Internet shutdown today

[geostep]

Hi All,

I'd thought everyone would like to know that the internet will be shut down today. Not all at once, but in stages.  Think of it as a rolling blackout. Expect websites and email to be unavailable from time to time.
The problem has to do with the binary nature of computers and the degradation of the 1's and 0's over time. If the bits degrade too far then you have corrupted data, program crashes, etc...  All highly undesirable of course.  Btw, this is one of the main underlying reasons why PC's and other computing devices crash or lock up.
In any case the best way to 'refresh' the bits is to shut down all of the computers all at once.  If not done that way degraded bits will easily be sent from an unreset PC to those that already were reset.
 
This mass shutdown also gives system admins and IT staff the opportunity to perform critical maintenance tasks. One of the most pressing issues is not coping with viral or malware infections. It is a little known but serious issue called binary imbalance. As information is stored on hard drives, the placement of 1's and 0's on the drives is not well regulated due to performance reasons. Over time it's possible for the bits not to be spread evenly over the drive surface. Too many 1's or 0's start to cluster on one side or the other of the hard drive platters. This imbalance causes mechanical stresses to build in the drive. It can lead to bearing failure, head crashes, lost data and the bits being literally flung off of the platter surface.
Newer SSD drives are not subject to this problem.

Also, have a happy April 1st.   

- George

[dfmischler]

I remember, sometime in the '80s, explaining to a manager that the reason we had to periodically backup our minicomputer system disk pack to tape and restore it (on a Saturday) was "just like" the centrifugal force pushed the bits to the edges of the disk and we had to spread them back out evenly to restore performance.  And that wasn't on April 1st.  Of course, it was really due to filesystem fragmentation, but we couldn't figure out how to explain that to him.

[electronics man]

Happy April fools day

[KD0CAC John]

It did not seem to be a joke at this end , couldn't get to the EEVblog yesterday ?

[madires]

A local computer magazine got a nice one on it's web page. It's about Deutsche Telekom and a new method to mitigate atom displacement caused by the skin effect when using high frequencies for DSL. Since the DSL downstream speed is much higher than the upstream speed the high frequency currents will displace the outer atoms of the copper wire in downstream direction over time, causing echo problem and higher losses. They got new DSL modems supporting a cleaning mode which sends a special bit pattern to reverse the atom displacement. And they found out that P2P upstream traffic, especially bittorrent, helps too.

[free_electron]

Time for the yearly straightening of all the cables. Make sure all bends are on a nice 10cm radius.
That way the 1's don't accumulate in the corners.

For audiophools: business as usual. Those are stuck on april 1st

[Neilm]

My boss asked for a report on the status of the project this morning. I told him that everything was perfect.

[linux-works]

Time for the yearly straightening of all the cables. Make sure all bends are on a nice 10cm radius.
That way the 1's don't accumulate in the corners.

I've found a way around this problem.  if you vary the clock speed then you can spread out where the 1's end up collecting.  yes, it only defers the problem.  so what?  that's what you get for free.  sheesh!

[Dave Turner]

Swiss spaghetti tree crop and the island of Sans Serif.

[linux-works]

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