Vulnerbilities of Interconnection

Mon Sep 16 17:30:56 UTC 2002

On Mon, 16 Sep 2002, Gerald wrote:

> >  >Just like the net was one of the prime sources of information
> >  >during 9-11.

> The internet sucked as a means of getting information on 9/11. I spent
> about 20 minutes hitting every news site I could think of, and they had
> all tanked. I set an away msg on IM:
> "Internet news sucks, I'm going to watch CNN."

There are several ways why "internet news" wasn't as good as TV news:

1. Using an infrastructure that is built for many-to-many communication
   for few-to-many communication is problematic

2. Look at the budgets for online and TV news

3. This type of situation doesn't lend itself well to typing in the news

What the net did do, was permit people to communicate while the phone
network suffered from massive congestion.

> William said they changed a lot of the way they do things at the company
> that hosts CNN.com since 9/11. I don't believe they were the only ones.

Can you name a few examples of the things they changed?