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On this day 54 years ago Olin Stephens put down the telephone and wrote an internal memorandum to Bill Shaw, cc Drake Sparkman, Rod Stephens and chief engineer Gil Wyland, of his conversation with George O'Day
Olin
Stephens
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December 8, 1958
“I have just had
a phone conversation with George O'Day, who is very anxious to get going on two new boats to be built of Fiberglass,
which he would like to have built according to our designs.
The smaller boat he has in mind would be a Junior Ocean Racer.." |
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The above pictures are the website 'Homepage" photos that will be familiar. The full text of the memorandum, which we call the Dolphin 24 Birth Certificate, can be seen in the History Section of the website, or by clicking here
This occasion seemed a good reason to publish a newsletter, long overdue, as # 8 was published back on March 26, 2011! Another reason is the hacker/spamming incident we had on the website Forum four days ago - we needed a more detailed explanation of what happened, and what might be done to help deter another such attack.
And, finally a quick highlights review of the past 20 months - dangerous in that some worthy highlights will undoubtedly be missed.
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On December 4, 2012 we experienced our 3rd, and most serious, hacking event when a spammer posted 90+ ads for fake Rolex watches and other similar products, covering all six sections of the Forum, and resulting in emails containing that ad, being sent to members who had posted comments and checked off the box indicating that they would like to be notified of any reply to their post.
This happened about 5AM in the morning - at 5:15, thanks to an anxious Airedale eager to start her day, your webmaster let her out, and on checking his email inbox, and found 104 emails waiting - 92 from the Dolphin 24 Forum!
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We have protocols for such events, some of which are top secret, but an event this large affecting our small world required shutting down the Forum - for the first time since the website was launched. Each of these spam posts had to be found and deleted, and action taken to, at least temporarily, make it more difficult to repeat. These spammers are usually experts, technically more competent in these matters than your typical Dolphin 24 webmaster. Several hours later the Forum was clean and started up again. Notices were posted in the What's New Section, and in the General Section of the Forum.
There are ways to make a reoccurrence more difficult but they typically involve a more restricted entry/approval process to the Forum. I am reviewing options with our web hosting service and will advise of any changes. For now, members posting on the Forum can better protect themselves when they make a post by not checking off the "notify me of replies" box. This is inconvenient in that a member must go back to the Forum to check for replies. To the extent Dolphin24.org should have done a better job protecting the Forum please accept my apologies for any hassle/inconvenience suffered by our members.
And so as not to end on a low note, here, in not any particular order, are a few of the 2012 website highlights - in case you missed them.
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> an early 1960's video recording of the restoration of the Lunn built Half Mine II, Huntington, Long Island, New York - the re-christening...
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> On March 26, 2012, this website celebrated its 5th birthday.
Its content today exceeds 3000 pages of data.
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> More investigation into the mystery of Hull # 1
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