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Technology In Katrina's Wake
We've had many submissions about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It doesn't come easy writes "From 'the end justifies the means department', the BBC is reporting that bogus emails about the current situation in New Orlean contain links to websites that promptly infect the concerned reader's computer. From the article: 'The separate virus and fake donations bogus e-mails have been discovered by computer security firms SophosLabs and Websense Security Labs. They are similar to previous fraudulent e-mails connected to last year's Indian Ocean Tsunami.'" Less cynically, an anonymous reader writes "A Linux developer is organizing volunteers for a public 'web station' project to assist Hurricane Katrina victims. The plan is to create numerous Linux-based public kiosks that boot directly into the Firefox browser and display a special home page with links to various services. In addition to offering disaster relief information and news, the kiosks will provide basic email capabilities via Yahoo!, Gmail, Earthlink, MS Hotmail, and other web-mail services. They're looking for donations of time and money. If you're looking to donate more directly, tech companies across the country are maintaining pages with ties to respected charities. Yahoo is maintaining the Red Cross donation page, and everyone from Microsoft to IBM has a message on their frontpage."
One thing that I'll never understand is why we (humans) continue to put important things in the most vulnerable places. This goes way beyond technology, but I'll use it as an example. Many large internet services companies are based on the west or east coast or in Texas. If you consider the worst (which is what just happend in New Orleans), there is a great potential for disaster in these places. However, in the middle of the country where the only natural threat is tornados, which don't affect everything together, there is very little. And so much
of the Internet depends on those vulnerable regions. The aftermath of the hurricane is now threatening DirectNIC.
Why do people keep building villages next to volcanos, museums with important artifacts in large cities, data centers in flood plains, major network hubs in cities.
I'm guessing that the most likely reason this happens is because those places happen to be nice to live, better weather, etc. and it serves people's short term interests. But in the long term, I think we're just asking for Trouble (yes with a capital T).
When a large wave comes in and knocks out the east coast with the next 100-1000 years, we'll probably have the same old excuses that we do now. And we'll be even more dependent on technology when it does.
Things like this bring out the best in some and the worse in others. Everything from looting to taking the opportunity to stake out political claims. The people will rebuild and do so despite what we do and do not do. I'm glad to see some are choosing to "do."
How will these kiosks work in the areas where they are needed most? What about internet access? etc.
-nick
...and the only thing on the minds of thousands of Slashdotters is whether computer and network technology is involved and if so does it involve Linux, Firefox, and Open Source Software.
Fro crying out loud people, who gives a damn?! Thousands are dead, many thousands more injured, and most of them and thousands more homeless and an even larger amount without drinkable water and an even larger amount without electrical power. WHO CARES if Linux is involved?
I swear, the shallow and selfish opportunism never ceases to amaze me. I bet if Bill Gates donated $50M to relief efforts there would be an immediate post proclaiming it an attempt to buy influence and derail criticism while a small effort of Linux geeks to raise a few donations via PayPal would get endless glowing praise. As it is I fully expect the tragedy to be laid at the feet of the Bush administration without regard to the local government evidently collapsing on itself in the crucial first hours of the aftermath.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
The problem is not where they go in their afterlife (or lack thereof) but that we have to contend with them in this life.
On another track, it's great to be giving so much when these sorts of disasters hit, but where's the love the rest of the time? When I give blood, it's not because there's some horrible disaster in dire need, it's because there might be. The American Redcross and other agencies can only so so much if their coffers are low and something like this hits. It's a good thing to give before disasters so they have money and resources at the ready. Fewer scammers are likely to trip you up if you actually contact your favorite agency proactively and give.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Ten months after the election, however, with no more elections for him to win, he plays the guitar, makes a few (non-relevent) speeches, and acts, essentially, as if nothing's happening. At some point on Tuesday afternoon, after the floods have started, and 36 hours after the hurricane actually hit, he announces he's cutting short his vacation. But he didn't actually get back to work until Wednesday afternoon.
And remember, while the floods may have only started on Tuesday morning, the Hurricane itself did immense damage, leaving hundreds of thousands of people across three states without power, in seriously damaged, often to the point of uninhabitability, homes. The hurricane itself - not its rains that caused the levies to break - caused astonishing amounts of distruction on Monday, more so than anything that hit Florida (and I live in Florida, in Stuart as it happens, where two of last year's hurricanes hit) - that's all been kind of pushed aside as we concentrate on looking at New Orleans.
And, you'll forgive me, but at least on Wednesday, the feeling I got from the White House was that gas prices were the primary concern of everyone there.
I'm sorry if this sounds like partisan bitching to you, but, well, call it constructive criticism if it hurts.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Web Stations???? That's almost as ridiculous as the free Wi-fi until Sept. 2 idea.
When you're starving to death, living in a toxic cesspool with dead people floating by, with raping and pillaging all around you, the LAST freaking thing on your mind is "maybe I'll go browse at the kiosk for a while"
Give to the red cross; they're trying to save lives. The kiosks, while I'm sure an honest effort to help, is simply not going to make as much impact as the same amount of money allocated to getting food and drinking water into that hellhole.
That was indeed a powerful article. I had read it moments before you posted. And it got me thinking. What do we know about Mr. Brown, the head of FEMA?
Well he's a lawyer with no experience managing disaster relief, who was promoted when the Homeland Security department was created. Contrast that with his predecessor, Joe Allbaugh, also appointed by Bush, but who had overseen a number of disasters prior to coming to the position. Prior to him, James Witt, a Clinton appointee, has previous disaster management at the state level before being elevated to the national position.
The real question is: Why in the hell do we have, as THE man in charge of disasters, someone who's entire emergency management experience consists of "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services"?
