LETTER: Accidental crashing of Owlnet was unfortunate

---

On Oct. 28, a global e-mail was sent to everyone at Rice University concerning the homecoming elections. This e-mail was sent by me and two others to campaign to elect Alberto Youngblood as homecoming king. The large number of e-mails caused the e-mail server on Owlnet to back up and the network file system to overload, causing Owlnet to go down. Owlnet administrators had to work on this problem in the middle of the night and deal with many complaints and questions concerning the nature of the message.

I would like to apologize to the people that were bothered by this message and to the system administrators who had to answer questions and fix the problems that this caused. We in no way intended for this to happen. We only wanted people to vote for Alberto Youngblood.

Ellis Giles

WRC '96

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the November 8, 1996 issue.

Copyright © 1996 The Rice Thresher. All Rights Reserved.
This document may be distributed electronically, provided that it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice. However, it cannot be reprinted without the express written permission of:
The Rice Thresher, Rice University, 6100 Main, Houston, TX 77005-1892, USA.