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Networking The Internet Technology

The Web Is Not the Internet 412

Posted by timothy from the and-please-don't-say-atm-machine dept.
pigrabbitbear writes with this rant from Motherboard.vice.com: "The Internet and the World Wide Web are not the same thing. They're not synonyms. They don't even serve the same function. And, just like how England is in the United Kingdom, but the United Kingdom isn't England, getting the distinction wrong means you can inadvertently sound like a dummy. Most of the time they can be used synonymously and no one will care, but if you're talking about history or technical stuff and you want to be accurate or a know-it-all or beat a computer at Jeopardy, you should know the difference. The Web was born at CERN in 1990, as a specific, visual protocol on the Internet, the global network of computers that began two decades earlier."
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The Web Is Not the Internet More

The Web Is Not the Internet

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  • And 2+2=4 (Score:5, Informative)

    by dmesg0 ( 1342071 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:31AM (#40674971)

    Now we all know.

    • Re:And 2+2=4 (Score:5, Funny)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:38AM (#40675055) Homepage Journal

      Now we all know.

      But 2+2=5, for very large values of 2

      This whole arguement is a single voice mumbling in a maelstrom. Rather like people pointing out the 21st century began on Jan 1, 2001, not on Jan 1, 2000 (while being utterly ignored by all the happy people partying.)

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        2+2=5, for very large values of 2

        That never made sense to me. It always seemed that 2+2 should equal 6 for very large values of 2.

      • Re:And 2+2=4 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by asdf7890 ( 1518587 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @12:06PM (#40675433)

        (while being utterly ignored by all the happy people partying)

        While sensible hedonists used the confusions as an excuse for an extra large party two years running.

      • The author is not only wasting his time with pedancy, but also wrong. Quote: "The Web was born at CERN in 1990, as a specific, visual protocol on the Internet: the global network of computers that began two decades earlier."

        No. The internet began in 1983... seven years earlier. Prior to that it was the ARPAnet with an entirely different protocol. If the guy wishes to nitpick the separation between WWW and internet, than he should be just as studious about separating internet versus ARPAnet.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by jc42 ( 318812 )
          Yeah, but if we really want to pick nits, we should also point out that "internet" and "Internet" aren't synonyms. The lower-case version was in use some years before the upper-case one was standardized and officially came into existence in 1983. Actually, I haven't been able to discover the earliest known uses of "internet". Does anyone have good data on this? (The data should include evidence that the writer(s) were actually using a definition consistent with the lower-case name.)

          I wonder if we can

      • If only they'd stop their partying long enough for me to point out that technically they are partying for the wrong reasons. Actually I'm making that up. I never get invited to those types of parties anymore. I don't know why, I'm full of all sorts of information like that.

      • That argument got us in the Vietnam War.

    • Now we all know.

      Not if you're using base 4.

    • 2 cups of water + 2 cups of alcohol 4 cups of fluid. /end chemistry jackassery

      • this should have read:

        "2 cups of water + 2 cups of alcohol does not equal 4 cups of fluid. /end chemistry jackassery"

        • Re:ugh... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by AliasMarlowe ( 1042386 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @12:39PM (#40675903) Journal

          this should have read:

          "2 cups of water + 2 cups of alcohol does not equal 4 cups of fluid. /end chemistry jackassery"

          Indeed it does not. If you add 2 cups of water to 2 cups of ethanol you get almost 4.1 cups of fluid due to the excess volume of mixing [wikipedia.org]. The result is fractionally greater if thermal expansion due to released enthalpy of mixing is included.

          Pardon my deficiency in jackassery where physical chemistry is concerned.

          • Indeed it does not. If you add 2 cups of water to 2 cups of ethanol you get almost 4.1 cups of fluid due to the excess volume of mixing [wikipedia.org]. The result is fractionally greater if thermal expansion due to released enthalpy of mixing is included.

            Pardon my deficiency in jackassery where physical chemistry is concerned.

            the inverse of that would be 2 cups of water added to 2 cups of isopropyl alcohol will give you less than 4 cups due to the liquids dissolving in one another.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hentes ( 2461350 )

        It's true for every system satisfying the axioms of arithmetic [wikipedia.org].

    • Re:And 2+2=4 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:56AM (#40675319)

      Slowly over time, being a technical person has became from a socially award activity to something more socially acceptable, and well recognized.
      We need stories like this to increase or "Anality" towards the general public, because we just can't go along being socially accepted.

      But...
      How much work on the internet do we do outside normal HTTP/HTTPS protocols? Most of our email clients are now Web Based. Cloud Applications tend to communicate via Web Services, On your local intranet at work, most of the stuff is Web Based...
      So if I found someone who mixes Internet and World Wide Web I am not going to correct them, unless we are talking in a very technical level.

      I had more issue back in the 1990's where people thought AOL was the internet. And the Only Way to get on it.

