How The Internet Works - With Tubes

Chardish writes "In an attempt to explain his reasons for voting against a Net Neutrality bill this past Thursday, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens delivered a jaw-dropping attempt to explain how the Internet works. Said Stevens: 'They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.'"

Subliterate Legislators

[(1+-sqrt(5))*(2**-1)]

Quoth Ted Stevens, from TFA:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday.

Arthur Clarke once said: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic;” and indeed, our senators conceive of the internet as a mysterious metaphysical entity. Ted Stevens seems to have “recieved an internet,” after all, sometime yesterday.

Isn't it bizarre having sub-literate legislators who determine the future of our livelihood: the internet?

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad part here is that this guy feels qualified to stand up and lecture everyone on why he voted like he did, despite the fact that he knows nothing about the subject.

I understand that not every legislator can understand every nuance of every issue being voted on, but this guy seems to have developed a strong opinion on the subject. To my way of thinking he needs to have some basic understanding of the subject under discussion to hold a strong opinion.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Tatarize]

People that disconnected from peers should be beaten with a broken pipe. He's not the only one with metaphors.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Anonymous Coward]

"The sad part here is that this guy feels qualified to stand up and lecture everyone"
Sounds exactly like Slashdot, wouldn't you say?

No, not like Slashdot!

[Roblimo]

Slashdot has moderation. The Senate doesn't. On Slashdot, Sen. Stevens would be moderated "-1 Troll" in about 10 seconds.

- Robin

Re:No, not like Slashdot!

[AstrumPreliator]

The Senate has moderation; it's called the people who vote the Senators into office. And just like slashdot the "moderators" are usually equally as clueless.

Re:No, not like Slashdot!

[ZorroXXX]

The Senate has moderation; it's called the people who vote the Senators into office.

This moderation system is however much less sophisticated with only two possible moderations, "yes: +1" and "no: 0".

Re:No, not like Slashdot!

[jZnat]

Or, in the case of Diebold voting machines: "yes: +1" and "no: +2"

Re:No, not like Slashdot!

[gEvil (beta)]

Yes, but at least we have meta-moderation to help figure out whether the moderators are doing a reasonably good job. Imagine what the voter pool would be like if we had meta-moderation of voters available.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[jkrise]

The sad part here is that this guy feels qualified to stand up and lecture everyone on why he voted like he did...

That's the BAD part.. not the sad part. The sad part is, he was VOTED to power by people like us, to stand up and lecture... The corrective action would be.. Have a set of tests to determine which senator(s) can lecture / vote on a given topic. Those who fail the test lose their voting rights...

this guy seems to have developed a strong opinion on the subject..

Or maybe he has been subjected to a strong influence, to lecture the way he did. Or maybe no one else listening knew enought o call the bluff. Or maybe the rest were lobbied to remain mute as well.. Or maybe all of the above.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[AviLazar]

Those who fail the test lose their voting rights...

Unfortunately, this is not the solution either. The way it SHOULD work in our society. An issue is brought up, each congressman is given X amount of time. The congressman asks his constituants their opinion and their majority rules. The congressman then uses the majority of his constituants decision to vote. He doesn't have to debate with his other congressman, he has to debate with us.

Alas our society is not like that. We vote for a guy, and t

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Petrushka]

Have a set of tests to determine which senator(s) can lecture / vote on a given topic. Those who fail the test lose their voting rights...

ALTERNATIVELY!!, YOU!! COULD!! -- oh wait, I'll stop yelling. Alternatively, you could consider the system that was practised in ancient Athens -- every elected official, upon leaving office, underwent an independent audit of his conduct in office. Those found wanting were prosecuted for abuse of power -- and not too infrequently, I might add. I've often wondered why this isn't practised nowadays. It's just too haphazard, this being held accountable only when someone happens to call you on something you've done.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[shobadobs]

If you do that, somebody smarter than you will come along and make the test too difficult for you. By the way, this was already tried. In the South. Guess why.

Future Simulation

[griffjon]

Y'know, with all of these horrid policies of net neutrality, legally-backed DRM on everything, and so on; we should make two "rooms" somewhere close enough to DC to bring policymakers to. In one room, you get access to a peer-supported free-for-all system, with (realistic) economic forecasts of how a free-media culture supports its artists, citing real world examples. In the other room, you get the DRM'ed, Net-traffic-law world, which resembles AOL, where you have to constantly pay for every piddly service, and all the media is essentially content-less, as it's entirely corporate, without any resampling, covers of classic songs, usage of old film clips, etc. All with another ecomomic forecast that reveals the reality of this world - oligopoly and monopoly-like businesses able to extract a huge percentage of consumer surplus [wikipedia.org], with actual lower payments to artists than the "free" model, and encouraging an increasingly unequal society.

We'd have to set up a list of tasks to do in each. e.g.

- you got called in to the office to do sign some papers, and will miss The Big Game. Can you - watch it over the Internet? record it at home for later? If possible, for how much?
- you heard a song on the radio that you liked, but didn't catch the artist's name. You called in to the radio station, but couldn't get ahold of anyone who could help. You remember some distinctive lyrics; can you "google" it?
-You bought a DVD movie. Your DVD player seems to be broken, can you watch it on your computer?

and so on.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[jkrise]

Let's make the PEOPLE pass a test in order to be granted the right to vote!

Won't work. People don't vote senators ONLY to debate on things like net neutrality. More likely, illiterate people have problems other than net neutrality... hunger, medicare, welfare etc.

