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Table of Contents
FOOD
At this point you should already have a three month supply of canned
goods in your cupboard. Since July 1999, you have been stocking up
sensibly,
buying things when they go on sale, or buying in bulk at BJs or Costco.
You have already put date stamps on items that did not come with a presupplied
freshness date so you can eat the oldest items first. Now that it
is winter 2000, you will continue to buy fresh food and replenish the items
that you eat from your supply. The backup reserve should be maintained
until at least March 2000.
HEAT
You should have an alternate method of heating at least one room in
your house that does not depend on electricity. This is prudent advice
in most parts of North America, Y2K or NOT. Y2K was just an excuse
to complete sensible home improvements
that will pay for themselves with lower heating costs in the long run.
TRANSPORTATION
You should keep your gas tank at least half full- in other words, don't
wait till it is on 1/4 tank to go to the gas station. You should
have charged cell phones in each of your vehicles, but should not talk
on them while driving unless you have a "hands free" adapter kit.
When traveling by air or rail, you should remain flexible and expect there
to be cancellations and delays due to the weather or other factors which
may or may not be related to computer errors.
FINANCIAL
You should remain vigilant and prepared for outages and inconveniences.
You should not modify your overall savings and investment strategy.
Pay special attention to your printed bank statements, utility bills, and
credit card bills. Invalid charges on credit cards are normally high
at this time of year, but especially after Y2K, credit card theft and identity
theft for the purpose of obtaining credit will likely reach record levels.
SUMMARY
Basically, you should be doing what you would normally do, Y2K or NOT!
Y2K just gave some people a socially acceptable excuse to stop putting
off home improvements or to take other steps that reduce their absolute
dependency on computers or other societal "bottlenecks" like the electric
power grid. All of these steps are prudent any time, especially in
winter.
Global Climactic Change
Africa: Cyclone
Eline Hits Mozambique After Weeks of Floods CNN
DisasterRelief.Org
800,000 people are displaced and another cyclone
is on the way!
Australia: Floods
Turn Australian Outback Into Inland Sea- Ayers Rock has Waterfalls!
CNN
USA: Midwest
Fog closes schools and airports CNN
One Week Until 2/29/2000
Are you ready for the "real" Y2K bug? Bookmark this page and
stay tuned for updates from me during the coming week, especially over
the Feb 29 - March 1 period.
Interplanetary Shock Wave Strikes Earth 2/21/2000
Increased auroral activity is expected all week as a coronal hole on
the sun is oriented towards earth.
Space
Science News
Check the Latest Space Weather
Weekly News Summary 2/20/2000
What a week! Sorry I was too busy at work to update this news
page, although you probably received emails from me concerning the problems
with various US government web sites and networks. Here are some
links to the official media versions of those stories. Then read
further below for the "real story" behind the headlines.
EPA Intranet Disconnected from Internet
CNN:
02/17/2000
CNN:
02/16/2000
Space News from CNN Tech Page
Weather Stories
Hackerphobia WINS One Round at EPA
Thursday morning I went to work at a company with a big contract with
EPA. Most of the people were unable to connect to the EPA servers-
we connect over the internet via TCPIP. Then we found out that EPA
had made the decision to disconnect all their servers and intranet (*not*
just their public web site, as has been reported
in the news) from the open internet. This was the case of
the hackers winning a battle without ever firing a shot!
I am not sure if the people at EPA HQ who are responsible for configuring the new firewalls they intend to put in place are even aware of the magnitude of what they have done. This means that many contractors working on upgrades to systems at EPA will be unable to connect to servers to complete software development. It also means that EPA State offices (outside the intranet) will be unable to connect to the databases at EPA HQ that manage their grant money.
What scares me about this CNN article (besides not being able to do my job, hence not get PAID) is that it is POLITICAL as much as technical. That does not bode well for a swift resolution. Quoting the article: "Virtually all of (the EPA's) computer data and systems may be highly vulnerable to penetration, misuses or attack by unauthorized users via the Internet..."
This whole thing happened REACTIVELY because the head of the House Commerce Committee, Rep. Thomas Bliley, R-Va., sent an embarrassing letter to Carol Browner, chief administrator of the EPA, accusing her of mismanagement of the EPA computers , and urging her to shut down the EPA's publicly accessible Web site.
