A.P. Lawrence

2003/09/05 DOS

Many a year ago, this just mean "Disk Operating System" and could have applied to any number of computers generically. But then Microsoft MS-DOS became the most popular person at the dance, so if you heard "DOS", it almost always was Microsoft's version.

Nowadays it's more apt to mean "Denial of Service" as in "Our web site was shut down by a DOS attack". That's when somebody (or a bunch of somebodies) ties you up by making so many fake requests that nobody else can get in.

I had that recently with mail. Some South Korean spam site had glommed on to me and was making multiple SMTP connections, so many that very little else could get through. I had to add that to the REJECT list in my access.db to stop them. I don't think it was a deliberate DOS, just a whole pile of spam, but the effect was the same.

Psst - Wanna work for yourself?

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