My suggestion was "Those senators voting either FOR or AGAINST a particular bill should pass an aptitude test.... "

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[mrseth]

Sometimes I think we should give a test before people vote. But one like this:

http://politicalcompass.org/questionnaire.php [politicalcompass.org]

Where the result is a 2D plot of their political point of view with the x-axis being left/right and the y-axis being libertarian/authoritarian. Of course the candidates would need to take it too. Then their vote would be cast for the candidate whose coordinates were closest to their result.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[aliasptr]

The political compass questions are almost a joke in my eyes. The fact also that you get four choices for the questions is again a joke due to the broad and complex nature of the questions. I mean seriously, the world's not "Black or White". Saying "I strongly agree" to blanket statements makes no real sense.

"I'd always support my country, whether it was right or wrong." Who defines right or wrong? I mean seriously, obviously if you believe the actions to be RIGHT you'd support your country. The question p

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Tatarize]

Show some respect!

The man is the President Pro Tempore. If the President, Vice President and Speaker of the House die... he becomes President of the United States. ... ... oh shit.

Re:And yet...

[smchris]

I disagree. It's the new method to assure nothing happens to the President -- morons all the way down.

Re:And yet...

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

It's the new method to assure nothing happens to the President -- morons all the way down.

Yes, we call it the Quayle Shield... :)

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[gutnor]

It is so much easier to develop a strong opinion when you don't know what you are talking about!

Anyway, what do you expect from somebody elected ? You cannot win any election without an inflated ego and strong opinion.
Not saying that for trolling, but fighting to be elected is essentially a media fight. People elected are showmen and they need to believe in themself, they need to feel they know everything to look credible.

The job of the politician is to get elected. That's the job of their teams to understa

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad part here is that this guy feels qualified to stand up and lecture everyone on why he voted like he did, despite the fact that he knows nothing about the subject.

Yeah, he should quit Senate and join Slashdot, where he obviously belongs. ;-)

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[rmckeethen]

Since when has a lack of understanding ever stopped a politician from meddling in someone else's affairs?

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[smittyoneeach]

Of exactly what part of money did you detect a lack in the political process?

What's really lacking in the system is transparency.

While privacy (or, at least the veneer thereof) is certainly a requirement, what of the ethic that whatever I'm doing, I should be comfortable admitting publicly? IOW, conscience.

Funny

[SamSim]

needs to have some basic understanding of the subject under discussion to hold a strong opinion

Hahahahahaha! Aha! Ha! Oh man! *wipes away tear*

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[BenBenBen]

Reminds of me of the theory about why Bush always sounds like he's explaining things to a bunch of pre-schoolers - he's just repeating things the exact way they were explained to him.

Chances are Stevens (not exactly renowned as a world-class legislator, see: Bridge to Nowhere pork scandal) has been listening to lobbyist who has as much respect for his intelligence as Stevens has for taxpayers and constituents.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[MaxwellStreet]

The fancy term for this phenomenon is metacognitive miscalibration [ed.gov] - which basically means thinking that you know more than you do.

Apropos in an amazing array of situations - this being an outstanding example.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[BenBenBen]

This truism speaks volumes about the current state of US political (and social) discourse - the less you know about an issue, the more likely you are to have strong opinions on it. Karl Rove has made a career (and a president) out of agitating the populace into action through this little secret. How many GOP voters have looked into the social implications of allowing same-sex marriages? How many understand the nuances of radical islam? Isn't "flip-flopping" equivalent to "evolving"?

I find that I rarely ha

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Glonoinha]

You're right - this is downright lunacy. This is tantamount to letting one of us make rules about 'going outside' or 'kissing girls'.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[QRDeNameland]

This truism speaks volumes about the current state of US political (and social) discourse - the less you know about an issue, the more likely you are to have strong opinions on it.

I remmeber reading an interview with a some media pundit (IIRC, Fred Barnes) holding up this exact quality as what was necessary to be a good media pundit. The more expertise you have on a subject, the more nuanced your understanding of it is, which leads to longer and less "black-and-white" commentary, which in modern 'Murka is b-o-o-o-ring. The more successful pundit is the one who can sound convincing knowledgeable on a subject without the slightest understanding of it, and make a good dumbed-down sound bite that of course doesn't conflict with his employer's interests.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[eraser.cpp]

You and Senator Stevens are falling for one of the lies the telcos are pushing: that there actually is a capacity problem. The telcos would like everybody to believe that they don't have enough bandwidth at the last mile to allow for widespread use of VoIP and video, but this simply isn't true. Using modern compression techniques VoIP traffic is very small, and for video there are numerous streaming media protocols that successfully send at rates exceeding real time over today's broadband lines. The proposed amendment would have resolved the only legitimate concern I can think of, which would be network jitter (variable delay between packet arrival). To more directly address your concern, it's important to remember that the people who would be charged money aren't actually even customers to these telcos. Google and Amazon would end up paying people who aren't even their upstream carriers. In fact they would need to spend presumably very large sums of money to each of the telcos just to reach their customers at a reasonable speed (or at all, it would be entirely up to the telco). While this is quite bad for the big guy, it completely shuts out the little guy. A website like YouTube would not be capable of paying the money for this access like Google can for their video services. And I believe YouTube is a good example of how popularity can be won even in a crowded market just by putting in the work to make your service better. Disrupting the ability for anyone but large corporations to innovate real-time applications would in my opinion be very costly for a society that is in reality still new to this technology.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Fred_A]

FWIW, ISPs in Europe commonly offer TV (including HD —no idea of the resolution though) and VOIP bundled in with the network connectivity.

Of course this typically currently only works in reasonably densly populated areas where ADSL2+ can be deployed (distance contraints from the user to the telco equipment) although it gradually starts to cover the countryside as well.

Of course in this configuration, video is only streamed from the ISP to its users, no through the Internet. So called "last mile" bandwidth can't possibly a problem. It could theoretically be possible that the backbones lacked bandwidth at some point. Isn't there still lots of dark fiber lying around though ?

I wish he were subliterate

[Mateo_LeFou]

Fact is, I watched the hearing [senate.gov] in which Lessig and V. Cerf and others explained exactly what the real issue is; what the meaning of net neutrality is in this context; and the patently obvious fact that Google et. al. are not getting the free bandwidth the telcos accuse them of getting.

