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Geek Guard to the Rescue
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.
it's gotta be extension 31337 ;-)
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I read it three times and I'm still not sure that actually understood it.
"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."
Dear God, someone call an editor, quick!
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
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
`find / -name "*your_base*" -exec chown us:us {} \;`
but then I saw this:
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
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I can just picture RMS in military fatigues ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Yeah, I get a mental image of frat boys guarding the geeks at a party, keeping them from leaving their appointed area, a la the "geek couch" in the opening scene of Animal House.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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.
At least the Geek gaurd might give us something to do on Friday nights!
Keeping
(Also, wearing a t-shirt from H2K)
Reality has a liberal bias
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:
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 or other NYCwireless locations, especially those affected by the WTC attacks.
Thanks,
--Terry Schmidt
NYCwireless
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.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Where do I sign up? I'm willing to do the artwork, too.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
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.
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
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.
icksnay on hacking my boxsnay.
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.
http://saveie6.com/
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!
BOSTON SUCKS!
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.
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
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
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.
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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
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.