http://www.nordicbots.com NordicBots.com News Latest news from the NordicBots.com website Wed, 14 May 2008 14:33:08 +0200 NordicBots.com http://www.nordicbots.com http://www.nordicbots.com/img/88x31.jpg Happy birthday tiidus! http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/90/ http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/90/ This time we are to celebrate tiidus. Today he reaches the age of 22 years.
Tiidus is also a devoted staff member of NordicBots, but today you should take a day off having a day with your family and friends.
We hope you have wonderful day with lots of nice presents.
We look forward to work with you for another year!

All the best from the rest of the NordicBots staff ]]> Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:27:24 +0200 TheAvatar@noreply.nordicbots.com (TheAvatar) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/90/ Happy birthday Petyyy! http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/89/ http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/89/
Ever since he joined NordicBots, Petyyy has handled a lot of requests. His peak was in 2005 when he handled more than 4.000 requests, and he has been progressing ever since.

He recently reached the astonishing (and in some way magic) milestone of 10.000 requests!

This is more than 15% of our total number of requests (since we started counting them in 2004) and has (so far :-)) not yet been reached by anyone else.

Petyyy, you are a great and devoted contributor to our service. Thanks for supporting us for all these years and congratulations with your milestone, you deserve it!

We hope you have a great day, gets loads of presents, and send (each and everyone of us) a piece of pie!

~ Your friends at NordicBots. ]]> Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0200 soczol@noreply.nordicbots.com (soczol) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/89/ Having other bots, the rules explained http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/88/ http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/88/
We suspect that many users simply don't know which bots are allowed and which aren't. So, we have made this post to hopefully make things a bit more clear.

First of all, there are several kinds of bottypes: Stats bots, Fun bots, News bots, Game bots, Service bots, Gather bots, QuakeNet bots (Q/S, fishbot, etc).

Our rules are very simple. We allow all of those bots except service bots (clearly, we do allow QuakeNet bots).

Note that some botservices have chosen to combine several functionalities into one bot, e.g. a fun+servicebot. These bots are not allowed either, as they are still service bots.

Our system automatically detects these service bots. This means that if you have one on your channel, sooner or later you will find the bot in your channel to be suspended.

A lot of people have wondered why it is exactly that we don't allow other service bots. Here are some of the main reasons why we don't allow service bots:

  • Botfights
    Bringing in other service bots usually means there'll be botfights sooner or later.

    For example: the other service bot tries to kick/ban our bot for voicing someone, which will in turn unban itself and rejoin, etc.

    We clearly don't like botfights. Our bots are not made to protect themselves from any attacks, so fighting against other bots is useless.

  • One service bot is enough
    We strongly believe that channels don't need more than one service bot.

    Bringing in other service bots leaves a lot of duplicate/colliding functionality. We think our bots are good enough to be used on their own. If you feel otherwise, you are free to try bots from another botservice, but then you can't have our bot.

Note: Just to make things clear; these rules only go for bots from other botservices, creating your own bot is fine.

We hope this post has helped you understand which bots are allowed, and why some bots aren't. If you have any questions feel free to ask on #NordicBots. ]]> Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:26:47 +0100 Petyyy@noreply.nordicbots.com (Petyyy) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/88/ Bots G-lined (banned) from QuakeNet (update) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/87/ http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/87/ QuakeNet refused to help out, so we will have to wait for the G-line to expire. When that will be is not known, as they wont inform about G-line expiration times.
The other part of the bots will just be idling in your channel for the time being, not responding to messages or public commands. For the time being, the bots will have an away message set, which can be seen with /WHOIS .
Away: Yes : NordicBots Natasha bot is currently not available - #NordicBots

When things are back up, the message will disappear.
We expect the G-line to last anything between a few hours up to one month.

An update will be posted when we have any news to provide.

Update 16:20 (GMT+1): The G-line has expired and all bots are reconnecting to IRC. They should be in your channel within a few minutes.

All suspends have been extended by one day so you have one more day to contact us, if you want your channel to be unsuspended.

Thanks for your support and patience! ]]> Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:35:59 +0100 TheAvatar@noreply.nordicbots.com (TheAvatar) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/87/ Happy New Year http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/86/ http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/86/ NordicBots staff wishes you a Happy New Year 2008!




The past year has been quite a hard year for us as we lost of our long-term QuakeNet trust in January and caused a three day g-line on our bots.
Later on we were victims of those not so nice ddos attacks.
Luckily not everything that happened the past year was bad, the addition of a few new staff members and a bunch of new bot features can be considered as good things. :)

Finally I would like to thank the whole staff team for this year, it's really a pleasure doing this with you guys. :)

Happy New Year everybody! :) ]]> Mon, 31 Dec 2007 15:17:56 +0100 tiidus@noreply.nordicbots.com (tiidus) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/86/ Merry Christmas http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/85/ http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/85/
The NordicBots staff would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas!




Probably you will notice that we are slower in these days as usually. Well it's Christmas and we have to spend some time with our family so we can't keep up our quick support but don't worry our support bots do not have social life they will work! :P

Anyway Merry Christmas again!

The NordicBots Staff ]]> Mon, 24 Dec 2007 08:50:23 +0100 Petyyy@noreply.nordicbots.com (Petyyy) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/85/ Services down due to power maintenance http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/84/ http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/84/ The bots are getting back online as we speak. The time is now 17:30. Sorry for the extended downtime.


Due to large changes in the power infrastructure of the datacenter that some of our servers are located in, our service will become unavailable in the evening of Friday 2007-12-14 (CET).

