'Slashdot Effect' Causes Havoc in Redmond
   
   REDMOND, WA (July 26, 1998) -- The microsoft.com website was offline
   part of yesterday as a result of the so-called 'Slashdot Effect'.  Yesterday morning, Rob
   Malda (aka CmdrTaco) posted an article on his Slashdot.org
   "News for Nerds" website.  The article linked to a page on the Microsoft website
   that announced Windows NT 5.0 would probably be delayed until early 2001.
   Tens of thousands of nerds visited the page and brought the NT-based atbd.microsoft.com
   website to its knees.  The site bluescreened within minutes of the
   Slashdot posting.  The site was back online six hours later.  "The
   microsoft.com site is really speedy now.  I bet they scrapped some their
   NT boxes and installed Linux on them to handle the demand," one anonymous
   Slashdot regular commented.