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Service interruption coming up ...

You know it's time for a major upgrade when you ssh into your server and see:

charlie@accelerando:~$ uptime
10:44:32 up 671 days, 18:38, 2 users, load average: 0.44, 0.37, 0.40
charlie@accelerando:~$

Right?

Translated from the UNIX/Linux speak that's telling me that this machine was last rebooted 22 months ago. While the stability is laudable, it's dropping too far behind the trailing edge. So next Monday onwards, there may be some service interruptions due to a major software update (and a reboot or two).

Once that's taken care of, I'm going to see what I can do about the blog comment system. If I can get the login mechanism fixed, I am minded to switch comments back on—but disallow anonymous commenting. You won't have to give me your real name, and you won't have to use OpenID or Facebook or some other syndicated ID system to tell me who you are; but you'll need to register an ID on the system before you can post. The reason for this: most (actually about 99.9%) of the blog spam that was crippling the system before I fell back to using Google Groups for discussions was coming in from anonymous scripts. Requiring registration will hopefully slow them up a bit. And if that fails, we'll see.

Addendum: Something about the decoupling of the discussion threads from the blog postings gets to me and, annoyingly, demotivates me from posting complex essays. I really want to get the comment system back. On the other hand, I'm hoping to hit the 40,000 word mark (out of a target of 100,000 words) on "The Rhesus Chart" either today or tomorrow ...

[ Discuss ]

1 Comment

1:

Another test post .. this to test the open comments on an earlier post.

It looks as if the " major upgrade " was well worth the relatively modest expense and surely it is allowable as a business expense given the " Charlies Diary " is a major method of communication with your readership as well as a source for research materials for your work.My knowledge of taxation on small and medium sized businesses is pitiful but you have and are operating and paying running costs on equipment that is used for no other purpose than communication with your customers and so such expenses must be tax deductible?

I do hope that "The Rhesus Chart" is going well ? You must be well beyond the halfway mark by now.

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This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on October 16, 2012 11:49 AM.

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