back to article Scottish news site admits coding mishap caused outage

Alternative news site Newsnet Scotland has admitted that a coding cock-up rather than a denial of service attack by pro-Unionism political opponents, was behind the outage of its site earlier this week. Initially the outage looked like the result of a flood of traffic that had knocked the site offline. In reality, changes to a …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tin foil sporran?

    I reckon there is a gap in the market for an internet site giving instructions for how to make a tin foil sporran. This would be needed to protect the precious Scottish genetic material from being spoiled by the sinister U(nionist)-rays being beamed down by the English from sky sattelites.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Scotland

    Ah the problem with Scotland is they think they're more important than they really are, nobody cares about their elections and would bother to DDos their site.

    If it wasnt for England bailing them out, they would be rubbing sticks together for fire

    1. Steen Hive
      Joke

      England...

      That the English have fire at all would probably depend on a Scot having discovered it and the English sending in the army to get it.

      .

      As for bail-outs - the father of modern economics was a Scot - begin your education there. ;-)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Was that post...

      1) an attempt at humour?

      2) a genuine deluded belief?

      3) an attempt to start a flame war via racist comments?

    3. ph3d
      FAIL

      William Wallace 4life.

      Good P.R for a site looking to get a name for itself..

      Also ITT: English Newfags

      3 Words, North Sea Oil..

      If we had went for independency a good few years ago, we would be alot richer than the rest of Great Britain,

      but, wait what? theres nothing great about any of it.. especially the English el reg readers lol..

    4. Naughtyhorse

      lulz

      consider world minus jock inventions.....

      we'd all be rubbing sticks together for fire

      dullard

      no im not of a sottish persuasion!

    5. serviceWithASmile
      Flame

      re: anonymous racetard

      can I just point out that this site is run by a very small subset of nationalists, not the entire fscking country. it also isn't the only scottish website in existence.

      while we are on the subject of people thinking they are more important than they are, perhaps you should consider the "bloody foreigners coming over here and stealing my job" crowd.

      or the royal family for that matter.

      or westminster.

      or the bbc.

      or you.

      piss off, troll.

  3. McMoo

    Of course it wasn't.

    It was obvious that it wasn't.

    Some news site that nobody has ever heard of is being DDoS'd? Of course it is, poppet.

    What a crap PR move, and I'm surprised El Reg bothered to publish it in the first place.

  4. fridaynightsmoke
    Coat

    This admission is FAKE

    and has been issued by SHAPE-SHIFTING LIZARDS who reside in London intent on STEALING SCOTLAND'S OIL and shipping it to Mars, where it is used to create PLASTIC MASKS so that the lizards can fully disguise themselves to integrate into the BANKING INDUSTRY such that they can DESTROY THE WORLD by funding experiments into EARTHQUAKE MACHINES, as were used recently to create the disaster at FUKUSHIMA, which was to create an evacuation so that nobody would see them LANDING THEIR MOTHERSHIP inside the exclusion zone.

    That's the TRUTH, and anyone who disagrees is a SHILL!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Re: This admission is FAKE

      are you related to amanfromars?

  5. Code Monkey
    Happy

    Fair play

    Come on web developers. Who hasn't claimed a DDOS was at fault for that shonky code you knocked out at 4 o'clock on a sunny Friday?

    Well maybe not so sunny in Scotland.

    1. Colin Millar
      Badgers

      Yeah ok - but

      A loop?

      That's just plain embarassing.

  6. Jonte Monkey
    FAIL

    "improvement in procedures"

    that'll be doing some testing then...

    1. Still Water
      FAIL

      Testing

      Yup - having a test system that's like live (and not just some apache server running on a dev's local box) would have probably gone a long way to picking this up.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To be fair....

    ... the paranoia is understandable given the fact that the BBC up there is staffed pretty much entirely by ex (and current) Labour party members/apparatchiks. Ditto the three remaining Scottish newspapers - all of which are plummeting into oblivion as circulation collapses.

    Amusingly the non-Scottish papers* have come out supporting the SNP in the May parliamentary elections. The fact that Murdoch is backing the SNP (which he personally detests) tells you all you need to know about the only possible alternative.

    Remember that Labour have effectively had 50+ years in power North of the border so imagine the sleaze of the last 13 years in Westminster and then think about what its like after FIFTY years - Glasgow city council for example is rotten to the core, as are Strathclyde Police who have done their very best to ignore theft, fraud, drugs, gangsters (REAL ONES) running the so called OLEOs.

    Can you imagine a situation in England where the leader of a council (Stephen Purcell) with a £1.3 BILLION budget gets warned by police about his drug taking (cocaine), his gangster connections, does a runner abroad and NONE of this makes news in Scotland until the Telegraph broke the story in England? It wouldn't happen would it?

