The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid
1–10 of 106 posts
Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid
#2If that is true, it's that an admission that you do not view fuel supplies as critical infrastructure?
Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid
#3If that is true, it's that an admission that you do not view fuel supplies as critical infrastructure?
Even so, some one has to pay, and the government wouldn't be keen on just handing out free fuel either.
Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid
#4The author of this article comes off as really very clueless.
Yes, in fact, if a store's computers go down they don't just let customers walk out the door with products and hope they get paid eventually?
As far as I understand colonial is basically a big gas station connected with a series of tubes. Look ma, the gas pump still works but it doesn't keep track of how much we pumped or charge us any more!
Of course they shut down if they couldn't bill?
It's being treated like some kind of greed when in reality they didn't want to give away millions of dollars of fuel they couldn't track or bill for.
The colonial pipeline was fine... except it couldn't do the thing it does which is sell gas to distributors, it could only give it away.
Sigh.
This isn't "fake news", but it is... shitty news? News which gives facts and a ridiculous analysis?
I'm still trying to find out what actually happened in Israel but god forbid a news source or commentator actually lay out the details of a complicated situation... (if you're not getting everybody pissed off about X, then you're not doing your job as a reporter?)
Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid
#5Can we get the title fixed please? Even if it's misspelled at the source.
..., shut down ...
Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid
#6[deleted]
Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid
#7If that is true, it's that an admission that you do not view fuel supplies as critical infrastructure?
Even so, some one has to pay, and the government wouldn't be keen on just handing out free fuel either.
If the power grid in your area loses its billing system should it just shut down?
What I don’t get is why they couldn’t gather the data manually to keep things running and sorted it out after the fact. They didn’t have any DR planning for something like this? Station people with clipboards and cameras at all meters. Measure the inputs and outputs as they occur. It seems there was just no real impetus to act responsibly here.
Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid
#8The author of this article comes off as really very clueless. Yes, in fact, if a store's computers go down they don't just let customers walk out the door with products and hope they get paid eventually? As far as I understand colonial is basically a big gas station connected with a series of tubes. Look ma, the gas pump still works but it doesn't keep track of how much we pumped or charge us any more! Of course they…
> if a store's computers go down they don't just let customers walk out the door with products and hope they get paid eventually?
This is exactly what we expect them to do in a crisis situation. This is also how Hollywood portrays ethical behavior. The store owner in Jericho (2006 TV series) is the first to come to mind, but there should be plenty of other examples.
And good deeds come back to us.
Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid
#9The author of this article comes off as really very clueless. Yes, in fact, if a store's computers go down they don't just let customers walk out the door with products and hope they get paid eventually? As far as I understand colonial is basically a big gas station connected with a series of tubes. Look ma, the gas pump still works but it doesn't keep track of how much we pumped or charge us any more! Of course they…
I think maybe you have to think about the total economic impact for the article and frustration to make more sense. Fuel is a very fundamental part of our economy and almost always goes toward producing much more value than the value of the fuel itself. Add to that, shortages can and do contribute to irreversible losses like loss of life. If every gas distributor shut down because ransomware hit them all, you could completely grind the country to a halt.
It's not too far fetched either to hope that their customers would be willing to self-report. Sure you might get some people who'd take advantage of the situation, but it's not a the total loss scenario of giving away your product for free that you're talking about. Add in the opportunity cost and shutting down delivery if you have alternatives that may not be 100% accurate billing is probably a net loss for the company, though it's impossible to say.
> I'm still trying to find out what actually happened in Israel but god forbid a news source or commentator actually lay out the details of a complicated situation... (if you're not getting everybody pissed off about X, then you're not doing your job as a reporter?)
It's a bit ironic to take a morals-over-profit stance on reporting right after having taken the profit-over-morals stance of gas pipelines.
Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid
#10How come that billing is basically ALWAYS the typical system that - no matter what - runs on Windows? SMEs software, big enterprise software and everything in between, you can have 99% of your core systems running on whatever operating system you want, or several of them, but the billing/payroll/accounting system will ALWAYS be Windows. Even if SAP has Linux/Unix versions.