Just snickering about the "Great FA Outage"
It's really hard to believe that so many people have nothing to do but sit around and complain because a web site is down.
For me, the interesting thing about this outage is that once again it proves the vulnerability of the internet as it exists today. High volume and long distance connections are supposed to be redundant now, not a single line from Washington DC to Sacramento or whatever like the way things were back in, lessee, 1858? There is supposed to be adaptive routing that automatically shifts traffic around a blockage. Things might slow down, but they shouldn't stop dead. Obviously, corporate profit of the backbone providers and phone companies comes before good design and preparedness.
Imagine if this outage were to affect some high volume commercial site right now, in the midst of the holiday shopping rush. Slamazon? WalWart? WorstBuy? There would be mushroom clouds over the corporate HQ of the providers in a matter of minutes. If it affected the federal government, the Homeland Insecurity team would be out there cordoning off half the country and making us all take off our shoes so they could be sure we weren't terrorists.
However, for those of us who live in rural America, it's just a day like any other day. Our internet connections are perpetually bad and there is NO broadband out here. So what's all the bitching about? Go read a book. Write a story. Draw a picture. Make love to someone. There's more to life than the internet.
For me, the interesting thing about this outage is that once again it proves the vulnerability of the internet as it exists today. High volume and long distance connections are supposed to be redundant now, not a single line from Washington DC to Sacramento or whatever like the way things were back in, lessee, 1858? There is supposed to be adaptive routing that automatically shifts traffic around a blockage. Things might slow down, but they shouldn't stop dead. Obviously, corporate profit of the backbone providers and phone companies comes before good design and preparedness.
Imagine if this outage were to affect some high volume commercial site right now, in the midst of the holiday shopping rush. Slamazon? WalWart? WorstBuy? There would be mushroom clouds over the corporate HQ of the providers in a matter of minutes. If it affected the federal government, the Homeland Insecurity team would be out there cordoning off half the country and making us all take off our shoes so they could be sure we weren't terrorists.
However, for those of us who live in rural America, it's just a day like any other day. Our internet connections are perpetually bad and there is NO broadband out here. So what's all the bitching about? Go read a book. Write a story. Draw a picture. Make love to someone. There's more to life than the internet.