NOT HOT! Just FYI: Cyberwings - Received an email from DomainsPricedRight.com

[Dipboy]

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh. "Top Secret" video cards. If the Russians ever got their hands on those we'd be finished!

 

[Kilocomp]

I just heard from my inside guy at ATI, Shawn is getting the 8500 Ultra MAX. This is a quad. GPU for maximum performance. I heard he was testing video cards from an little known company called LighVideo, but they killed his bandwidth on the video cards. This solution from ATI is 100 times better and even has redundancy.

 

[schuang74]

Originally posted by: Kwad Guy
Well CEO hasn't given up yet. But apparently he is getting frustrated. The latest
missive from CEO to me, for your perusal:

Kwad:

Well, yes, as you say, it is not looking good from the outside. It is not looking so
good from the inside, either. LightShip, or should I say LightSh*t, has been giving
me major hassles. Apparently they no longer consider a 486 based computer "worthy"
of their facilities. They also had some issues with the USB ethernet. Since when is it ANY
of their business how I run my servers? Now, they said they'd overlook these infractions
if I paid them off to the tune of thousands of dollars. I told them no way. That money is
for only two things, both vital to our business model: Either to fund the purchase of our
new 300,000 square foot state of the art hosting center in Baton Rouge, LA, or else
for new (top secret, I can't disclose details as I am under non-disclosure right now) state
of the art video cards that will allow us to simultaneously run our servers and offer the
world's fastest Quake frame rates to our local cafe users (I believe I am just about to sign
on the dotted line to purchase the space that will house the world's first cyber-cafe +
web hosting location in the world...Local gaming will subsidize hosting costs on the
servers and by my calculations won't impinge at all on the hosting quality). Note that I haven't
even mentioned this last exclusive on my chat boards yet. So please, people, keep it under
your hats for now. If it gets out, I think my access to these next generation video cards
will dry up.

In either case, as you can see, LightShip is just trying to milk us at a time when least
wish to afford it. One more thing: IBM has in the past few days approached us with a unique
hosting app that is based on OS/2. Apparently few people are running this, and so they
are willing to work with us and offer us a basically unheard of deal on it. We are considering
switching over, especially since IBM is willing to throw in 200 hours of consulting gratis.
The only problem is that their hosting app doesn't support some of the esoteric apps such
as SQL or certain types of ftp, but we are trying to work out replacement apps that we
think will be more stable and more suitable for the purposes of most people who host on
our servers.

I will keep you posted, but expect GREAT SURPRISES in the next few days.

CEO

Dear GOD!

of all of the greatest gaming hot beds in America and Cyberwings has a "non disclosure" for "state of the art video cards"! Wow will wonders never cease? Forget conventions like E3, or Comdex. Cyberwings is where its at! They get all the good stuff before anyone else....... You figure ATI has already relased their information on their next card, Matrox also, and so has Nvidia (every 6 months remember?). Why on earth would they confide in some Mickey Mouse hosting provider? Yeah go ahead an open that "state of the art" Data Center in Louisiana (another hotbed of technology).

Whatever....

Also being an IBM Employee, I have yet to hear of any hosting app based on OS2. As a matter of fact OS2 in general has been pretty much dropped by the company since it was more a less a byproduct left behind by Bill Gates and the gang..... People are still rather bitter arround here on that one. You should have seen the anger when we had to roll out Windows NT a few years back. But hey we still have Lotus Notes...... IBM Does produce hosting and networking apps based on their several UNIX flavors..... Mr. CEO and Kwad may want to draw the corrispondance to a minimum since each letter brings out more and more questions about credibility. Come on Kwad... you would think that he would eventually post something himself. Give it a rest.

 

[Lucky]

Mr. CEO and Kwad may want to draw the corrispondance to a minimum since each letter brings out more and more questions about credibility. Come on Kwad... you would think that he would eventually post something himself. Give it a rest

You know this is all satire, right?

 

[fr]

Can someone summarize what's going on in here? Kwad, your letters are fake right?

My site hosted by them has been down for a week and they have not contacted me. I've read serveral times on their site that everyone should have been running by yesterday. I don't consider "Cannon find server" to be successfully running.

 

[Kilocomp]

Don't worry once Shawn gets a hold of ATI's 8500 Ultra Max, everything will be fine. All of those letters are just for humor on this forum. The ironic thing is I am not sure what is more funny these or Shawn's real letters.

 

[clarkmo]

Originally posted by: Lucky

Mr. CEO and Kwad may want to draw the corrispondance to a minimum since each letter brings out more and more questions about credibility. Come on Kwad... you would think that he would eventually post something himself. Give it a rest

You know this is all satire, right?

