Anybody There?

5:45 PM -- As the aftermath of Katrina wears on, members of the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) spent the afternoon debating the role of failed email during the disaster.

Triggered by remarks about poor online service by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as reported in the Wall Street Journal, geeks nationwide speculated about why FEMA's servers didn't seem to work when needed. Was it a bifurcated firewall? A snarled IP address? A misconfigured server?

Someone popped up with news that FEMA lists at least 250 points of IT contact on its online staff listing. To which someone else responded that perhaps the problem wasn't a technical one after all.

We leave you with the quote of the day, from President Bush as reported in the WSJ: "I can do more than one thing at one time. That's what you -- that's what I hope you -- by the time I'm finished president, I hope you will realize that the government can do more than one thing at one time and individuals in the government can."

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch