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Can Satire Take Down AT&T's 3G Network?
Fake Steve Jobs organizes a roundabout, satirical AT&T DDoS

Last week AT&T suffered through yet another week of bad press. Comments by AT&T's Ralph de la Vega were interpreted to mean AT&T was not only complaining about people actually using the AT&T 3G network -- but blaming consumers for AT&T's inability to prepare for iPhone bandwidth demand. AT&T's bad week (one of many this year) was punctuated late in the week by Fake Steve Jobs (writer Dan Lyons), who wrote an incredibly amusing fake conversation with AT&T CEO Randal Stephenson. In it, Mr. Jobs educates AT&T on the finer points of appreciating bandwidth-hungry iPhone users. The whole thing is chortle-inducing, but we'll trim out the bits that solely have to do with AT&T and running a network:

quote:
if you did understand how to do things, your guys wouldn't be standing up at Wall Street conferences and complaining about how much traffic you're getting. Instead, you would be running around like a f**king maniac trying to build out your f**king network and make it the best network in the world - and the only reason you would ever need to talk to me would be to thank me for creating a phone that's so amazing that it draws people to your shit network in the first place . . .

And when I say that "we" have a hit on our hands, I'm really giving you way too much credit, because let's be honest, the success of iPhone has nothing to do with you. In fact, iPhone is a smash hit in spite of your network, not because of it. That's how good we are here at Apple - we're so good that even you and your team of Bell System frigtards can't stop us. . .

So let's talk traffic. We've got people who love this goddamn phone so much that they're living on it. Yes, that's crushing your network. Yes, 3% of your users are taking up 40% of your bandwidth. You see this as a bad thing. It's not. It's a good thing. It's a blessing. It's an indication that people love what we're doing, which means you now have a reason to go out and double or triple or quadruple your damn network capacity.
To make matters worse (for AT&T), Fake Steve Jobs has subsequently posted a fake internal memo from fake Apple, calling for annoyed iPhone customers to engage in a day of protest against AT&T's "substandard network." Dubbed "operation chokehold," fake Steve Jobs is calling for iPhone users to use as much bandwidth as possible this upcoming Friday in order to "send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network." Tune in Friday to see if a fake CEO's somewhat fake joke results in a very real DDoS for AT&T.