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What The Internet Isn't
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Feb 10, 2004 08:31 PM
from the to-name-just-six dept.
from the to-name-just-six dept.
looseBits writes "Doc Searls and David Weinberger, co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, have put together a 10-part guide for how to stop mistaking the Internet for something it isn't. It contains some painfully obvious and often overlooked characteristics of the 'world of ends' we call the Internet."
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for sale... (Score:5, Funny)
For sale Dell Computer Pentium II with the Internet
I was shocked... First thing I thought was where the hell can I fit the entire Internet on my machine.
Where is the Internet? (Score:5, Insightful)
A careful summary of world wide networking (this was before web browsers) would be met with a blank stare and "Yes, but where is it?"
We finally decided to tell them it was at a secret location in a closet in Idaho. This seemed to make people feel better.
I never really understood why the most confusing thing was.... "Where is it?"
These people had already learned how to use their email programs and 3270 emulator (virtual mainframe terminal) with no problem.
Thinking back on this.... it makes more sense that AOL had so much success. If AOL was installed you could tell the user that the internet in that little friendly icon right there on the desktop.
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Re:Where is the Internet? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Where is the Internet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of being a condescending ass, why don't you just use the simple telephone system analogy? Once you've done that almost everyone will understand that the net isn't a thing in a central location, but a global network that computers plug into like their telephones plug into the telephone system. If an idiot follows up by asking, "but... where is the phone system?", THEN you can tell them it's in Idaho. :)
--
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Re:Where is the Internet? (Score:5, Funny)
But then you have to describe the telephone system and that's tough, even for someone like Einstein. Look.
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Re:Where is the Internet? (Score:5, Funny)
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Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Also look at this:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~neteagle/oops/downlo
I sent that link to a friend and she thought something was actually downloading. Just perfect.
Parent
Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Also, be sure to check out www.turnofftheinternet.com [turnofftheinternet.com] (turn your popup blocker off.. works best in IE6.. remember your Alt+Tab and Ctrl+Alt+Del.. it's nothing you can't get out of, don't worry). Funny trick to set up in a computer lab, for instance...
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Re:for sale... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:for sale... (Score:5, Funny)
my other favorites include
"i am having a problem with my LSD" (they ment DSL... i hope. to which I always wanted to reply, call your dealer or OEM)
what version of windows is on your computer? "windows XP millenium edition" or "windows PLUS"
and my alltime favorite was an old lady from FL
"it says intercource explorer has encoumbered an error..."
wow, i know what she uses HER dsl for...
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Re:for sale... (Score:5, Funny)
Mac users usually know they have a Mac. Linux users usually already know that the problem is at your end, and what YOU need to do to fix it.
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hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, we already know - porn...
About a year ago... (Score:5, Informative)
Political, not descriptive (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Political, not descriptive (Score:5, Interesting)
"But wait!" you say.
"What do you mean AN internet? Isnt there only one internet?"
No there are many internets just like there are many governments. A LAN is a type of internet. It simply uses a different agreement just like in China you give up different rights then you do in the US.
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Re:Political, not descriptive (Score:5, Interesting)
A government is much more than a simple agreement. It is define by more that one simple protocol. That people use the phone to talk about a lot of things does that mean the phone is more than a way to talk to each other?
A LAN is not a type of internet. It can use a subset of the internet protocol, but to be an internet, you have to connect multiple LANs trough gateways.
And usually when people refer to the internet, they mean the main one that most people connect to.
Parent
Re:Political, not descriptive (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing more to the constitution than "I will give up some of my freedoms and in return you will give up some of yours." The whole document, from Preamble to Amendment XXVII, is simply working out how the citizens, state governments, and federal government will divy up the available freedoms. That's it. That's the whole document. The minutae, the paragraphs of information, are just working out *how* those rights get split up. Just like the minutae of IP (packet sizes, routing, port numbers, backbone wiring) is just working out *how* the packets get from A to B. The citizens say, "We will give up our right to make laws directly, and in return the two governments give up the right to hold office longer than we want them to." The state government says, "I will give up my right to have my own army, and in return, the federal government will give up its right to not defend me." And so on. Anything else that's involved (such as the laws themselves, or the governmental departments, or the government-sponsored programs) is just building upon that one foundation. Everything goes back to the constitution, and anything that doesn't agree with it gets rewritten or thrown out by the Supreme Court. Just like additional protocols, like email, news, HTTP, UDP, and LAN are built upon the IP foundation to create a working system.