Stevens presided over this hearing. He knows the facts of the matter quite well. This is not a case of ignorance but of deception. Sorry, it just is.

12 O'clock flasher

[DesertWolf0132]

Stevens, and others in Congress, are what the great comedy troup Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie [deadtroll.com] called 12 o'clock flashers. Every electronic device in their house is always flashing 12:00. It is physically impossible, no matter how much you dumb down the terms, to explain the concept of the internet to the feeble brain of a 12 o'clock flasher. You might as well read them the writings of Stephen Hawking in Dutch. No matter how simply you dumb down the concept of email, they are still receiving an "internet", they boot to "Microsoft", Windows are what line the walls of their office, and rebooting involves kicking more than once. These are the same guys who break their "cupholders" and scream at tech support for their incompetence when they don't realize they have the program minimized. I know there are many here in this august body who have greying hair as a result of these lusers and can attest to Mr. Stevens incompetence just by hearing about his reciept of an "internet". He probably asked his secretary to download the "internet" to a floppy so he could read it in his spare time.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[CastrTroy]

It's not all about supply and demand when talking about net neutrality. I pay for my bandwidth with a bill at the end of each month. Google also pays for their own bandwidth with a slightly :) larger bill at the end of each month (or however often they pay their bill). All the networks in between Google and my house have struck a deal saying that they will carry traffic between eachother's networks. But now some of the in between or end user networks want to charge more to certain companies because they feel that they use a lot of bandwidth. Ah ha, but they are already paying for their bandwidth. What they actually want to do is charge a premium to companies they feel have a lot of money. They want to charge the carwash more money per litre on the water they use, because they are making better use of that water, and making a huge profit. Imagine going to the gas pumps, and having to pay more for gas, because you're a pizza delivery guy, and you're making money off of that gas. Or because you're Walmart, and you make gobs of money, we're going to charge you 10x the amount we'd charge a regular person for gas. They are doing the exact opposite of supply and demand. They want to charge you more, simply because they feel you have more money. Not because there's only so much bandwidth to go around. Everyone is already paying for their bandwidth.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Megane]

Imagine going to the gas pumps, and having to pay more for gas, because you're a pizza delivery guy, and you're making money off of that gas. Or because you're Walmart, and you make gobs of money, we're going to charge you 10x the amount we'd charge a regular person for gas.

You forgot the bit where Wal-Mart has their own pizza delivery service. I think it's more like Pizza Hut owning all the gas stations in the area and selectively charging more for gas to Domino's, Papa John's, the local Mom and Pop pizzaria, UPS, FedEx, and whoever else they think is making too much money off of it.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[John Nowak]

The free market is not about charging a fair price based on supply and demand; It's about charging the maximum price that the market will bare. Fairness never enters into the equation.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[jZnat]

Congress does have an attendance policy. According to the Constitution, they have to meet at least once a year.

*ahem* Anyhow, Illinois has this nice little part of their Constitution that states that all bills must cover only a single logical subject matter (i.e. no riders allowed), and it works out very nicely around here. Maybe something like that will help the US Congress immensely.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[hazem]

Well, that explains why Google is giving so much room in their inboxes. You just never know when you might receive an internet or two. Next thing you know, you'll be getting whole spam internets.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Gleng]

That explains why it took so long to turn up in his inbox too. Doesn't he realise that Internets are fucking huge.

No wonder his tubes got all clogged up.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[gkhan1]

And also, by "an internet was sent by my staff" I assume he means an email. Since when does it take days for an email to arrive? It's nutters! I'll say it again, who the fuck votes for these guys????

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[mcvos]

And also, by "an internet was sent by my staff" I assume he means an email. Since when does it take days for an email to arrive? It's nutters! I'll say it again, who the fuck votes for these guys????

It can take days, and it always could. It has little to do with congestion of the lines, and a lot to do with bad configuration of networks, servers and mailreaders.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Fred_A]

If a mail server is down on the mail route, the mail can be delayed for whatever time it takes to get it back up (up to five days in most default configurations).

Nowadays of course very few servers will be left broken and unattended long enough for email to sit around for longer than a few minutes. So basically either the stuff is delivered in a few minutes, vanishes without a trace (getting fairly rare as well) or bounces.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[10Ghz]

So, we have now established that this individual is 100% ignorant when it comes to this particular subject-matter. Instead of whining about it on /., has any of you actually contacted him and told him that he's wrong?

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Who235]

Good point.

I think I'll send him an internet right now.

Neutrality vs. priority tubes

[Fiery]

Reviewing the transcript, I see a rough analogy that can be grasped in a few minutes by many people. My bank uses vacuum tubes to conduct transactions. The Internet is made up of millions of vacuum tubes, each carrying deposits of requests and withdrawals of results. This analogy is more effective than many of my attempted explanations. The speaker states that mail should be the highest priority of the tubes. Neutral pipes are essential to the development of new architectures. I agree that some email

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Hrunting]

I sent him an internet this morning. He should get it in a few days.

Re:Correction

[miu]

he should just talk to former Sen. Gore, who should know exactly how it works, on account of being its inventor and all.

Har dee har har, you hear that joke on "Hee Haw" or Rush?

But Gore did have an understanding of how the Internet worked, he made it his business to be informed on relevant subjects when he was a congresscritter. He talked to and listened to subject matter experts, and he wrote position papers and popular articles that clearly showed an understanding of the basic concepts.

Re:Correction

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Gore did have an understanding of how the Internet worked, he made it his business to be informed on relevant subjects when he was a congresscritter.

Those facts and their damn liberal bias! You aren't being truthy! [wikipedia.org]

Gore delivered and continues to deliver good stuff

[Futurepower(R)]

You've been lied to by Karl Rove once again. (Karl Rove is "Bush's Brain" [bushsbrain.com].)

