this new thread replaces my previous newsgroup thread subject "Friday's chat"
because recently a poster, who shall remain nameless because he tends
to rant,
this paragon of our society inadvertently tried to respond to my
posting using an earlier subject "Friday Chat"
which was used ages ago for the now defunct Yahoo Group chat room
Unfortunately one chatter used the outdated link and found himself in
an empty Yahoo room last week

Also this week I am separating the regular chat advert and my attempt
to provide a concise digest of the past week's highlights on the
Newsgroup and the Corfid Discussion Forum


Firstly apologies for our non-appearance last Friday in the Bravenet
chat room as currently linked from Rik's web site both of my PCs that
I could have used had a (different) problem and neither would boot
up.Further to my earlier explanation of the inability to get into
Rik's old chat room either by the browser/Java applet link or the
recommended method using the mIRC "chat client" program
Ladies and gentlemen we have a problem
I managed to get a response from cjb.net with whom Rik had somehow
tied up both a browser link and the facility to use mIRC via the IRC
server cjb.net
"the gist of this reply said
"Sunday, February 22, 2004
Over the past few days, we have been receiving a very large sustained
ongoing DDoS attack....Ultimately, we decided that it's no longer
worth the expense, resources, and trouble to deal with any more
attacks and outages over a free service"
I found one site which explained:-
Distributed Reflection Denial of Service Attack
Nothing more than the whim of a 13-year
old hacker is required to knock any user,
site, or server right off the Internet.

So obviously we need an alternative room, I have tried to get either
Rik or Cathy Cowette's son Matt to explain how the chat room channel
system works and asked if the replacement room that Rik had tried (the
Bravenet room as currently linked from his web site) can be accessed
via mIRC for anyone like my wife who cannot on her PC get the Bravenet
Java applet to open.No response yet to help me over that, But I have
so far found an alternative "Conference" room offerred by http://www.webmaster.com
that appears to offer both browser access from for example my own
Lightfoot webring page and it can also utilise mIRC. But this will
take some efort on my part to understand and implement.
Meanwhile two weeks ago I was able to discuss our problem with Matt in
an AOL Instant Messenger chat and he with his knowledge of how IRC
(Internet Relay Chat) was able to st up a channel #gordonlightfootchat
which can be accessed via another IRC server namely EF.net but not as
far as I can fathom out via a browser link.
So for this evening's chat at 9pm EST anyone wishing to chat will I am
afraid have to get to grips with downloading, installing and
configuring mIRC
I already have an illustrated tutorial on my site at http://johnfowles.org.uk/LIGHTFOOT/c...tingupmIRC.htm
in essence you go to:- http://www.mirc.com;select download;and a download location
to get file mirc614.exe it is omly 1.23MB so it fits on a floppy
on a 56k dial-up connection it took just over 4 minutes
install then launch
then setup for the channel name and IRC server.
My page shows the setup for cjb.net but to use the alternative EF.net
it will be necesary in the second screenshot down to addone step
before pressing the "connect to server" button: Simply click on the
drop down list and instead of the link to "rikschatroom" you just set
up look for "EFnet random server"
if you already have an older version of mIRC installed you might not
have this "random" server option but instead choose the EFnet Georgia
server.
Sorry but if I am to get this posted today I cannot revise my site
page
Cheers in some frustration
and sorry it was rather long
John Fowles


------------------
My Gordon Lightfoot webring
starts at
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot