In computer news this week, 02/07/2003

In computer news this week, 02/13/2003

Lead: What happens to the internet if there's a war with Iraq?

You wake up in the morning, have that cup of coffee and read the paper, and then wander over to your computer to check your usually awaiting dozen or so emails.

Your computer turns on fine, but when you go to check your email there's a problem - it just sits there and eventually gives you an error message, the old 404 Not Found error message The Web server cannot find the file or script you asked for. Please check the URL to ensure that the path is correct.

No problem you think, my ISP is having a problem - again, so I'll just check my mail from another site. Probably the most common internet site people use to check their mail from when they're away from their office - or when their ISP is down - is a site called www.mail2web.com

As long as you can get on a computer that's hooked to the internet - you can go to www.mail2web.com - sign in with your regular email username and password - and retrieve your email from anywhere.

But today when you try that - you again get the old 404 Not Found error message .

Well gee you say, guess I'll just start surfing the web for fun and see what's new - but still again you again get the old 404 Not Found error message . There's just nothing there - the internet has gone away !!

You turn on your tv and every channel is covering the iraq invasion, or the current internet attack.

Can you imagine the impact on the world if the internet goes down due to hacker attack with some kind of internet worm?

Cyber terrorism has been a real threat and concern for years now, and many experts say that a war could trigger it.

How many people now work from home via the internet internationally?

How many people make their living from the internet - via actual ecommerce, or people like professional investors who play the market.?

How would this effect banking and the stock market?

How would this effect world wide information retrieval and emergency services?

The fact is - this could happen. During the last Iraq war - the Gulf war - the world wide web had not even officially started. The gulf war ended in April 1991 - the WWW officially started in 1992.

Today world businesses are dependent on the Internet for communication and commerce.

Hundreds of millions of people and businesses use the Internet daily, so what do you do if it's not there?

It might be an idea to have some kind of a plan in the event of this happening.

This means you have to go back to the old days in a way. You might have to actually talk to people on the telephone, so you need to have a list of phone numbers for people you usually email. And you need addresses too, in case you have to snail mail them letters.

You need to know where information sources are - not online information sources - and you can start at your local library. They have these things called "books" that you pick up, open and read, and you can find information in these books. You can't find what you're looking for as fast as on the internet - there are no hyperlinks or search engines - but you can find information.

So the old Boy Scout Motto "Be prepared" applies to camping - and to cyberspace too.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230