“Decent” is an understatement. He/she sounds genuinely remorseful.

I can understand if that comment was made out of frustration . . . I have had my own moments of frustration at many times of life and I’m sure I have said/posted things on the Internet that reflected that.

Dear commentator, thank you!

Thank you, ARIC (who is no longer an ARIC)! Sanctification at its best.

If only it was always this way among the faith family. Love it.

What a wonderful, heartfelt apology and explanation! Thank you!

Thanks for posting this! I always enjoy what appears to be true repentance. The Lord is good and faithful.

Took a grand total of what, a day for the apology. And how many days and counting for CJ?

Sincere apologies from someone who could have dug in their heels make me hopeful for the future. Thanks for sharing this.

I’m putting this here because, frankly, the misinformation is bugging me to pieces. This is a huge problem in business today but I believe people don’t understand what DDoS really means.

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) does NOT mean to put a virus on someone’s website. All it means is that a large number (these days, it has to be in the thousands of connections on very large sites) of computers are connecting to a website in a malicious attempt to keep the website off line. If you run a business that promotes its availability on the Internet (e.g., most large American banks), this can be killer. People tend to take to Twitter and gripe when JPCitiAmericaFargo is not available so they can see how much money they have in their accounts.

Where the virus comes in is here: there are a LOT of computers out there that have been infected with viruses/trojans that harness their computing power into what’s called a “botnet.” So, for example, it’s believed that the DDoS that has been perpetrated on US banks over the past several months is being run by a group calling itself the Izz Al-Qassim Brigade (or Battalion, seen it both ways). They have thousands of infected computers in their botnet and they can send a command out that tells these computers to open connections to JPCitiAmericaFargo and just keep flooding those connections with data. I mentioned hundreds of gigabytes of data a second in a previous post. It takes thousands of infected computers (*not* websites, *computers*) to do this.

Back in the beginning of 2008, the Church of $cientology was hit by a DDoS attack run by members of Anonymous, using far less firepower than today’s botnets. It hurt the Co$ terribly and it ended up utilizing the services of Prolexic to counter the DDos. I’ve also heard of (but not recently) incidents where hackers have used a piece of software called the “Low Orbit Ion Cannon” to try and bring down sites briefly. In neither of these cases, viruses and botnets were not involved (at least to my knowledge). And then there’s the noted “Slashdot” effect, in which a website’s sudden popularity or notoreity is such that it can’t handle any more connections. This usually happens to websites hosted on shared servers.

My point is this: DDoS is a bad thing, but a DDoS does NOT involve putting a virus on someone’s website. It DOES involve harnessing botnets of computers infected by viruses (not websites infected by viruses) to block access to websites.

I also agree that the original DDoS statement was out of line and I’m glad to see the apology. I am dead serious when I say that I know someone who spent several months in jail because he was convicted of terroristic threats because he linked together three words (“missile” “tom” and “cruise”) in a post and it was taken as a threat in the early post-9/11 era. (He didn’t help his case by having a bad attorney and then by running off to Canada.) So you do have to be careful of what you say online.

ARIC, I agree that this apology took guts. I am totally impressed how beautifully direct your words are. Two giant thumbs up to you. May God bless you.

ARIC – so good to see, nice work you.

To ARIC from another ARI(at times!)C,

Brother or sister, as one who has often (and very recently!) made an a** of myself in the public square of a blog; I know how painful it is to eat words! Just recently I lost my temper and posted a lengthy and unkind comment on Jared Moore’s blog in response to his words about our dear WW ladies and reposted the comment here. I was compelled (on Easter Sunday morning) to e-mail Jared and ask forgiveness. Ouch. And that’s just one example. Apologizing and asking forgiveness HURTS when it is done right but it is a good hurt, isn’t it?

God works even our sin for good and doing right is always worth the cost. Blessings to you!