I told you they were the same guy, inside info my eye.

 

[XFreebie]

"oh yes kwad, i want to know are those actual letters fake?"



those are the real letters, direct from Shawn's laptop in bermuda

 

[Boogak]

Tsk tsk, some folk's parody meter seem to be broken. Actually the first CEO Shawn letter got me until I started reading more and it got more absurd. Funny shtuff though... I liked the "first name is really CEO" part LOL.

 

[MontyBurns]

Originally posted by: Wolfgang
MrTorrent,

I think the issue with the backup lines is this: they depended on a friendly relationship with LightShip, LS turning them on as needed when there were tech problems at LS.

But since LS was saying the problems were on Cyberwings' end, which CW's tech's didn't find plausible at all (tried everything they could think of within reasons to fix it on their own end), the backups never kicked in.

And now, apparently, the whole service has been suspended, so backups aren't available--period.

In a nutshell: they were backups to deal with a self-evident LS technical failure--any other kind of failure, and they were useless.


Hence, the move. (Though another note in this thread suggested LS won't let that happen until CW pays a bunch of money, perhaps for unused months of service or.... Speculation upon speculation, unfortunately--nuff said.)

Live and learn. One of the mistakes Shawn will not be repeating.

Man, you just have an excuse for them every time they shovel a load, don't you?

What exactly is so hard to comprehend here? It appears they didn't pay their bill, and so got shut down. Period. You have a pretty elaborate conspiracy theory about how you think LS is out to screw the company, but it's entirely unclear why a data provider would want to lose a customer.

What exactly is your connection to CyberWings? Why do you seem to have so much trouble seeing what everyone else realized months ago?

And again: Could you briefly outline why you think this is such a great Web hosting company?

 

[schuang74]

Originally posted by: Lucky

Mr. CEO and Kwad may want to draw the corrispondance to a minimum since each letter brings out more and more questions about credibility. Come on Kwad... you would think that he would eventually post something himself. Give it a rest

You know this is all satire, right?

...... DUH?

You would think that if this guy is "working so hard to get things up and running", he would have better things to do then E-mail Kwad several times a day (come on think people, he gets these E-mails like 3 times a day). Also, you would think that if they valued their "business model" so much they would at least try to get their business up and running insted of bickering with their former ISP. However Kwad may want to quit since he could easily get banned (or worse.... law suit anyone?) for this if Cyberwings finds out that he is posting fake letters from their "CEO". This forum is an excelent paper trail.

 

[Kelemvor]

I haven't been able to access my site in almsot 2 weeks now. I jsut wish someone would come out and post when the hell we can expect to see something again. Yeah it's only $4 or whatever that's $4 that I can put towards a hsot that actually works.

 

[Karsten]

I had on and off access. Now it is down completly. I will change providers by the end of the week/weekend if nothing happens till then. I really liked the webmail feature!

 

[Wolfgang]

MontyBurns,

I actually did reply yesterday, but then an e-mail URL I clicked on changed the browser page, and it was lost. Didn't feel like redoing it then.

And BTW, I've no connection with CW, aside from having some annual accounts with them. (No lifetimes. ) I don't get anything from them at all, though eventually I hope to get some accounts that work--nothing more. No need for you to be paranoid.

This faulty-backup "excuse" was explained to me by someone closer to CW than I. It also makes sense--again, nothing to be paranoid about, even if it was (in retrospect) a very naive arrangement, counting on LS to switch things over if there were problems. They didn't cover the case where there's a dispute over the problem.

I think you're forgetting too that while LS and Cyberwings have now broken things off between them, this started as a maddening, intermittent, but frequently recurring technical problem, each side blaming the other (which doesn't mean each side was trying to "screw" the other, BTW). It may well be that billing dispute derives from that (e.g., if CW has an annual contract that it's breaking)--or not. I don't know.


Back to your original question: you mischaracterize what I said. I don't think Cyberwings IS a great hosting solution; I think it COULD be, a substantially different assertion.

Here's why it's possible, in my opinion:

I have three controversial premises: (1) Shawn is basically honest, in just the sense that it's not his character to just flat out lie to people. According to some who have known him a lot longer than I, he is impulsive and hyperbolic (and too often takes attacks on CW personally, and one man's salesmanlike hyperbole is another man's total BS), but NOT a con man. (There's another sense of "trustworthy" meaning something like "reliable and competent"--that's at best unclear right now.) (2) CW did indeed deliver the goods very well up until this last month, up until the last 2 weeks, basically. (3) Shawn has said that he's already put around $120k in to CW, and is willing to put in more in the near future. He's said repeatedly that CW has some problems right now, but cash flow isn't one of them. MAYBE this is just a flat-out lie, despite (1); but MAYBE it's not, too.

