, combined with visitors using the campaign’s lookup tool, would not be kind to the server.
While they can’t track hits now, they could’ve right up to the point when they took the server offline. If this was a legitimate crash, then the traffic spike would be logged.
Why change the DNS records? Some other possibilities, of unknown plausibility, off the top of my head: it could be just a quick and dirty way to take the server offline while they work to add capacity/wait until things die down a bit/optimize their lookup tool code. This would also explain the short TTL; when they get things working again, I’m sure they want as many people as possible to see the site as soon as possible.
Just some thoughts.
My guess would be that it was an error on their staff’s part, and someone else in their organization, without being aware of the true cause, jumped to a premature conclusion, without checking their facts, as they have repeatedly throughout this process.
Oh, who cares about “hits”.
And, duh, Noah Kunin! Where’s my coffee? Definitely a brainiac!
http://www.blanked-out.com/2006/09/20/statement-on-mn-senate-race/
I have a theory, doesnt mean it’s a good or valid theory but what if… what if Norm is tired of this, what if Norm doesnt want the farce of the election contest to continue per all the real emails, calls and letters he has received asking him to concede, what if that’s what he wanted to do.. and the Powers that be created this little artificial show of support to prove to Coleman he MUST GO ON for the “people” that dont really exist….. yeah, well, I said it wasnt necessarily a good or valid theory….
Speaking of websites…
Free Newt? Ack.
It is conceivable that when you get a direct link from the most popular news site on the web (according to Alexa.com), that it would bring your server to its knees. It is also conceivable that, in an effort to figure out the problem, staff would reset the server causing it to default to 1.1.1.1 for a period of time.
But that is far too boring. This is a scandal!! A juicy conspiracy against all that is good and honest!!
Good work!
I don’t think that relying on DNS and past traffic alone is enough evidence here. It’s possible they set the DNS to 1.1.1.1 after a crash and to shift traffic away from the server to fix it. It is strange, and it’s probably faked, but it’s not the only evidence.
http://whois.domaintools.com/colemanforsenate.com
DomainTools has cached the A record as being IP address 208.42.168.197, which is what it likely was before the change. That IP address is responsive to HTTP requests. I sent a request and the site is definitively operational, and it’s more than sufficient proof that it was planned and forged.
Cermak:~ Tony$ telnet 208.42.168.197 80
Trying 208.42.168.197…
Connected to webmail.solarisinternettech.com.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
GET http://www.colemanforsenate.com/
Home - ColemanForSenate.com
…
It’s worth noting that the exchweb folder identifier could be a reference to a Microsoft Exchange web client. This means that a Coleman staffer likely copied a link from an internal email and pasted it into a message to Flynn or Brodkorb without first amending it to make it look like an external link. But the fact that the machine is owned by FLS Connect shouldn’t surprise us — FLS Connect has handled all of Coleman’s online media presence for the entire campaign, and at one point shared a mailing address with his campaign office.
Wow Tony — they left their telnet ports wide open, huh?
Well, Coleman’s never been one to let the truth get in the way of a good story. Whoever is behind this is either lazy, stupid, or the biggest uberdork to work a campaign - well at least since T-Paw worked on Grunseth’s.
I’m glad to know that y’all use your powers for good and not for evil!
Wonder if Normie is simply fishin’ for email addresses of people that think they may have been disenfranchised and who voted for him. Then he’d have a database that could be used for cointact purposes, fundriasing or for sale.
Are there actual names of those that were challenged on the website? If there were, and people who tried to check and found they weren’t on the list, might l;ose interest. But by not actually giving them that info…it keeps the interest up.
Joe Bodell: Tony was connecting to port 80, which is the TCP port used for web traffic. You can use the telnet tool to connect to any port.
If anyone would like to see coleman’s website for themselves, you just need to follow these steps for Windows, or the equivalent for your os:
1. Go to Start/Run…
2. Type in “notepad C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts” (with no double quotes)
3. Below the line that says
127.0.0.1 localhost
add in a line that says
208.42.168.197 http://www.colemanforsenate.com
4. Go to file/save
5. launch your web browser and type http://www.colemanforsenate.com in the address bar.
Voila! I just loaded the website and it’s perfectly fine… it’s plenty responsive too, since nobody can get to it!!
1.1.1.1 is actually reserved by IANA and no real sites can be hosted there.
I created a screenshot of what the results look like here:
http://share.3wheel.net/images/politics/coleman_liar.png
I release this image for any use, as long as it is done with proper attribution.
