We're doing the same thing. The building blocks of liveHarmony are our network servers, provided to us by the goodwill of a few generous organizations. On top of this tower, we have built a community with almost 1,000 users in it at any given time.
Unfortunately (and perhaps inevitably), someone didn't like your stack. Perhaps it was the colors you used. Perhaps it was the people who built it. Perhaps it was just a grudge against the whole block-stacking movement. Or maybe just boredom, personal problems, or a need for validation. Whatever the reason, they chose to kick it down.
In much the same way, our servers have been attacked -- pulling the supports out from under our peaceful community.
Please bear with us as we attempt to continue full service to our user community. We thank you for your patience.
The service was attacked tonight by a malicious user. The nature of these attacks is such that they are nearly impossible to defend against.
The user in question was attempting to harvest passwords from users in our support channel. When the network administration banned him, he launched the attack which has crippled our services.
As you can see, there is no easy solution to this. Our primary service provider, linkLINE Communications, decided to temporarily shut down our machine there in order to keep optimal network performance for their other users.
The good folks at linkLINE host our server free of charge. We cannot begin to express how thankful we are for this. They have gone above and beyond for the general Internet community, and their network technicians are some of the finest I've ever dealt with. There are few ISPs of their caliber.
I believe that there is truly nothing sadder than seeing the good will of the great people who run this network nullified by someone with a vendetta. I (and my staff) have put everything we have into this, and it's been probably the most rewarding thing that I have ever done.
I thank you for your patience and I hope that this can be resolved as soon as possible. We're not done yet.
Do you know what it's like to see something that you've put your heart and soul into creating grow and flourish and become one of those communities? What it feels like to give back to someone, someone just discovering the Internet, those same feelings of wonder and awe and warmth and community and friendship that you found? To receive, not the welcome random bit of thanks here and there, but the far deeper and more wonderful knowledge that you've built and maintained something that people are using and using to do things and see things and think things that they otherwise would never be able to do or would have no outlet for?-- Russ Allbery, "A Rant about Usenet"
For all of us,
Alex Lambert
"denium"
Hey now, hey now, don't dream it's over
Hey now, hey now, when the world comes in
They come, they come to build a wall between us
We know they won't win
(Thanks, Curve)