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Hunters Shot Down Google Fiber
aesoteric writes "Google has revealed that aerial fiber links to its data center in Oregon were 'regularly' shot down by hunters, forcing the company to put its cables underground. Hunters were reportedly trying to hit insulators on electricity distribution poles, which also hosted aerially-deployed fiber connected to Google's $600 million data center in The Dalles. 'I have yet to see them actually hit the insulator, but they regularly shoot down the fiber,' Google's network engineering manager Vijay Gill told a conference in Australia. 'Every November when hunting season starts invariably we know that the fiber will be shot down, so much so that we are now building an underground path [for it].'"
The combination of guns and immature pranks doesn't sound too good to me.
What are they thinking? Also, what kind of hunter can't hit an insulator? Amateurs...
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
For our amusement, let's hope they killed somebody's 2g1c download.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
I would have expected to hear about something like this in Kentucky, Tennessee, or another southern state, but Oregon? I can't even think of anything Oregon's known for.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
The word "fucktards" comes to mind. This is what you get when you have some kind of right to own a gun combined with a bunch of low-IQ fuckwits.
Take their guns away from them. They are too stupid to have them.
I drink to make other people interesting!
I work for a large utility holding company. Every new years and 4th of July we have transformers shot out across our system. They make pretty "sparks and arcs" while they die. Another stupid people trick is throwing chains across 2 live high voltage lines. Invariably, at least one person per year forgets to let go of the chain before it makes contact. Stupid people are everywhere. Darwin takes care of some...
--I like turtles...
that'll learn em
Ah, so an internet company should consider fuckwit withs guns as part of its normal operating procedure, eh? Are you from Oregon perhaps?
Or if you are no, but you are so disturbed by Google that you can't even read a story like this without ranting what bad guys they are then do the obvious thing: fuck off to the opt-out village.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
On the list of preaching, soap box standing zealots, I have found hunters to be the most vocal. Responsibility, conservation, and a given right to engage said pass-time is delivered in fire-brand like sermons.
From my observations, though, for every 1 responsible hunter there seem to be 10 irresponsible.
15 years ago, I did a stint as a volunteer park warden for 6 months. I noted the following:
- Bringing shot deer down to the nearest clearing, often walking tracks, partially butchering the animal and leaving the rest to rot on the track.
- Pot shots and damage to any and all infrastructure.
- "Boredom Kills" - usually birds shot with high powered rifles.
- Hunting dogs left to roam, sometimes till a following weekend, when the hunter would come back.
- Creepy comments to day hikers such as "I saw you long ago from across the valley, i saw you in my scope".
15 years later and hunters will still defend their pass time with the fervor of a rabid PETA campaigner, or Muslim cleric. Saving the world you know. Thinning pests, and over population of grazing animals...
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
During his Beretta days Robert Blake was on the Johnny Carson show.
He told a story of walking in Northern Europe during WWII. They saw some insulators.
"It was wartime. We had guns on us. When we got back to camp, we were told that the Germans had cut the communication lines."
Hunters were reportedly trying to hit insulators on electricity distribution poles...
It's why non-Americans think the U.S. gun culture is so obviously insane. I remember talking to one person here on Slashdot who recommended that I read the Turner Diaries (which is often sold at gun shows to gun enthusiasts) in order to understand the gun culture in America. The funny thing is he thought the Turner Diaries was a NORMAL and intellectually stimulating thing to read, just like the Bible.
For the rest of us (non-Americans), we think a love of guns and a feeling of necessity to own fire-arms by U.S. citizens is as fucked up as it is in the Middle East for ordinary citizens to own automatic military assault rifles. It's one thing to be Libertarian about gun ownership, and quite another to be fanatical about gun ideology and just plain Gun Happy, as most Americans seem to be.
When I used to work in the wireless Internet world, I had an associate who had much the same problem with idiots shooting at his antennas. After he had been forced to change antennas on several occasions, I told to him that the simple way to fix the problem was to mount a bullseye somewhere else on his towers and give these lunatics something different to aim at. The last time I talked to him his antennas were bullet hole free but he did have to replace a few of the targets due to them taking some serious damage. Come on, Google, put some creative thought into solving these problems..
