Oh Dear, we have a computer crash and all sorts are running around
like chooks with their head chopped off !
The Greens are calling for an enquiry, others are demanding why
the CEO hasn't told them what is going on! She probably hasn't a clue!
Can she survive in her job !

Its a bl^%^&&dy computer failure !
Sometimes faults like this can be very hard to tie down to one
transistor, or one connector, or one integrated circuit or indeed
a software bug that had been hiding there for years.
Like, when someone with a particular phone number and a particular
phone plan used a particular app on a particular date ! etc etc.

I have been in exactly the position that two or three guys at Optus
who were trying to find the cause were in.
The worse thing that can be done is to put pressure on them.
Stop asking stupid questions like; When will it be fixed ?
Pressure from the bosses is fatal to a quick solution.
The best thing the bosses can do is arrange for meals to be brought
in for them. Like most computer engineers they will work 24 hours and
more if need be.

There is no real solution to this difficult fault, except having a
completely duplicated system.
Then wouldn't you know it the change over system might fail !

Ho Ho

There once was a time when all phones were stuck to a wall and the cost per call so prohibitive, only the wealthy had one.

When software was was your Mothers petticoat and computer was a non word.

A time when a letter through the post was the expectation, and travelled on the mail train overnight for delivery next day..

Then came Television, a remarkable technology quickly rendered worthless to average Joe, and smothered to death with banality of programming and swamped with commercial advertising.

Technology advanced to supply portable phones and internet connectivity and the birth of social media.

To suit this technology, parents produced children as prodigious fodder for the technological grinding machine impinging on mental health of children and parent alike, necessitating select committee in Congress to formulate a path of salvation for all from the mire of resultant addiction , bullying and sexual grooming by evil foreign forces infiltrating our homes because of it.

Losing a phone for a day will be something which may cause death to many social media addicts, and could I add, the more the merrier!

The fault itself - if the truth of it is ever discovered - is not the point; the point is the warning for those who are rabbiting on about a 'cashless society'. Signs popped up every in shop: 'cash only'. The smarty-pants with the medication prescriptions on their smart phones could not get the scripts filled. Couldn’t use the fantastic plastic. Trains came to halt in Melbourne. Hospitals affected. VOIP phones in offices kaput. People still call the phones on their desks and hall tables 'landlines'. Well, folks, there are no landlines any more. Get it yet?

It wasn't just about smartphone users losing their suck blankets.

The immediate rush of the tech-lovers to change companies within just a few hours shows what slaves or addicts they have become.

Nota bene, Comrade Xi. Australia is stuffed without its you-beaut technology - a pushover.

Getting rid of the telephone lines was on a par with blowing up coal-driven power plants.

A friend in the NSW Electricity Commission said to me when I asked,
no we will not be using the internet to control the NSW Grid.
This wa long before hackers were the threat they are now.
The Commission had microwave links everywhere.
When I hear things about hackers etc, I often think, why is it connected
to the internet ?
I know that there are organisations that have their own fibre installed.

Very few people understand just how precarious our vital infrastructure is, how close we are to a temporary return to the 1800's.

These calls to force companies to make their system fail-proof are just ignorant. There is no such thing or at least nothing that would be cost effective. Sure, if customers were prepared to pay $200-300 a month for their phone, the telcos could afford to put multiple back-up systems in place and that might work. But that ain't gunna happen.

Equally our electricity systems live a precarious existence that is always on the edge of failing.

And the transport system that refills the supermarkets each night is never far from disaster. A breakdown here and the city folk would be living a Lord of the Flies existence within a fortnight.

Still, governments will pretend they can do something about it, the telcos etc will pretend that they've resolved it and the people will continue to believe all is good.

Until the next time.