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Comment Re:Routing around (Score 1) 198

This all depends on the physical architecture used for the said circuit. I don't know how frequently SONET is used these days on HiCap and Tier-1 circuits, but if your network is designed using what is known in the industry as UPSR (Unidirectional Path Switched Ring), there is a redundant path on another circuit that can handle the traffic around the disabled / failed segments of a SONET ring. If the fibers were located (physically) close to each other (which is not a good, secure practice), then this would be a huge problem, and the segments within the failed portion of the ring would be "in-wrap" so segments at either end of the failed sections would still have signal, and therefore, service. Multiple fiber cuts, as were reported, might have been done to intentionally disable this in-built service protection of UPSR. If there were 3 cuts, as reported, this would had to have been a coordinated & direct attack on the carrier's infrastructure.

Comment Waiting for the "This is why.... (Score 1) 247

....we can't have nice things" sub-thread in 5....4....3....2....1.... .....oh, wait.

Seriously, though - these are the kind of people that just make me want to walk up to them and just stare at them, wide-eyed, for about 2 minutes and calmly say "What is wrong with you". These are the same kind of people that used to throw rocks at my car when I drove up the hill to 1 Cyclotron Drive in Berkeley to work at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in the 80's - total nut-jobs who, despite their obviously misguide attempts at trying to make the world a "better place", are utterly clueless as to making the world a truly "better place".

Comment Mass casualty incident (Score 4, Informative) 338

It's not uncommon to have a vehicle accident with 5 patients and also declare that an MCI. That just means the first responders were overwhelmed by the amount of patients and injuries and they need to declare an MCI, which prompts a number of things: additional emergency personnel, overhead to manage the incident, notifies local hospitals so they can start taking action prior to patient arrival, etc.

Comment Re:The Arpanet was supposed to survive nukes. (Score 3, Informative) 368

Blame the Tier-1 & Tier-2 backbone providers and telcos for skimping on SONET implementations; UPSRs (Unidirectional, Path-Switched Rings) do not have the line-fault switching capabilities that a BLSR (Bi-directional, Line-Switched Ring) because of the single-direction design of a UPSR. Since UPSR networks are cheaper (1/2 the fiber-lay costs) than BLSR, many large telcos and backbone providers play fast and loose with fiber capacity and provisioning...which, in this case, apparently came back to bite them.

The original ARPANet, as it was designed at that time in history, *was* redundant and met the needs for the spec. The ARPANet / NSFNet is as distant from today's Internet as a Blue Whale is from granite.

During "The Great Internet Build-out" of the late 90's, outages similar to this were more common than what you have been led to believe; the reason why people heard virtually nothing about those outages was because (a such outages weren't "visible" to those outside of the telco industry, and there wasn't such a demand 10 years ago for such high capacity circuits, and (b circuits were more carefully planned-out and used BLSR as much as possible. Now, where stockholders go crazy if their investment in a given telco doesn't grow by 10%, those telcos scrimp and cut corners wherever they can - including running SONET networks with inherently unsafe ring topologies.

For more about the differences in SONET topologies, please visit:
http://www.hill2dot0.com/wiki/index.php?title=2F-BLSR

--ScottKin

Comment Re:Maybe the media is what he wants. (Score 1, Insightful) 846

Interesting...

Based on your 3rd paragraph, are you saying that "we" expect Republicans - who, according to you, generally distrust the government, and that because of this distrust, are less-likely to want to get away with "crap"...and that politicians from the Democratic Party can "more easily get away with this kind of crap without infuriating their government-loving base (i.e. Democratic constituents) because they're expected to want to try to "get away with...crap"?

Hmmmmm.

Based on that, can we surmise the following?

1) Republicans are, generally, more honest - because they don't want to try (or even think of) "getting away with crap" (i.e. being dishonest)

2) Democrats are, generally, more dishonest - because they want to and we expect them to try to "get away with crap" - and that the process of "getting away with crap" is expected of them?

Works for me - especially in light of Sen. Obama's Real Estate scam involved with his home, his "donation" of US$800,000.00 to ACORN to "Help Get-out The Vote" while ACORN is filing phony & bogus Voter Regisrations in at least 6 States...not to mention his association with Weathermen Underground member William C. Ayers AND donations given from the Woods Fund to the Arab American Action Network - whose President, Mona Khalidi, is the wife of Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi...who is, in turn, co-founder of an Arab organization which supported the Palestinian Liberation Organization when the PLO was still labeled a terrorist organization and called for the "obliteration of Israel and it's friend, AMERICA!"...and HE (Rashid Khalidi) even held a fund-raiser for Sen. Obama's campaign!

--ScottKin

Biotech

Journal Journal: Scientists move closer to human therapeutic cloning 136

Reuters reports an advance of stem cell research that could move the field closer to human therapeutic cloning: "Human therapeutic cloning has moved a step closer after U.S. researchers said they had successfully created embryonic stem cells from monkey embryos. In what would be a world-first breakthrough, scientists told a stem cell research conference in the Australian city of Cairns this week that they had successfully created two batches of embryonic stem cells from cloned rhesus mo
The Media

Journal Journal: Massive Ivory sale gets mixed reviews from conservationists

According to National Geographic, the The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, came to a decision on June 2 to sell 60 tonnes of African Elephant ivory in a 'one time only' sale to Japan. The ivory coming from elephants in South Africa that had died of natural causes or had been culled legally. 30 tonnes from South Africa, 20 from Botswana and 10 from Namibia, with the profits go

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