Utah woman deletes the Internet

REDMOND, WA: Millions of frustrated calls rushed into Internet service providers this past Thursday as "The Information Superhighway" was reported Missing In Action for several days.The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) traced the problem

Paul Thurrott

March 31, 1998

1 Min Read
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REDMOND, WA: Millions of frustrated calls rushed into Internet service providers this past Thursday as "The Information Superhighway" was reported Missing In Action for several days.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) traced the problem to a home inUtah where Doris Packuko resides. She was allegedly found "hysterical and crying," police say.

"That much information flowing through the phone lines all at once generates a lot of heat," Doug Wernicke of the IETF told us, "We just followed the smell of burning fiber optics."

"Apparently, she just deleted The Internet right off her desktop. Even after being warned, 'are you sure you want to delete The Internet?', she persisted."

Experts claim that this is a major problem with The Information Superhighway, perhaps even worse than animal pornography. "The Internet isa great cooperative work, built by millions of people. It is so unfortunatethat it can be ruined by just one person. Thank God we were able to save it," commented Packuko's neighbor.

The IETF was able to recover most of The Internet by opening up Packuko's Recycle Bin and dragging The Internet back onto the desktop. The rest was restored from the master backup copy kept on Zip Disk in the pentagon. Packuko claims ignorance was the cause of her act. "I just didn't know. I was trying to clean up my desktop and I deleted it. I...I just didn't realize."

Microsoft Corporation reports that they are currently working on a bug fix.

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OK, it's April 1st: you have to expect this. Thanks to snoot.com forthe great goof).

--Pau

About the Author

Paul Thurrott

Paul Thurrott is senior technical analyst for Windows IT Pro. He writes the SuperSite for Windows, a weekly editorial for Windows IT Pro UPDATE, and a daily Windows news and information newsletter called WinInfo Daily UPDATE.

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