Take a step back and look at it as a big picture. We agreed to form a bunch of states. We agreed to combine those states into a federation called The United States. We agreed on a single currency for all the states. We agreed on a method for choosing our leaders. What happens if members of the system don't agree to the above? In small cases, the members are taken out of the system (prison). In more extreme cases, the whole system collapses into civil war (for reference, see 1861-1865). What happens when a computer doesn't agree to the IP, and refuses a packet? That computer is taken out of the system. In more extreme cases, many computers refuse packets, and the system falls apart. The bit doesn't get from A to B, and the internet is down.
The whole point of the article is the big picture. It doesn't matter what we call the internet. It's just a big system, and the authors of the article are simply defining what that system is, since most of the commercial sector seems to have lost track.
Oh, and Internet2 is not a seperate internet. It's a consortium of people working out new systems for the internet. Read the FAQ [internet2.edu].
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FreeNET (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, and this is exactly what FreeNet is designed to do:
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Perhaps the fear of every government everywhere, FreeNet allows for secure and anonymous communication.
Let's all sing, digitally (Score:5, Funny)
We are the world
We are the Internet
We are the ones who make a better place
We are the bloggers.
(Take it away, Bob Metcalfe!)
It's a choice we're making,
We're changing our own lives...
ObSimpsons Quote (Score:4, Funny)
Forget the Cluetrain, get on the Gluetrain! (Score:4, Funny)
This quote says it all about politics and tech (Score:5, Informative)
But what *IS* the internet? (Score:5, Funny)
> symmetric closure of the relationship "can be reached by an IP
> packet from". --Seth Breidbart
I think I got that from the nanog list a few years ago.
I respectfully disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
a device to prevent four Palestinians from committing suicide by talking them dowjn realtime
a device to conduct career counseling of disadvantaged global youth in europe, africa and the middle east
a device to teach myself html, php and css
a device to advance my career through spontaneous, informal networking
in fact, i basically live my business life and more and more of my personal life on the internet. and this is not a bad thing, in fact it has maximized my power and leveraged globalization for myself and millions of other members of the brown horde.
Re:I respectfully disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet is not a tool. It's how you hold a tool. That's why it can enable you to use millions of different tools.
Parent
Adding value can be a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds screwy, but it's true. If you optimize a network for one type of application, you de-optimize it for others. For example, if you let the network give priority to voice or video data on the grounds that they need to arrive faster, you are telling other applications that they will have to wait. And as soon as you do that, you have turned the Net from something simple for everybody into something complicated for just one purpose. It isn't the Internet anymore."
The way I see this, prioritizing packets also ensures that a minority of users can't abuse the network ressources the everybody else want to use.
Right in my home network I had to prioritze RTP packets (VoIP) so that other people in the house couldn't screw up my phone conversations when saturating my uplink or downlink. The same can be true on a national backbone, especially in failure conditions where you will get links that saturate.
We can't stop the Internet from evolving either, it has probably turned out to be very different than what it's creators had envisioned...
Re:Adding value can be a good thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, fair queueing ensures that a minority of users can't monopolize the network's capacity. Prioritizing packets based on applications hurts all other applications.
Prioritizing packets within your own network is fine because you know what you want. The core of the Internet doesn't know what you want, so there's no way for it to provide reasonable prioritization.
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Obligatory Simpsons Quote (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong about advertising (Score:4, Insightful)
He's completely wrong about advertising on the internet. Once advertisers treat it as a medium similar to television, that is exactly what it will become. The process has already started, and a majority of sites have flagrant advertising. The recent idea of television commercials displayed fullscreen between pages is yet another example.
Junkbuster is a joke, like spam filters, most advertisements easily slip by. Want to subscribe to a site? How about a couple dozen. The small $5 - $15 fees can add up to well over $800 per month for an average internet user.
I didn't bother to read the rest of the article, but this guy is clearly living in a fantasy world. A world with cave trolls, elves, magic goblins, and internet users with a clue.
The only alternative at this point is to start a new internet, completely seperate from the existing network. Maybe the spammers and advertisers could be kept at bay for another decade or so.
Re:Wrong about advertising (Score:4, Informative)
I use pithhelmet [culater.net] on safari to filter ads, and i find few if any that get by. Not only that, but it runs a javascript routine to adjust the layout so that you don't even know that they were there. This, combined with Safari's popup blocker mean that I see almost no advertisments online, EVER.
