The Random Facts Thread

[Earthshine]

If you feel like you are going to vomit or if you feel your gag reflex kicking up... smile... smile really wide and it's supposed to "cancel out" your gag reflex.

The milk thing really does work, best thing ever.

[Rejoyce]

Human red blood cells have no nucleus. When they are made in bone marrow, they have a nucleus, but it's soon extruded from the cell. Red blood cells can't carry out repairs because of this.

[Shiyonasan]

All three of the moderators on this forum have ten letters in their usernames.

We promise that wasn't on purpose.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

I assume that would be you, Earthshine, and April7 (if you spell out the Seven).
Also Astro4Ever (spelled that way).

[Earthshine]

Huh, I never even noticed...

Maraschino cherries are not actually red from the tree... the red you see is actually a dye and a preservative

[Shiyonasan]

Last night, the "most users ever online" record that you see at the bottom of the main forum page was shattered on Astro Boy Online Forums. Previously, the record was 560, which happened on July 3rd, 2009 (as indicated in the link below):

http://web.archive.org/web/20150603101130/http://www.astroboy-online.com/forums/index.php

Now, the record is 971, which happened about 10 hours ago from when this post was made.

Probably, most of the "971" were search bots since the forum has been pretty dead lately in terms of active members.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Last night, the "most users ever online" record that you see at the bottom of the main forum page was shattered on Astro Boy Online Forums. Previously, the record was 560, which happened on July 3rd, 2009 (as indicated in the link below):

http://web.archive.org/web/20150603101130/http://www.astroboy-online.com/forums/index.php

Now, the record is 971, which happened about 10 hours ago from when this post was made.

Probably, most of the "971" were search bots since the forum has been pretty dead lately in terms of active members.

I wonder how a search bot would show up in the "who's on line" quick link?

Reno: (catching Atlas at the keyboard of his computer) So you're the one that has been causing the DOS attack on the Astroboy-on-line web site with your search bots!"

[fafner]

Weren't they spambots?

For the ones not familiar with computer science, DOS attack stands for Denial of service attack. I love the image of an Atlas in a dark room writing kiddy scripts to attack his brother's fan forum

[Rejoyce]

What are search bots and spambots? Did the forum think computers doing stuff were people visiting?

In early drafts of the Star Wars script the Emperor was named Cos Dashit.

[fafner]

What are search bots and spambots? Did the forum think computers doing stuff were people visiting?

Search bots are computer programs working for search engines such as Google. They index the web, so they need to access web sites or they have nothing to index

Spambots are computer programs that try to post spam on forums (or blogs, or anything they can get they dirty paws on). If they are detected, the forum block them, but I suppose they may still appear as guests, if only when trying to gain entrance.

In any case, the forum can't tell the difference between a real human accessing it, or a computer program acting like a human.