You think that's bad? In Germany, manhole covers and guard rails are vanishing...but the best one was when they stole 40 tons of rails...yes, the ones where trains run on.
On a sidenote, there are quiet a few stories about that over at the Darwin Awards.
Yes. Because unless they are some dumbass redneck there is no way to argue that shooting at their equipment is a good response. In fact even the dumb hicks who did it would probably "argue" that they were just pissing around because they were wasted. It takes a real armchair nutjob like you to claim that they were in the right against some evil global multinational.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Ah, so a citizen trying to live freely should consider a global information aggregator as a harmless and healthy part of society, eh?
No, but a conscientious citizen shouldn't consider lunatics with guns a great thing either.
I worked for a ISP that had a POP in the sticks. It's feed would regularly be shot by some stupid hick. There was also only one telco field tech for the area, and it would take him forever to respond and even longer to resolve the issue. The city has its own issues. Once a very large section of copper was stolen from the telco taking out an untold number of consumers.
If you work for telcos that have thousands of miles of fibre traversing farmland, you'll quickly come to appreciate (especially in the hunting season) that shotgun damage is a fact of life.
And no, the hunters are not shooting at the fibre or insulators, but at the pheasant, grouse and other flying game creatures that routinely alight on the overhead cables (usually power lines) that carry the fibre.
I get up, I get down...
You can't simply chase down a deer and scream liberal rhetoric at it until it kills itself, now can you?
No. Because unlike you I am not racist enough to assume that an urban gang is black. Tell me, have you stopped beating your wife yet you redneck hick?
Yes.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
In soviet Russia, insulators on electricity distribution poles shoot hunters.
The article says that HUNTERS regularly TRIED to hit the insulators. That's like those jackasses that shoot up stop signs for fun. It's called VANDALISM, not HUNTING.
I'm guessing the animal rights nuts and anti-gun people are thinking that hunters go in the woods, get bored, and start shooting at random objects to pass the time..
That makes absolutely no sense. Regardless of what game you're going after, if you make any noise at all, any game in the vicinity will take off. If you fire off a shot, you can pretty much pack it up and go home. You're not getting anything that day.
Accepting vandalism does not lead to accepting suicide, murder, bombing (even if "no one is hurt"), etc. The fact that you managed to make the conclusion means that you probably need to seriously review your premises, as a lack of perspective of that magnitude could mean you end up causing considerable harm to yourself or others.
If you can't see how vandalism does harm to normal people, then it's you who needs perspective.
Misa no botha with yousa.
Some stupid scottish neds stole a whole bunch of cable a while ago, burned it as usual to strip the insulation and tried to sell it.
It fibre.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
They aim at the insulators, and end up taking down the cables as collateral.
Pure "luck" hitting them, but with enough shots at the insulators the wires will by chance get hit eventually..
It is amazing what you can hit while aiming at something else.
Also, cables cover a MUCH larger area than insulators - i.e. there is whole lot of cables to be hit while missing insulators.
And shooting with shot might not reach the insulators with enough force to do any damage, but just nicking the optic fibre might warrant servicing/replacement.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Did they steal the overhead electric power lines for the trains? That's happened in the UK, although it's more usual for them to steal the signalling cables (which can still be quite a high voltage, but are presumably easier to steal).
I don't see the point of stealing rails, scrap steel isn't worth much compared to copper.
Oh dear, so you understood that I meant yes to both, but you are still trying to force a false choice upon me. Perhaps you need the class in both English and logic?
Perhaps that course in English would teach you what an epithet is. Or perhaps not, miracles are not that common.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
According to a friend of mine, who started out as a shooting competitor and only recently started hunting, many hunters are lousy shots. He got to see their results on the range in his shooting club.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I dare you to list one single reason why a modern society _needs_ to _hunt_ for _food_. There are none.
Because they want to? No further justification necessary.