I use a baysian email filter on all my computers, and would estimate that they filter close to 90% of spam with essentially no false positives.
From where I stand, ad and spam filters work fine for me.
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Content is not free. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no fan of popups or banner-ads, but if that pays for content
that I otherwise would not be seeing, then so be it. I think
commercials have made for a rather successful business model
for television, which is as pervasive as ever, even after more
than 50 years.
I also think the slew of dot-bombs from the past few years
proves that you can't give away something for free forever.
I would much rather put up with ads than have to open an
account with every website that provides quality content.
(subjective, I know)
I use the internet very very frequently to find information that
I need. Outside of my monthly charge for internet access, this
information is all free. It's free to me for one reason alone:
Internet Advertising.
The only thing people seem to be giving away for free on the
internet is their opinions, which I'm up to my neck in!
Simple stuff, but right on the money (Score:5, Interesting)
These 10 points may sound obvious to the slashdot crowd, but to many people they are not. Unfortunately, the content owners are trying their best to turn the Internet into another channel on your television set. And the national governments do not have a reason to prevent it. And since many people are blissful in their ignorance of this issue, they will not even complain if the underlying freedom of the Internet is slowly taken away.
The part about the Internet "routing around damage" is an important feature that will be central to the battle over the future of the Net. It has taken the content owners and the government awhile to realize this property of the Net. That's the reason for the increased push for DRM and tightening copyright laws. I believe it is also the reason for the increased push for governments to directly "govern" the Internet. The fact is that the Internet makes many governments uneasy. It's a very large, uncontrolled system.
But the most important thing for us to fight to protect is the end to end connectivity. As long as I can connect to the person to which I want to communicate without going through an "approved" centralized server, the basic features of the Net will stay intact. It will be hard for the government to change this without completely destroying the value of the Internet. But I don't think that will prevent them from trying.
My prediction is that we will see increasing talk about changing the Internet to "protect the children" and "stop the terrorist from using the Net" as entry points for stricter authentication, auditing, and control, as well as increased centralization of the structure of the Internet. As much as I hate the thought, I think it's inevitable. Now that I've depressed myself, I'll take off my tin foiled hat.
What The Internet Isn't: (Score:4, Funny)
so, in other words.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I do take issue with that particular writeup, although it is true in many senses.
Today, many so-called internet users have their access mediated by firewalls and NAT. This reduces the set of internet services available to them.
(I'd even say, as a slight exaggeration, that their ISPs had engaged in false advertising by calling it "Internet Access")
By the original definition of the internet, anyone with access (control of one host) could send packets to any address:port combination, and open any port to inbound connections.
This means that everyone with internet access should be able to run an HTTP, FTP, or UT server. But many people are prevented by their ISP's routing policies.
Firewalls and NATs supposedly "add value" to the internet by making it safer for some users. But it's not made a lot safer (worms get through even today), and it has "lowered value", because creating new applications is more difficult. For example, today there is a movement towards SOAP [soaprpc.com]; XML-RPC. Unfortunately, one of the motivations to promote it is to allow arbitrary, application-specific traffic to travel over port 80. To work around firewalls which only permit HTTP, we're starting to see a legitimization of tunneling commands over HTTP.
(I'm not saying that was the original goal of SOAP- but sneaking around firewalls is one reason that some developers are eager to try it)
So there's an example of why "adding value to the Internet" is generally bad.
However, there are cases where it may be good. We all know that IPv6 will be a postive (someday). Multicast extensions to the internet were developed well after it was first created, and are generally accepted as a good thing, although their deployment so far is well short of universal. Multicasting is a superset of existing internet functionality (assigning a single packet to be destined to multiple recipients).
Multicasting may turn out to have downsides, depending on how it's implemented (and I haven't followed development closely enough to be sure what the direction is). If it creates an unfair environment, where large corporations (CBS, MTV, RIAA) can create multicast streams, but individual users cannot, then it will cement inequality and make internet use move closer to resembling traditional television viewing. I feel justified in hoping this won't happen, however.
And QoS (quality of service) is a debatable issue, not a flat-out bad one like the article suggests. IP, the existing internet protocol (not to be confused with Intellectual Property), makes no guarantee that packets will arrive quickly or in order. It doesn't state that packets will travel at the same speed as each other. It doesn't even state that a packet which is sent will ever arrive, only that the network make a "best effort" at getting it through someday.
