Michael Jackson dead at 50.

[Julius Seeker]

Wow. I don't have words right now.

[M'k'n'zy]

Wow...two celebritys dead on my birthday.....I must have some bad juju today.

[Eric]

Speechless. =/

[Mental]

I feel like a large chunk of the 1980s is suddenly gone in some inexplicable way.

[Zeus]

Wow, just like that? He didn't have any previous heart-related issues, did he?

[Shellie]

He had been taken to the hospital a few times for "exhaustion" I think

[Mental]

He'd taken painkillers since he got set on fire for that Pepsi commercial, and as he went touring and etc. he kept using them...in some ways I kind of have to wonder if some of what was blamed on plastic surgery resulted from that painkiller addiction, that so many people didn't really know about. The vitiligo, the crappy skin tone, the later emaciation. When you take a lot of those things every day, it'll wreck your liver, your kidneys, various other parts of your body, and eventually it takes a severe toll on your system.

He's been pretty frail for awhile, apparently. The "comeback tour" he was planning was pretty ill-advised, but then everyone thought he was Michael Jackson and really was invincible. 140 million records sold, 40 for Thriller alone, worldwide fame... Even I have to admit this one caught me completely off guard. He was pretty young, in modern terms.

R.I.P. Michael...you will be missed.

[Lox]

It was very shocking. To be honest, I've missed MJ for years. We lost him a long time ago. I kind of always hoped he'd pull it back together, but now that'll never happen.

[Julius Seeker]

I think a lot of people were waiting for him to make a comeback. It's sad to hear that he died in the preparation for that. His attorney did say that his physical health was fine, but that he was extremely worried about the medications he was taking.

I haven't seen shockwaves through The media and just conversations like this since the World Trade Center. You go all over the Internet and people are talking about, in gaming forums, fighting forums, history forums, and on all sorts of different websites who don't cover celebrity news are posting reports. This just really goes to show, despite his fall, he has really been a massive part of the fabric of the consciousness of so many people throughout the world. His legacy is evident throughout much of our pop music since the 80's; the crazy dancing; the huge amount of emotion thrown into performances. It really is a huge loss in that respect.

He's a guy who has managed to sell millions of copies of Thriller more than 25 years after its release now having it top 109 million copies worldwide, a seemingly unconquerable record considering that the next highest selling album is dwarfed sitting at 47 million sales (Back in Black).

The last time I listened to his music was only last weekend. My CD copy of Thriller has had a home on my TV stand, mostly because it is the one album that so many people have something to say about; whether it's laughter, praise, or negativity (the rarest reaction by far). Now his life story is complete. It's time to reflect on it as a whole with no wonder about the future.

[SineSwiper]

Oh, come on. I thought of a couple of jokes related to this:

Well, the mortician just needs to take one look at his face and go "Okay, I'm done!"

Al Sharpen spoke about how sad he was about the loss, but I don't understand why he's speaking about it. Michael isn't black.

And then FARK's version: Michael Jackson starts plans for Thriller 2

[Chris]

I just lost my babysitter

[Mental]

It was very shocking. To be honest, I've missed MJ for years. We lost him a long time ago. I kind of always hoped he'd pull it back together, but now that'll never happen.

[Mental]

Lox, you might have been interested to see the Onion's "breaking headline" - "Last Remaining Piece Of Michael Jackson Dies".

Poor form in many ways, but I had to admit I laughed. He wasn't really there after HIStory and its "poor" album sales (gee, only 7 million, I can never understand why everyone has to always consistently be judged against their previous record sales instead of acknowledging that seven million albums is a shitload), which is a shame because HIStory's second disc was actually a damn good album if you took the time to listen to it. Michael even had a track with Biggie on that disc.

It's a sad event - it's getting increasingly hard to escape the fact that I'm not a kid anymore - but in some ways I have to admit I feel a kind of relief, too. I think that given this news, it gets easier to see that Michael had really been dying slowly for a long time. This way people can remember him for what he gave the world, not the media circus his life became later.

I submit my choice of something to remember him by - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INwB0BWV ... om=PL">"We Are The World"</a>, probably the most hopeful thing he did, if not the most hopeful thing the entire music industry ever did. Seeing how many famous musicians were on this track boggled my mind...I never paid attention at the time.