Otherwise you get stuck on the slippery slope to micromanagement madness. So, are cows more or less sentient than pigs? Is it more immoral to yank a living green onion out of the dirt and chop it up while its still alive, than to tear the dormant seeds off a fruit tree and eat them while they're "sleeping"? Is it more or less immoral to chop up an apple and then bake it into a pie, thus only torturing it for an hour or two, vs dehydrating apple slices slowly over a period of days?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The proper term for people taking these actions is not "hunters", it is "vandals."
Why "hunters" need guns?
Because I'm in it for the food, not for the fun (it's okay if it's fun as well though) and because without guns hunting is a high-energy activity with a poor risk:reward ratio.
Explain to me please why you think the subject line is part of the comment. It's labeled, you'd think you could tell the difference.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The rural midwest of the US of A needs to hunt for food. We had a deer over-population in my home town about 15 years back. Farmers had shot nearly all the coyotes that normally kept the deer in check as they were killing their livestock. It's nearly impossible to keep them out, coyotes are pretty smart and WILL find a way to get to your goats/chicken/whatever so I understand the farmers protecting their livelyhood. Adding to that hunting was also less popular than in previous decades and less deer were being taken in that manner. The overpopulation of deer was causing starvation, driving them to eat anything within 6ft of the ground including tree bark. It was also causing a large increase in deer/car collisions, resulting in multiple injuries and a couple deaths if memory serves.
The solution was to have an organized hunt/cull in which many people who wanted to try their hands at hunting but couldn't because they are disabled. Then they loosened the restrictions on regular hunting during the year and allowed people to take more deer. Now the you see in parks are much more healthy and less deer are hit on the roadways.
Plus, venison if cooked correctly is delicious! (Ok so nobody would starve if there was no hunting for food, but people were getting hurt/killed due to over population of deer. Tasty venison is a nice byproduct of solving that problem.)
I am in favor of licensing citizens without criminal records to own firearms. However, before you leave the gun shop the gun owner should have valid certificates from certified gun safety training schools. Add a tax about equal to the price of the firearm. Use that money to enforce licensing. Add to this expensive fines for violation of hunting or gun use regulations with payment of property damages. Want to shoot an insulator? Go right ahead, but the fine for that would be $20,000 plus all expenses for repair plus court costs, plus paying for the time spent by law enforcement on the violation. Oh. And for malicious destruction of property, the license to own firearms is permanently suspended and all firearms confiscated.
You can't simply chase down a deer...
Apropos of nothing, actually, you can run down a deer, much like you can run down an antelope. Whether you've got the energy and the patience, on the other hand, is up to you.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
> The only difference is you want to decide what people should want to do.
No. The difference is that _one_ of the examples you made involves hurting other sentient beings. This fact changes the "let people do what they want" situation into a "let people do what they want, but minimize negative impact on others" one.
Also, neither video games nor web sites per se are a need. Food is. By claiming that hunting is for food, people deliberately pull something from the realm of "want" into the realm of "need". When I call bullshit on that, claiming that "want" is "want" may be true, but is hardly a logical answer to what I said.
It's nothing personal, but I feel reminded of arguing with children or religious zealots, atm.
I work in electrical power transmission and distribution, and apparently shooting at insulators is a popular pastime. One of the bullet points in most specsheets for fiberglass insulators is the resistance to damage from gunfire.
Whatever. You try digging hundreds of kilometers of trenches for cabling in sparsely populated regions to reach perhaps only a few thousand houses or less. Try maintaining those trenches too. Then come back to us.
At the end of the day, poles are surprisingly more robust and resilient and cost effective than people give them credit for. Yes power cuts occur, but they can be fixed promptly if the right systems are in place. I've lived in rural areas for years and while power outages happen (~1 every 2 years), they are usually fixed within a day or perhaps two. Even following nationwide gale-force winds and 100,000 homes without power, the juice is usually back on for almost everyone within a few days. Meanwhile, the state has saved itself billions over the years by not digging expensive trenches under every boreen up and down the country.
This is in Ireland. A small but sparsely populated country on the whole. I cannot fathom what herculean labours North American network engineers have to perform to keep their systems up and running. But even despite the tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and hunting parties, given the scale of the continent I doubt they've given up on poles just yet.
May the Maths Be with you!
So, what we're saying is that Google is being regularly shot down by yahoos?
