Pig plague could crash interwebs, say US feds

Stop contributing to the idiocy, ElReg.

How many people have died of H1N1 in any given acreage this month?

In the same acreage, how many have died from complications of smoking in the same time frame? How about from bad driving? Alcohol abuse? Drug abuse?

It's only fucking influenza, for fuck's sake. If you are healthy, understand nutrition, grok the concept of remaining hydrated, and can stay warm and dry, you'll survive.

Or...

They could just start telling people that they shouldent work if they are ill, as in rest, like they are suposed to...

And why is someone working more important than someone making use of the internet for fun? We all pay the same.

The "Internet freedom" Act

I find it interesting that this scare story comes on the heels of John McCain's introduction of the Internet Freedom Act. Excellent bit of double speak. His definition of "Internet Freedom" means the freedom for the telecoms companies to charge whatever they like to whoever they like whenever they like for any service level they like.

The Act would block the FCC's ability to regulate the Telecoms insofar as Network Neutrality was concerned. John McCain sees the FCC as applying "onerous federal regulation" on the industry.

Everyone seems to ignore why the DHS is making these claims. The Existing infrastructure can not take the strain it is too fragile. It is simply inadequate. And the Telecoms are saying that if you will pay for it we can make it better. They have already been paid for it with the 1995~96 Telecoms act that rolled back regulation and allowed them to increase profits. They promised to use that profit to build infrastructure. What happened to all of the dark fiber that they bought up when the Tech Bubble burst.

Short explanation on Gizmando

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/10/john-mccains-internet-freedom-act-seeks-to-block-net-neutrality-rules/

Interesting take on Boing boing.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/26/yet-another-reason-m.html

In 1995 the Telecoms promised 45Mbit broad band to every home in America if only the government would lift the restrictive regulations and let them charge what was needed to build the infrastructure. they spent the intervening time using that money to fatten C level executive paychecks and buy up or destroy any competition.

When congress came back several years later and asked where is the 45Mbit broadband? They responded 45Mbit?? We just meant broadband. And if you redefine Broadband to be 128Kbps then most all of the country is covered. See we did our job.

While most of my family, back in th states, is still on dial-up or paying 4~5 times what I am paying here in Korea for service that would not be acceptable to the average Korean customer.

In comparison --

I am glad that I live in South Korea where the Internet runs as it should. Other things don't but thats life everywhere. The government insisted on competition and regulated an environment where it actually happened. The latest estimates are that with all of the Korean traffic from games, video, IP TV, web, mail and every thing else they are only using about half of the available backbone capacity. And all of the Telecomm companies are still building more capacity.

Gigabit speeds in the big cities by 2012. Nationwide by 2015. Korea Telecom (KT) just offered my boss fiber to the home at his weekend country house, a 2.5 hour drive outside of Seoul. NOT fiber to the curb as most places define "Fiber to the home". Actual fiber in to the residence. Family members, on his wifes side, already have fiber up and running at their residence and business in the same area of the country.

The industry sees a future where all services converge into one and become ubiquitous. Television to your cell phone, (already happening with DMB) true Internet anywhere on any device, Mobile WiBro (WiMax ) services already in most major cities and expanding. WiFi everywhere now.

You may read more about it here:

United Nations Asia Pacific Training center:

http://www.unapcict.org/ecohub/resources/u-korea

Or get the master plan straight from the Korean government.

U-Korea Master Plan (PDF 32MB):

http://www.ipc.go.kr/servlet/download?pt=/ipceng/public&fn=u-KOREA+Master+Plan+.pdf

Or Google "U-Korea Master Plan" or "Ubiquitous Korea", a lot of interesting information.

RE:Govs, gotta love 'em!

Utter balls. No-one has ever lost there job for haveing a few days off with a Drs note. Stop saying this rubbish, and stay off work if you are ill. You might be safe, but the person sat next too you might have a health problem you don't know about and die.

@AC 12:03

"no-one has ever lost their job for having a few days off with a doctors note"

possibly not, but if you are off sick frequently, people do notice. Even if it's just that they notice the people who were in more!

Also it depends on where you work and what you do, but in quite a lot of places, if you are off for a few days, that puts you a few days behind. If i'm in the middle of designing a system, chances are nobody could pick it up and continue before i got back, even after a week. Which means impacting project dates, and masses of work when i get back, which i don't want to do. So i endure a bit of a sniffle occasionally and work through it, rather than immediately take the day off to go to the doctor, for a note to take a few more off.

I'm actually quite proud of only having a single sick day in 7 years, i was very, very hung over and throwing up constantly. Even after coming off my motorbike and breaking my ribs, i still continued on into work, as i didn't want to delay a design. Strangely enough, if you actually enjoy your job and feel like you do something useful, you don't actually want to spend the day at home in bed every chance you get.

But wait!

We can't have freedom and control freedom. . .

"Head asplodes."

Re: more scaremongering...

We've had two cases of confirmed swine flu on our floor of about fifty people. One of them sits next to me and was under the weather before he went on sick leave. Despite all the hype about how easy it is to catch I'm still flu free and so is everybody else. However the whole HR department on a different floor have decided to stay at home until they think it's safe to come back. Their last action before departing was to send a mail on the precautions to be taken and the preventitive measures put in place. Precautions include not shaking hands with visitors although there was no mention of not kissing them which is not unusual in our office, especially if you haven't seen each other in a while. The preventive measure, singular, is a bottle of disinfectant hand wash and a box of tissues at reception.