      • Anality (Score:3, Insightful)

        by formfeed ( 703859 )

        Slowly over time, being a technical person has became from a socially award activity to something more socially acceptable, and well recognized. We need stories like this to increase or "Anality" towards the general public, because we just can't go along being socially accepted.

        Some of it is needed however. Too much "anality" and you become a dweeb again, too little and you lose your expert status.
        The public expects some level of nitpickery, anal irrelevance, incomprehensible babble, and irrelevant findings for you to continue your status as egghead.

        • But if you are truly and expert, you will do incomprehensible babble from time to time, we don't need stories to try to make us go further.

      • "I had more issue back in the 1990's where people thought AOL was the internet. And the Only Way to get on it."

        dark days, indeed.

      • Even if you use a web-client to access your email, the email still uses other protocols (POP, SMTP, IMAP) to move from server to server. So yes, we are using things other than the World Wide Web. Also, I thought Web Services are were being obsoleted by WPF Services and the like...No longer restricted to HTTP protocol.

      • Re:And 2+2=4 (Score:4, Informative)

        by Yaztromo ( 655250 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @01:54PM (#40676925) Homepage Journal

        How much work on the internet do we do outside normal HTTP/HTTPS protocols?

        Quite a lot in traffic terms. Streaming video (Netflix et al.) and BitTorrent use massive amounts of traffic without a lot of HTTP(S). Lesser bandwidth uses, but still very important include VoIP, SSH, SMTP/POP3/IMAP, various instant messaging protocols, VNC...honestly, if you're doing most of your work within only HTTP, you're an internet lightweight. It's a magical Internet out there, jellomizer ol' buddy -- let's go exploring.

        Yaz

  • Interweb (Score:5, Funny)

    by TechwoIf ( 1004763 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:32AM (#40674973) Homepage
    It is interweb, not internet. ;-)

  • well duh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:32AM (#40674979)

    This is not news for nerds or stuff that matters.

  • This story is for idiots (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Slashdot is jumping the fucking shark. This story belongs on CNN.com, where their tech reporters are busy giving the dead Steve Jobs rimjobs every day.

  • Why, thank you for that pedantic rant (Score:5, Funny)

    by crazyjj ( 2598719 ) * on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:33AM (#40674985)

    Bet you're a hoot at parties. I can only imagine how charming a fellow you are when someone uses the term "hacker" to refer to someone who breaks into computer systems.

  • Laymen's Terms (Score:5, Funny)

    by russlar ( 1122455 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:34AM (#40675005)
    The internet is a series of tubes, the web are the cats clogging the tubes.

  • This is Slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:35AM (#40675023)

    What the fuck happened to this site? Seriously.

    I used to come here daily to get my news fix and now it's more like once a month... and I'm immediately disappointed in the quality. I can't even be bothered to log in anymore.

    This is amazingly horrible.

  • When were the tubes born?

  • We're on Slashdot... It's 2012... I'm pretty sure that this "revelation" was unnecessary for those that frequent this site.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 )

      We're on Slashdot... It's 2012... I'm pretty sure that this "revelation" was unnecessary for those that frequent this site.

      Yeah. Now we can return to our Gopher and Archie servers and get some real research done...

    • Can a story be modded "Troll" or "Flamebait"?

      If stories could be modded, this story would argue for adding a new "Obvious" mod.

  • The article's wrong too (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:39AM (#40675071)

    What's not on it: Lots of stuff. E-mail, smartphone apps, peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, instant messaging programs, FTP, and Usenet, for example.

    The web is not simply whatever is transmitted over HTTP. It's an information space, where anything addressable by URI is a leaf in the node. For instance, a telephone number is part of the web because of tel: URIs. Most of the things on his list are part of the web too - there are FTP and NNTP protocols. And in fact, some P2P networks work over HTTP anyway.

    From Tim Berners-Lee himself, writing in 1996 [w3.org]:

    An information object is "on the web" if it has a URI.

    • Re:The article's wrong too (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:52AM (#40675253) Homepage

      The Internet is a network of computers. The World Wide Web is a network of information. The Semantic Web is a network of information with contextual meaning in an annotated (preferably machine-readable) form.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hentes ( 2461350 )

      But those services don't follow the W3C standards, so strictly speaking they are not web.

      • But those services don't follow the W3C standards, so strictly speaking they are not web.

        Since the web existed before the W3C was created to develop and promote standards for the web, the fact that services don't follow W3C standards can't mean they aren't part of the web. It might mean that they aren't part of the "open web" (though if they follow open standards that don't happen to be W3C standards, even that's dubious.)

    • The web is not simply whatever is transmitted over HTTP. It's an information space, where anything addressable by URI is a leaf in the node.

      The web is an "information space" with abstract entities that cannot (necessarily) be located or interpreted in any consistent way? Sorry, but even though you have cited mightly (invoking the great TBL himself), this is strictly an academic viewpoint. It's cute, but I wouldn't bring it up in a job interview.

