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Geek Guard to the Rescue 147

Posted by michael from the minutemen dept.
Ant sends a link about the Geek Guard proposal that is floating around. Supposedly technology companies would form the backbone of a fast-response technology force. But Verizon was and is part of the problem with regard to communications, not part of the solution. A lot of technically-inclined people and groups like NYC Wireless did assist in lower Manhattan after Sept. 11, and they're still helping out businesses and people with no internet/phone connections and not even an ETA from Verizon on when Verizon might get around to hooking them up. If Verizon fulfilled their Geek Guard duties with all the rapidity that they, say, install DSL lines for competing DSL providers, they would have "rescheduled" their disaster response three times and we'd have an appointment for early November right now.
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Geek Guard to the Rescue More

Geek Guard to the Rescue

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  • I know the emergency phone number... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ekrout ( 139379 ) on Friday October 05, 2001 @10:24PM (#2394537) Journal
    it's gotta be extension 31337 ;-)
  • And they said NYC Wireless were just a bunch of bandwidth theiving hackers.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 05, 2001 @10:30PM (#2394547)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Um...
      It makes perfect sense to me. Actually, it's pretty funny. But if you're going to address God, why don't you ask him for something, rather than asking someone else to 'call an editor' immediately. Do you think God is incapable of summoning an editor?

      On another note, does God use emacs, or vi?
      Hmmmmm....

    • perhaps you've never dealt with verizon or perhaps you don't understand english. either way, michael's statement is mostly true. a company like verizon will already be stressed during a situation like this and will have its workers working on verizon network problems.

      no, a non-heirachal group of tech workers in small teams on specific points of problems with wireless communication links between teams is the best way to go -- not a military styled 'top down' approach which would slow the deployment and execution of such a 'rescue' attempt. these groups should be in every city and partially exist in the form of LUG, 2600, et al. the only thing preventing these groups from taking control of the situation is effective communication which could come from HAM operators, one in each group.
      • Perhaps you are new to the english language?

        All I know is that the passage cited in the parent post does not resemble the english language in any way.

        Perhaps the writers and "editors" of Slashdot should have taken some remedial English classes in addition to CS.
        • Technically, the English is fine. The construction is probably too complex, but the writer was emulating a certain mode of speech. Essentially it's a compound of two sentences, "they would have 'rescheduled' their disaster response three times," and "we'd have an appointment for early November." The balance of the sentences consists of qualifying clauses.

          It might have been clearer to you had the post's author used the term "for example" instead of the vernacular "say."

          Out of curiousity: did they teach you to diagram sentences when you were a lad?

    • Dear God, someone call an editor, quick!

      ln -s /bin/ed quick
  • As a person with 24 hour restoration contract with Verizon, and it now being nearly 1 month since the "outage" I am not having to pay them around $1000 a day for not delivering to the SLA. Verizon's own Account team called me and told me I wont be billed for this month.. Something good finally came out of this..

    my eta for my circuit to be repaired, Mar 2002
    • I am not having to pay them around $1000 a day for not delivering to the SLA

      Verizon is doing business with the Symbionese Liberation Army? Given the current situation, that is pretty damn low. Even Patty Hearst doesn't like to talk about that anymore.

  • emergency response team (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Friday October 05, 2001 @10:34PM (#2394553) Journal
    The first question in my mind is if this would have a military feel to it, or a corporate suit?

    but then I saw this:

    "With congressional support, the leaders of our nation's technology companies could organize themselves, their employees, and their resources for this purpose," Wyden says. "Medium and small-sized businesses would be able to contribute once a national framework was put in place. The resources from the federal level need not be extensive; people could be designated from existing human resource pools at major" companies, Wyden says. [...] in such times of crisis, about the last thing a company is going to want to have happen is to see their top network architects rush into the nearest restroom and emerge in green fatigues with a camouflage soft-sided laptop briefcase in hand ready to "go to war" while the company's own LAN starts to buck and spit and blow chunks of data out into cyberspace.
    If it is not some federally agency, then the rest of the businesses in the country are likely to not support it.

    Never mind that the transportation system was also knocked out for a while.

