Ciscogate -- imminent internet threat? (1 Viewer)

[Linda Thompson]

I've been reading about this in various venues this week:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-...ml?tag=nl.e757

Partway into Season 4 of '24', when everybody was speculating as to what the big threat for the season was going to be, I remember some discussions (both here at HTF and elsewhere) about the possibility of taking down the internet, and the resulting disasters.

A bit ironic in hindsight, given the very prominent product placement of Cisco in '24' S4...

 

[Joel...Lane]

That story reminded me of the Y2K fears of 1999. NBC even produced a lame movie of the week based on it which aired a couple of months before Jan. 1, 2000 to really scare as many people as possible.

I'm sure anything is possible but I'd be more concerned about a meteor crashing into the planet before the Internet is shut down. (famous last words!)

And if my access to the HTF is cut off "before midday then there'll be hell to pay!"

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Yeah, my (former) company hired some "Y2K Consultants" (otherwise known as crappy computer people who couldn't get a real IT position in a job market that was hiring 12 year olds to write web pages) and they had a big gloom and doom meeting that warned us to "stay away from airplanes and don't go on elevators" on 1/1/2000. We explained to them that we were actual computer engineers, that we understood the "consultants" were hired just to make stockholders think we were prepared, and they should save their BS for the third floor management who actually believe that kind of crap. The meeting ended early and we all left for happy hour.

 

[Mort Corey]

Did you do either?

Mort (whose 8088 CPU didn't know the difference either)

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Not on an airplane but I rode a few elevators. The whole Y2K weekend I was making over $100 an hour babysitting my systems. I slept at our headquarters with 3 other engineers and our weekend consisted of 96 hours of us watching DVD's on the ad-hoc surround sound system we had hooked up in our lab. It was so uneventful, we finally stopped monitoring the computers, because we knew (since we wrote it) the software was 10 ft. tall and bulletproof. One of the most relaxing weekends of my life and I got triple time for it.

 

[Joel...Lane]

 

[Jeff Peake]

spoken like a true programmer

 

[Jeff Gatie]

We also tested it, we're cocky, but not stupid. Plus the whole design from the top down did not rely on dates of any form, besides the elapsed days since install. It was designed to withstand Y2K; the "consultants" got management in such a lather they wouldn't listen to us, so I got triple time for 4 days.

 

[Eric Kahn]

most older elevators would not have been any problem, since they have no computers whatsoever controling them, just lots of old clunky relays



and the new ones, although computer controlled, do not know what date it is

 

[Ricardo C]

Much appreciated reference, sir *tips hat*