Quote: 'Bliley accused Browner of "gross mismanagement of cyber security" and charged that she had not taken adequate steps to ensure that EPA's data on secure computer systems -- including confidential financial and trade information provided by companies as part of a regulatory proceeding -- are protected. '
So NOW what has happened is, Ms Browner and her technical advisors decided that the only way to respond to the House Committee's threat was to cut off all access between the EPA Intranet and the internet at large. Meanwhile they will formulate a way to ge better control over who has access to computer resources within the EPA network. How long will that take? This was a REACTIVE move based on political embarrassment, NOT on a real hacker threat, and apparently without a PLAN to restore the service in a timely, orderly, logical way!
I think I may be out of a job! Anyone hiring Lotus Notes developers? Here is my online resume.
If you didn't get a copy of the letter from Carol Browner that was circulated within the EPA Intranet today when I first mailed it, email me again and I will forward you a copy. Some people are circulating an email chain letter around various anti-government web sites and mailing lists to protest this "illegal" denial of the public to their environmental information- if you receive this chain email, please do NOT follw the advice of the email to call Carol Browner's office- this will only add fuel to the fire of an already beleaguered agency and make it take LONGER to resolve this problem. However, if you decide to contact Rep. Bliley's office in Virginia and complain about his harrassment of the EPA which is politically motivated (he is a republican, and Browner is a Clinton appointee) then that is up to you.
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!
What a day! A massive winter storm system caused havoc from southwest
Georgia and Alabama to northern Maine. Even in Washington DC this
evening, a severe thunderstorm watch with lightning and hail was in effect
during evening rush hour. In California, in a fog bank on I-15, there
was a 63 car chain reaction pile-up.
NIGHT OF THE TWISTERS!
22 Dead in 3 Counties in SW Georgia:
CNN
Washington
Post (AP)
Disaster
Relief
MORE HEADLINES
Columbine students found dead
NEAR probe orbits asteroid Eros
Shuttle mission thruster problem
Online Auction Fraud Probe
CYBERWAR IN PROGRESS!
Last night at 6 PM when I uploaded the news for February 8 below, more
coordinated attacks were taking place against other "high profile" internet
sites: eBay, Amazon.com, Buy.com, and even CNN! It is the lead
story on the CNN main
page at this moment, but will you be able to open it? Or
will you get a "busy signal" or hourglass while you are waiting for the
page to load?!?
Yet Another Plane Crash near Chicago!
Also yesterday afternoon, two small planes collided north of Chicago
and one of the planes crashed into the roof of a hospital. This was
on the radio last night as I was driving home, and on the 11:00 PM news
last night; but this morning I can find no mention of it on
the CNN main page nor on the US News
page. There is so much going on today that the plane crash
didn't even make the final editor's cut! On a slow news day, it might
have been the major headline!
Hail Storm and Funnel
Clouds in Seattle
Last night, while all this was happening, a friend in Seattle emailed
me that a hail storm was in progress and that she sighted a funnel cloud!
Yahoo Offline For Hours During Cyber Attack
Is this as big a deal as the media is making out of it? On CNN
today, I heard this quote: "If Yahoo can be shut down, the entire internet
is at risk!" This was a "denial of service" attack- someone flooded
the Yahoo routers with millions of TCPIP packets, jamming the ports and
stealing bandwidth from legitimate users. CNN
Story #2
Another Alaska Air Plane Makes Emergency Landing
Last night, after I posted the news from yesterday, another Alaska
Air plane on the same route as Flight 261 from Puerto Vallarta Mexico to
Seattle, was forced to land in San Francisco when air traffic controllers
saw sparks emanating from one of the engines. Alaska Air is a relatively
small airline, and the MD-80
had no record of trouble prior to the incidents of last week. Since
all the flights originated in the same city, shouldn't someone be investigating
the possibility of SABOTAGE in Puerto
Vallarta?!. Maybe a reporter from a Los Angeles newspaper should
fly down to Mexico and hang around the airport for a few days looking for
any suspicious activity. That is what I would do if I had the means.
