Re: Gartner sees declining need for tech skills

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Tue, 23 May 2006 10:23:43 PDT, "Hubbard, Dan" said:

> A new and unique threat to business operations is looming on the
> horizon; an avian influenza or "bird flu" pandemic. This pandemic will
> likely be global in reach, cataclysmic in consequence and complete in
> rendering useless today's business continuity plans.

Given that there's no indication that said virus has mutated to a form
easily transmissible to humans, and there's no *particular* reason to
*expect* it to happen anytime soon, why is *this* one getting played up
any more than any of the *other* nasty pathogens out there?

Yes, there's good reason to suspect that in the next decade or two, we
will see *some* influenza variant go pandemic.  My money is on some strain
other than "avian".

For instance, Ebola comes in 2 strains - one is transmissible by air to
monkeys. The other is transmissible to both monkeys and humans, but only via
bodily fluids (which are unfortunately quite copious, as Ebola basically makes
you spring leaks all over the place).  If either of those strains mutated to
one that was airborne and infected humans, it's Game Over. (See Preston's "The
Hot Zone" for details. Good book).

There was a lengthy discussion of this on NANOG a while ago - the most
interesting point was "is the local DSL provider able to handle *everybody*
telecommuting at once?"

Attachment: _bin
Description:

_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.