M-Net is currently experiencing some sort of failure; it can't be reached
via telnet and doesn't respond to pings, and traceroute craps out in
Livonia.  Since dialin users get through the authentication process but
never reach M-Net, I assume the problem is our machine.  

84 responses total.

Does this mean no one will be able to get in and check things out until
tomorrow morning?

bummer..nice to have a home away from home. :)

Where is m-net, not able to get in by any means :(

M-net is in Livonia, Michigan.

M-Net is located at the WWNet facility in Livonia.  Their staff comes on at
8 tomorrow morning (well, this morning now) and I'll call them when I get
up if someone else hasn't already notified them.  They can reboot the M-Box
for us, but we don't want to abuse the privilege so we aren't publishing the
phone number to contact them.

thanks joe.

i just tried.. no luck.
but, i think i may be a tad early. it isnt quite 5am heree.

        At 8:59 am i dialed in on the guest line, and went through the
WWnet authentication process. After the "TTS system AUthentication"
Message, the system hung. Hope the information comes in handy.

        (OH, for the good old days of M-Net, when Staff wasn't aloowed to have
a life. THey looked SOOO grand chained near the M-B0x.  :)    )

        Tell 'em thanks for me even before they get the b0x back up. 'cause
I know they'll do it.

I just called WWNet, so hopefully it will be up soon.  Thanks to all for
their patience and information!

you bbs junkies.  get a life!

still nothing. even the webpage is down.

        get a what

we've got dns problems on m-net.  and, we've had them for ages, but they don't
really cause a problem until m-net's dns server (itself) goes down for a day.
so, m-net is up, and I'm on it right now, but the world can't see it, unless
you telnet to it's ip address : 209.142.209.161

It's back up, and can be reached the normal way.

Not for me at 6:54 pm today (dialing in).

Sounds like a good reason for WWNet to handle M-Net's DNS.

Yep.

mnut has been unreachable since very early this morning.  connection is made
and immediately lost.  telnet or dial-up telnet, doesn't matter which.

Just noticed that myself.  Not sure what's up.

<drums fingers impatiently>

BTW, M-net also went down last night, notwithstanding #18.

i noticed it was being bad aroun 1am.  tough call - early morning or nite?
  :)

still down...

... but we're back up now.

M-net may have gone down around 10:30.  Connections are timing out from 
michnet, msen, tir and grex.  I haven't done a traceroute or tried
wwnet dialins.

M-net is still down. Can't dial-in, telnet or get in via the web site.

i was online and the lag was getting pretty bad so i bailed.  couldn't log
back on.

i wish my request for a wishlist of hardware would be forthcoming

Well.  seldon and jerryr are here.  Is the toxic atmosphere of
M-Net too much even for them?  What irony.

No, seldon and jerryr are just using Grex as a backup information
channel when M-net is down.  

exactamundo.  the same service m-nut provides to grexers.  
btw, russ, many of us are proud of the toxic atmosphere on m-net,
especially if it discourages certain users from logging on. 

Re #30: Ah.  This attempt to discourage the undesirable element;
it accounts for Arbornet's strong community base of support and
robust financial health, I take it?

We've got some assholes on M-Net, certainly -- but frankly, you've got some
over here on Grex too.  The style is just different.  Yours pretend to be
polite, while ours don't bother.

We also have a younger and consequently less affluent crowd than you do,
with more users who think $10 is a lot of money.

I'm not supporting Greg's statement that assholes are a good thing because
they discourage other assholes from logging in, and that certainly isn't the
basis of M-Net policy.  We just feel that the damage that would be done by
censorship is worse than the damage the assholes are doing.

But I really don't see much point in the two systems insulting each other.
Neither side would like to see the other system go away, because then they'd
have to share a system with the people on the other one who they dislike.

Back on topic:  M-Net's recent failures may be due to overheating.  Steve
Gibbard has done some things to help the situation, and M-Net's brand new
9 Gig hard drive (ordered today) will also help.

Re #32:  Ah, yes.  The difference between M-Net and Grex must be that
Grex censors people, and the impecunious users must not be able to
dial or telnet to Grex.  Did I read you right on that one?
 
You'd do a presidential candidate PROUD with responses like that, Joe.
(Can't call 'em answers, but the purpose is to dodge the question rather
than address it, isn't it?)
 
Care to talk about the social climate encouraged by some of the more
prominent and influential users?  The statement in #30 is good fodder,
but start wherever you like.

No, you didn't read the response right.  Or you did read it right, but
chose to cast it inaccurately to support your pet issues with M-Net.

Yes, we have assholes.  So does Grex.  Assholes are a fact of life on any
public-access system.  There are a limited number of ways to deal with
them.  

One is to close the system and only let in people we don't think are
assholes.  That defeats the whole purpose of an open system, and wouldn't
be acceptable on either system.

Another is to censor responses by assholes.  M-Net doesn't do that.  I
don't think Grex does either, though I could be wrong.  The problem with
this approach is that it means someone has to decide what constitutes an
asshole response and what doesn't.  This is the one you like, but what you
fail to realize is that a number of people consider you an asshole and
would censor your responses with great pleasure.  The same would be true
of anyone with a strong opinion that disagrees with the powers that be.
Not only that, doing this often provokes the assholes into a war with the
FWs, where they try to enter too much crap to censor and wind up trashing
the whole conference.  The war is unwinnable, because there are an
unlimited number of assholes, as well as people who are willing to act
like assholes to resist what they see as oppression.

The final one is to simply ignore the assholes and work around them.  This
is what M-Net does.  I've seen Grexers do it too, though for all I know
they're also applying massive peer pressure to the asshole behind the
scenes.  This one works the best of all, and it's working pretty damn well
over on M-Net.  The problem is, you can't bear to use this method.

Frankly, Russ, I really don't think there's anything M-Net could do to
make you happy while still being an open system.  At some point, I have to 
take the position that you are a customer who wants something different
from what we're offering, and you're better off elsewhere -- maybe here on
Grex, in which case I hope it works out for you.  Given that Grex doesn't
censor either, though, I suspect it won't in the long run.  How do you
deal with Usenet News?

w/o labeling or trashing, this whole exchange would have been dealt with in
about 3 or 4 sentences on m-nut.  here on grex there has always been an
abundance of pixels available to beat a dead horse into un-recognizable
sludge. 

it's simple a matter of different strokes for different key strokers.

It's also just a matter of two different social groups.  Hang out with the
one you like better.

Grex does not censor assholes.

Out of curiosity, do you censor anyone?  ;-)

People who post credit card #'s, or other illegal material.  This isn't
very common.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss