Virgin Mobile has launched a UK ad campaign featuring a hypermuscular
granny, called "Superbuff". The campaign is being run by London marketing firm DMC, with the spots and web site produced by interactive media shop 12foot6.
Amusingly, the "viral" marketing site appears to be down, or at least
not listed in DNS. I suspected initially that 12foot6 had set the
server to refuse net connections from North America, perhaps having
been too
successful at meme-spreading for its own good. So I pointed my
Mac at a public UK proxy server (to make it appear as if I were in the
UK), but the site still wouldn't load. Whois.sc confirms that
it's inactive. (There are Quicktime and WMV file links at
the DMC site.)
So in a couple days check Superbuff.com [dead link],
maybe by then it will be back up. In the meantime, they'd better
hope Richard Branson doesn't find out about this. I'm told he
eats people who disappoint him.
I clilcked the link and it worked just fine for me. No pictures though, just 3 videos of "Miss Superbuff". They do have another section there of "Flo and Jo" but I've not looked there.
Lingster
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Not for me
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209.158.203.xxx
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2005-12-03 11:35:24
How strange - it must not have propagated to my broadband provider's DNS servers. And presumably not to whois.sc's ISP, either.
Jon
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Failure... to communicate
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24.60.175.xxx
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2005-12-03 13:50:07
I've had that experience... one of the muscle sites I visit is not accessible by my ISP, but is perfectly fine from other providers. :sigh
Lingster
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DNS Propagation
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209.158.203.xxx
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2005-12-03 14:52:21
Well, what we're talking about here Jon is likely just a temporary situation. DNS servers refresh in total every 24 to 72 hours - the simplest metaphor is that the internet rewrites its phone book every few days. The Superbuff site is new, and it's not too far out of the norm for a new site to be missed for one or several DNS refreshes. Eventually it will get picked up.
I understood how DNS worked about ten years ago - as an example I remember scrolling through the Bitnet domain index back in the early 90s, it took about 20 minutes to go through all of the "nodes". There were only a thousand or so, I guess. I really don't understand how the tens of millions of domains are indexed by DNS servers today. Probably something I should read up on, though I know enough about it already to fear its vulnerability to exploitation; it's very open and non-secure.
From a database design standpoint DNS calls are probably not that intensive a process - the workflow is translating a given domain name into its proper IP address, which is a four number string from 0-255 (16-squared digits). But managing the huge quantities of fairly fluid data has to be a challenge. And of course distributing changes across the whole internet is also non-trivial, which is why some like superbuff.com fall through the cracks. (Most IP addresses have no domain associated with them.)
Now the problem you mention - a longstanding site not being accessible - that's probably because it's been blacklisted by your ISP. The domain may be suspected of hosting malware, and ISPs tend to simply block those domains rather than deal with the problems they cause. So you can't get there because your ISP doesn't want you (or your PC) to be exploited. And 99 times out of 100 the ISPs are right about that, at least in countries with strong free speech protections. So basically, if you're in an English-speaking country (except Australia, which has never adopted a free-speech provision to it...
Petechons
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WTF!?
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67.37.232.xxx
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2005-12-03 20:32:15
OK, I've seen it. Man is it weird.
Lingster
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Re: WTF!?
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209.158.203.xxx
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2005-12-03 21:31:46
Weird, but on-topic.
Cowprobe
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All your Biceps are belong to
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68.66.169.xxx
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2005-12-03 22:32:29
Funny stuff!
The grandmother clips showcased the beneficial efforts of exercise as one gets older. Resulted in similiar a physique for Judy Miller I believe.
The flower women ones were bizarrely good natured poking fun at both narcissism and the foibles of the two flower ladies.
Those these clips will haunt my nightmares :x ;)
tourist
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well...
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84.144.32.xxx
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2005-12-04 02:28:00
Guest
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well again...
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84.144.50.xxx
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2005-12-04 02:31:03
:sigh
i laughed my ass off ( not really)
how about a mobile phone clip where the muscle lady makes the screen collapse by pushing or punching it.
that would be something!
Martin
Lingster
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Poop
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209.158.203.xxx
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2005-12-04 10:59:36
I still can't get it.
Delmo
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Charmed's "Hulkus Pocus" ep
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206.15.108.xxx
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2005-12-11 22:02:21
...should've been done this way, with the Charmed trio's heads on the bodies of Spice, Cory, and Cameo.
As for this, weird but funny.
Does anyone know who the 2 blonde female bodybuilders pictured on the site are?
Guest
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ms superbuff just killed my lo
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24.61.232.xxx
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2005-12-12 21:02:07
:eek old lady muscle is nasty she probly tastes like depends
supreme
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superbuff granny is great
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65.54.98.xxx
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2005-12-14 04:37:45
Love to see her posedown versus a young male bb in her weightclass who is about 1/3 her age and outmuscle him on stage!