Since IP makes no guarantees of transmission speed, adding an optional mechanism to request QoS efforts won't break the existing protocol definitions. Yes, it may disturb some people to consider that internet packets, which used to be fair and unbiased, may someday have preference given to them based on the sender's bank account- but look at the alternative:
Not what it used to be (Score:4, Insightful)
Granted I was young, but when I first dialed with my 14.4, I was enamored by the sensible and meaningful content that dominated the internet. It was intelligent. As the internet has trickled down to the masses, we are now plagued by commercialism, ignorance and stupid people, spam, congestion, and far too much subscription-based content. The internet, IMHO, is now another outlet for the media and people who take advantage of the anonymity. Granted there are still hundreds of sites such as this and others that still offer that of value, but they are easily overwhelmed by the other garbage that's out there now. I used to come home from school every day and dial up. Now, with a few exceptions, I sit down and use the internet only when I have to, because it's just not worth it.
Re:Not what it used to be (Score:4, Insightful)
You are far too young for the 'things used to be so much better when i was young' shtick. Yes the net is used for commercial endeavors, and for anonymous child porn trading, but it is also the greatest information resource in the history of the world. With google and little bit of creative searching, you can get by with a minimum of chaff in your wheat.
-Ted
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Re:Not what it used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
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IMHO (Score:5, Funny)
Let's make a website where people can gather together, and quote (or misquote) various famous television shows. Such as The Simpsons, or South Park.
We can also allow a certain sense of humor, and we'll offer news along with the humor. Everything will center around a penguin that has more power than the richest person on the planet.
What? Slashdot.org, huh? Well, I for one welcome our new slashdot overlords.
Much Ado about Nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with the Internet as an advertising medium is that it works backwards from the mass media. We're used to having ads thrown in our face, and that's the only paradigm that MegaCorps are capable of dealing with right now. Fortunately, there are many tech savvy thinking individuals who are more than happy to build ad blocking infrastructures that render bulk advertising moot.
Right now an internet presence is not necessarily a profit center, but a lack of one can certainly cost you money - more and more middle class (and up) people are turning to the internet first for information about what product they will buy or service they will use.
In the end, the internet presents the nightmare of true value comparison; the advertising that it's ideal for is comparison research; backwards from the current model which resembles a firehose, this becomes "on demand" advertising.
I research nearly every major purchase on the internet prior to spending money. It has saved me a lot of money, in the long run; whatever product I am considering, I can usually find posts somewhere on the web from someone who has one, and is either really happy, or really unhappy about that fact.
Someone mentioned QOS and bandwidth hogs vs backbone bandwidth - network bandwidth will increase until there are essentially no bottlenecks. It's a fact. Eventually, our network connection will exceed our local bus speed now. QOS is a stopgap measure to shoehorn technologies onto the 'Net before it's grown to accomodate them.
The very last page... (Score:4, Funny)
"Owner of the Internet" (Score:4, Funny)
Re:opinions versus facts... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an opinion. Considering more and more people are logging on, and I just read an article about older people turning to the Internet, consider the following... Just because to the author, the Internet, and using it is easy, does not mean it is not complicated for a new user
They don't mean the protocols or the software, or anything like what you're suggesting. They are simply saying that the internet is something that carries information from one point to another. That's pretty simple.
No people are stupid. Personally (this is my opinion) I believe the next generation is going to be hellishly smarter than the one I grew up (growing up) with (in). Where else can you learn so many things from without leaving your home. Encyclopedia? They're limited.
Well, if by "smart" you mean "tech savvy" I might agree with you. People are still as dumb as always when you get down to it. But, again, you're missing the point, because the internet has data available (much of it false or incomplete, I might add), that doesn't refute their claim that the internet is stupid. A library is stupid, yet it is full of information.
There is no true 'value' per se as one cannot grasp anything physical. But where else can you find mega bargains, mega information...
They mean, the internet is just a mechanism for transferring information. Trying to layer something else on top of it, like "pay per view" or "content protection", runs counter to the basic principle of transferring information.
Finding "mega bargains" is in fact a transfer of information, which is what the internet is all about. Charging you $1.50 for that information? No, that's not what the internet is about.
Here's a thought experiment for the MegaCorps: what if it is simply not possible to make profit on the internet?
