.. no one will be able to tell you why. This didn’t make it into my adventures in hell page, but it’s typical. A few days ago, logging into my web site’s shell account suddenly acquired a 2 minute lag between password and prompt. As this was extremely annoying, I started collecting relevant data and complaining to the site’s technical staff. No one had any explanation, or infomation about why there was suddenly a delay, but the curious fact I turned up was that only some points of origin were affected. After about 12 hours, the problem, whatever it was, went away.
This kind of network glitch seems to happen to me every year or so. It’s never the same strangeness twice, and threre’s never any explanation. No doubt, something, somewhere was broken, and someone who was affected by the broken hardware or software eventually noticed, and fixed it. Meantime, at least one of the victims is left with no information, no tools, and no recourse.
This general pattern is common to essentially all software driven activity. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you’re pretty much up a creek without a paddle. So one day if you wake up and find every channel dark, you’ll know why. I just told you.
When the internet crashes
By Dave Dyer.. no one will be able to tell you why. This didn’t make it into my adventures in hell page, but it’s typical. A few days ago, logging into my web site’s shell account suddenly acquired a 2 minute lag between password and prompt. As this was extremely annoying, I started collecting relevant data and complaining to the site’s technical staff. No one had any explanation, or infomation about why there was suddenly a delay, but the curious fact I turned up was that only some points of origin were affected. After about 12 hours, the problem, whatever it was, went away.
This kind of network glitch seems to happen to me every year or so. It’s never the same strangeness twice, and threre’s never any explanation. No doubt, something, somewhere was broken, and someone who was affected by the broken hardware or software eventually noticed, and fixed it. Meantime, at least one of the victims is left with no information, no tools, and no recourse.
This general pattern is common to essentially all software driven activity. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you’re pretty much up a creek without a paddle. So one day if you wake up and find every channel dark, you’ll know why. I just told you.
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