    That sort of media bias is endemic in Scotland. BBC Scotland for example totally ignores its charter obligations and any complaints are likewise ignored unless you complain to someone in London.

    Shite state of affairs really.

    *like the "Scottish Daily Express" and the "Scottish" Sun, neither of which are much more than reprints of the real paper in England.

  8. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coat

    Just think.

    If the nationalist scots hadn't been shit at IT, their campaign for independance could have continued without interruption.

    Then again, if the nationalist scots hadn't been shit militarily and politically, they wouldn't *need* a campaign for independance.

    I'm seeing a pattern here.....

    1. The First Dave
      Boffin

      Monarchy

      Methinks that a few people south of the border need to re-read their basic history books - the current UK monarchy runs directly back to James VI of Scotland, who also took on the throne of England. Technically, there has been no true king or queen of England since.

      1. fridaynightsmoke
        Pint

        @The First Dave

        Shouldn't that include a fair few folks *north* of the border too?

        1. Alfie
          Joke

          colonials?

          So we shouldnt be trying to get independence, we should be trying to give independence to our southern colony that stole our monarchy and parliament?

      2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        You're forgetting the Glorious Revolution

        Or according to somebody Tory on Radio 4 recently, the successful Dutch invasion. Troops wearing clogs and everything. Scots insurgents suppressed, massacred, and compelled to wear kilts (wait... well, something like that).

        And then until the First World War weren't we ruled by Batternbergs?

        The flag ought to be pink and yellow quarters, plus orange.

        By the way I'm writing from the environs of Glasgow, which probably makes me technically a Sassenach. We're famous for our soft water.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Actually...

      ... it was the thing you failed to mention that resulted in the union.

      Its the economy stupid! :D

      Warning - history incoming, avoid now if averse to facts.....

      England was making shedloads of money from the "Americas". Sugar for example was more valuable than gold for a few decades. Tobacco from the southern colonies in North America was becoming more profitable for transport.

      Scotland (eventually) thought "ooo thats a good idea" and setup a colony in Panama. England (quite rightly really) viewed that as an economic threat, didn't trade with it and raided ships etc.

      Normal stuff for the times.

      The colony effectively bankrupted the "nobility" of Scotland, England rained gold upon them and what had been a "hostile takeover" in the days of Edward I became a "merger".

      Money talks. It still does.

      The amusing/bittersweet (depends on your PoV) part of this is that had the colony succeeded then Scotland would have controlled the area where the Panama Canal is now. Then again that probably just means the USA would have declared war on Scotland :D

      My personal opinion (I'm a Scot living in England for 20+ years) is that both Scotland and England would be far better places as seperate countries. I don't think the union benefits either country.

  9. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
    Boffin

    hmm

    The site is hosted outside the UK, if the site was performing very slowly it might have been impossible to logon to the server to find out what was going on.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google McCrone report north sea oil

    This report in the 1970s, warned that an independent Scotland with all that oil would be embarrased and wouldn't know what to do with it, so better keep it secret.

    It took some FoI to eventuall prise that report into the public domain.

    North Sea Oil (you know, that stuff that was perpetually going to run out) has been bailign out the UK for years.

    So, Newsnet scotland went off the deep end on this one, though not all leapt to that theory. Hopefully they'll be a bit more cautious, but there are real journos contributing to that site, not that I'd expect such a jarring fact to stop the sneering

  11. Oninoshiko

    hrm...

    Atleast they managed to publish a report of their error, and apologize.

    That makes them better then most.

  12. Badbob
    FAIL

    Typical nationalists

    Everything is ALWAYS someone elses problem, when in reality it is their own incompetence.

  13. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    News website?

    It's an SNP propaganda site, with about as much impartial news as the Daily Mail.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Erm...what?

    If it was a DDOS you would see a spike in traffic and also a spike in CPU usage. If it was a error in programming there is no increase in traffic but a spike in CPU usage. These usually identify what is causing it to happen.

    Who runs their IT systems...

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Darien scheme

    It wasn't the only problem but a major problem with the Darien scheme was the Navigation Acts passed by the English Parliament, which forbade English colonies trading with the Scots. Only English merchants in English ships were allowed.

    Come the time o the Act of Union, the English had an army ready to invade if they didn't get their own way.

    As to Newsnet

    It was established to counter a major imbalance in rerporting in Scotland, more importantly by the BBC which has long established links with one of the National, UK parties.

    From that root it has also given a platform for Greens, SSP, UKIP and recently LibDem points of view.

    But hey, don't let your prejudices get in the way of a good froth

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