(So Long and) Thanks for all the Fishes

[AfterMidnight]

(So Long and) Thanks for all the Fishes

The second most intelligent creatures [on Earth] were of course dolphins who, curiously enough, had long known of the impending destruction of the planet earth. [...] The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double backward somersault through a hoop while whistling the star-spangled banner, but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.

-Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

After seeing the "Thanks for All the Fishes" at F*** I knew it would not be coming back. There are conflicting stories as to why the site is down. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the correct one.

Continue Reading (So Long) and Thanks for all the Fishes

[AfterMidnight]

(So Long and) Thanks for all the Fishes

The second most intelligent creatures [on Earth] were of course dolphins who, curiously enough, had long known of the impending destruction of the planet earth. [...] The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double backward somersault through a hoop while whistling the star-spangled banner, but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.

-Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

After seeing the "Thanks for All the Fishes" at F*** I knew it would not be coming back. There are conflicting stories as to why the site is down. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the correct one.

According to several articles on the internet, F*** suffered a Hard Drive failure at the same time as ScT was shutting down. Although the timing seems suspicious; in an infinite universe, all things are possible. The only backups had by F*** were from late 2008.

To be fair to the Rabbit, HDD failure with improper/incomplete backups is more common than you might think. Just recently Danger (owned by Microsoft) experienced such a massive data loss, that thousands of people almost lost all of their T-Mobile Sidekick data. At the time, their current backups were not done properly, and it took Microsoft weeks (and probably their top people) to get most of the data restored. All while Sidekick owners could not power down their devices for fear of even further data loss.

That's a multi-billion dollar company that lost data and was forced to spend hundreds of hours recovering it. Plus, T-Mobile's contract with Danger included a stiff fine for every day without data. Now think about the small tracker that's experienced a massive data loss. It may be recoverable, but they probably lack the considerable money and time it would take to do so. In light of the situation, F*** admins decided it was time for the tracker to make its final trip down the rabbit hole. It's unfortunate, but understandable.

F*** was a shooting star that shone as brightly as **-*. Unfortunately, the stars that shine the brightest often burn out the fastest. Their closing signals the end of an era for the BT world; such respected trackers will not soon be forgotten. And so I'll leave you with this:

So long, F***. We salute you. And thanks for all the torrents.

____________________________
Thanks to JustJenna for her assistance in writing this article. It is greatly appreciated.

[konVILEuted]

I never would've expected this article to be about ftwr lol!

I feel that you'd have to be pretty incompetent to lose data THAT important in this day and age.
Especially for a huge company.
FFS a terabyte can be got for what.. less than 70 bucks now?
Considering most of this data is text or in the case of a tracker, torrents and the userbase (text), more than a TB wouldn't even be necessary.
There are more than 1000000 megabytes in a TB.
Torrents are very very rarely more than 1MB, and usually only about 10-100kb.
I can't think of any tracker that has even 1/4 of a TB worth of torrents.
So why not spend a tiny bit more money for some redundancy and to prevent this stuff from happening?
Failures..

[Majid]

F*** was a shooting star that shone as brightly as **-*. Unfortunately, the stars that shine the brightest often burn out the fastest. Their closing signals the end of an era for the BT world; such respected trackers will not soon be forgotten. And so I'll leave you with this:

So long, F***. We salute you. And thanks for all the torrents.
____________________________
Thanks to JustJenna for her assistance in writing this article. It is greatly appreciated.

Wonderful article AfterMidnight, not a surprise when it comes from someone such as you who can write so beautifully. I have to agree with all that you have said, it's suspicious how it a ScT went down around the same time but like you said it happens.

RIP F*** for all the great torrents and the great run you had.

And i love that sentence you wrote, so perfect.

Unfortunately, the stars that shine the brightest often burn out the fastest.

[AfterMidnight]

Majid, Oh I wish I could take credit for that line. However, I was bested in writing that by our very own JustJenna! She's quite talented, you know. Thanks again, JJ!

[tifosi]

**-*, ScT, F*** they have all gone the way of the dodo. Extinct, sadly. I've always loved wabbits (and cats as they have a puhrsuhnalitee), even before i was introduced to bugs bunny as a kid.

It is a sad, very sad thing to see any tracker go down, and is a puzzling thing especially when they are well established and of quite some repute as the above mentioned names. They're quite secretive about their existence and have rules about even mentioning their names, but have a good enough user base to fuel it. However, of late, they've been receiving a lot of coverage. One would tend to suspect, hell, if i was them, i'd be doing something similar. So i wonder... Well, i really hope that they are alright... Doesn't matter whether i'm on it or not, but the fact that someone's sticking it to RIAA and doing it together as a community, its priceless!!! Brings a tear to my eyes... sniff...

However, if this all is true, i really want to wish them all luck with whatever they'd do in future. I really do. We'll miss you all. RIP, our dear departed ones!!!

[yayhl2]

And another one bites the dust!

[Majid]

Majid, Oh I wish I could take credit for that line. However, I was bested in writing that by our very own JustJenna! She's quite talented, you know. Thanks again, JJ!

Ohh i see well you got trained by the best and i have to admit now and since you started you have been awesome and if JustJenna came up with that sentence wow, i am amazed, a truly wonderful sentence.
Thanks to you both JustJenna and AfterMidnight

[thelostark]

why do people still star out the names of trackers even after they are shut down?! doesnt make too much sense to me.

[Majid]

why do people still star out the names of trackers even after they are shut down?! doesnt make too much sense to me.

thelostark some people do it out of respect to the tracker and its rules. Even thought the site is gone people still respect it and therefore since it is part of the rule, people star the name.

[thelostark]

ok true, makes sense! thanks for the reply

[enday]

Wonderful article AfterMidnight, not a surprise when it comes from someone such as you who can write so beautifully. I have to agree with all that you have said, it's suspicious how it a ScT went down around the same time but like you said it happens.

RIP F*** for all the great torrents and the great run you had.

And i love that sentence you wrote, so perfect.

Unfortunately, the stars that shine the brightest often burn out the fastest.

That quote has been used many times in different novels, so it's not really original. :P

It's a shame about all these trackers though. Will they all go the way of **-* and F***? I hope not.

[JustJenna]

^^ It's not a quote at all. I wrote that myself. The thought might not be original but the sentence is. Try googling it in quotes - does anything but here come up? If you're going to make statements like that, you'd better be prepared to back it up.

[AfterMidnight]

...I was going to say! Jenna is a talented writer and an excellent editor; she's really helped me to "plus" these articles. I write the articles and she sands down the rough edges. It is true that similar quotes have appeared before, but Jenna's was custom-made for this article; it perfectly dovetailed with what I had already written. And it's a scientific fact that the brightest stars have the shortest lifespans; you can't claim a literary monopoly on scientific fact.

Back on Topic: Does anybody have any idea what tracker(s) will become the next "gotta have it" tracker? It seems to me there might already be one lurking out there, hidden beneath even our radar.

[Maelstrom]

thelostark some people do it out of respect to the tracker and its rules. Even thought the site is gone people still respect it and therefore since it is part of the rule, people star the name.

In death members of project Mayhem HAVE a name, his name is Robert Paulsen...

His name is Robert Paulsen

His name is Foll....... SHUT UP!!!!!!