[Mental]

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/26/mich ... >Michael's death almost breaks the Internet</a>

[Zeus]

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/26/mich ... >Michael's death almost breaks the Internet</a>

What would happen to the Internet if there was a true worldwide phenomenon where, say, half a billion people decide to go on at the same time? I know this story refers to certain sites only but can the main servers handle that kind of traffic should it come up?

[Kupek]

The only "main servers" of the internet are the DNS servers for the top level domains (.com, .net, .org, etc). DNS is setup so that any individual domain resolution request is unlikely to go all the way to the top level servers. (DNS means Domain Name System, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System , and it does the mapping of "google.com" to the the actual IP address of the server you want to connect with.)

Other than that, there are no "main servers."

[Lox]

Other than that, there are no "main servers."

But then how do the Interwebs function???

[Zeus]

The only "main servers" of the internet are the DNS servers for the top level domains (.com, .net, .org, etc). DNS is setup so that any individual domain resolution request is unlikely to go all the way to the top level servers. (DNS means Domain Name System, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System , and it does the mapping of "google.com" to the the actual IP address of the server you want to connect with.)

Other than that, there are no "main servers."

Sorry, routers

[Kupek]

The DNS servers aren't really routers, either. They're more like a giant telephone book that the routers sometimes query to figure out the right number. But DNS is set up so that most queries are handled by local DNS servers.

So, to answer your question, the infrastructure of the internet is both hierarchical and distributed to avoid bottlenecks like what you're describing. According to this page, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm , we're already at about 1.6 billion people on the internet.

[Mental]

<a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/news/ne ... cus">Onion : Neverland Ranch Investigators Discover Corpse Of Real Michael Jackson</a>

[RentCavalier]

Wow, I kinda feel like I'm the only person who doesn't actually care that he's dead.

Huh.

[Mental]

Very interesting article about Lisa-Marie Presley and her reaction to this event:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/0 ... index.html

Remember, she saw her father die under circumstances that so closely parallel Michael's that it is absolutely uncanny - and she was married to Michael for about two years. Even while married to her he expressed fears that he would end up like Elvis at the end, and to see the extent to which that has come true has me seriously thinking.

[Kupek]

It actually occurred to me today that this is very like Elvis.

For the record, Jackson's death doesn't have much of an impact on me. I remember being enamored with things like Thriller and Moonwalker when I was little, but that didn't endure long. I didn't care for his music for a long time, but recently I realized, yeah, he really knew what he was doing.

But I had figured that the past 15 years had eroded the public's good will for him, but I was wrong. I've mostly been curious at the reaction to his death. This essay is the best I've read regarding his death and people's reactions: Epitaph for a Plastic Man

[SineSwiper]

Other than that, there are no "main servers."

Sorry, routers

There are backbone links, but TCP/IP and BGP were designed not to be single-threaded, and every backbone has a ton of backup links connected to different routers. Nothing is really single-threaded on the Internet, except for the web servers, and only sometimes. (Your typical major site like CNN has a farm of web servers running something like F5 to robin-round the traffic.)

[Mental]

It's not as simple as "the Internet goes down", I regret that headline in some ways. I really see two major things that can happen:

-Individual sites find their traffic capacity exceeded - a lot like what happens in a DoS attack, but just from natural demand. Even the biggest websites will have difficulty processing requests from a majority of Internet users in the world at once. You'll note from the article that even Google News experienced serious service trouble from this, and it may be safe to say Google has more outright traffic capacity than anyone in the world (unsure, but up there in terms of probability). Their webservers will either be clogged or crash outright, and then you have a chain reaction effect - if one popular news site (CNN) goes down, the users will go to, say, MSNBC, Time, or Newsweek, and then each of those sites is under a greater load and possibility of going down. With enough demand in a particular area - e.g., Jackson's death - you could get sort of "localized cascades" that leave the majority of sites unaffected but shut down major sites in key sectors.

-Mid-level routers crash or become clogged. Again, it just depends on demand, but you can get the same kind of chaining effect if the spike is big enough. The more backup equipment you have, the better chance you have that they can take a load that heavy. But if things start going down, then other servers are going to try to reroute through other paths, since really it's all just a big web (I don't even want to think about how hard it must be to program the software for top-level DNS servers).

