Jon -

Relative to those who log on to the regular 'cat site, the catters who go to your site when the 'cat is too busy to connect are probably a very small subpopulation. It could just be that the one (or more) who have, or have had, the bug just aren't in that group.

And, as I suggested, even if Max has found the "FunWeb" search engine, it could have been attached or embedded in almost anything, if I read how these things work and are being used. From what I've seen/heard, there's virtually no "pure FunWeb" stuff very active, as mostly it's bundled into downloaders, pornsite logins, etc., by individual "site mismanagers" and it's freely available to anyone who wants to mangle it. There's also the difficulty that FunWeb has quite a few different programs available for people to misuse, so you may just be seeing "the good ones," or just not seeing the isolated mismangled one(s).

I would expect that a typical search bot would try to collect a few bits of stuff and send it's findings home immediately. I would also expect that it might incorporate a "try again later" if it ran into too much info or didn't get a connection "at home," since otherwise it could stall and/or swamp the receiving site. Given the 'cat heavy use of links, everything is linked to everything else, tied up into loops and knots of links, so a search bot that blindly follows links is going to end up trying to send the entire 'cat server back multiple times. It may have a "time out and try again" that just turns it on and makes it "run til failure and reschedule" - or some such mechanism, that makes it come back every morning to try again?

Most sites have a few, or even quite a few, links that go somewhere, and maybe go to a page with a few additional links, but on most sites the links end somewhere - or lead off the site. On the 'cat no chain of links ever ends. I know that there are mechanisms to limit the depth of search by bots, but if the searchers are as dumb as implied by what I've seen about the FunWeb machines, I'd not be surprised if the 'cat server is full of the little vermin, happily spawning new bots and looking for the end of the links - and there ain't any ends.

Or it may just be too many Brits having tea.(?)

Of course, again, I'm just imagining what might be, so it's of no real help to the stranded 'catters or to Max.

John