    It needs to be a federal thing, I think

  • Yeah right (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday October 05, 2001 @10:34PM (#2394555)
    I can just picture RMS in military fatigues ...
  • The name "Geek Guard" has to go... there's a negative stigma associated with it.

    -Berj
  • I'm young, I want to learn, where do I sign up?

    Seriously, this sounds like an excellent idea. But, who runs it, where's the money from and how do we follow any progress?

  • Verizon should not be permitted to operate... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05, 2001 @10:42PM (#2394574)
    If there was any alternative I would use them. Since April, I have been waiting for them to pull a fibre for our T3. Our entire business has been down. Their damn switching office that they have to pull it from is right accross the parking lot from our office.

    April! It is now October. Last month some idiot from Verizon finally came and pulled that fibre. Big job, down near a man hole on the block their building is, and up over a few poles. Must have taken a whole 2 friggen hours. The guy pulls it to the wrong friggen building.

    Two weeks ago, they send him back. Yes, he gets the address right this time. Way to go Homer. I bet his wife has to tell him to check his nuts when he leaves in the morning to make sure he hasn't left them behind.

    Oh, glory, he even gets it up to where the termination and router has been waiting, sitting on the wall, since April. That's all he does. Seems he's not permitted to do anything else. So time for the brain trust.

    Last week, dummy 2 arrives, looks at the wall, and scratches his ass for a bit. Seems there is a problem. Nobody tipped the bloody fibre. Dummy 2 doesn't do this, and dummy 1 was lucky he could even find the building, even though it is right accross the street. Maybe it's a union thing. Well, a dummy 3 is needed to tip the fibre so dummy 2 can plug it into the socket. Gee, wouldn't it have been brighter to train Homer over there to do a complete job rather than have three seperate idiots?

    As of today, the fibre is still dark. Dummy 3, you see, also went to the wrong address, and a different one at that! Dummy 3 can't come out later today because he's only allowed to make one visit per day. No sir, Verizon isn't the sort of company that after f**king up a job for 6 months would trouble itself to have somebody work a little overtime to fix anything. Monday, you see, is also Columbus day. Maybe we will see Moe Tuesday, and after that Larry can come by later to plug in the tipped fibre.

    So, you see, having them f**k the rest of lower Manhatten is probably just normal business practice for them.

    • We had a DSL circuit ordered in Sept (2000)that verizon finally pulled in April...
      Went to wrong address 4 times.
      Insisted that the customer was never there even when they got the address right (Cust. runs business from home, and has 2 dogs that bark at any intruder that makes it on the yard, dogs never saw anyone.)
      God that was the most patient customer we ever had.

      Had another one that they finally ran the line.. then came back and totally rewired the customers house and broke both her phone and her DSL, then proceded to unhook the DSL line that they took 6 months to put in. She cancelled...

      And of course they kept telling her that they could have her DSL in 3 days.. if she bought from them...
    • you really should check out dslreports.com for more of the same types of stories and rants...
      me, i switched to another telco provider alltogether (both phone and dsl service) and haven't had to deal with those monkeys since.

      (cavtel.com)
    • Hmmm I'm on the oposite side of America, while we certainly didnt ask for a T3, we got DSL (high speed DSL) from them pretty quick, quicker then they were estimating as a matter of a fact. The other nice thing I recall reading, was that they refused to release information about their customers and not track what their customers do and ban them for using gnutella (unlike some other broadband companies that have gove bank rupt recently).

  • A Note from NYCwireless (Score:5, Informative)

    by sportal ( 145003 ) on Friday October 05, 2001 @10:57PM (#2394597)
    If you are a company, business, organization or individual who has been disconnected (primarily internet access, but VoIP is a possible solution) by the WTC attacks and would like assistance from NYCwireless, send the following information:

    • Name
    • Company Name
    • Address & Cross Streets
    • email address and phone number if working or other forms of contact
    • # of floors in building
    • # of floor you are on
    • How many users / computers are disconnected
    • Bandwidth Needs if know
    • What your "Line of Sight" is like, include a link to a webpage with digital pictures of you line of sight if possible.

