Posted on 10/29/2009 9:34:35 PM PDT by mlizzy
(NaturalNews) The US government has issued a new report that recommends blocking access to popular websites during a pandemic outbreak in order to preserve internet bandwidth for investors, day traders and securities clearing house operations. The concern is that a pandemic would cause too many people to stay at home and download YouTube videos and porn, hogging all the internet bandwidth and blocking throughput for investment activities, thereby causing a stock market meltdown.
This isn't an April Fool's joke. It's all based on a public report issued by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), available from their website at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d108.pdf
In this article, I'm going to explain how a pandemic outbreak could theoretically bring down Wall Street. But to get to that, you'll first need to find out what the GAO said in its curious report (see below). Parts of this article are presented as satire, but the underlying facts quoted here are all true and verifiable (links are provided to all sources).
This report in question is entitled, "GAO Report to Congressional Requesters, INFLUENZA PANDEMIC" and includes this subtitle: Key Securities Market Participants Are Making Progress, but Agencies Could Do More to Address Potential Internet Congestion and Encourage Readiness.
(Excerpt) Read more at naturalnews.com ...
With a laptop, it's easy to you tube from bed. My wife checks her email and does minor net surfing while in bed, via her cell phone, which can be connected to the net through the cable modem via the 802.11 wireless network rather than using up cell minutes going through the cell network. I guess she could do music videos that way, if she was into those, which she is not.
But to think that this additional load is going to load down the local cable network to the point where it impacts the doctors office operations is, well ridiculous.
If they cut off home use of the 'net, how would these workers be able to connect to their employers' networks?
To keep the truth from getting out.
Perhaps Billy Corgan is correct!
I think you've got it...
HEY GOVT, I have an idea. Why not put yourselves to good use and increase bandwidth, better lines for communication, faster speeds, for billions of people. The way to do that is take off regulation, allow people to fix this in the best way possible, even if we end up with a private business with a monopoly. Instead of restricting growth, why not have business do exactly what it says to do in the Constitution, PROMOTE growth.
It is very decentralized and very self-healing. That’s the first straw man—the idea that people staying home sick would “take down the internet”.
Once you get to the web it’s so redundant there’s no way you could take it down. Your own individual computer doesn’t have multiple links, so severing that “last mile” would obviously cut you off, but the internet itself would be as strong as ever.
If a ton of people all jump on at once you can have lag, because that last mile is being crowded. But the net everywhere else is working just fine.
My point was more about the financial nonsense. That’s the second straw man, because all the important stuff is on dedicated networks anyway—the bulk of trading is done through fiber connections that connect to exchanges separate from the internet.
The dozen or so guys who set LIBOR (the base rate for all non-government borrowing; everything from banks moving money around to your mortgage) even have their own dedicated phone lines so that if something happened to prevent them from making it to their daily meeting they could just pick up that line from home. This stuff was though of long ago, before we had the latest non-catastrophic flu and control-freak Chicago Machine in power.
Thank You for expanding on the Explanation.
That verified my Initial impression and added more Data to use for Debate.
Thanks for the ping!
George: I got just the thing to cheer you up. A computer! Huh? We can check porn, and stock quotes.
Jerry: Porn quotes... I'm so lucky to have a friend like you, George. Ever tell you how much I love you?
Yep. It is rehashed in the reports here:
Critical Organizations Reviewed Have Plans to Continue Operations with High Absenteeism, but Some Have Limitations in Their Staffing Plans and Teleworking Alternatives
All seven critical securities market organizations we reviewed have developed plans with procedures intended to allow them to continue the functions critical to their operations despite high levels of absenteeism, but not all have fully analyzed or thoroughly documented their staffing levels or developed formal alternatives if teleworking proves unfeasible due to Internet congestion. Although congestion during a pandemic could interfere with individuals ability, including teleworkers and others, to access the Internet, the primary communications of the critical markets organizations would not be affected because these organizations and their participants communicate via high-capacity, proprietary networks that do not traverse the public Internet infrastructure.
According to the health authorities, one of the most significant challenges of a pandemic will be staffing shortages due to absenteeism caused by employees either too ill to work, taking care of ill family members, or afraid to come to work because of the chance of infection. Unfortunately, organizations could also permanently lose critical staff if the pandemic causes significant levels of deaths. Therefore, a responsive pandemic plan should include procedures for ensuring that an organization can continue performing its critical functions even with as much as a 40 percent reduction in its workforce for a prolonged periodthe level that the federal government has advised should be used for planning for a severe pandemic.
in other words, any restrictions to WEB SITES during such an event would be purely discretionary. It would not have any basis in the facts of preserving internet access to financial markets.
Also, if forty percent of the nation's or planet's population is sick, dead or dying, why are these azz-clowns thinking Wall Street is just going to keep chugging along?
We've been Powned!
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