Granting these three premises, the third of which obviously seems the most dangerous, and also assuming the technical problems will be corrected in the move to the new DC in northern VA (whenever such a move happens--the fact that it hasn't already, with (and this disturbs me) no explanation, lends some credibility to the note allegedly from a LS employee saying that LS would not let CW move until LS gets what it thinks it's owed financially), then CW will be operationally back on its feet in a week or two.

If it can offer service as it was before, before the fiasco between it and lightship, and at something even approaching its current prices (Shawn has said they will rise, but how much is to be determined), then there's an opportunity for a lot of people to get HQ (then, not now :^I) web hosting cheap--and that's a very good thing. Again, IF and ONLY IF, LS-like fiascos can be avoided in the future--not to mention resolved now!


Nothing magic--just the beauty of the free market as assisted by significant cash infusions and large amounts of enthusiasm (which can be worth a lot of time and money), and perhaps a resulting large scale of operation. That combination is the only thing that might offer excitement here.


And obviously ONLY TIME WILL TELL. To repeat, there ARE, I realize, obvious grounds for pessimism--take the whole last 10 terrible days, the ongoing poor communication, the "back up soon" but never today, etc.

But I (unlike others here) think there are also some grounds for optimism.

-----------

I must admit I'm less optimistic rewriting this this lunch-time than I was writing it last evening. The most customer-friendly rep resigned yesterday--NOT because it's all a scam, etc. etc., but because she thought (correctly) that Shawn and other staff were becoming too defensive and hostile toward customers. And once more, last night Shawn had an opportunity to explain himself and said he would, but simply didn't, not live and not on cwstatus.com. No doubt, he has his reasons (e.g., "too busy solving the problem", and serious embarrassment if LS controls his servers; apparently he was also locked out of his house), but the fact that his early statements so often conflict with his later actions suggest impulsiveness, misunderstanding, and poor planning. One wonders if he'll completely change his mind and just refund everyone and vanish, rather than embrace the effort, cost, and embarassment of having to rebuild CW's reputation--and by extension, his own.

I bet these characteristics, not fraud, will undo CW if anything will. Only time will tell.

I used to think the odds were over 50/50. With this relapse into silence, a return to regres over progress, it's hard to know what the odds are--but it seems a safe bet that this silence is not golden. The next 48 hours will be fascinating.


Wolfgang

P.S. Sorry this is so long. Can't afford the time to shorten it now. I apologize in advance for any mistakes, for the same reason.
P.P.S. I'd also encourage you to be a bit more accurate and charitable in your portayals of others' statements, unless humor is st stake. :^)

 

[immortalis]

You guys are really amazing.

When is the point reached that you realize it is not what it should be?

Two weeks down and he does not respond to emails.

I just filled out the "forfeit" form my CC company sent me. This is needed to claim your money back. Nice thing it has a prepayed return envelope.

So except of some wasted hours (how much do you value those?) and many hopes and being carried away in these threads I did put an end to this madness.

 

[Lucky]

However Kwad may want to quit since he could easily get banned (or worse.... law suit anyone?) for this if Cyberwings finds out that he is posting fake letters from their "CEO". This forum is an excelent paper trail.

He wouldnt win; its a parody.

 

[geekender]

Similar to Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" ; Of course that one didn't go over to well either

 

[wedi42]

weird, i have 2 sites hosted w/ cyberwings.
both are still going fine. in fact one of them i have monitored by easymonitor.com and haven't had downtime in more than a month

 

[labgeek]

As for setting up a datacenter......he probably means rack space in someone elses datacenter/colocation site. Takes 2 days tops and if you have a pressing concern they can have you running in 12hrs. All it takes is some cash. Hmmm. I should clarify that I think Shawn is trying [successfully up until the last 24hrs I might ad] to give the professional allusion of a datacenter.....which would cost an ENORMOUS amount of money. Albeit a colocation or rackspace in a datacenter would be excellent.
...

Maybe he better re-read the HostingTech article regarding matrixcubed.com if that's the case. The judge there ruled that even though they bought from a company connected to XYZ and ABC, does NOT mean they were connected to them as well, even though they were buying bandwidth from the intermediary who was connected. Though it is a common practice in the industry. They were fined for making fraudulent statements (among other things). Mr CEO REALLY needs to read that article before he gets himself in a whole lick of trouble...

