ARMM

2 definitions found

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [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 (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  ARMM
       
          {Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation}