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Vandals snipped another fiber optic cable line in the San Francisco Bay area this week, the 12th incident of its kind in the region over the past year.
The latest attack occurred in the San Joaquin Valley town of Stockton, disrupting Internet, mobile phone, and 911 service for tens of thousands of AT&T and Verizon customers in three counties east of San Francisco. Service was restored about a day after the Tuesday incident.
The FBI, which is investigating the attacks, has not stated a motive, but it said the attacks usually occur in remote areas where there are no surveillance cameras. The initial attacks on California telecommunications lines began in July 2014. Whoever is responsible appears, for the moment, to be operating with impunity.
It would be funny and appropriate if they kept snipping the cables running to the Wall Street high frequency traders that keep front-running everyone's trades. Also, potentially lucrative if you go long in Depends adult diapers first.
(Score: 4, Informative) by jmorris on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:15AM
It would be funny and appropriate if they kept snipping the cables running to...
Just no. Don't know if you are trying to be funny, don't care. Civilization is fragile and depends on a hell of a lot of infrastructure not being tampered with. These clowns need to be found and put away for a long time as an example. No jokes, no sympathy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crutchy on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:35AM
the same could be said of most politicians
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:47AM
Civilization is fragile and depends on a hell of a lot of infrastructure
Really? jmorris spake thus? Whence the free market? Whence the lack of government interference in the infrastructure attacks of free persons? My God, if they succeed, we would not be able to read jmorris's opinions on his lack of ability to express his opinion. Or get his pron.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:31AM
Conservativism, like nearly any ism, is not at all consistent. This story is one of extreme revenge to barbaric extremes (it always is when the words "make an example" is used) for little morris, thus fits with his profile just fine.
(Score: 4, Funny) by penguinoid on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:17AM
These clowns need to be found and put away for a long time as an example. No jokes, no sympathy.
I see what you're trying to communicate here. We need someone with some real fiber to give out a bundle of punishments to cut down on this sort of behavior.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:39AM
put away for a long time as an example
Are we still talking about civilization?
(Score: 3, Troll) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:30PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AnonTechie on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:14PM
Reminds me of "The coating of civilization is often so thin that it rubs off with a little alcohol"
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 3, Funny) by tibman on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:21PM
I can't hear you over all this freedom we're hav.. wait.. no, i can't hear you because someone cut the fiber-optics again.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:15PM
ROFLMBO - did you say, "Like the U.S." ? ? ? ?
I know that the U.S. has done a lot of shitty things in it's history - but the U.S. didn't start either one of the world wars. You can make a case that we contributed to the second one, but the first one was all on the whitey-white people across the pond!
But, yes, you are right. Civilization is but a thin veneer. Funny how few people appreciate that fact. Everyone just blindly accepts on faith that nothing can happen to upset our tidy little apple carts. What's with Daesh? They're tipping apple carts left, right, and center!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @04:47PM
Recall in the very recent past,when Soviet enforcement of law and order was removed from Yugoslavia how quickly the "civilized" europeans turned to mass murder and genocide? It was practically overnight. And how quickly Sarajevo went from the beauty of a Olympic host city to a war-torn hell hole of death? That took less than ten years.
The largest technological and cultural contribution made to mankind has come from the Eurasian continent, spread over thousands of years, and that is of war and efficiencies of war.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:46PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @10:38PM
Are you fucking kidding me? You want to compare the $200k the Japanese offered in Katrina relief (if requested) to the $730 MILLION [jcie.org] given to the Japanese from the US. That's fucking MILLION. And $77 Million of that was direct from the US government [usembassy.gov] delivered after only ONE month. Right after the disaster the US moved in an aircraft carrier, several amphibious ships, and put 2000 Marines on standby at the behest of the Japanese government.
You really want to negatively compare the US disaster relief response, funding and supplies for any major disaster anywhere in the world, whether it is at home, Hati, the Indian Ocean, any fuckingwhere? There is no country that is quicker in response and no people that dig deeper in their pocket than the US.
Are you THAT hateful, or stupid, or both?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 22 2015, @12:49AM
You see that dot it the distance? Nope? Kinda normal, given how far you've missed his/her point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @01:47AM
No, it is pretty spot-on. Though you must figure yours to be the "civilized" response.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday July 22 2015, @03:30PM
External disaster relief and donations was most definitely not what curunir_wolf was talking about.
I must have missed the press coverage of how the Japanese people who had survived the water and the destruction instantly started bickering and fighting.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 22 2015, @01:32AM
Look at the big picture. You want to take a snapshot, and compare a couple of nations. Snapshots aren't sufficient to evaluate much of anything.