Jackson's death seems to have primarily caused the first. That could be a sort of stress test for the Internet - I mean, really, this IS the most practical stress test the Net has had so far - in terms of diagnosing that individual sites are likely to be the biggest bottlenecks and the most vulnerable in a demand surge, not routers or the actual "inter" part of the internet.

There is the possibility that a major backbone DNS server goes down, or that there's a problem with the big, major cables that connect some of the fatter and longer physical pipes out there. I see that, though, as more likely to be caused by physical damage to either the site server location or the lines bringing it around the world. Lightning, tornado, earthquake, explosion and etc. Damage to the undersea cables that link countries together seems to me like a distinct risk that somebody must be trying to deal with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_ ... ions_cable

(TBH, by the way, as a postscript, submarine comm cables blow my mind, period. The notion that we can lay a cable capable of carrying anything important OVER AN ENTIRE ____ING OCEAN is mindblowing to me. Not only that - but the fact that the world has had them for a hundred and fifty years. Here's a crazy-ass picture of what intercontinental telegraph cables looked like in frickin' 1901: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1901_ ... cables.png)

[Mental]

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/26/mich ... >Michael's death almost breaks the Internet</a>

What would happen to the Internet if there was a true worldwide phenomenon where, say, half a billion people decide to go on at the same time? I know this story refers to certain sites only but can the main servers handle that kind of traffic should it come up?

By the way, Zeus, I would like to point out that while I don't know the numbers, I would almost be willing to bet that this is exactly what happened. 500 million people worldwide is not an unreasonable number to assume for MJ's death and would not surprise me in the least. A fat round billion would not surprise me in the least. The biggest TV audience worldwide was 2.5 billion for the funeral of Princess Diana. Less people have net-capable computers than televisions, but it's catching up fast, and this is definitely a news story capable of rivaling that worldwide.

[SineSwiper]

The biggest TV audience worldwide was 2.5 billion for the funeral of Princess Diana.

I can't believe that HALF of the world's population even knows Princess Diana.

[bovine]

The biggest TV audience worldwide was 2.5 billion for the funeral of Princess Diana.

I can't believe that HALF of the world's population even knows Princess Diana.

It was probably just the only thing on.

[Mental]

[Imakeholesinu]

Funny thing, I saw this in the hotel room last night in Nebraska. The news media was all up in arms defending their 24/7 circus surrounding his death. "If people didn't want to watch then why did 93% of cable viewers watch the shows?"

Simple, because you fucks won't report anything else.

[SineSwiper]

Funny thing, I saw this in the hotel room last night in Nebraska. The news media was all up in arms defending their 24/7 circus surrounding his death. "If people didn't want to watch then why did 93% of cable viewers watch the shows?"

Simple, because you fucks won't report anything else.

Don't underestimate how many stupid people worship this fucker. There were billions of people at his memorial.

[Imakeholesinu]

Funny thing, I saw this in the hotel room last night in Nebraska. The news media was all up in arms defending their 24/7 circus surrounding his death. "If people didn't want to watch then why did 93% of cable viewers watch the shows?"

Simple, because you fucks won't report anything else.

Don't underestimate how many stupid people worship this fucker. There were billions of people at his memorial.

Apparently there are less sheeple than I thought. If you look at the poll on CNN's site, 60% of people are trying to avoid coverage of the ceremony. Maybe it is just the media that are the sheep.

[Zeus]

Maybe it is just the media that are the sheep.

They're more the shepherds than the sheep.

[Julius Seeker]

There's nothing wrong with celebrating the life of one of the most significant forces in music history (along with many other things; such as increasing the comfort zone and breaking down barriers between people of different colour, and donating HUGE amounts to charity). Celebrating anything dosn't make people sheep, regardless.

[SineSwiper]

There's nothing wrong with celebrating the life of one of the most significant forces in music history (along with many other things; such as increasing the comfort zone and breaking down barriers between people of different colour, and donating HUGE amounts to charity). Celebrating anything dosn't make people sheep, regardless.

He was lucky, just like everybody else. And he fucked little boys. Doesn't mean we should worship him. Neither should the media.

[Julius Seeker]

There's nothing wrong with celebrating the life of one of the most significant forces in music history (along with many other things; such as increasing the comfort zone and breaking down barriers between people of different colour, and donating HUGE amounts to charity). Celebrating anything dosn't make people sheep, regardless.

