2211 XP-Aladocious

Maybe it's going to happen this time. You know, the total meltdown of technological civilization. We've been warned for years. Our systems are so vulnerable. Hack attacks. Monster brownouts. Giant flares from the sun.

I had some giant flares and they were the end of fashion civilization.

Remember the terrifying computer threat at the beginning of the millennium? Windows ME.  I mean Y2K. Civilization was going to end because of the Year 2000 changeover in computers that only used 2 digits to identify the year. 

Old computers that were clunking along on 640 kilobytes and didn't even have room to add the other two digits in a 4-digit year. Just 99 instead of 1999. Come 2000 your computer was supposed to think it was the year zero. And who could tell what would happen? The Magi could have shown up pitching myrrh for all anyone knew. 

As it turned out, not so much did. 

So it is now with the death of XP. All the news outlets are predicting the end of the world. ATMs across the country run on XP. Financial institutions, stock trades, Mom and Pop chicken and jo and Fosters Forty peddling convenience stores. 

But maybe this time it is so. Unsupported XP is hackable. There's also the Heartbleed bug vulnerability. Heartbleed, sounds like a Liberal plot. But no, the SSL/TLS security channel is compromised on computers and servers. Not just yours, your bank's and whoever you do online business with. The solution, change all your passwords. But not yet, because your providers all need to change theirs too or your new ones will get compromised. 

And this is really scary: The other day here in Washington, even the 911 system crashed.

Batten down the hatches. The X-Pocalypse is here.

America, ya gotta love it.