    Email requests for assistance to wtcreliefrequest@nycwireless.net
    Please only send direct request from the affected organizations and individuals.

    If you have resources and would like to contribute, the following would be useful:

    • Wireless Building to Building LAN bridges
    • 802.11 Access Points & Cards
    • Antennas (Yagi, Sector, and Omni) and mounting hardware
    • Cables, Connectors and Arrestors
    • Locations in NYC area with available internet bandwidth
    • Locations in NYC area for antenna placements with good line of sight
    • Individuals that can install wireless hardware
    • Individuals that can install antennas
    • Individuals that can provide networking support
    • Individuals who can provide VoIP solutions
    • VoIP hardware

    Email offers to wtcreliefoffer@nycwireless.net

    NYCwireless has been very busy working with the affected businesses and organizations in New York. We apologize if we do not respond to every email offering support.

    Everyone is welcome to use the latest public NYCwireless access point at Tompkins square park [nycwireless.net] or other NYCwireless locations [nycwireless.net], especially those affected by the WTC attacks.

    Thanks,

    --Terry Schmidt
    NYCwireless [nycwireless.net]

    • If you are a company, business, organization or individual who has been disconnected (primarily internet access, but VoIP is a possible solution) by the WTC attacks and would like assistance from NYCwireless, send the following information: ...

      I have no mod points at present, but this post belongs much higher than (1).

      -- MarkusQ

  • Time for a breathalyzer on the publish feature (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sagarian ( 519668 ) <smiller&alum,mit,edu> on Friday October 05, 2001 @10:58PM (#2394598)
    If Verizon fulfilled their Geek Guard duties with all the rapidity that they, say, install DSL lines for competing DSL providers, they would have "rescheduled" their disaster response three times and we'd have an appointment for early November right now.
    Quick! Get a breathalyzer on the news item submitter!
  • Before Bell Atlantic and GTE merged to form Verizon, there were long standing problems with BA. Back in '98, I was assisting 2 local ISPs with contracted systems engineering... BA was a large problem because they would sit on a phone loop installation order for 6 months before doing anything. Meanwhile, we'd have customers complaining about busy signals because BA would only install new lines on their special schedule.

    Most of the ISPs in maine got together and formed a consortium and persued legal action against BA. I'm not 100% sure of the outcome from that, but I'm sure its still a battle being fought with Verizon.
  • Where do I sign up? I'm willing to do the artwork, too.
    • yo...I tried to send you an email @furnetwork.net, but it bounced - User Unknown. So here's the message body:

      Hi. I found your comic strip after seeing a post by you on slashdot. I thought I'd just like to email you and say I think its a great comic, and I think its cool you use the Gimp to make it. Keep it up :)

      And in a pitiful effort to save my poor rapidly dropping karma, I think a Geek Guard is a good idea. Hopefully in the future it can let people communicate quicker in a disaster.

  • Give Verizon a break (!) (Score:5, Informative)

    by xyzzy ( 10685 ) on Friday October 05, 2001 @11:56PM (#2394688) Homepage
    Although I work for a subsidiary of Verizon, I am no particular friend -- but I feel I should say this.

    Give Verizon a friggin' break here! They've rebuilt an entire telecommunications network in lower Manhattan from scratch -- on the order of 100k+ lines! Photos have been circulated internally of the West St. switching station -- this being the one that had the antenna mast from the WTC pierce it when it fell -- and the equipment is more or less completely replaced now. And they had the NYSE up and running so they could open a week after the attacks. And all of this is in addition to all the emergency communications needs.

    That's a pretty formidible task. Even if they are your bitterest enemy, this is an amazing performance.
    • Ditto.

      If you have actually been in Manhattan since 9/11, you would think that there was a war between the army/national guard and verizon on acct. of the number of vehicles both have in southern manhattan. The verizon presense is simply astounding.

