The Conservative Cave
The Bar => The Lounge => Topic started by: mrclose on November 12, 2016, 02:57:32 AM
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Gone?
It's been a week and the place no longer responds.
The forum has been around for twelve years.
The oddest part is the icon page of the forum in my favorites turned black?
http://www.republicanoperative.com/forums/
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Wow.
I used to belong to that forum. It was a pretty good one, too, operated out of somewhere in western Pennsylvania. Susannah, the mother of the owner-operator, was great. I left because I wanted company louder, more raucous, and people there were too genteel for my own tastes.
But it was a nice forum, professionally done too.
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As mrc knows, and frank may remember my having mentioned it, I'm a Mod on RO. The "answer" at this point is that the Mods do not know what happened. RO went down some time in the late AM or very early PM of 11/6. It may be the host went down and RO has not been brought back up, or it may be that just the site went down. RO changed owners back in 2012 (or very late 2011), just before I became a Mod. The current owner does not live in the US, and looks in very infrequently (months, not hours or days). We've tried to contact him, without success.
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Wow.
I used to belong to that forum. It was a pretty good one, too, operated out of somewhere in western Pennsylvania. Susannah, the mother of the owner-operator, was great. I left because I wanted company louder, more raucous, and people there were too genteel for my own tastes.
But it was a nice forum, professionally done too.
I used to post there.
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I figured the dems were upset and decided to cause a denial of service.
I remember reading how a 12 year old took down the website of Gibson Research (Spinrite). :hammer:
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I used to post there.
I only joined RO in 2010 and don't remember you there, but "Rightwing Nutjob" mentioned on FB that he remembers you.
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Courtesy of another RO member, one of the Mods got another email addy for the owner. An email was sent to that address, and it was valid, the owner responded within a couple of hours.
The Readers Digest version of his response is that RO was attacked by a very sophisticated and methodical hacker, who was after members' registration info, including IPs. The owner had SW that monitored and reported hacking activities, and he "shut down" RO's server before - as best he knows - the hacker got what he wanted. Because he travels a lot as part of whatever his business is, he has not tried to restore RO, as he would not be available to defend against renewed attacks.
I know little of his situation or of what/how much he did in the background (i.e. without logging in to RO), but it looks to me (i.e. this is my guess and opinion) like he wasn't keeping RO's forum SW up to date, wasn't incorporating security patches as they were released, and being an absentee owner finally bit RO, hard.
Some GP take-aways:
* DU-folks' paranoia, conspiracy-mindedness, and excessive self-importance notwithstanding, the hack attacks during the run-up to the election were not partisan. And on my part, I could try to build a conspiracy theory out of the fact that RO was hacked several days before the election, while DU was brought down midway though Election Day. But I'm not conspiracy-minded, nor do I attach momentous significance to RO.
* Absentee ownership/administration doesn't work anymore. Some one with appropriate techno-chops needs to be available 24 x 7 x 52.
* Conservative Cave and Conservative Underground being of similar size to RO, CC and CU probably also came under hack attack - more sophisticated than the recent rudimentary DOS-attacking of CC - and between proper preventive maintenance and CC's and CU's technoid life-forms being vigilant, both are operational. Kudos to miskie, et al!
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Some one with appropriate techno-chops needs to be available 24 x 7 x 52.
Yeah I once had a very small forum for my old high school and the constant updates and patches became a hassle, not to mention the drive-by robots and internet numb-sculls.
Kudos to miskie, et al!
I second that.
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I posted there until '08.. Mom didn't think I was funny and told me to shut my mouth.. :tongue:
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I posted there for a little bit, during the extremely shaky days of CU IIRC when that hostile blowhard was running it. Just not very many active members, and the TOS were awfully nanny-ish. Pretty much stopped posting after CC came up to full speed.
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There were some very nice folks in the forum.
I really would like to know where some of them went.
It doesn't look like the forum is coming back.
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sam posts here occasionally. Maylar, Freedomnut, and RET have posted some on CU.
I've pretty much given up on RO.WIJG doesn't have the time to Administer it adequately, but can't seem to let it go so some one else could try to make a go of it (I'm inferring this from the total silence from him and some one I know was interested in buying the site).