Hurricane Katrina's effects are certainly devestating on so many levels: physical (financial/structural), emotional, and social. Reports of widespread looting and shootings reflect a people so distraught that they seek to provide for themselves and their families at any cost.
(Forgive me, this next point is trivial compared to what's mentioned above, but as that's too depressing to dwell on right now, I'll digress into yet another strange rant about globally distributed computing, of which I seem to be attracted to so much lately.)
My friend and old coworker's company Lewis isn't reachable at all as of this moment, perhaps proving the case for geo-distributed DNS, such as the services that both UltraDNS and Akamai, among a few others, supply. No doubt that Lewis's upstream provider is likely down, and perhaps even _their_ upstream provider as well, proving that the internet (as the saying goes) is only as strong as its weakest link.
DNS dig here.
Posted by stephend at August 30, 2005 10:25 PM