      A bunch of geeks getting 802.11b working so other geeks can walk around with the ipaq, or whatever the geek lust toy of the week is, uploading pictures= geek circle jerk. Verizon fixing regular people's phone lines= restoration of normalcy. Verizon has tons of temporary phone booths set up, etc, etc. 802.11b is valuable to *maybe* 1% of the NYC populace.

      ostiguy
      • Yup, for as much baby bell bashing as we do I gotta admit that what they are doing is impressive, but they are working on a priority basis. This ER thing is more about making sure that something is available quickly to first support the first responders with something quick, it needs to start operating right now so people like firefighters can get building plans, supply vehicles head in the right directions ect.
        After that it can be reconf to provide commo to less immediate needs; after existing emergency comunications are in place. This is where 802.1B is handy. providing a point to point from a Emergancy scene thru relays to where a more Traditional connections exists. and geeks with lap tops, hams with A.25 ect. are prefect to do it.


        And yes having more traditional types is OK, the network is down when the building is flattened so their not much for him/her to administer. I don't think most suits are going to complain much now when its explained that way. Its a disaster back-up plan, that alows emergency traffic to piggy-back.


        Maybe you guys are to young to remember but UUCP was a way to tranfer Email before the internet. It worked mainly because A corp had a T1 from one office to another as did B corp between them and another city. Data was transfer between the two at a city where both had offices avoiding toll charges, this alowed for mutual benefit. This would work the same way, install an antenna or two on the roof, and in an emergency just turn it on and start routing until your generators run out of fuel.

        Given the direction that proposed legislation is head we're going to see more of this stuff anyways. Just think the guy/gal that hacked your network to its knees last month, may be your networks only link this month.

      • Sorry, your post needs to be eliminated for not following Slashdot orthodoxy.

        Those stupid, bumbling, unionized Verizon workers were probaly sleeping in their trucks. After all, they are not smart dotcom types who work 80 hours a week for underwater options.

        Regular non-geeks don't need phone service -- they should get a clue and find out just how important the internet is.

        Verizon's #1 priority should be to establish free 802.11b nodes at every streetlight, so that enlightened geek can check out pr0n while walking down the street with their iBook.

        In order to accomplish this, all of those lazy and imcompetent union slobs should be fired and replaced with the Slashdot staff. Instead of having monopolized, unreliable phone service, we would enjoy the smooth operations and record uptime of Slashdot using only Linux & MySQL.

    • this is an amazing performance.

      Now if they could only do a good job the rest of a time.

      I'll give them a hand. Well, a finger anyways

    • accually WorldCom got wall street up and online... Verizon just took credit for the work.
    • I have to agree. When i saw this thread i figured it might get around to Verizon bashing. But in all fairness, every time I'm in Manhattan tooling around the lower west side, I see Verizon crews hunkered down over a manhole.

      Mind you, this is at any time of the night. They have a massive job to get done. And while I'm no fan of them either (I've seen and heard about all of the ways they know how to Ass-up a job) I haven't had any bad experiences.

      These days (esp in Manhattan) i think are bringing out the best in every one. When it's over, maybe Verizon will be able to get back to its regular way of screwing things up. But for now, they seem to really be doing their best.
  • http://newscenter.verizon.com/wtc/

  • This proposal from the Senate Subcommittee of Science and Technology gives all of us a chance to use our brainpower for something other than maintaining corporate networks or communication systems and surfing for pr0n. We actually may have opportunity to help save lives and ease the pain of those affected in times of crisis. I dont know about you, but giving blood and money just wasnt enough for me. I wanted to help in a more direct way as well as giving my financial and "biological" support. I humbly suggest that you let your senators know of your desire to help. http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cf m [senate.gov]
  • I would imagine that during and/or immediately after a disaster, certain forms of technology would be very useful, if not critical. A geek squad sounds like an interesting idea but sometimes resources are scarce. I wonder what the government or some companies would say if rescuers, etc. were using cloned cell phones (if they were the only means of communication) or pirated software (to keep missing and dead lists) if there were little or no funds. True geeks would find a true technical solution. Just a thought.
    • IANAL and I am not even under US legislative powers. But over here in .de there is a rubber-law that literally translates to "justified in case of emergency" (rechtfertigender Notstand for those speaking german).

