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armm


armm

 

  2  definitions  found 
 
  From  Jargon  File  (4.2.3,  23  NOV  2000)  [jargon]: 
 
  ARMM  n.  [acronym,  `Automated  Retroactive  Minimal  Moderation'] 
  A  Usenet  {cancelbot}  created  by  Dick  Depew  of  Munroe  Falls,  Ohio.  ARMM 
  was  intended  to  automatically  cancel  posts  from  anonymous-posting  sites. 
  Unfortunately,  the  robot's  recognizer  for  anonymous  postings  triggered 
  on  its  own  automatically-generated  control  messages!  Transformed  by 
  this  stroke  of  programming  ineptitude  into  a  monster  of  Frankensteinian 
  proportions,  it  broke  loose  on  the  night  of  March  31,  1993  and  proceeded 
  to  {spam}  news.admin.policy  with  a  recursive  explosion  of  over  200 
  messages. 
 
  ARMM's  bug  produced  a  recursive  {cascade}  of  messages  each  of  which 
  mechanically  added  text  to  the  ID  and  Subject  and  some  other 
  headers  of  its  parent.  This  produced  a  flood  of  messages  in  which  each 
  header  took  up  several  screens  and  each  message  ID  and  subject  line  got 
  longer  and  longer  and  longer. 
 
  Reactions  varied  from  amusement  to  outrage.  The  pathological 
  messages  crashed  at  least  one  mail  system,  and  upset  people  paying  line 
  charges  for  their  Usenet  feeds.  One  poster  described  the  ARMM  debacle 
  as  "instant  Usenet  history"  (also  establishing  the  term  {despew}),  and 
  it  has  since  been  widely  cited  as  a  cautionary  example  of  the  havoc  the 
  combination  of  good  intentions  and  incompetence  can  wreak  on  a  network. 
  Compare  {Great  Worm};  {sorcerer's  apprentice  mode}.  See  also  {software 
  laser},  {network  meltdown}. 
 
 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  ARMM 
 
  {Automated  Retroactive  Minimal  Moderation}