A lot of things Senator Gore says sound very wooden and otherwise poorly expressed. However, Gore delivers [imdb.com]. In a private email message, Vint Cerf [washingtonpost.com] told me that it was true that Al Gore was instrumental in the development of the Internet. Before Mr. Gore's involvement, it was a semi-private utility known as ArpaNet and NSFNet. Mr. Gore championed the development of the private network as a public utility. This was years before Bill Gates, for example, recognized its importance.

No, Vint Cerf is not a friend of mine; that's not the point. The point is that Senator Al Gore has a brain of his own, and a very good one.

Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska [irregularnews.com] is known as someone who supports destructive causes. So, those who want corruption in the U.S. government go to him. Many people on Slashdot suppose that he views his ignorance as bad; on the contrary, he is openly advertising his ignorance so the corrupters will know to find him when they want someone who will help them corrupt.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[hamburger lady]

first we'd have to stop being idiots.

Senate Intelligence Down the Tubes

[eldavojohn]

Poor guy, doesn't even know his head from his tube.

I read the whole thing in hopes that he was addressing why the government & pentagon use their own equipment and lines for communications but he wasn't.

One would hope that if you were planning on giving a speech about the internet that you would either pay an aide to sit you down and brief you on it ... or you would at least Google it [google.com].

Hopefully this will be somewhat of a wake-up call for politicians to educate themselves on the topic of the internet before they start passing legislation on net neutrality. I doubt it though.

I can laugh at this guy, but if I think of any member of my immediate family they probably think of the internet as a "magic tube" just as much as Senator Ted Stevens. I could go through the frustrating process of trying to explain it to them but that's not so enticing.

Just shut up and take your bribe money

[Serveert]

Senator Ted Stevens,

Your ignorant words accomplish nothing except make you look like an idiot. Just save your breath, shut up, vote against net neutrality, and take your bribe money like a good little corrupt politician.

Re:Just shut up and take your bribe money

[sexyrexy]

Do you really expect every lawmaker to be an expert on everything?

No, but I have always wanted to believe they aren't completely retarded. My grandparents don't even own a computer and they could explain the Internet better than that. You don't have to be a mechanic to know that a car has pistons, needs gas and oil.

Re:Just shut up and take your bribe money

[ultranova]

You don't have to be a mechanic to know that a car has pistons, needs gas and oil.

More to the point, if you don't know that a car has pistons, then perhaps you shouldn't vote about laws concerning safety- or enviromental regulations of car engines.

It's the good old dihydrogen monoxide effect at work again.

Re:Just shut up and take your bribe money

[linvir]

It's one of the magic tubes inside your car engine. When put your foot on the gas or the brake, you send a transmission across the engine (the transmission is another tube). See, the engine is not the sort of thing you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand how those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your 'transmission' in, it gets in line and is going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material, like for example listening to pirated music on your car stereo.

I just the other day got, a brake transmission was sent by me at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, and I just slowed down yesterday. Why? Because I was listening to music I'd gotten from Kazaa at the time. The problem is, I was braking the transmission because there was a truck stopped in front of me. Because the transmission was slowed by enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material (pirated music), my piston tubes never got the signal in time. And a truck is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Long story short, there was a horrible crash, a big explosion, and I was fatally killed. You see, a person isn't something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material. In the end, though, all the material left my pipes as a result of the explosion. This is what happens if you don't regulate the flow of material through those pipes properly.

And that is why I voted against road neutrality.

Netwhat?/? You know, taht inter-movie-thingy!!1!`!

[BrynM]

Internet?!? That bozo can't even understand Netflix:

"There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

"But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free."

I'm calling Netflix in the morning to ask where my other 7 DVDs are... and argue that I shouldn't be charged for changing my Queue. I'll also ask them where their non-internet website is at. My other 7 DVDs better arrive when I get home!

CSPAN is sometimes indistinguishable from Comedy Central. I can't believe this guy is the President pro Tempore of the senate (third in line of presidential succession). He also chairs the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. If you voted for this asshat, do the rest of us a favor and please don't ever vote again.

Re:Netwhat?/? You know, taht inter-movie-thingy!!

[hyfe]

If you voted for this asshat, do the rest of us a favor and please don't ever vote again.

A majority of the US population seem to have taken variations of this advice already.

Besides, this is a variantion of the whole 'only the intelligent know they're stupid'-problem.. if you have everybody who realise they're wrong withdraw because of their own perceived stupidity, you'll just be left with the people who weren't capable of realising their errors. Learning is doing mistakes; people who never do mistakes are just good at shifting blame.

Re:Netwhat?/? You know, taht inter-movie-thingy!!1

[70Bang]

Perhaps so, but he'll beat you hands down in a spelling bee. ;)

Back to topic.

Stevens is known to be very powerful in the Senate ("Dances with Bottomless War Chest"). Despite Alaska's low population (let alone population density), it makes you wonder how it happens...unless you know about this:
I don't know if this is still the practice, but in college (early 80s), my roommate and his brother were from Juneau|Douglas, AK.[1] When it came time to memorialize the Sinking of the Titanic (IRS - April 15), it turned out they didn't have to pay state taxes. Instead, they were the recipients of oil rebate checks; in essence, profit-sharing. I think they were receiving [at least] $1'500/year [each]. One would think there would have to be graduated degrees of monies received considering how much money+oil is flowing up there. And where there's money passed around...there are politicians.

Because there aren't many voters up there, it doesn't take all that many votes to elect someone, e.g., to the Senate. With a well-oiled machine, why stop?

As far as N^2 goes, I think it's a foregone conclusion as to what the outcome will be but that doesn't mean everyone has to give in without a fight. It took awhile for taxation to grasp an inevitable hold. (I suppose they could assess some fixed Internet tax against all who have the ability to shop online, encouraging them to shop online as much as possible. That obviously wouldn't help the brick & mortar stores.)