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Re:opinions versus facts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh come on now. The internet is making money for a lot of people, just not as an advertising vehicle. For one thing, people are using the internet to find information about products and services. Feeding the right information to them is very worthwhile and will be as important in the future as standard marketting. Already music labels (large and small) are employing digital street teams to seed positive feedback about their movies over the net. And it's not always as obnoxious and obvious as you might think...I was on the street team for the last Queens of the Stone Age album and think I drummed up quite a bit of support for the record on forums and such I was already a part of.
Then there's the other business uses of the internet...we use it to telesupport our software. Install PCAnywhere along with the software, give people a five minute introduction on how to start the host when we need them to, and viola! We no longer have to drive to client sites to perform support, and we can have multiple levels of support working simultaneously at the office. Then there's the company groupware server, the Citrix server which allows our remote staff to connect from home, and the massive online knowledge bases we can use to help troubleshoot problems.
Oh, and our provider makes PLENTY of money off of us using the internet for these purposes. So do the companies that made the software we use. In fact, there is so much money being made off these relatively mundane uses of the internet that I bet the "content" side can be made basically free...so long as nobody expects to be paid to generate it.
Even then, there are plenty of folks who will generate content for "free," or through pledges. Shit, I'm one of them. Shit, I've even been known to give away bandwidth to worthy causes [wefunkradio.com].
Parent
Re:opinions versus facts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Their point seems to be that the Internet, so far as it exists, is a shared idea of how to transport things from point A to point B. And it has a Protocol that you may have heard of somewhere. Remember this - they're talking about things on a IP level.
Now then:
The idea behind the internet isn't complicated, which is what they are trying to say. See, the idea is that you hook end points together. Gee, doesn't sound too complicated to me. I thought they wrote about this well, if a bit simplisticly from a technical perspective.
The seem to mean that the internet (IP) is stupid because it doesn't know about what is going on above it. That's just the point that leads to the others. It doesn't know what it is transporting. It just moves it from point A to point B. So while the internet is enabling many smart people (this generation and next), it in itself doesn't know more than "this thingy goes from here to there".
Here's where things get kind of complicated, I'll admit. The values talked about are two different kinds of values. I won't go through this, but advise people to RTFA. In summary, this point says that anything that makes the IP less stupid (so that it knows more about what it is transferring) results in some sort of restriction or impairment to transporting other things, which lowers the overall value.
So, The Real Nutshell: The internet (protocol) doesn't know what it is transporting, but just transports it. This is a good thing, but many people fail to grasp that this is the reality of the situation, which leads to many headaches. Especially for those of us who do grasp the idea, and happen to like it.
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Re:Old news... (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet isn't better off because of slackard MS. They were late to the party (just like today's patch took 200 days), and they use it for their gain, with lack of concern, as usual, for the 'customer'.
Remember, a 'headline' here is what you find yourself in when you have to take a leak at a basketball game. Just because a topic is raised, doesn't mean squat that it has value to anyone.
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Re:Old news... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Ironic? (Score:5, Interesting)
The internet itself is made up of many parts: email, usenet, IRC, world wide web, ftp, telnet the only thing they really have in common is that all of those work on top of IP (internet protocol).
The internet itself works fine on just about every platform. The services provided on top of that may be hit or miss depending on how and who impliments them.
Of course, you knew that, but a surprising number of people think that the web is all there is to the internet. I've met CS majors who still don't quiet get that AIM is part of the internet. They'll send me a message and say "my internet is down".
"...how did you send me this message?"
really they're just having some site not resolving.
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Re:Ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Go to a command prompt.
Type "ping 66.35.250.151" (slashdot, as of an nslookup just a few seconds ago). Do you get a response?
Congratulations, the internet works for you, regardless of platform.
The internet does not give a damn if your favorite web-browser style works or not. It doesn't care if you use a broken MS Samba implementation. It doesn't care if AIM works with MSIM. It doesn't care if you can't make a passive connection to an FTP site through your firewall (although that does actually get a lot closer to the nature of the internet than the previous examples).
It doesn't care if you live in China and research Falun Gong, whatever the hell that means (they certainly make a big fuss about it, though). It doesn't care if you look at kiddie porn. It doesn't care if you troll slashdot (no, I don't mean this as a troll, just giving an example).
The Internet routes packets from point A to point B. Nothing more, nothing less.
Parent
Re:Ironic? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, the internet does have some standards, you know...
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Re:Well, for starters... (Score:4, Insightful)
-B
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