He was lucky, just like everybody else. And he fucked little boys. Doesn't mean we should worship him. Neither should the media.

Just luck huh? Which is essentially saying that anyone could have done it if they were in the right place at the right time.

He didn't "fuck little boys," he was falsely accused of it. The tabloids ran with the story, and who was it that was accusing people of being sheep now? =P

[Zeus]

There's nothing wrong with celebrating the life of one of the most significant forces in music history (along with many other things; such as increasing the comfort zone and breaking down barriers between people of different colour, and donating HUGE amounts to charity). Celebrating anything dosn't make people sheep, regardless.

He was lucky, just like everybody else. And he fucked little boys. Doesn't mean we should worship him. Neither should the media.

Sine, are you trying to tell me his success was based on luck? You have got to be kidding me. I ain't no huge Jackson fan but the man was a legend for a reason and arguably one of the best performers in history. He basically changed live concerts from being people on stage singing to actually performances which you see in nearly all big acts now. If I'm not mistaken, he was also one of the first widely-accepted black celebrities too. You can dislike his music, image, whatever, but you can not sit there and deny his talent and impact he made.

You know, I've been looking for that evidence of him actually molesting children. If you could post it, it would be appreciated.

[SineSwiper]

He didn't "fuck little boys," he was falsely accused of it. The tabloids ran with the story, and who was it that was accusing people of being sheep now? =P

Falsely accused twice? Seriously? And OJ was innocent? Seriously? Sure, I don't have any evidence of OJ murdering Nicole Smith, but the guy gets locked up with the maximum sentence for a small robbery, and nobody questions why.

As far as his talent on stage, gee, I guess I get to thank him for all of these boy bands and their stupid dance routines. Thanks, MJ!

[Zeus]

Now you've compared MJ to N'Shit and The Backside Boys? Your argument has officially jumped the shark

[Julius Seeker]

He didn't "fuck little boys," he was falsely accused of it. The tabloids ran with the story, and who was it that was accusing people of being sheep now? =P

Falsely accused twice? Seriously? And OJ was innocent? Seriously? Sure, I don't have any evidence of OJ murdering Nicole Smith, but the guy gets locked up with the maximum sentence for a small robbery, and nobody questions why

Let's see, people celebrating the life of a legend, or people blindly following the tabloids; which ones are the sheep?

[Eric]

He didn't "fuck little boys," he was falsely accused of it. The tabloids ran with the story, and who was it that was accusing people of being sheep now? =P

Falsely accused twice? Seriously? And OJ was innocent? Seriously? Sure, I don't have any evidence of OJ murdering Nicole Smith, but the guy gets locked up with the maximum sentence for a small robbery, and nobody questions why.

As far as his talent on stage, gee, I guess I get to thank him for all of these boy bands and their stupid dance routines. Thanks, MJ!

Michael was accused twice with almost no evidence to back up either claim. Of course it's Michael Jackson and he's weird so he's an easy target. The prosecution in both cases had almost no evidence. They just had the claims of the children and the parents trying to collect $$$.

In OJ's case, the prosecution had the evidence, but complete incompetence on their part led to an acquittal(Let's have him try on the gloves he wore in court after they've shrunk from testing! BRILLIANT). So yes, OJ got the book thrown at him for the robbery, because it's seemingly impossible for him to get a fair trial after since you know he literally got away with murder before.

[Mental]

Whether or not Michael actually tried to molest the kids, I think the relevant concept is that one way or another he made them feel uncomfortable enough to make them feel violated in some way. In terms of accusations of pedophilia, that's usually what has gone down, and a lot of people don't make a difference in judgement between the two. I personally make no claims whatsoever to know what happened there, and I have a certain amount of compassion for both parties.

Alfred Kinsey's research showed that in many cases of child abuse the violent and extreme reaction of parents and authorities towards the perpetrator traumatized the child just as badly or more than the original abuse, and I think that, sadly, this has been forgotten about. But, there are rarely any shortage of people who prefer to see an extreme reaction to just about any crime (been reading more than I want to about Joe Arpaio, lately)...

[Julius Seeker]

Lewis Carroll was another famous person who had children as friends and had been accused of pedophilia after writing Alice in Wonderland.

Speaking of Kinsey, I am watching that movie tonight, odd coincidence =P