If he was going to get up & deal with Internet-related stuff, why not disassemble the 2003 U-CAN-SPAM act which the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) wrote and Congress rubber stamped? That would have shown true insight into how the Internet works. And if it's going to seem like too much work (despite the fact those Congress Critters who have been willing to chat about it have admitted it was a mistake), then add something to it: make it illegal to hire a spammer and illegal to solicit someone for the purpose of spamming. That stops spammers from having a reason to send anything: people can't hire them. That leaves them with spamming everyone for the purpose of solicitation to be a customer of their services, and I just covered that.

_______________________________
[1]
We slept with the windows open every night with a 24" fan for white noise. (They weren't the only polar bears.) But imagine what it was like for someone who answered a floor-common phone walking into our room in single digit temperatures whilst in nothing but their boxers to get me up to function as one of three EMTs within a twenty minute drive of the nearest hospital.

And the humour is?

[riflemann]

Network engineers talk about 'pipes' all the time when it comes to internet links. Tubes, pipes, same thing no?

Sounds like a good analogy to me.

The joke's on us

[pedantic bore]

This "tube" metaphor doesn't seem bad at all, especially given his audience. As the parent post pointed out, if he'd used "pipes" instead of "tubes" it wouldn't be a slashdot story...

Seriously -- do you expect him to hand out copies of a few dozen RFCs and a map of the backbone sites and say "here, read this, and everything will be crystal clear." Politicians have better things to do than try to understand BGP.

Re:The joke's on us

[LordSnooty]

No, but understanding the difference between an "internet" and (one assumes) an "e-mail" might be a start. Also useful would be understanding the notion that the presumed delayed e-mail was not delayed because I was downloading Superman Returns, for example.

Re:And the humour is?

[smchris]

In all fairness, the guy is a politician. He's almost certainly only saying what his aide wrote for him after his aide told him it was a good analogy.

And being a Republican from Alaska, you have to figure he has pipelines on the mind.

Ted Stevens, I love the guy.....

[gkhan1]

This is the same guy the threatened to quit the senate if funds for building a brige that led to nowhere in alaska was used for relief after hurricane Katrina. He is mindbogginly isnane, he is. Who the fuck votes for these guys?

Re:Ted Stevens, I love the guy.....

[gkhan1]

Maybe it's just by childish naivete, but I would hope that voters would recognize that, even if it might be slightly negative for themselves, giving a few bucks to people who have lost their homes and their livelyhoods and are living in tents is, you know, the right thing to do.

Re:How much pork does he get?

[Ohreally_factor]

Maybe I should have bolded the part you ignored:

without consideration for others

If this were not true, then murder would be perfectly acceptable method to accumulate wealth.

The guy is right

[palad1]

Stop making fun of him, this guy is right.

Proof is, most emails I get are along those lines :

Hey, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGT1oQn_qzE&search= cute%20kitten%20funny [youtube.com]

Tubes hah!

[taniwha]

in my country we use transistors ....

That's a poor choice of quote in the summary...

[vistic]

...the quote in the summary is actually the most accurate thing he said.

"I don't have to have the type of speed they're introducing, but the people who are streaming through 10-12 movies at a time or a whole book at a time... for consumers use, those are not you and me, they're not the consumers, those are providers."

Re:That's a poor choice of quote in the summary...

[kahei]

I especially like the 'not you and me' thing. It doesn't matter that he doesn't know what he's talking about, it doesn't matter that he's semi-literate, it doesn't matter that he is well above that threshold of wealth beyond which you simply don't have to know how things work or how to make them work; what matters is that he's on our side, the side of ordinary folks like you and me, the consumers.

I feel a warm fuzzy feeling. I'd vote for this guy.

Re:That's a poor choice of quote in the summary...

[werewolf1031]

people who are streaming through 10-12 movies at a time or a whole book at a time...

Oh noes, not a book! How will we get those gargantuan text files through Teh Intartubes?!

Clogged Tubes

[peteb0]

Stevens made this speech DAYS ago -- yet it's just getting to slashdot TODAY???? Those damned tubes must be clogged again!

Just an observation:

[carcosa30]

When they mention families, duct tape your ass cheeks together.

Are all your bloody politicians like dubya?

[Don_dumb]

Quote from TFA

"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?"

From RFTA - the apparent translation is

"The other day I just got an email that was sent by my staff a number of days before"

Judging by the almost complete lack of any real grasp of the English language or how the internet works, could it be that his email was delayed by the fact that he had no idea what the internet was until one of his staff had asked why he hadn't replyed to his emails?

Re:Are all your bloody politicians like dubya?

[Inda]

Maybe there's another explanation (not that I'm sticking up for this guy. He does sound like a grade A idiot.)

Ted: Joan [the secretary], I asked for that report to be emailed to me by Friday morning and yet I haven't received it.

Joan: I emailed it yesterday at 10 o'clock.

Ted: I could not see it in my inbox when I checked earlier.

Joan: Maybe you should have another look. You know how slow internet emails can be. *finds email in draft folder, clicks send*

Ted: Oh yes! It's there now! Damn slow internet!

C'mon,

What he REALLY wanted to say...

[Opportunist]

I mean, I can see why a politician can't express himself in a way to be understandable, but as far as I get it it is:

Without net neutrality, the internet goes down the tubes.

I think he was talking about the trucks.

[raygundan]

No, seriously-- look at his comment:

And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

What he appears to be saying is "Trucks, unlike the internet, have infinite capacity. You can continue to dump things

Give the guy a break

[i_like_spam]

He has obviously been reading Slashdot.