...There's gotta be a witty quip to be made there somewhere...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
>You'd think so, but the US Military has bigger guns and bigger idiots, so revolt could never occur.
I submit to you that the United States has been engaged in an unsuccessful bid to put down rebellions in at least two countries for the last 9 years and has been unable to do so, despite massively superior military power. I think everyone pretty much sees how this will turn out - we will eventually withdraw, just as the Soviets did, without having changed much of anything.
I also submit to you that this war is fought somewhere else and most US citizens just don't care. As one soldier put it, "The Marines are at war. America is at the mall." Also because of this, there is no damage to America's infrastructure. A rebellion at home would directly affect the citizens of this country and directly affect its infrastructure, causing massive economic fallout, massively eroding the tax base, thus hitting the government where it is most vulnerable - its wallet.
When the two DC Snipers went on their rampage shooting people at gas stations, the economic impact was in the millions of dollars just from people afraid to go put gasoline in their cars. Imagine the impact of outright civil war.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
They sure do. but at least you can send out untrained crews across the area and ID where your breaks are exactly, so the next available trained repair crew and come out and attend to it.. repairing utilities in a vault or in a trench isn't as easy.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
Can someone explain this to me? Do insulators have some kind of shape or feature or position that awakens some kind of primal instinct or something? Are people somehow compelled to shoot them down? Should they be painted a special colour or something, because it seems that people cannot be relied upon to resist the urge to shoot them down.
May the Maths Be with you!
>If a lot of households have weapons, it means that the criminals are more likely to carry a weapon. If the criminals are likely to carry weapons,
>it means that even more households will acquire a gun, too. Stalemate.
I would expect that if it were known that lots of households have weapons, a lot less criminals would rob households
And in fact, the FBI's Uniform Crime Records confirm again for 2009 that violent crime of all types, including firearm types, continue to decline, in spite of continuing record sales of firearms and ammunition
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
>Actually, I think that does help to show just how close gun ownership is to an addiction. Gun owners actually can
>experience withdrawal symptoms if they lose access to their weapons. And like most addicts, they can get agitated
>and violent if they feel cut off from their high - just ask any smoker who quit cold turkey.
What a complete and utter crock of shit. People enjoy exercising their rights enumerated in the Constitution because people enjoy being FREE! I like being able to say what I want. I like being able to have equal protection under the law. And I like having the means to defend myself and my family.
I enjoy all these right not because of some fucking addiction, but because all people love freedom!
>When the Bill of Rights was framed, the writers still remembered warrantless searches and seizures by the British
>army before the war for independence, and since guns and ammo were naturally scarce they didn't consider the possibility
>of gluttonous gun consumption a serious concern. Coupled with how most of the western borders of the 13 original states really
>were the Wild West, with lots of dangerous wildlife, it was only natural then to declare gun ownership a right.
Let's be absolutely clear on their motivations here. Their motivations had nothing to do with the availability of firearms (which had existed in much the same form for at least 200 years before the founding of the United States). Nor did it have much to do with shooting bears.
The entire country was set up as a series of checks and balances, so as to prevent a concentration of power in any one branch of the government. This philosophy extended to military power. THAT is why they enumerated the People's right to keep and bear arms.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
>So, owning guns is about "not being submissive to the government"? So, do gun-owners in USA refuse to pay taxes,
>break the law and otherwise disregard laws and regulations that are mandated and enforced by the government? Or do
>you follow them just like everyone else does? So, how exactly are those "Euro-hippies" and what have you "submissive"
>to their governments, while those American gun-owners are not?
Quite simply, owning firearms gives me the power to choose whether to do all those things or not. Most firearm owners are peaceable, law-abiding citizens who believe in our way of government and believe it still responds to the will of the people. Firearms are simply an insurance policy in case this turns out to not be true one day.
>How does gun-ownership turn person from a "sheeple" in to "non-sheeple"?
I would say that owning firearms is just like owning any other tool. It gives you other optional courses of action to follow.
>So, the argument is that in case of oppressive government, you can use your shotguns and what have you in defending freedom?
That is correct.
>If I slap you in the face, do you have to right to shoot my head off?