BTW Fox9 has now said that it appears that there is evidence that the “site crash” for the Coleman campaign from “activity” is a mistake…and it cites mnpublius as the source! Wow! Way to go guys.
The Coleman campaign is now saying that they made a mistake and are trying to fix the linking issue. It seems they are confessing that their earlier claims are bulldada…which is interesting since they supposedly were capturing site-visit data on that “dead end” link. Hmmmm!
It’s Lieberman all over again.
The astroturf’s gettin pretty thick in MN!
‘The website was unavailable Wednesday afternoon, but the campaign said it is “actively working to remedy the problem.”’
O RLY? Why is a 3 second fix taking them this long to implement?
John, totally didn’t think of that! Great.
Also the blog entries have entries from today, yet they claim it crashed last night… any hard-hitting journalists want to go stand outside of VISI’s datacenter looking for his team?
There is an $819 billion spending / stimulus package being debated. President Obama gave a groundbreaking interview yesteray on arab tv. The President has given several landmark executive orders in the past 8 days.
Yeah, this is the most important thing for us to be spending our time on.
Tony: I use this technique quite a bit at work before putting websites live, for testing. It’s quite handy!
One thing I just noticed- the blog software here automatically prepends “http://” to web addresses, so the line in my post above is incorrect. This line:
208.42.168.197 http://www.colemanforsenate.com
should have no http:// in it.
These guys give the Keystone Cops a bad name.
Talk about being desperate.
Great work! Thank you.
Bottom line:
Team coleman is incompetent or dishonest. How is this news, Aaron? [/snark]
I just tried http://www.colemanforsenate.com. The page loads, but shows about 40 mysql errors.
My conclusion: the earlier crash was neither traffic nor a stunt - just basic incompetence.
This is an interesting story, but I have absolutely no idea what any of the replies mean.
lojasmo, Team coleman is incompetent and dishonest. Fixed that for you.
What is most important Dan is that our obstructionist Republicans are taking orders from Washington DC obstructionist Republicans in a critical time in our country’s history. So far the GOP’s only message is do nothing and watch more people out of work and the economy burn. Tax cuts were an important part of the mismanagement of the Bush administration… are they the only solution now?
Even more so we Minnesotan’s are being doubly screwed because we don’t have the representation we need in Washington.
This is fantastic. Maybe the people who selected Palin are running his Litigation strategy? Sloppy.
With Franken’s campaign retaining top-notch lawyers, and Coleman’s history of electoral antics building a following of detractors via myriad political blogs, the Coleman campaign battleship seems to have run aground. There’s really nowhere to hide. Everything that they can do to present fabricated evidence faces a community of professionals very willing to refute said evidence.
Coleman is presenting an identity for the GOP that could, at the very best estimate, alienate the party to everyone except the truly devoted (delusional) or the truly dishonest (corrupt). That’s essentially the GOP base. Everyone is either delusional (mentally handicapped or incorrigibly conservative) or corrupt.
Should have said and/or. Sorry for the confusion.
FWIW The site currently is intermittently showing mysql errors.
Warning: mysql_pconnect() [function.mysql-pconnect]: Too many connections in /var/www/colemanforsenate.com/include/config.php on line 31
It should be noted, irrespective of why they changed their DNS info, that they could have had a problem either at the application or database level with too many concurrent connections that would have prevented users from being able to reach the web site without taking down the entire server. Additionally, the response time from both the database query and the application itself, if overly long could significantly decrease the number of concurrent connections the site could serve.
Especially if you do a really crappy job building your app, it’s not actually as hard as you think to create a situation where even a modest amount of traffic could cripple the site.
However, as noted, even if that was the case, that is no reason to celebrate. I certainly wouldn’t be smiling if nobody could reach the content I was trying to disseminate on my site.
Lastly, even if Coleman was actually flooded with requests, so what? The fact that people came to your site proves nothing about their thoughts or opinions. It would be like saying everyone who tuned in to watch the state of the union agreed with the president.
“18 18 DantheMan
January 28, 2009 at 3:34 pm
It is conceivable that when you get a direct link from the most popular news site on the web (according to Alexa.com)”
Are you talking about Drudge? I’m just at Alexa now and it’s not even in the top 10. Yahoo News is first. Drudge is at #32
I find it really irksome that he is using open source products and tools including mysql, subversion, php and linux.
Shouldn’t a died-in-the-wool right wing nut case like Norm be willing to pay Microsoft of all those tools? I’m betting there are very few republicans writing free software.