      Internet Access Via Pneumatic Tubes -- Whooosh! [slashdot.org]

Don't Just Reply on Slashdot

[Christoff9]

Dear Slashdot Community,
I know that the very structure of this site lends itself to keeping your comments and opinions contained within the slashdot community. However, in this case, it's not a great time to be so inward. You can take just a couple of extra seconds and make a difference with your opinions on Net Neutrality--go to http://stevens.senate.gov/contact.cfm [senate.gov]. Write Senator Stevens a short message expressing your concerns about his lack of expertise on the subject (even his fundamental lack of understanding about what the internet is and how it works). Don't do it by calling him an idiot or otherwise insulting him. Give him a quick summary of how things actually work. Tell him what Net Neutrality *really* is and why it is important--especially to the average consumer. Then take a couple more seconds to go to http://thomas.loc.gov/ [loc.gov], find out how to contact your House rep or your favorite senator from your state, and write a similar message explaining that you were concerned with the views Senator Stevens expressed to the Senate Commerce Committee about his lack of support for even the most basic Net Neutrality legislation. Again explain why you feel Net Neutrality is an important issue for the average consumer. This is particularly important if the Senator to whom you write is one of the other 10 members of the Senate Commerce Committee who voted against adding this minor Net Neutrality amendment to a recent telecom bill (presumably, a Republican from this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Senate_Committee _on_Commerce,_Science_and_Transportation [wikipedia.org]). It will only take you a few more minutes than crafting the "perfect" slashdot comment, and it will make much more of a difference.

Best,
Chris

I for one...

[owlnation]

...do not welcome our old clueless overlords...

Geek clique

[Decker-Mage]

So the guy says tubes when he really means pipes. Given that his generation didn't even have an internet, at least he got somewhere in the ballpark. Every profession, group, or clique has it's own terminology and it isn't surprising when a non-member mangles the terms. If you are polite, which this group obviously is not, you politely correct the individual and explain what is meant by the term. Given that pipes as a term bears zero relationship to the actual hardware, he actually did damned good in my not so humble opinion. As a teacher/professor in multiple fields, I can easily switch to vernaculars which would leave most of this audience gasping for breath, or at least grasping for Wikipedia if the terms are even in there. I try to avoid that or explain paranthetically what I mean.

As for the issue at hand, he isn't far off the mark although I think Congress is totally ill-equipped to address the issue just as they were ill-equipped to address the SPAM issue. Frankly I think the market should decide. If the telecomm providers try to double-tap the content providers they will more than likely get a very rude shock when the large content providers purchase, if they don't already have it (Google}, dark fiber, fire it up, and do an end run around the telecomms industry. It wouldn't be hard for the larger providers to do so and with cross-trading capacity agreements, they could probably do a better job, cheaper, actually. Then the telecomms providers wouldn't have a basis for complaint at all. All that excess capacity they already have to handle peak traffic would just sit there, not earning them a dime on their capital investment. Couldn't happen to nicer people (SBC anyone?).

Re:Geek clique

[macadamia_harold]

So the guy says tubes when he really means pipes. Given that his generation didn't even have an internet, at least he got somewhere in the ballpark.

Except that this isn't your clueless uncle we're talking about. We're talking about someone who will be deciding the future of something he doesn't understand. Understanding basic concepts like this is this man's entire job.

So, yes, it is a problem. The man's not doing his job, and we're all going to suffer for it.

Re:Geek clique

[Himring]

Oh he's in the ballpark alright. Problem is, he brought a hockey stick....

Plan Nine from Alaska?

[jejones]

Next he needs to explain how Solaronite works.

"Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe."

stupid, ignorant, or corrupt?

[eagl]

By his argument, my ISP should chop bandwidth to your site unless you or your ISP coughs up extra money, because ones and zeroes to and from your site should somehow be more expensive than ones and zeros to and from sites on my ISP's subnets... That is, unless you pay EXTRA. See, paying for bandwidth only ONCE isn't enough, and to ensure that this senator's internets (I think he meant email but he could mean pRoN) isn't held up a few minutes by me browsing your site once or twice a day, ones and zeroes passing along the public funding subsidized internet should pass through various tollbooths, with each carrier charging whatever they can get on top of the network access and bandwidth fees I personally pay.

Most places call this extortion, and the mob made quite a living doing this. Apparently the mob has gotten to congress in a big way, since approx 50% of the senate commerce committee seems to have been bought off (plus/minus the ones who are simply ignorant). I'm not sure whether to send a letter to my congressman or stockpile .45 ammo and bottled water, but it's clear that the telecom mob is pulling strings here. Pay up or get cut off is the message, no different than the moonshiners back during prohibition, and congress is dancing like the drunken bought-off puppets they are.

Over the top? Maybe. But read the distinguished Senator's attempt to explain how the internet is made up of "tubes", and you'll realize why I'm convinced they're dipping at both the cash and booze troughs. A 2nd grader sopping full of Jack Daniels could come up with a better explanation of how the internet works...

He even claims that net neutrality has caused the DoD to create it's own "separate internet". What a load of crap. This guy is either stupid, amazingly ignorant, chemically imbalanced, flat-out-drunk, or, since we assume senators don't fit into those categories, bought off by someone. He's so wrong that as a citizen I'd like to believe that he's merely ignorant, but it's not POSSIBLE to be that wrong about the structure of the internet. What part of DARPAnet and the relationship between NIPR and SIPR nets, and the fact that the "internet" is merely ones and zeros running around wires and glass, is he unable to understand?

There is so much excess capacity laying around that Google is buying up so-called "dark fiber" (unused fiber optic cable) by the hundreds of miles. How long until these corrupt senators figure out a way to blackmail google into halting their purchases? I give it a year, because net neutrality is big money, the mob never backs off of money this big, and senators need their cut because it's going to be a tough election cycle and campaigns are expensive.