Asteroid Discovered In January Will Make Near-Earth
Pass In 2023
This story is really a non-event, but it is interesting to see what
the media focuses on. Asteroid 2000 BF 19 discovered in January by
the SpaceWatch Telescope has been confirmed to be a "near earth object"
but will not come closer than 3 million miles to earth in the next fifty
years. CNN
Coverage
This is the real comprehensive list of "Potentially Hazardous Objects" (PHAs) as catalogued by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in my home town of Cambridge Ma. From this list you can see that the next object to come within less than 0.01 AU (approximately 900,000 miles) will be an asteroid in the year 2010. The newly discovered object has not even been added to this list yet. But it will be.
However from this list of recent discoveries, you can see that new PHAs and NEOs are being discovered weekly, so the "cue ball with our number on it" has yet to be discovered, and when it is found, it will probably only be weeks away from impact. When Comet Hyakutake was discovered in 1996, it was only a few months away from its closest approach, and it passed within a million miles of earth, almost directly over our north pole where it remained visible all night from the northern hemisphere.
"Small" Sunspot Group Causes Massive Solar
Flares
Please read this Special
Report from the Space
Weather center.
Alaska Air Crash Aftermath
Of course the news is full of stories about Alaska Air Flight 261 that
crashed into the Pacific Ocean a week ago. How many more
times will we watch the footage of the divers off the coast bringing
up wreckage, and the makeshift
memorial on the beach as people wade in the surf to feel closer
to their lost loved ones?
In the week since the crash, three more Alaska Air jets made emergency landings. The MD-80 pilots have been especially cautious about their horizontal stabilizers, putting them through additional tests on the ground which in at least once case may have caused the stabilizer motor to overheat.
Why do these things also seem to happen in groups?
Just today...
Two
Small Planes Collide Near Los Angeles
Avalanches Hit Alaska!
CNN
Version
FEMA Version
Alaska is also mentioned on this Other
World News page from
DisasterRelief.org,
along with torrential flooding in Indonesia and Mozambique.
We are fine here on the central peninsula. A little tight at the
grocery
store but the local Safeway is airlifting staples to it's three main
locations.
The refineries are only 15 miles from here so fuel is no problem.
Natural gas is recovered from reserves right below us so home
heating is not an issue as long as the electricity remains on.
Some remote areas of the northwest and northeast Kenai Peninsula have
been
without power for a few days and may have to wait several more before
it's
restored. I have a generator at home for back up if needed, a freezer
full
of salmon and chicken, a pantry full of dry goods, plenty of gasoline
and
the confidence a major outage in the local area would simply result
in a
welcome long weekend of Scrabble.
I guess my smugness must be a result of vindication for being y2k ready.
Please take a look at Bill's amazing comet photographs-
http://www.eaglestation.com/cimgs.html
You can see Hale Bopp and the Aurora Borealis in the same shot...
http://www.eaglestation.com/cimgs/hb31297a.jpeg
... one of my favorites! Wish I could have been there!
Solar Smoke Rings!
You must see these pictures
of solar prominences taken by the SOHO
spacecraft in the past week!
Hackers Can Embed HTML or JAVA script in web
links
Microsoft is working with CERT to determine a strategy to combat the
"Cross
Site Scripting" threat.
Don't Install AOL 5.0!
Disgruntled
AOL 5.0 users seek up to $8 billion in damages
Disaster
Relief World News Page
Current Stories include:
Cyberwar in Japan!
Washington
Post: Hackers Slam Japan Websites
Another Mysterious Plane Crash
CNN
Coverage- Alaska Air Crash
Washington
Post Coverage
Disaster
Relief Coverage
Shuttle Launch Scrubbed Due To Computer Glitch
CNN
Tech Page
ASTRONOMY AND SPACE
MYSTERIOUS ACCIDENTS
& PLANE CRASHES
CYBERWAR, Y2K GLITCHES
& OTHER COMPUTER FAILURES
Analysis of the Y2K
Threat
Strategies
of Containment
Other Sites
The Millennium
Matters
Today's
Space Weather
Insurgency
on the Internet (CNN)
Boston.com
Year 2000 page
Yahoo
Y2K News Coverage
The Weather Channel
DisasterRelief.Org
