- On this day, I highlighted her workstation and hit the F6 key to reset. But my screen went temporarily black and then seemed to be starting again. I realized that I had mistakenly hit F7 and reset all the workstations in the embassy. This realization didn’t bother me much, because no one except the Agriculture section secretary was usually on the computer system this early in the morning.
But then all hell broke lose.
This is the fault of the dork that came up with that interface, not of the author.On this day, I highlighted her workstation and hit the F6 key to reset. But my screen went temporarily black and then seemed to be starting again. I realized that I had mistakenly hit F7 and reset all the workstations in the embassy.
This is a perfect example of how fragile important things can be. If there was some valuable unsaved information on a computer before it was reset than it could have been forgotten about in the wake of new information. Also, if reports came out about a station's computers all resetting at once then Alex Jones and other conspiracy nuts would have a field day claiming that it was an inside job. In that same vein, the Boston Bomber internet witch hunt contained tons of extra information which was not pertinent, but it was still heavily scrutinized by the conspiracy crowd. How many of those tidbits of information were the results of overhearing a different case on a police scanner or a misunderstanding? Cable News stations seem to have gone the way of reporting any and all information rather than ensuring that the information is both credible and relevant. News media needs to stop and count to ten as well as news consumers who were ready to start pointing barrels after the first reports of MH17 going down.
'K, but the important factor on the KAL takedown was that the USSR ostensibly shot down a civilian airliner for violating Soviet Airspace with electronic surveillance equipment on board. The US screamed up and down that it was a civilian airliner with no intelligence mission whatsoever and that's the narrative that persisted. Fact of the matter is, the preponderance of evidence supports a CIA payload at a bare minimum. After all, it had happened before. So sure - maybe a lone geek feels culpable for an information blackout that cost him his job. But it's kind of a "fat finger theory" when, in fact, lots of clever people knew exactly what they were doing.