2 simple examples of why net neutrality needs govt

[eagl]

It's as if toll booths were being put up on interstate freeways... We already paid for those roads and we keep paying for them through income and gasoline taxes, so the local govts have no right to collect additional tolls. But that's what's being threatened here, and it needs to be fought tooth and nail. Another example is if cities started charging extra phone fees for incoming calls because they originated outside the city limits. The govt absolutely forbids that kind of gouging, but it's exactly what they're trying to do with internet bandwidth.

2 examples of why we need govt regulation to ensure network neutrality. It's become an essential national resource just like the phone system or the telegraph before that, so what's different this time? Oh yea, it's congress who has changed course 180 degrees from protecting national resources to ensuring that more money gets into a select group of hands. That's all that's changed.

We used to be able to trust congress to at least pretend to act in the national interest, but the DMCA, the repeated MPAA/RIAA copyright modification attempts, and now this make it pretty clear who congress is working for.

This is actually about telecommuters

[Effugas]

This has nothing to do with charging Google for video, and everything to do with this [practicallynetworked.com]:

Thank you for your message.

The Comcast @Home product is, and has always been, designated as a residential service and does not allow the use of commercial applications. A VPN or Virtual Private Network is primarily used to connect Internet users to her or his work LAN from an Internet access point.

High traffic telecommuting while utilizing a VPN can adversely affect the condition of the network while disrupting the connection of our regular residential subscribers.

To accommodate the needs of our customers who do choose to operate VPN, Comcast offers the Comcast @Home Professional product. @Home Pro is designed to meet the needs of the ever growing population of small office/home office customers and telecommuters that need to take advantage of protocols such as VPN. This product will cost $95 per month, and afford you with standards which differ from the standard residential product.

If you're interested in upgrading your current Comcast @Home service to Comcast @Home Pro, please e-mail your name, address, and phone number to: [e-mail]. Prior to Sept 15th, you will be contacted by one of our Comcast @Home Pro representatives to discuss upgrading from your current Comcast @Home residential service.

While VPN is not a prohibited use of the @Home Pro product, Comcast does not provide support for VPN technology. All inquiries regarding VPN should be directed toward your company's network administrator.

Currently, the Comcast @Work commercial services do provide VPN support. If your company pays for your internet service, or if you would like to use supported VPN or IP tunneling, please contact our commercial services at 888-638-4338 or visit www.comcastwork.com.

If there is anything else we can help you with, please contact us. Thank you for choosing Comcast@Home.

Steve Comcast@Home Email Response Specialist

Stop talking about this like it has anything to do with video. This has nothing to do with video, and everything to do with them turning off telecommuting (indeed, any encrypted communication) [computerworld.com] by default.

Excellent Point!

[Baavgai]

Strangely, the Senator has elegantly illustrated one of his points.

If the point is that law makers have no business legislating things they know nothing about, this guy is the poster child. Ironically, this is one of the party lines against Net Neutrality and he's now a shining example.

On the flip side, if the congressmen actually understood the issue, and the way they should be rightfully eviscerated for corporate toadyism come next reelection campaign, they'd leave it alone.

I hope he's a South Park fan...

[iiioxx]

...because Senator Ted Stevens just demonstrated an artful execution of the Chewbacca Defense.

About Senator Stevens

[UnknowingFool]

For those who don't know about Senator Stevens, he is a senior member of the Senate and has lots of power. He is the chair of the commerce committee. I only follow the Senate now and then, but to me he seems to be the model of what's wrong with American government. When the government need to cut down the budget, he refused to cut a $400 million bridge project in Alaska. To many, the bridge was a pork barrel project that connected the main part of Alaska to a remote village of 300 people. Currently the village uses ferries. Those dealing with the situation didn't want to remove it completely but rather postpone it or at least fund it in phases.

When Big Oil execs testified in front of Congress last year, he refused to swear them under oath as is the custom. Time and time again Stevens seems to be doing what is in the lobbyist's best interest like right now with the net netruality bill.

Highway analogy

[CustomDesigned]

There is nothing really wrong with a pipe or tube analogy, but perhaps this highway analogy is better. The Telcos run a freeway (constructed with public funds). While there is no backup, special couriers (real time protocols) who need to arrive within a fixed time frame are often delayed. The highway engineers (IETF) propose toll lanes (QOS) which are restricted to cars purchasing a special pass.

However, this doesn't generate enough revenue for the Telcos, so they come up with an even "better" idea. They install traffic lights at the freeway entrance ramps, which allows cars onto the road at timed intervals, keeping the freeway nice and empty. They also install reserved on ramps which are available only to cars with special passes.

Well, I can understand his problem

[sgrbear]

He got the whole Internet in his "In" box. That would surely eat up a lot of bandwidth.

Just the other day, someone e-mailed me Usenet, but fortunately my Spam filter discarded 98% of it.

Stevens a corrupt scumbag, not just an idiot

[JimmytheGeek]

As a former Alaskan resident, I feel more than enough standing to complain about this evil yahoo.

During hearings on oil industry price gouging, Sen. Cantwell wanted to put those testifying under oath. Stevens arrogantly refused. The oil execs promptly and obviously lied throughout the hearings. Stevens made it possible. They basically pissed on the face of the Congress, and by extension, on the American people, and Stevens held their dicks.

Follow the Money

[gesualdo]

A few pages about the people from whom Stevens has been taking [publicintegrity.org] bribes [opensecrets.org].

1 News Corp $47,250
2 Boeing Co $41,900
3 Verizon Communications $36,550
4 Veco Corp $31,750
5 Viacom Inc $23,000
6 AT&T Inc $22,500
7 General Electric $20,000
7 Walt Disney Co $20,000
9 BAE Systems $19,000
10 Northrop Grumman $18,000
11 Cubic Corp $17,250
12 Mantech International $16,500
13 Intergraph Corp $15,600
14 Cassidy & Assoc/Interpublic Group $15,569
15 General Dynamics $15,000
15 Lockheed Martin $15,000
15 Northern Lights PAC $15,000
15 Teamsters Union $15,000
19 Science Applications International Corp $14,500
19 Sprint Nextel $14,500

Has all this corruption and ineptitude in our government caused anybody else to come to the conclusion that gun control is a bad idea?

