http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F02%2F1546214
Journalspace.com has fallen and can’t get up. The post on their site describes how their entire database was overwritten through either some inconceivable OS or application bug, or more likely a malicious act. Regardless of how the data was lost, their undoing appears to have been that they treated drive mirroring as a backup and have now paid the ultimate price for not having point-in-time backups of the data that was their business. The site had been in business since 2002 and had an Alexa page rank of 106,881. Quantcast said they had 14,000 monthly visitors recently. No word on how many thousands of bloggers’ entire output has evaporated.
My own personal web server does regular automated backups of both static content and databases onto a write-only target on a different machine, and the only sites on it are my now defunct personal web page, nutandbee.com (which Annette also keeps local backup copies of), and a site advertising ficticious hamster real doll sex toys[1].
Given that I bother to automatically back up that content (as well as the siteholders personal backups), there’s so much fail here on the part of Journalspace, I cannot even express how gobsmacked I am over it.
Mental note to never hire anyone technical who has “Journalspace.com” in their resume, even if they just worked there making coffee and/or cleaning the floors.
[1] Seriously.[2]
[2] Don’t ask.
January 3, 2009 at 4:01 am
You don’t want to show people the majesty of realhamster.com?
January 4, 2009 at 7:52 am
I could have, but it was funnier if I just described it… perhaps I should have made the whole description a link.
January 3, 2009 at 4:31 am
Wow! Journalspace.com is indeed an epic failure. I keep a backup of the settings of my guitar effects unit, even.