"Why do I have to care?"

Our bots will be unavailable and will disconnect from IRC and thus leave all channels.

(note: before asking us how to get the bot back in your channel, please read the "what do i have to do?" section below)

The server that generates statistics for your channel is also affected by this maintenance, so statistics will be unavailable too.

The only part of our service that will still be available is the website, which however will not be as functional as normal because some parts of the website are tightly linked to our other services.

"What do I have to do?"

As with previous planned downtimes, there isn't anything you can or have to do. If you already have a bot, the bot will automatically rejoin your channel once the service is up. If your channel is currently suspended, we will make sure you will still have enough time to get your channel unsuspended.

Note that we also can't do anything while the service is down, so it will be impossible to remove any suspends.

"Aha, and when exactly did you say this was going to happen?"

All servers in the datacenter will be shutdown in the time window of 00:00 - 01:30 (CET), although we may decide to shutdown some services earlier to prevent accidental data loss.

"How long is it going to take?"

After all servers have been shutdown, it will take quite a few hours for all power to be up again.

Our providers hope to start the first servers again at 03:30 while they do some more testing and hope to have all servers online again around 06:00 (CET).

At which point you will have to wait for some of the NordicBots admins to wake up and start the appropriate services ;)

UPDATE: Everything is up again! Thanks for your patience. ]]> Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:23:58 +0100 soczol@noreply.nordicbots.com (soczol) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/84/ Phoenix is finally growing up! http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/83/ http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/83/ (Phoenix_the_II) I am 725414400 seconds old, it is...hmm (23.00274 years) or (1199wks 3days)But I wonder what he was thinking when he didn't at all get the responses he'd expect..

(soczol) I am 801149562 seconds old (25.390373 years) - 32wks 10hrs 27mins 18secs until 26 years old
(Phoenix_the_II) ;o
(Phoenix_the_II) well, its yet again this time of year :OP
(soczol) yup, almost 2008!
(Phoenix_the_II) anyways
* Phoenix_the_II is gone
(Phoenix_the_II) gone smth to celebrate they say
(soczol) well, a bit early, but hf, i guess
(Phoenix_the_II) ._.
But don't worry Phoenix, we haven't forgotten about you :)

Phoenix, which is responsible for the server that hosts our bots and has written the system that hundreds of users use every day for requesting new bots, has been with us for a long long time.

Phoenix, we've been through a difficult few years and we appreciate your effort during those years. Thanks!

We hope you'll enjoy your birthday and life as an official grown-up (yes, it takes a bit longer for some of us - not mentioning any names)!

Happy birthday!

~ The NordicBots Team ]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:02:11 +0100 soczol@noreply.nordicbots.com (soczol) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/83/ Planned downtime because of a server move http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/82/ http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/82/
The service will be shut down around Tuesday 2007-11-27, 23:00 CET (GMT+1), at this points all bots will disconnect.

We do not know how long this is going to take, but we will keep you updated through this newspost.

"What about my channel?"
No settings will be lost, and once everything is up the bots will rejoin their channels again. There isn't anything you can do or have to do.

Note if your channel is suspended: Your channel will not be removed while the service is down, even if it's due to expire, you will be given enough time to contact us, once the service is up.

Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience and cooperation.

Update 2007-11-27 23:00:

The service has been shut down. Backups have been made and we should be ready to go.

Update 2007-11-28:

Oops.. Things didn't go as planned..

We found out that, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, the service was shut down too early, one day too early to be precise.

The physical server move for this particular server was not scheduled in the evening of 2007-11-27, but instead one day later, in the evening of 2007-11-28.

Attempts to move the server at an earlier time have failed. We're hoping that the move that is scheduled for this evening will proceed as planned. For the time being all we can do is wait, as it's not worth the effort and time, just to get the service online for a few hours.

If everything does go as planned, our service should start getting operational again during the morning of 2007-11-29.

Thanks for your understanding and patience.

Update 2007-11-29 9:10:

Things is now back up running since approx. one hour.
Stats will not be updated until up to 24 hours from now, until then, the stats from Tuesday will be shown.
The bot Year2007 lacks its nick, but we hope to have it back soon.

Update 2007-12-01 9:00:

The nick for Year2007 has finally been restored. ]]> Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:06:50 +0100 soczol@noreply.nordicbots.com (soczol) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/82/ New version of the Natasha mIRC Script http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/81/ http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/81/ With this new one, you choose a language when you load it the first time, so in the future there wont be language specific versions on our website.
This new version does as well feature an (auto)update function (can be enabled/disabled when the script is loaded or later on from the options menu), which will tell you when a new version is out. If you want to install it, just click "OK" and it will install it right away all by itself!

As this new script is rather new and contains more technical code than the old scripts, please let us know if you run into any errors using the script so we can improve it.

The script can be found in the downloads section, or by clicking here!

Update 4/11-2007
A bug was fixed so if any of you have a problem where the menus are greyd out, please redownload. Sorry.

*Privacy notice!*
Please note, if you are using the update feature it will connect to our server and report back your current version of the script, what language you are using to improve our script as well as gather a bit stats to know how much users are using the script. To more accurately measure this, the script will as well submit a random string (e.g. SUQIOMRX5262130BVQXDYOU) which is somewhat unique but not identifying you personally in any way. ]]> Fri, 02 Nov 2007 22:05:23 +0100 TheAvatar@noreply.nordicbots.com (TheAvatar) http://www.nordicbots.com/news/rss.php/81/