At best, the Coleman team chose to use poorly written MySQL queries as a reason for the entire site to crash. I have not heard from anyone who had actually seen the “database,” which is not as significant as it sounds, before the site allegedly crashed. When I connected to the site directly by IP address before the DNS was changed back, the entire functionality of the “database” did not even exist — and that was hours ago? Why are they just changing the DNS back right now?
The reason I’m receiving this error is not because of too much traffic, it’s because someone doesn’t know what they’re doing:
“Access denied for user ‘www-data’@’localhost’ (using password: NO)”
And if the site “crashed” yesterday (according to Coleman’s campaign), how did someone make blog posts this morning on the site during the time it was down?
Did the site crash because of an unmanageable amount of traffic? No.
Did the site crash because it was linked on Drudge Report? No, this campaign is getting plenty of attention in the national media. It’s on a dedicated server in a Twin Cities-based datacenter with peering with major backbone providers.
Did the site crash because the web developers preemptively launched a new feature without doing proper testing in a non-production environment? Maybe, intentional or accidental — but it’s deceptive to use that as a basis to falsify traffic.
Is changing DNS to an address outside of your control for a day a reasonable use of best practices in mitigating traffic? No, reverting to the old site or displaying a temporary page would have been better.
If the database caused the crashes because of human error, I can go on and on about what they should have done: version control, test and production done separately, lowered TTL’s and more.
But ultimately — if they had time to write a press release and distribute it via MDE, they had time to fix a small database error for a functionality that is really just a list of names.
It’s deceptive and opportunistic at best, a complete fabrication at worst.
Aaron, this is brilliant investigative work and I hope you win the Pulitzer Prize for Pwning.
And, check out the big fat 205 mb database file on the server as well
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adriarichards/3234833407/
Plus, it appears you could create admin account without the need to authenticate.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adriarichards/3234818883/
Coleman site is back up, but I tried to post a comment at MDE and got this:
get_list: Failed to get blacklist entries of type: rbl_server_uri. Query: SELECT * FROM `sk2_blacklist` WHERE `type` = ‘rbl_server_uri’
SQL error: Lost connection to MySQL server during query
Error: cannot update comment entry ID: 275530 to status: approved.
SQL error: MySQL server has gone away
Failed inserting/updating sk2_kSpamTable record for comment ID:275530 (mode: overwrite).
Query: INSERT INTO `wp_sk2_spams` SET `karma` = 2.5,`karma_cmts` = ‘a:3:{i:0;a:4:{s:2:"ts";i:1233193687;s:3:"hit";d:2;s:6:"plugin";s:12:"Link Counter";s:6:"reason";s:31:"Comment contains no URL at all.";}i:1;a:4:{s:2:"ts";i:1233193687;s:3:"hit";d:0.5;s:6:"plugin";s:18:"Javascript Payload";s:6:"reason";s:39:"Valid Javascript payload (can be fake).";}i:2;a:4:{s:2:"ts";i:1233193687;s:3:"hit";d:0;s:6:"plugin";s:17:"Encrypted Payload";s:6:"reason";s:37:"Encrypted payload valid: IP matching.";}}’, `unlock_keys` = ‘a:0:{}’, `remaining_attempts` = ‘5’, `last_mod` = NOW(), `comment_ID` = 275530
SQL error: MySQL server has gone away
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/e/x/p/exposed/html/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_util_class.php:208) in /home/content/e/x/p/exposed/html/wp-content/plugins/SK2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php on line 997
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/e/x/p/exposed/html/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_util_class.php:208) in /home/content/e/x/p/exposed/html/wp-content/plugins/SK2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php on line 998
Sorry, but your comment has been flagged by the spam filter running on this blog: this might be an error, in which case all apologies. Your comment will be presented to the blog admin who will be able to restore it immediately.
You may want to contact the blog admin via e-mail to notify him.
“Shouldn’t a died-in-the-wool right wing nut case like Norm be willing to pay Microsoft of all those tools? I’m betting there are very few republicans writing free software.”
????
A Democrat’s View of a GOP Entreprenuer: A cigar-chomping, fat cat driving a 2009 Escalade, meeting with his big-business buddies at a steakhouse. Telling Bill Gates that “of course we’ll pay you top dollar” while slapping his back.
A real entrepreneur: Resourceful, lean and mean. Filling an unserved niche. If open-source code provides the best product, then use it. Trying hard to cut a profit while adding value to fill our society.
