Laughing in the face of danger!
IRC
FLUBBERHOSTS – The hosting scams and scandals!
Apr 30th
What type of host puts you on a server with way too many users on it already? What type of host deletes your data before you have chance to back it up? What type of host deletes your account in spite? What type of host gets personal when you leave their services for a better host? What type of host null-routes users who had a small disagreement with them?
FLUBBERHOSTS DO!
This network claims to be better because of various little things, but quite a few shocking discoveries came out over the past couple of days…
- Overcrowded Servers – According to my reliable source, they stick far too many clients on a single server. This causes a fight for resources and often leads to CPU battles between users. This also sends the performance of the network right down.
- Null-Routing Nasties – If you ever have a disagreement with them, and you are using one of their clients services, you will be null-routed because “they can”. Any ethical host will only resort to null-routing if a particular user DDoS’s them.
- Deleting Dictators – If you even give them the hint that you are going to be migrating to a difference service because its cheaper or your getting more, they’ll delete your account before you have chance to get a backup. They are notorious for deleting MySQL databases from clients accounts before they have chance to get them.
If you want a decent host, use Flubberhost’s Host, Gridstar!
Stability Restored
Apr 21st
You may have seen a highly contraversial blog about 6 months ago stating why UKChatterbox was regarded as unstable. By the looks of it, someone saw it and took my advice.
- New channel mode developped to restrict ages/genders from channels.
- Moved database to a dedicated server.
Despite the performance fixes above, there are still some issues which need to be addressed before UKChatterbox can become as great as any other network.
- Ditch SQLMod. This module actually stops the IRCd when an SQL query is being performed.
- Ditch privlog and chanlog. These modules are ethically wrong, and can be seen as a breech of our human rights.
- Ditch m_restrictnotice. This module prevents users from noticing each other. As long as you have the right modes set, users shouldn’t be able to disrupt channels by using /NOTICE #channel.
- Move to a Data Centre dedicated to providing a decent service. Actually getting 4 VPS’s in the UK would work out cheaper than 4 shells from UKShells. Apparently, they need to have their servers in the UK for legal reasons (I can’t actually see what this reason may be).
I reall do hope UKChatterbox becomes the better network. They have so much to offer, but they go the wrong way. You can be safe without logging, you just set extremely advanced spamfilters. UKChatterbox have so much going for them, they just need to listen to people’s views and take them into consideration.
SearchIRC – The Low Down
Apr 10th
SearchIRC – The most advanced IRC search engine.
What utter bollocks! SearchIRC throws other peoples rankings who have worked hard to get their network ranking above 820, down to 890. If I remember correctly, SearchIRC rankings are based on the number of people, the number of channels, and the freshness factor. New networks are sprouting up all over the place, but don’t last long. This pushes the larger, developing networks ranking down, making way for these smaller networks who usually die off 3 months later.
I would like to take FSIRC as an example here. Over the past 4 months, we have seen the ranking rise past several other networks to pass over 90 places. Then last week, we dropped back down these 90 places. We used to have a simple relay link with another network, but this fell (due to reasons unexplainable to anyone). This could have something to do with it, but there are networks with less users, less traffic, and with “stale channels”, and they still rank higher than FSIRC.
I just think its about time SearchIRC enforced a policy that stated that you must have over 10 users consecutively, and all services daemons must be declared (as some networks use these to bump up ratings). I’m just fed up of people cheating their way to a higher ranking. Not only is it not fair, but it doesn’t give other people the chance to excel their networks into higher rankings.