Re:It's NOT a truck??!?!?

[BoaZaur]

Actually A truck is a bit better analogy than a tube. The truck been a packet of at most some amount. And the capacity of the roads are the bandwidth. and the need to go through a series of junctions, to get from one place to another. And the main roads, and the back roads. Only that the time on the line is negligible and the only thing that matter is the load on the junction (and the junction speed maybe) and that when the junction/(line) gets over capacity the truck is destroyed and another identical tru

Re:It's NOT a truck??!?!?

[linvir]

Wow, congratulations for you on your ability to pay your way into your proposed elite circle of law-abiding rich Americans. But what of all the people who have enough trouble simply connecting to the internet in the first place? What of the rampant inaccuracy of your lame ad-hominem against apparently the entire Slashdot 'collective'? Are you so bigoted that you really think that the proponents of net neutrality are secretly just protecting their bittorrent download speeds?

What of the fact that a US implem

Re:It's NOT a truck??!?!?

[Fallen Kell]

Fair enough. It doesn't change the fact that the vast amounts of porn and P2P that are trying to pass through these junctions are pushing them towards their limits, with no signs of slowing in volume.

Huh? No they really are not. Did you ever hear about something call truncating and load-sharing? If there ever comes a time when your ISP (or any in the line between you and your data), they can and will simply upgrade their connection. You see, they are actually be PAID to transmit/carry that data. The more data that flows through their "pipes", the more they can "bill" OTHER ISP's that connect through them. So whenever they have an edge router that starts hitting its limits, it is always in their own best interests to replace/upgrade/load-share/truncate that connection so that they can bill even more money to the people around them. Maybe there are vast amount of data going through those pipe because of porn and p2p applications, but you know what that means to the compaines? They have more data to BILL other companies with to get more money for the service they provide by allowing that data to use the network infrastructure.

In the meantime, all the legit stuff is in threat of getting caught up in a porn jam.

I say "huh?" and "what?" again. You are under the misconception that some data is more important then other data. You see you are falling into the biggest trap there is when dealing with an entity like the internet. You will almost always be "biased" toward what you want to use the internet for. So your particular "types" of data you feel should get priority. Well the problem is that the person next to you will have a completely different set of priorities, and the next one, and the next, and so on and so forth. There are probably thousands of people out there who feel that their NTP traffic should have "realtime" priority over everything. Now imagine if we actually started to try and do things like this. Well, your ISP will because you are so happy to pay extra for it, will prioritize on http traffic, email, and maybe VOIP (assuming you use "their" VOIP and not someone elses). But the people you wish to connect to are not using your same ISP, instead they are using one that results in your traffic crossing, lets say "three" other ISP's inbetween yours and theirs. Let us also greatly assume that because you are not on those other 3 ISP's, they will most likely NOT have the exact same priorities. Why? Because you aren't the one paying them directly. One their network, they have paying customers that want different things, so they prioritize differently as a result. Now, back to my case here, ISP "A" has a priority of http, email and ftp, but VOIP is not considered a priority because they also own a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) network, so VOIP is a direct competition to their phone services, and they do not want anything to do with it. ISP "B" has a priority of http, ftp, and VOIP. Email is not high priority on ISP "B" because they feel that email should be handled the way it was origionally intended, as a simple, unreliable delivery mechanism. ISP "C" prioritizes p2p, ftp, and VOIP because their main business is "content" delivery. They have a major customer who has a p2p video delivery system which uses ftp connections to get the data out first to several servers and then uses them to seed the data into a custom p2p network.

Now your problem is that you want to connect to someone else, and your network connection path goes through all those other ISPs, well, your optimized connection inside your ISP, just have every one of your critical uses degraded and and relegated to transmittion only when there was nothing else occuring through those other ISP networks. This is what WILL happen. Your money isn't enough to change the immediate priorities of every ISP in the world or even the immediate world around your ISP.

You know what? My legitimate downloads or VoIP should get priority over your illegal

Re:I'm

[jamie]

Huh? No, the "bridge to nowhere" [mccarthy.vg] would go from Ketchikan (population 8,000) to Gravina Island (population less than 50). If agriculture on Gravina Island has anything to do with it, that's news to me; the officially defined need [alaska.gov] says nothing about farming the island's mountain ranges. What probably is related is that your governor's wife owns 33 acres on that island. I can understand why you might be unaware of that fact -- he failed to disclose it [anchoragepress.com] as required by state law.

Alaskan politicians may be working on a useless Anchorage-Wasilla bridge also, but that's not that famous "bridge to nowhere."

Bridge to nowhere

[Tony]

The point of the bridge was to allow two populations to commute easily. The Ketchikan International Airport (yes, international-- I think they can fly to Canada from Ketchikan) is on Gravina. Currently, commuting between Ketchikan and the airport requires taking one of two ferries, which are limited in capacity. During the summer when all the rich tourists are up catching their salmon, the ferries are somewhat packed.

That's the idea for the "bridge to nowhere." It's really the bridge between Ketchikan and i

Re:Bridge to nowhere

[SydShamino]

Currently, commuting between Ketchikan and the airport requires taking one of two ferries, which are limited in capacity. During the summer when all the rich tourists are up catching their salmon, the ferries are somewhat packed.

Ahh.. so to make this somewhat on topic, Alaska simply needs to inact an anti-ferry neutrality bill. Rather than allow anyone to use the limited "pipes" (Ferry bandwidth), more "legitimate" traffic (local commuters) should get priority over junk traffic (rich tourists). Just have