Sally - I stand corrected. The ranking I cited was for top Political news website, not overall news website. I apologize for my oversight.
Another interesting page
http://208.42.168.251/colemanforsenate.com/template/admin/traffic_statistics.php
The page simply says:
“Traffic Stats Coming Soon (Likely in a new window)”
Tony -
Bandwidth alone doesn’t tell you the whole story. The bottleneck can exist at any point in the process. And with most dynamic web applications, the database is the biggest bottleneck. That’s why you cache everything. Slow queries aren’t the only potential culprit. The mysql server could have also been configured with an unreasonably low number of max connections, or with too low of memory allocation. Either the queries they’re using or some part of the application could have a memory leak, which given enough users in a short enough period of time could cause the server to start swapping out.
I also think the phrase “crashed” is a misnomer. Barring a kernel panic, or running out of memory, the physical server itself, or even the apache or mysql instances should not have crashed. What is far more likely (if something traffic related did happen), is that the site received more concurrent traffic than it was able to process before request started timing out, or before the mysql server started erring out on too many connections. To the end user, there is no distinction. But from a technical standpoint, whether the application was inaccessible or the server crashed makes all the difference.
To clarify, I don’t think there is any reason to believe that this database shouldn’t have been able to handle even drudge-scale traffic. The database shouldn’t have been a factor. They should have been caching everything out to static html files or memcached. Even without that, using optimized queries and proper indexing should have taken them a long way.
I don’t think we have enough information about their setup to say without a doubt that it wasn’t overwhelmed by traffic. But, like I said, that in and of itself doesn’t mean anything. And to your points, the way they responded to the alleged problem would get someone fired at most companies.
They might be telling the truth. Maybe. But, even then the best case scenario is that they are completely incompetent.
If anyone is interested but there appears to be an email list dump avaialble. Has anyone bothered to call the Coleman Campaign and say “Hey, that other IP address you were using, you forgot to turn on access control when you disabled it.”
Anyone else see the irony of this happening on Data Security Day?
Oh, this too easy. Two reasons to “crash” their own site. 1) Distract from an cover up their rank incompetence, lying, etc. in other areas (i.e. their laughable court filings, arguments, and witnesses), 2) Pretend to be “serving the MN public” in good faith, and crash your own site, in order to buy some more time and stretch and muddle this debacle a few more weeks. (“We were trying to get all the disenfranchised voters a voice, but there were so many that they crashed our site…. [Insinuating there is a real problem with voters not getting represented AND taking responsibility for these debacles temporarily off the shoulders of these political Keystone Kops.] Nice double whammy if people weren’t on to them. Now they just look more and more desperate and crooked. Good work MN Publius.
Fake website crash, fake website hits, because they didn’t get the fake votes they were fighting for…
Er, sorry DantheMan, but that doesn’t seem to scan either, looking through Alexa’s categories the only place where Drudge makes the top ten (at number 10) is news/chats and forums. As far as I can tell there is no News/politics string. There is a Society/politics, but Drudge is nowhere in the top 50 there.
I think some people have ascribed more power to Drudge then actually exists. And frankly if the Coleman campaign has a site that can’t handle spikes in traffic from news sites, even major ones, then it speaks pretty poorly upon them. One would think, duh, that during the actual campaign there would be heavy site usage, not so much now.
My bet? Camp Coleman is running low on funds and can no longer pay the people it needed to work with the open source they installed, and now they’re up shit creek with no competent IT.
When even Power Line is eviscerating Team Coleman for weakass legal capability… well the rats have done gone and abandoned the ship.
I ran a ping on colemanforsenate.com and recieved this:
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
D:\Documents and Settings\myoung1>ping colemanforsenate.com
Pinging colemanforsenate.com [1.1.1.1] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 1.1.1.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),
D:\Documents and Settings\myoung1>
Okay, enough with the technical stuff. If you want to talk html, do it in the lab….. We got the story, that’s what’s important.
I checked the Onion Site. Norm’s article isn’t there yet:
“ALIENS CRASHED MY SITE” says distraught former senator.
You guys were awfully quick to judge. I’m going to say that it’s extremely unlikely that legitimate traffic crashed the website, but as a computer science guy that builds high-traffic websites for a living, the DNS switcheroo looks more like the typical response to a DDOS attack. If you aren’t running a dedicated server (or sometimes even if you are) and someone hits you with a DDOS attack, your hosting provider may ask you to shut things off at the DNS level because the attack is having an effect on their other customers. Is it lame that the Coleman crew tried to spin this? Oh, you better believe it, but the evidence you have against them doesn’t necessarily point to them intentionally disabling their own website for the publicity. Maybe they really are that desperate, but I doubt it.
