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Multiple Fiber Cuts In San Francisco Area
georgewilliamherbert writes "Multiple news reports, mailing list posts, blogs, and tweets are pointing out two overnight acts of sabotage in the San Francisco Bay area, with long distance fiber network cables being cut in two locations in the early morning hours. The first cut, around 1:30 AM, affecting landline and cell phone service and 911 calls in the communities of Morgan Hill, Gilroy, and parts of Santa Cruz counties, was on an AT&T fiber alongside Monterey Highway near Blossom Hill Road, in San Jose. A second cut, around 3:30 AM, in San Carlos, affected Sprint fiber and has significantly disrupted services at the 200 Paul datacenter in southern San Francisco. Rumor says that this may be related to a AT&T communications workers contract having just expired — but no evidence has been published yet in the media, and this could be an intentional act of sabotage by someone unrelated to the company's workers."
Say it ain't so!
Talk about people who never left high school mentality behind. Before the local GM plant closed here in Atlanta my friend's mom worked there and he also took up that type of employment. My ex-girlfriend is a UPS driver but not in the union. All can basically come up with the same type of stories. The first rule I learned about buying cars, don't get anything made just before, during, or just after, an agreement is being negotiated. The second thing I learned is, if you have union buddies order the car and they will follow it through the plant for you... don't order the fanciest electronics but don't be surprised at what is under the seat or hidden somewhere.
Sabotaging one's own employer is old hat. Favorite car tricks were bubble gum wads inside of panels. Dries and falls off after leaving the factory producing a nice rattle. Snappy a few clips helps too - but only inside of areas you can't see or get to easily. Getting drunk at work wasn't that difficult, if you got caught you might get in trouble, for about three days... and most of it goes away. As for my UPS friend. Finding dog shit on her car or under the handles is a monthly occurrence. Having her truck break down more than is statistically probable was a nuisance till a friend who knew the guys made it stop. Real damage to her car happened once till the police actually showed up to see it. Then it was down to harmless; if dog shit can count as harmless.
So I put odds on it being someone inside, someone who knows the areas to hit, just what to hit to not cause an all points freak out, but enough to annoy his employer and possibly the guys who get stuck fixing it. Make the office boys work overtime and see how they like it! Yeah that will show them.
Really it will blow your mind.
Please don't think its a majority thing, the fact is most are very good and want a successful company and job, the twits just wreck it all because they are still in that phase of "I'll hold my breath if I don't get my way". The problem is the rest don't do anything about it for fear of being the next target.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
That's no reason not to have a massive multi-path infrastructure within cities.
Personally, I'd love to see cities implement GPONs (Gigabit ethernet Passive Optical Networks) within the cities, even if they kept the same connection for external traffic. Imagine downloading the Ubuntu 9.10 ISO on BitTorrent, finding a seeder in your city, and having the download speed limited by your hard drive write speed!
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Back in '05 when our local telecommunications company (TELUS) in British Columbia went on strike, some lines were cut and service for a couple thousand customers was lost. Of course, the first thing the company does is blame the union for sabotage.
Turns out it was just some thieves cutting the lines for copper, but that didn't come out until a month after the labour dispute ended.
Most likely the same thing happened here, thieves aren't exactly smart and most union employees would not risk the bad press something like this would generate.
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Us fiber owners have these neat tools that will tell you exactly where a fiber is damaged. To the foot.
Can all fish swim?
Maybe they were trying to steal copper and didn't realize it was fiber optic cable. Copper theft is at record highs right now.
Of course, thats about as likely as a ship dropping an anchor on an Mediterranean communications cable twice in two months....
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Multiple cuts at the same time definitely suggests some form of planning and coordination in this case. If it was just one I would be tempted to say that it was just some explorers/vandals poking around who poked a bit too hard, in which case they would be lucky that it's only fiber optic and not something that would fuse their bod to their surroundings.
Incidentally that's why I always bring a live wire detector when I go exploring buildings, even if its a factory that's been abandoned for 30 years.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.