      This law has in the past been used for about everything - the cops listening in on GSM calls (and even catching the cellphone IMEI by setting up "phony" repeaters). People who were charged with DUI got out on that law because they were taking someone with heavy injuries to the nearest hospital while no emergency assistance was available. I am almost sure the US has a clause that can be compared to this. If they don't, they should quickly as hell pass it instead of crxpto bans.

      Using this law as a "fast relief valve" in situations like these sounds like a damn good use of the law.
      • INIAL but,

        In the US, we have the Godd Smaration Law, which is simulur.

        The good smaration law states that if you assest someone in an emergancy situation, you are automatily given imunaty to any crimminal and civil action that arises aganst you as a result, unless you deliberatly acted malioucesly or negligently.

        Example:

        You're walking down the street, and you see a store on fire. You call 911, and while you're waiting for the fire dept. to arive, you hear cries for help. You rush over to investigate, and find someone is trapped behind the store window. You shoot out the window, allowing the other person to escape.

        They can't charge you, they can't sue you, unless it's proven in the investigation that you didn't excersorise adiquite care, or that you were actuilly trying to delibreatly harm the other person.
  • I wonder how much of the problem with BA/GTE/Verison really comes down to most of the people who knew how the system worked are no longer there?

    Computer scheduling of all of this stuff is well fine and good, but none of those systems have much relevence when entire COs have gone missing. All of a sudden it is we need 'n' dialtones on this block right now or people will die. No pretty computer printed work orders, no f**king union work rules, no buck to pass.

    Perhaps BA (originally NY Bell Telephone) has lost sight of the knowledge of the line staff and supervisors. Perhaps too, the union (CWA if I remember correctly) has lost sight that the customers getting bad service will ultimately come back to get them.

    It is time that there be some kind of new relationship between the company, the employees and the customers. I know NYC has lost dozens if not hundreds of business because the telecommunications provider sucks. (The same can be said about Ameritech in the midwest!)

    -- Multics

  • If Verizon fulfilled their Geek Guard duties with all the rapidity that they, say, install DSL lines for competing DSL providers, they would have "rescheduled" their disaster response three times and we'd have an appointment for early November right now.


    So what you're saying is that Verizon isn't exactly quick about installing DSL lines for competitors (makes sense to me), and that if they performed their Geek Guard duties the same way, you'd get the same slowness. However, that "if" implies that they are not performing their Geek Guard duties in such a manner, so how are they performing them, then? Quickly and promptly? That's what you're actually implying, though I'm guessing that's not what you meant to say...

  • This just in,

    in a pre-emptive strike, the National Technical Defense 31337 unit air dropped 500 Microsoft IIS servers into Afghan territory. Once fully deployed, this powerful weapon has the potential to slow or even stop all communications with Afghanistans internal network.
  • I am a ham radio operator. I along with many many ham ops belong to RACES, the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service. In Texas RACES is coordinated through the Texas Department of Public Safety which also oversees state troopers and the Texas Rangers (not the baseball team). RACES along with another ham volunteer organization called ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) works all over the United States in case of disaster.

    The San Francisco Amateur Radio Club has a site with descriptions of one of its member's trials in New York.

    http://www.sfarc.org/

    Here, in Central Texas, the stuff of local legend and the singular event in the lives of many hams is the Jarrell, Texas tornado outbreak of May 27, 1997. An F5 destroyed an entire subdivision in a small town just north of me. There was *nothing* left - only slabs of concrete.

    The 800 MHZ system for my county was destroyed. For the first hour, communication was handled *exclusively* by hams. My friend Bob describes a dark and surreal scene when he drove up. It was dark and scary and policemen where haplessly clicking there shoulder mikes and not getting anything. Only a couple of Texas DPS state troopers had comms. The rest were dark. For the first hour, all we had was ham radio. After that, ham radio served as a type of 'glue' communications because even then some services where not compatable.

    This event has forever changed ham radio in Central Texas. Around 30 people died. We are now *always* included by our local government officials. We are a part of the equation now. We have weekly practice nets on our local repeaters and practice our skills using different ham modes (esp. packet radio) at bike races and fun runs. We have gotten much better since that day and are adding new capabilities as we go along. Packet radio is a key area we are improving on. We can work long haul traffic on HF nets and local traffic on freqs all the way up to daylight.

