The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs is a blog, not written by Steve Jobs (of Apple fame), which was once clever and entertaining. It’s decidedly less so this week as The Fake Steve Jobs incites a data riot to bring down AT&T’s network.
His plan, reinforced again here and here, encourages frustrated iPhone owners, such as myself, to simultaneously run data intensive apps for an hour straight this Friday at noon PST in an “attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees.” However, “Operation Chokehold” is no Boston Tea party. It’s a spiteful and selfish act. Which has probably been good for his blog traffic. But spearheading a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against one of the largest US communications networks may also attract the sort of attention he’ll be less pleased with.
I imagine there are those who would argue that The Fake Steve is merely writing a humor site. However, he (Dan Lyons) is a professional journalist. And this is a call to action in the real world, not the “fake” one. Look, I’m no fan of AT&T’s inferior network performance. But his plan does nothing to ameliorate the situation or enlighten the players – both AT&T and Apple are most assuredly aware of the situation. So, to my fellow pissed off AT&T customers, out of respect for all the pregnant women, business people, and ME, let’s act responsibly and please keep the network up Friday.