2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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ARMM
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. [acronym, Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation ] A Usenet cancelbot
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created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was intended to
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automatically cancel posts from anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the
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robot's recognizer for anonymous postings triggered on its own
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automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by this stroke of
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programming ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it
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broke loose on the night of March 30, 1993 and proceeded to spam
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news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over 200 messages. ARMM's
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bug produced a recursive cascade of messages each of which mechanically
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added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers of its parent. This
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produced a flood of messages in which each header took up several screens
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and each message ID and subject line got longer and longer and longer.
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Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological messages
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crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying line charges for
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their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM debacle as instant Usenet
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history (also establishing the term despew ), and it has since been widely
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cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the combination of good
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intentions and incompetence can wreak on a network. The Usenet thread on the
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subject is archived here. Compare Great Worm ; sorcerer's apprentice mode.
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See also software laser , network meltdown.
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