It depends on what state you live in, but where I live I have the right to shoot the head off of people who I reasonably believe are a threat to myself or my family. If you slap me in the face, and I can be shown to reasonably believe that your intent is to cause grave harm to me, then yes, I can shoot your head off.
>Could you explain how people who do not own guns are being "controlled by the government",
>while gun-owners are not? How about some tangible examples?
I believe the OPs point is that should you start to be oppressed by your government and you are unarmed you have no choice but to go along.
>Maybe widespread availability of guns is one reason why your personal space is so threatened?
As the just-released crime date from the FBI shows, violent crime of all types continues to decline, in spite of record sales of firearms and ammunition.
>Strange, I have never had the need for anything of the sort.
Good for you.
>I lived in rural areas as well, and I never felt threatened by anyone. Yet I'm the one who is to be pitied,
>where you are the bastion of freedom to be envied? Even though you need to arm yourself to the teeth in order to be (or feel) safe?
You are to pitied because you have no choice in the matter. You have been lucky enough to avoid violence, but you have no recourse should you be forced to confront it. That is a pity.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The reality is that there is always something to repair.
Yet more evidence that there are a lot of damn fool gun owners who need to be regulated (NRA be damned).
I personally find modern factory-farming to be a lot more hostile to animal-welfare than hunting a wild animal is. Yes, the farmed animal can be killed in a more controlled fashion, so the death will be swifter and involve less pain. But on the flipside, that farmed animal might have spent it's entire life on a letter-sized piece of wiremesh, and never once even seen the sun. What would you choose for yourself ? Life your entire life free, and then some day be shot from a distance. Or live your entire life in a prison, then one day be executed. I don't know your answer, but my guess would be, the overwhelming majority, would prefer living free. Offcourse some people are of the opinion we shouldn't be eating meat at all. I can respect that, though I don't agree. it's atleast internally consistent. But happily munching eggs from modern cage-hens, while complaining about hunting on animal-welfare grounds, seems rather strange to me.
Guns are supported by many on the left in American politics. We even have the Pink Pistols, a gay pro-gun group ("Armed gays don't get bashed"), and the NRA has endorsed many Democratic candidates based on their pro-gun stance.
They sure do. but at least you can send out untrained crews across the area and ID where your breaks are exactly, so the next available trained repair crew and come out and attend to it.. repairing utilities in a vault or in a trench isn't as easy.
No, it may not be as easy to identify a break on a buried line versus a high line, but the likelihood of a problem occurring with a buried line aren't as high as they are with a high line (IMO) in my neck of the woods. Sure, a backhoe or trencher may cut a line, but I think in that case the problem area is pretty apparent.
Having said that, I agree that US "internment camps" do not rise to anything like the level of inhumanity found in Nazi concentration camps.
So everyone can do any inhumane thing that occurs to them for any reason and it will be perfectly all right, as long as they don't do the worst thing that has ever been done.
"Sure I killed your grandma by dunking her in acid, but it's fine because I heard of a guy who dunks 'em even slower! I mean, THAT'S the guy you should be mad at."
Can someone explain this to me? Do insulators have some kind of shape or feature or position that awakens some kind of primal instinct or something?
They're glass or ceramic. They shatter spectacularly.
Did this work for the Soviets in Afghanistan? No, of course not. It didn't work for the Germans in France either.
Actually it was working for the Soviets. The mujahadeen were losing and dying off until the US intervened with massive financial and material aid based out of Pakistan.
And it was working in France too until the allied invasion. The resistance was more of an intelligence gathering operation until the invasion.
Note the common thread. It was massive external forces that led to the failure of the invaders employing brutal tactics.
Upon arrival to a site the crew will either find an abandoned construction site or vehicle accident. Construction crews generally leave the site when they hit a cable because they know work is done for the day and their employer is about to have an unpleasant phone call from someone like me. The bill for a cut like this runs in the tens of thousands of dollars.
If an obvious break isn't found, then you have to start looking for squirrel chews on aerial and rat chews in underground conduit. That's generally just a partial break so you can roll your fiber at the two nearest splice points onto good dark fibers, or at least fibers occupied by lower speed systems.
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