I'm not Mr. anti-corporation or anything...but since these companies are experiencing the biggest profits in years (before this crisis btw) couldn't they just come out and say "we're going to do our part and drop the price of gas a whole dollar until this crisis is over". Right? Couldn't that help a hell of a lot of people?
The shareholders of said company would oust that executive before he finished that sentence. These people run companies to maximize shareholder profit, not play Mother Theresa with one of the most valuable commodities on the face of the earth.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
of Needs.
...
...
Expecting people to be angels when you haven't satisfied their primary needs of:
1. Water - yes, this is 1 - and potable too;
2. Food - and it has to be ethnically acceptable too;
3. Clothing - and sitting around in 110 degree temperatures when you may not have been dressed for it in the first place
4. Shelter - this basically means dry shelter;
but basically, if you haven't met at least the first seven levels, and it sounds like most people there haven't even had the first four levels met, you will act in ways that few people would believe.
Add that to seeing bus service laid on to evac the hotel guests while they wouldn't even use the trains to get you out, and you might be a bit miffed - and you can forget about civility.
But, hey, I'm just repeating my Army training guidelines
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's not just downtown New Orleans. Millions of people were affected by the storm, and hundreds of thousands, in Mississippi, Alabama, and the rest of Louisiana need food, water, and medical supplies. The people evacuated to the Astrodome in Houston need help now. The hundreds of thousands already in shelters need help now. After the people still in New Orleans get evacuated, they will need help too. Many will get these things from the American Red Cross before FEMA can even get down there.
Yes, the people stranded in the Superdome and Convention Center need immediate help that only the government can provide. But those people are not the only victims, despite what CNN might have you believe.
The US Government does not pay for, staff, or organize these shelters on its own, and it does not feed these people solely out of our tax money. I don't know where that FEMA budget goes, but it only comes into play days after a disaster. The government bureaucracy is reactive; private charities like the Salvation Army and Red Cross are proactive.
After Hurricane Hugo, it took a week for FEMA to get off it's collective ass. The Salvation Army was there. The Red Cross was there. The state and local governments were pleading for federal assistance. I was living there at the time, and I luckily did not need any aid. If it'd been up to FEMA, hundreds would have died before getting help.
It's your money. Give it to whomever you want. Keep it. Use it to pay your taxes, I don't care. But don't tell people that donating money to private charities won't help. It may not drain New Orleans or airlift those people out of the Superdome, but that doesn't make it a scam
New Orleans was built in 1717 by French explorers who got lost in the new territory they claimed. But they found a tribal trail from a giant freshwater lake to a stable part of the river that led up into the entire continent, the entire area they called "Louisiana" (from Texas to the Appalachians, from the Gulf to the Great Lakes). They built a walled city for trade and conquest, which prospered. And survived: at high ground, it hasn't been destroyed by any of its frequent storms, though a fire under its 34 year Spanish rule meant rebuilding in the late 1700s.
It's in a great location for shipping and connection to rail, road and the abundant farmland. The Mississippi River moves a bit, but the value of its strategic location (near the Panama Canal and Venezuela's oil terminals) is vastly superior to any other alternate location for its purpose, with a location more protected from the weather than most of the rest of the Gulf Coast (though now obviously not enough). Development is a question of alternatives, and New Orleans has been the best option for development for literally centuries.
The city was secure, even under the threat of major hurricanes, through the 1930s. That's when the Army Corps of Engineers installed the wall holding back the lake, with levees, insufficient to withstand a Category 4 (or 5) hurricane. And failed to compensate for the destruction and development of the buffer zone of wetlands between the city and the Gulf. With those centuries-tested natural relief buffers, the city wasn't nearly as threatened by catastrophe. Of course there have been huge benefits from reclaiming land from the lake, though the waste of the Gulf wetlands has little upside beyond real estate agents and vacationers. But those benefits were bought with IOUs to Nature, which has eventually called in the chits. We could have paid more for better systems, but we tried to get off cheap.
People are talking about replacing New Orleans like it's somehow something that you just do. Like replacing a 50-year heart with a bionic one. Well, people don't do that unless we're forced to, usually after the old one has failed, and a heroic effort is necessary to save us. Which we then do, even after we've raised kids, produced in our careers, had our fun. A city is vastly more than just its economic function, both to its residents and the people who care about them. New Orleans is unique, and irreplaceable.
The much better question is how America took the city for granted, letting it down in every way, though we've known this catastrophe was inevitable. Along with (Republican) House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert saying it should just get bulldozed, we've got (Republican) president Bush saying "no one could have anticipated the levees would fail" (echoing his lies about the 2001 planebombings of New York City). Those people, and their subordinates, along with the Democratic Senators from Louisiana, and (until last year) the Republican Governor of Louisiana, have blood on their hands. They, like everyone else in charge, abandoned their duty to protect New Orleans. American development is always entirely devoted to the sale to the first customer, regardless of the hidden costs to people left holding the bag. Now we've got our heart ripped out. And so much of our rotten understructure is revealed to the world.
Yes, we should look at the big picture, at tomorrow's risks we deny when we're making today's sales. We have to look at "total cost of ownership" of more than just Linux, but at whole cities. But we can't blame the victim so much, here: New Orleans, which has delivered so much to American and the world from its unique location. But which has always been shortchanged, paid in scrip. Now that she's destroyed, we have to first look to save her as much as possible. Then look at who's got her blood on her hands, and deal with them. And in the longer term, look at how we let her down, and let ourselves down by losing her. Because New Orleans was possibly the most human city in America, warts and all. How we deal with her and her fate is how we deal with all of our fates.
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make install -not war