There's an idea floating around, via the Wall Street Journal, that Iran is contemplating cutting their Internet off from the rest of us. Basically creating a private Internet that's not connected to anyone outside Iran.

It's very possible. If there are only a few of points of entry into the country, they must control those.

The miracle is when things are compatible, that's why the Internet is so great. If you tried to get all the countries or all the companies to agree to a standard that would allow all their private networks to interoperate, it would never happen. Only when a bunch of idealists in academia thought it would be neat if they hooked their networks up could it happen. Before anyone else was interested.

The reimagined Battlestar Galactica had a lot of great ideas. They had all these old-fashioned items around the space-age starship, a reminder that this all happened so far away that time is practically meaningless. As far away as they are in time and space, they area lot like us, in many ways. The Galactica starships didn't have the Internet. It's not that they didn't know how to do it, they did -- they had to disconnect because it was an attack vector. In one episode they had to temporarily turn the Internet back on, as a desperate measure. And sure enough, within seconds, probably milliseconds, the virii started attacking. It was only a matter of time before their databanks were corrupted. Of course they saved the day, and lived to fight the Cylons once again.

Iran is under attack in exactly the same way. Their techs can't control the viruses we're sending at them. This means two things:

1. They will eventually wise up and take their Internet offline.

2. And watch out, they have hackers too. And if we can do it to them, you bet they can do it to us.

In other words, enjoy the freedom of the Internet. Because it's quite possible you won't have it much longer.

 5/28/2011; 3:56:15 PM.   .

Yesterday's ride was great, but gave me a case of buttus sorikus, otherwise known as "sore butt." Which sounds like sorbet, but is not.

That and Fleet Week made midtown on the Hudson a mess, so I turned around at the Intrepid and made it a shorter ride.

I must get out earlier, avoid the crowds.

Here's the map. 51 minutes. 7.2 miles.

 5/28/2011; 12:24:42 PM.   .