As for New Orleans and Louisiana during Katrina - liberal, incompetent governor, liberal, incompetent mayor. DAYS AFTER the hurricane struck the city, the president of the United States had to ask that liberal, incompetent governor if she needed or wanted help in New Orleans. The governor didn't even mobilize her own National Guard. This is the kind of thing that happens when important positions are given to bumbling fools for feel-good reasons.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:38PM
Kinda sounds like that time that all those submarine fiber optic cables were cut [wikipedia.org] mysteriously around Iran.
Of course, unlike San Francisco, the U.S. is now friends with Iran. You have to wonder why somebody would target a repressive, politically intolerant regime like San Francisco.
(Score: 5, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:05PM
What in the world does Wall Street and high speed trading have to do with civilization?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:38PM
Civilization is fragile and depends on a hell of a lot of infrastructure not being tampered with
Citation needed.
But assuming your correct, you think the solution to the problem is making infrastructure unbreakable, or making civilization less fragile and afraid ?
I remember before the Internet civilisation was civilized, true story.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:20PM
"I remember before the Internet civilisation was civilized, true story."
That's why the KKK burned crosses and hung black people in the South.
And, that's why 40,000 Americans died in Vietnam.
And, Pol Pot.
And, Idi Amin.
And, Operation Ajaz.
And - to hell with it. Fill in your own blank spaces.
I once thought that the world was civilized. But, that was while I still lived a sheltered life. Before I quite reached my teens, I began to understand how UNcivlized the world really is. The almost fifty years since haven't improved my opinion any.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:20PM
Why do you think all those shithole middle eastern countries love to block/filter the Internet so much?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Touché) by penguinoid on Tuesday July 21 2015, @10:50PM
Why do you think all those shithole middle eastern countries love to block/filter the Internet so much?
Because they don't have enough power to take down the sites they don't like at their source?
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:02PM
What you are describing is culture. Civilization needs cultures to perpetuate, but not all of any culture is civilized.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:00PM
Front-running trades is illegal, but the high-frequency traders who do it nowadays use fiber and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and algorithms too complex for the government to begin to pretend to crack down on it. So the Wall Street traders commit millions of crimes per day (because we're talking about transactions that occur in milliseconds or fractions thereof) with total impunity. As such, if the fiber lines to their operations and their operations alone were cut, it would in fact be something done in defense of law and order and civilization.
For me, and perhaps others, it would also be funny because those traders do tend to be quite cock-sure and the look on their faces as all their systems say [CARRIER LOST] would be priceless.
Even more fundamental an infrastructure than fiber cables or roads are the rule of law and financial infrastructure. Wall Street traders and all their ilk who commit crimes with impunity (LIBOR rate fixing, money laundering for Mexican drug cartels, bribery, corruption, take your pick) and steal from you and yours in a thousand ways you don't even see strike at the heart of the civilization that produces those roads and fiber networks. They are tampering with that infrastructure.
You don't like cheek. Fine. The Wall Street banks are the central existential threat to the civilization you're talking about. The government won't move against them because they the banks have completely co-opted that government. They own it. They own it more now than JP Morgan did 120 years ago. They have erased trillions of dollars of wealth of every American while siphoning more wealth to themselves. They have done enormous damage to the future of every single citizen in this country.
Still think they wouldn't deserve somebody snipping the fiber cable to their office?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:23PM
Holy crap, dude. No one gets away with talking so bluntly and honestly. You better join a witness protection program!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:38PM
My life they may take, my integrity never.
We should all stop pussy footing around and talk about this clearly. Others are [huffingtonpost.com]. Like Huffington Post or not, it's a media outlet a lot of people read and that's on the front page. I've seen similar sentiments expressed in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. The 1% fear it, but we know it. If things in America (and the entire developed world, frankly) don't turn around abruptly and for the better, severed fiber optic cables will be the very least of the 1%'s problems.
Of course they won't turn around because the 1% think everything's just dandy. Everyone they know tells them so.
It's going to be a rough couple of decades.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:36PM
Why would a wall street trader looking for extremely low latency trades put thier office on the other side of the continent?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:13PM
They don't. The colocate in the same datacenters that the markets themselves use. They have fiber back to home office, but they also have microwave redundancies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:34PM
What this shows is that our infrastructure is pathetic. How much more of this will it take before we wise up and come up with a sensible design?
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Wednesday July 22 2015, @07:15AM
Totally. Civilization depends on the stock market and high-speed trading.
Just keep the shell game going until everything goes to hell. So, at least until the end of next week.