Obama signed fair pay legislation…. first of its kind.
Oh wait, this “cover-up” is far more important.
This shoukd be the end of the Coleman stalls. Minnesota needs leadership now!
Dtm
Yes, Obama has made great strides…done things your guy never would have considerred. Plenty of places to discuss that outside of a primarily mn politics driven blog.
Were the web and db servers dedicated or shared? If shared, one can easily conclude that this was fabricated if other sites were unaffected…if hosting company will talk.
Typical Repugnant tactic. Leiberman did it (I know he’s technically not, but he might as well be a Repug) when he was trying to get sympathy during the election. Seems that his staff is just as devious or incompetent as Norm’s (Mr. Polident) is.
“actively working to remedy the problem.”
Which takes all of, what, 10 minutes?
Seesh, if I have a problem with a DNS record entry on any one of my sites, I can fix the problem in 60 seconds. (Propagation may take longer, but that’s not the point.)
Why, oh, why are there so many bozos in the world who can’t even fake a website outage properly? What has our IT education come to?
“Access denied for user ‘www-data’@’localhost’ (using password: NO)”
Holy s**t! The IT “guru” who set this up should be drawn and quartered!
A database access from a server-side script with NO authentication (i.e., no password)? What the hell was this person thinking?
Just goes to show, I guess, the quality of IT person the Coleman campaign can afford to hire — are the type of person who is willing to work for him no matter how much they’re paid!
Uh, Bob at #62? No.
If your web site is being hit by a DDoS attack, then DNS is almost certainly irrelevant: any DDoS attacker worthy of the title has targeted your server by its IP address and isn’t paying the slightest attention to DNS. Changing the DNS A record for your site is thus the logical equivalent of Wile E. Coyote opening an umbrella before a house-sized rock lands on his head.
We can thus safely conclude that either (a) the floated “attack” story is true and their response to it was laughably incompetent or (b) the floated “attack” story is false and they’re laughably incompetent liars.
In the real world of large-volume web hosting, attacks like this are not dealt with at the server level: they’re dealt with at the firewall level or at the network perimeter, by doing things like null-routing prolific attack sources. (For non-techies: you look at which chunks of the Internet are the source and you throw their traffic away. Everyone else is unaffected.) Less severe attacks are dealt with by putting up a static page (thus alleviating the need for any and all backend resources) that says “we’re overloaded, come back later”. Nobody bothers changing the A record to point to reserved address space.
My guess, based on all the evidence presented here (including the remarkably funny dump of the anti-spam code for their comment system) is that someone was trying to make a change to the site, and blew it. Badly. A story was needed to CYA, so they came up with one that was considered plausible enough to get picked up by media who do not know you can telnet to port 80 and manually issue HTTP requests. That part was actually fairly crafty, but they erred in presuming everyone else would blithely accept it, and erred again in not doing something simple — like going to the facility and yanking out the network cable — that would prevent contradictory evidence from surfacing. After due consideration, I give this a “D”.
The line that made me laugh was “thousands of hits”. I would have known it was fake just from that statement alone. A US senator’s website can’t handle thousands of hits? And we’re supposed to believe he barely made it through election season without it going down in flames? Well, I guess that proves Franken won. After all, if Coleman’s site could only handle a few hundred to maybe a few thousand hits at once, where did all those Coleman voters come from anyways?
Talk about a really stupid stunt that is beyond transparent.
Ironically, their site used to be hosted on a Microsoft platform before it was migrated to Debian.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?mode_u=on&site=www.colemanforsenate.com&mode_w=off&avg_days=120&submit=Redisplay+Graph
DantheMan: DNS does not work that way. They could run the web server over with a tank, and the nameservers, which are other, seperate systems providing information to a huge network of DNS servers, would still report the configured IP.
And shouldn’t you be off discussing those important things, rather than wasting your time here? Or perhaps conservatives are not so stupid that they cannot do more than one thing at once, even if they pretend otherwise.
Nerull,
DTM is far more civil than most conservatives, let’s not stoop to their level. Dan usually posts things coherently and civily, and should be treated with the same respect, regardless of the conduct of his political peers.
With Coleman’s website down, where will I go to remind him regularly that he has lost?
где можно вашу аську увидеть? хотела бы пообщаться.