    Ham radio needs our support. Unfortunately, it has an older demographic and needs alot of new blood to keep it going. Ham radio *is* the original geek force. It was established for this purpose - keep our citizenry experimenting and improving the radio art and electronics and to give the United States a pool of comm experts in times of crisis.

    Sorry to write a book, but this is very close to me.

    73

    dit dit
    • I recently did some consulting work at the State's Teale Data Center in Sacramento (that's where California keeps _some_ of it's computers). One day, driving my client back from lunch, I asked about the antennas on the roof and learned that some State employee hams maintain an Emergency Communications System in the building. Sure enough, in one of the corridors was a door marked "Emergency Communications - Restricted Access."

      I live in Orange County, CA and can see the County's Emergency Operations Center a few miles up in the hills with line-of-sight to the government buildings in Santa Ana. I'll bet there are a few ham band antennas on that bunker, too. I believe such ham systems exist almost everywhere in the US.
  • Drill Instructor:"You call that stuff code?"

    At least they would have to change the weight and physical fitness requirements;)
  • I read the title and thought "finally! a deoderant for people who sit in cubicles for 14 hours straight coding!"
  • I can hear the construction trucks clear out rumble from the WTC as I type this 3 blocks from the WTC in lower manhattan. Phone service has been operating for at least 2 weeks now and the reception is surprisingly better now then before the attack. The old lines were aging copper cables that ran under the WTC. They have all been replaced by fiber from lines reserved but not used on Wall Street several that are several blocks away. The switch or CO for DSL however is just across the street from the WTC. Amazingly the building survived the WTC collapse and it didn't get crushed from the rubble. The area is in the frozen zone and the building is damaged so no one can restart the DSL switch. The phone routers in the building are working again because they are unmanned and they rebooted when the power was restored.

    However, I would never use DSL from Verizon for obvisous reasons. Verizon is the anti-christ for customer service here in the northeast. Infact a former co-worker ordered 640k verizon DSL service and it took over 4 MONTHS TO GET service. To top it off the speed was barely above 192k. This really pissed him off since Verizon told him he would have maximum speed because of the distance to the CO. The money verizon used to fix lower manhattan came from uncle sam because Verizon didn't want to pay for it. I surely wish the DOJ would investigate all the Teleco's. They and not microsoft are the true monopolies. This story is just more proof of it.

  • As many of you may already know, the Verizon building at Water Street where a number of OC48's converged was practically destroyed. What isnt buried under rubble is flooded underground. This affected lots of businesses including mine in Midtown.

    The other CO on Broad street took on a lot of traffic as a result and a good source told me that Verizon expects the rebuilding project complete no sooner then in two years. ouch!


  • I don't work for Verizon, and I too have a critical line out of service, but you do have to understand one thing

    Verizon lost, for all intents, 2 buildings on 9/11 - the 47 West St CO, and the Duane St CO. The Water st CO was one of the larger COs around - Just to give you an idea, it's got 5 basement levels. Last I heard, 4 and a hald of these levels are full of water. If you look at the building there is a huge chunk taken out of one side, and a bunch of above ground floors are partly collaped

    The few Verizon guys I've seen around are all working 12+ hours/day 6-7 days/week trying to get phone lines up

    Give'm a break this time. Usually I'm one of the first to say that Verizon sucks (because they do), but right now, they have a LOT of people working all sorts of hours just trying to get lines back

  • What about a new Military branch instead? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by IRNI ( 5906 ) <irni AT irni DOT net> on Saturday October 06, 2001 @11:43AM (#2395364) Homepage
    I am horrified about going to bootcamp and shooting things. But I am quick to draw with a keyboard. This story gave me an idea. Why not make something like the Tech Reserves? Something similar to the army reserves. The government brings you in 1 day a week and two weeks a year for training and other informative seminars. Then when the need arises (Cyber Warfare or whatever need), we help the government in the way we can best? I think military service with the knowledge you aren't going on the front lines but you are helping is something to think about.
  • Expand the military's own information warfare efforts considerably. Have military units -- the real, in-uniform type -- ready to respond to situations like this. Give them good training which will serve them well in civilian life. Probably make most (though by no means all) of the units Guard or Reserve rather than active, so that they can usefully apply their skills in civilian life at times when people aren't, say, crashing airliners into skyscrapers. Guard would be particularly good since they could then be called upon by state governments as well as the federal government.