 

[SearchMaster]

johngute,

Your server(s) must be in Texas at RackShack. I also have two sites with CW - one is at RackShack and has been super reliable. The other (fortunately much less important one) is down...

The thing that worries me most (other than impending CW collapse) is that Shawn said on cwstatus.com that all servers will be moving soon, so our reliable RackShack (ever think you'd hear those words in the same sentence?) service will be interrupted for at least two days (my guess, not theirs).

 

[Magicktech]

the stories coming out of CW have so many plot holes they could make a bestseller or tv miniseries!
honestly i hope its one of those things that only seems too good to be true - but im getting more doubtful with every new 'explanation'...

from cwstatus.com - apparently the only site having to do with cw thats online.

"CEO-Shawn is leasing space from a data center in Northern Virginia - will not release who/where for privacy/confidentiality issues. " (oooh another secret!)


"CEO-Shawn - The lease has a "purchase" option as well, I wanted that in there in case we decided to have a major expansion next year and needed to make it more formalized. " (but then reveals details of a private lease?! - this doesnt really wash (again))


but i still have fingers crossed cause i would like to be using the very inexpensive webspace i bought from cw soon and still using it next year...

 

[mrtorrent]

So now he no longer has a datacenter that has been built in two days ("New DC in Virginia is complete."), just some space that he's leasing. Brilliant, as usual.

 

[Kwad Guy]

Well, another day, another message from CEO. I'll just pass it along without comment.

Kwad,

Yes, it HAS been a very hectic several days. But I have good news to report. You know
that new 300,000 square foot data center I told you we were having built in Baton Rouge, LA?
It looks like it will be done within a day or two. It went much faster than we expected. Two hitchs,
though. First, they forgot to include any air conditioning or ductwork for airconditioning. My operations
man tells me we should be able to run the servers without it, although we'll probably buy another
fan for each server box. Fry's has special case fans that run at several THOUSAND rpms per minute.
We'll probably go with those assuming we can keep the costs in line. The other problem is that
they apparently are only running 60A service into the building. Now, as you'll recall, we bought special
high end 300VA UPS units that can run off 60A service. But with the thousands of servers we expect
to have up and running shortly, we may need more juice. The Baton Rouge people tell me they
can run additional 60A trunks into the building as needed, although they are looking at 6-8 months
lead time per line. So that may hold a few things up. Still, we expect to be able to do most of our
business without any immediate problems.

Now I am not absolutely certain the data center will be ready by tomorrow, but as I said, it
looks reasonably good to go. I will let you know soon. Oh, and here is the coolest part: The
building is already pre-outfitted with several "crack racks". The crack servers have been removed, but
we hope to use these special crack racks to run our own crack servers. Although we do not see this
as taking much away from our #1 goal of having the cheapest hosting services with a full 98% uptime
(find another hosting service offering that kind of uptime guarantee!), we also forsee ourselves as
helping out in the cracking business. I currently have feelers into the Orion and Paradox groups to
see what we can do to help. I expect when they hear we have built in crack racks that they'll be
onboard quickly. I feel this is part of our give-and-get philosphy: These groups have given us
so much in the past, we should do our best to pay them back. I have always said that up to 10%
of each server should be made available to these altruists. I feel this strongly, and have advocated
this position among all my industrial colleagues.

Oh, and I was just talking to the IBM guy about their hosting app. It turns out that after evaluating
our requirements, they are suggesting we use different hosting software based on Win3.1. This
apparently is more stable for our purposes. The only (and I emphasize ONLY) drawback is that
this hosting software is only compatible with the Morpheus browser. But the IBM guys are working
with us to make Morpheus available as the primary browser to anyone who may want to access
website hosted on our servers. We see this as a shorterm issue, and not a dealbreaker. I guess I'd
like to hear what the people on the various forums say, though, before we sign on the dotted
line.

Well, back to the mill. I have run the capacitance bridges on the south junctions of all the
servers now. So we are all but good to go.

CEO

 

[RSG2]

I really wish you guys hadn't spilled the beans about Kwad's letters - that was more than worth the $4.00 I spent...

Then again, it had been explained earlier in the thread that they were a parody, and that semmed to be overlooked...

Kwad, keep 'em coming...I need a laugh before dinner...

 

[clarkmo]

It sounds like Shaawn really, really has it going on, now.
Crack racks and Morpheus?
Looks like he'll have to loosen up on the bandwidth limts. Maybe get into the mb range
I prefer Kazaa lite myself but why doesn't he look into Napster? It's legit now and would be an excellent way to share those cracked apps.








Just waiting for the next hooked fish reply. My guess is 8:17 PM.