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1997 Fools: Massive Network Failure at U. S. Justice Department
Tuesday October 21 8:20 AM EDT Massive Network Failure at U. S. Justice Department WASHINGTON - Sources within the Justice Department reported that a massive network failure occurred there yesterday at approximately 4:40 PM EDT. Shortly after posting the daily press releases and current issues on the DOJ web server, all departmental network services mysteriously failed. Attempts to connect to the public DOJ website http://www.us-doj.gov/ returned a DNS name lookup failure, indicating that the site has been removed from internet name services databases as well. Sources say that this failure was not confined to Washington D.C. headquarters but affects outlying DOJ facilities as well. It was also noted that this failure does not appear to affect any other Federal facilities. Experts from IBM Global Systems were called to attempt emergency repairs. No-one at IBM headquarters could be reached for comment. A recorded message stated that all personnel were currently in the field at customers' sites. Unnamed sources within the Department of Justice have revealed the nature and scope of this failure. All 7500 NT servers, supporting approximately 15 thousand workstations have apparently failed. E-mail, both internal and external, inter-departmental scheduling services and the internal DOJ web are all affected. Technicians report that all attempts to access department computing services result in a cartoon likeness of Bill Gates wagging his index finger, saying "Ah..Ah..Ah! You forgot the magic word!". In a related story, General Services Administration has submitted emergency requests for bids for Unix workstations, software and support. Interested parties may contact the GSA with quotes at hammer$@gsa.gov. -- Paul Hovnanian | spam to: Chairman Reed Hundt hovnania@atc.boeing.com | rhundt@fcc.gov ------------------------------------+-------------------------------- Windows 95: n. 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
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