    Large municipalities (e.g., NYC and Washington, DC) might also want to consider city government agencies for the same purpose.

    Basically, we have militaries, police departments, fire depts. etc for a reason: some functions are too vital to be left up to corporations whose primary purpose is profit, not public service. (A good example of this is the trend away from city-funded paramedic services to private ambulance companies a few years ago; most big cities are now realizing this just doesn't work, and that it's better for ambulance service to be provided either by fire departments or by separate city agencies such as NYC*EMS.) If we consider communication to be as important as national defense, law enforcement, fire protection, and emergency medical services, then it should receive the same governmental priority, not a half-assed semi-volunteer solution run by PHB's.

    To those who say, oh, geeks are too individualistic for this to ever work, or geeks are out-of-shape slobs who could never make it through Basic, or whatever: well, I served in the Army as an infantryman and in the Air Force as a medic, and now I'm a working DBA/Webmaster who just got into a very good CS Master's program. The stereotypes are only true if we let them be ...
  • They mobilized technicians from all over the country, and knowing that cell phones are a critical component of emergency communications, deployed many COWs (Cellular on Wheels) units in and around Manhattan within hours of the towers going down. It's a little unfortunate that companies are complaining about Verizon not getting data services back up quickly, Verizon lost millions of dollars worth of real estate and infrastructure and dedicated resources at major expense to restoring the basics like dialtone.
  • It's not as easy as plugging in a toaster and making toast.... this is very long - but PLEASE READ ON!

    I worked as a lineman for Verizon before the merger for 5 years while putting myself through college. I don't think you understand the ammount of work that is required before phone service can actually be RESTORED!!! First, they have to get access to the cable vault - this includes pumping the THOUSANDS of GALLONS of water that's down there due to broken water pipes and firehoses that have been spraying water on the Ground Zero area 24/7 since the 11th of last month. After the water is pumped in, they have to dry out the existing cables or replace them. I would imagine that most of the ducts leaving the Central Office (now referred to as CO) are crushed, too... so new ducts must be built or in the meantime (which they are doing) they're laying new cable on the ground or digging small temp trenches. Electricity must be restored to the CO - first by generators then by Con Ed. Then the air compressors that keep air in the cables must be tested, and put back online and/or replaced. These compressors pump air through underground cables to keep pressure in the cables so water stays out of splices once a cable is in a manhole and is submerged.

    Cable that has been temp run or has been pulled to manholes. Now these manholes have to be pumped 24/7 via gas and hydrolic pumps to keep the water level down so the splicers can get down into the holes and start splicing in new cables and performing maintenance on the existing cables and air circuits that were mentioned above. Remember - gas lines could be severed - so manholes have to be tested for gas leaks and can't be entered until gas leaks are fixed. Then splicers can get to work. OH - and btw - have you ever humped a 1200 pair copper cable??? I have - and it's no fun... yeah the underground cable trucks pull the cable - but it takes HUMANS to feed the cable off the reel into the ducts -and you have to make sure that the cable feeds into the duct CLEAN so the sheath of the cable doesn't get damaged - as that will leak air (see air circuits above).

    Fiber Optic Cable (now referred to as FOC)doesn't require air circuits or compressors - but it is costly and time consuming to splice fiber cable - and it requires a STERILE environment and it must be done carefully (read NOT RUSHED) to make sure the FOC gets optimal signal passed through the splice.

    (remember - over 300k voice and 3.5million data circuits went out on the 11th!!!)

    Now - after all the cables are laid and spliced - they have to be connected on the central office frame and programmed onto the switch... all this is also relies on electricity - powered by generators and then street power when restored.

    Running cable and restoring circuits are NOT as easy as plugging a toaster in and making toast!!!

    Slashdot should post an apology for posting such an insensitive and ill-informed story. Shame on you guys, man!

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