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.'"

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

[greenpanda]

Dammit! I was sure it had SOMETHING to do with trucks! Grrr!

Oh, and that whole thing about pipes - was anyone else thinking about their intestines at that bit? No? Not even when he says they are filled with an "enormous amount of material" ??

It has to be said

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we can all agree, there are a lot of tubes on the Internet.

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]

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.

Tubes hah!

[taniwha]

in my country we use transistors ....

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????

Clogged Tubes

[peteb0]

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

Re: the excerpt quoted above.

[Bloke down the pub]

Not only does the guy talk crap, he talks totally ungrammatical and repetitive crap. All it needs is a few end-shifted verbs and it Yoda would sound like.

Tubes?

[killeena]

Well, now I know how to clean up after a DoS attack. Use a plunger!

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.

Re:Senate Intelligence Down the Tubes

[Anonymous Coward]

He would have googled it but the tubes were all clogged up the day he tried.

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:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

If Sen. Stevens is having difficulty understanding how the Internet works, he should just talk to former Sen. Gore, who should know exactly how it works, on account of being its inventor and all.

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?

I for one...

[owlnation]

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

Re:Tubes???

[lanswitch]

You probably were asleep. It came right after the chapter on IP over Avian Carriers (RFC 2549).

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: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. ;-)

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."

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?!

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

[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: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.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Who235]

Good point.

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

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]

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Fred_A]

Let me see, what was tested was the voter's albedo [wikipedia.org] right ?

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Hrunting]

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

Re:And yet...

[smchris]

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

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 into them forever, and everything will still arrive on time."

Which, of course, we have all known since the usenet days. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes."

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'.

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

[iiioxx]

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

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:No, not like Slashdot!

[jZnat]

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

Those who can, do. Those who can't, govern.

[ManyLostPackets]

Like the ol' Libertarian saying goes:
Those who can, do. Those who can't govern.


I dunno, might make a good bumper sticker.

Re:Geek clique

[Himring]

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

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.

Re:Deception and the usual Coin-Operated Congressm

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! Did a nun beat you as a child?

That would be carbon-fiber nanotubes...

[rholland356]

--For Immediate Release--
From the Office of US Senator Ted Stevens:::

My fellow citizens, the internets is made up of carbon-fiber nanotubes, which grow only in permafrost and are harvested mainly from the arctic tundra at the wildlife refuge. Now, we must slow down the internets because, as you know, that tundra will soon be given over to oil recovery and we soon will no longer harvest carbon-fiber nanotubes.

Also, as you know, the Russians have a vast area of arctic tundra on which to grow carbon-fiber nanotubes, and before we suffer a carbon-fiber nanotube gap which will give strength and fortitude to the vital bodily fluids of corrupt, former-communists, the oil we recover from Alaska will be burnt to warm the globe to a temperature where Russian permafrost becomes unsuitable for growing carbon-fiber nanotubes.

If Americans everywhere can reduce their use of the internets, we can move forward with these plans today.

Re:12 O'clock flasher

[panaceaa]

He probably asked his secretary to download the "internet" to a floppy so he could read it in his spare time.

You accuse Sen. Stevens of being feeble brained, yet you use the phrase "the internet"??? If YOU KNEW HOW TO READ, you would know that there are LOTS of internets. The DoD has its own internet. Sen. Stevens receives many internets a day. So quit talking about "the" Internet like it's the Vatican.

And maybe you haven't worked in the US Government, so let me inform you that you can't fit more than a few government-related internets on a floppy disk at one time. For that you need an Iomega Jaz disk.