Re: [gentoo-user] Somewhat OT: Any truth to this mess?

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 06:00:00 -0600
Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> > And no, the intartubes will NOT be switched off.
> >   
> 
> I don't really think they can unless they just cut power to all the
> computers.  After all, the internet is supposed to be redundant right?
> If there is a few computers still running that have a connection, it
> is still working.  Sort of anyway.
> 
> Does make one wonder tho.  They have been talking about having a
> internet "off switch" but I'm not sure it would be that easy.

To switch off the internet, you don't switch off the computers on the
internet. You switch off the routers that drive the internet.

There is no "kill switch", what there is is the
old-fashioned method called "making a phone call" and that conversation
has all sorts of references to broken knees and such. This is how
Egypt did it a year ago.

But the internet is full of rogue and maverick sysadmins who don't take
kindly to strong-arming, so coverage won't be complete. 

Unless of course Cisco and Huawei put magic firmware code into their
router interface hardware that we don't know about. If you are worried
about that internet, *that* is the part of it you should be worried
about.

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com