If you're reading this, odds are you are under attack. Your Web server is being crushed under the extraordinary load of thousands or even millions of bogus requests. How do you deal with it?

Before we jump into that, a quick definition, courtesy of Wikipedia:

A distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) occurs when multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers. These systems are compromised by attackers using a variety of methods, though most commonly it's due to malware or trojan attacks, either pre-scheduled or triggered by an external event.

I heard on the news today that my favorite social network, Twitter, is being plagued by what they called a "denial of service attack". What on Earth is that? They're forced to not actually get service and it's an attack? I mean, I've been to restaurants where I experience a denial of service, but how can something like that affect Twitter or Facebook or whatever?