      For practicioners, the web is a specific technological ecosystem backed by a specific set of protocols and a handful of major players. And NNTP ain't it.

    • "The web" is mostly marketing buzzcrap. So if anything, it's a disinformation space.

  • And what is the Internet? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cyberax ( 705495 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:42AM (#40675117)
    And what is the Internet? The best definition I know is: "The largest equivalence class in the reflexive transitive symmetric closure of the relationship 'can be reached by an IP packet from'" by Seth Breidbart. Which is somewhat of a mouthful.

    Who can give a better definition?
    • An internet is simply two or more networks (e.g. LANs) connected together in such a way that they can communicate.

      The Internet is the internet that most networks are part of.

    • Before I start with my definition, how familiar are you with tubes?

  • This is a meaningless argument that isn't even a story. This should be on something lower than Idle Slashdot.

  • Was it visual? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tancred ( 3904 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:44AM (#40675141)

    The Web was born at CERN in 1990, as a specific, visual protocol

    The first web browser I used was text-only, called 'www', running on a Sun box. Was the visual component really there initially with the hyperlinks?

    • Re:Was it visual? (Score:5, Informative)

      by c0d3g33k ( 102699 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @12:02PM (#40675381)

      MicroVAX for me. As I recall, the visual component was there initially, if your monitor could display graphics. Since the WWW was originally concieved as a way for researchers to share research results over the internet, URLs could refer to non-textual information, including, but not limited to visual information. Though the original browser was text-only, you could browse to an image that would display on your graphics capable monitor. It just wasn't integrated into the page alongside the text. The integrated text+graphics browser you're thinking of became popular with the development of Mosaic, although there were a few other WWW clients that did a passable job of it before Mosaic came along. Mosaic worked best, though, so it was the game-changer.

    • Yes, for some meaning of "visual".

      For example, vi (the editor) has this name because it originated as the "visual" mode of ex, a line-oriented (so non-visual) editor. So, even a rudimentary text-mode web browser would be considered "visual" when compared with FTP, for example.

  • This bodes well... (Score:4, Funny)

    by OldSport ( 2677879 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:44AM (#40675143)
    ...for Slashdot accepting my recent submissions of such articles as "The Sky is Blue" and "Hitting Yourself with a Hammer Hurts."

  • "The AOL" (Score:5, Funny)

    by stevegee58 ( 1179505 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:44AM (#40675147) Journal
    One of my favorite quotes from my mom.
  • but the internet keeps getting in the way,

    would that be considered cybersquatting?
  • I thought the Internet was a small black box sitting on top of Old Ben! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg [youtube.com]

  • Thanks for the tip.
     
    Slashdot has really gone uphill since CmdrTaco left.

  • Oh yeah...what's next? (Score:3)

    by dtjohnson ( 102237 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:54AM (#40675277)

    ...next thing you're going to say that 'cee-ment' and 'concrete' aren't the same thing.

  • They are still basically the same thing and can be used interchangeably, correct? BTW, you forgot to say "Get off my lawn!"

    • the difference between The Web and The Internet

      with The Web if you have a new computer (or one that was just reloaded because a virus ate Windows AGAIN) you
      start surfing around and spend the next 5 days trying to get all that "stuff" back on your computer (and have to babysit the installers to make sure you don't load any "extra" programs).

      with The Internet you grab your key with Ninite on it (you already picked out your list of programs) or hit ninite.com and make your picks and then run a program and THE

  • ... should be aware that the botnet their PC is part sent their personal data using internet but not their browsers.

  • Remember folks, thanks to everyone being taught MS-DOS in the 80's and early 90's, all web addresses are pronounced:

    Aitch Tee Tee Pee, Colon, Backslash, Backslash...

    Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]

  • Short easy names for things win. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jonadab ( 583620 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @12:08PM (#40675459) Homepage Journal
    > And, just like how England is in the United Kingdom,
    > but the United Kingdom isn't England

    I suppose too that The United States of America is in the Americas but the United States thereof is not the same thing as America? And we dursn't call it just "the States" either because that's ambiguous because there might be other countries with the word "States" in their name at some point? Shall we stop calling China just "China" and start spelling out "The People's Democratic Socialist Republic of Maoist China" or whatever it's called in the formal diplomatic papers, every single time we refer to it, and similarly for the other one across the strait? And we should say "The Republic of the Netherlands" instead of Holland?

    Phooey. Life's too short, and all that gratuitous verbiage takes too long to say every single time. I'm going to keep on calling them England and America and China and Taiwan. Every single person on the planet knows exactly which country I mean, *including* the sadly misguided people who insist I should call them by their ridiculously long official names all the time. Stuff that.

    It's a little different with the web, because "the web" doesn't actually take longer to say than "the internet" or even just "the net". So, okay, we can call it "the web". I can live with that one.

  • Tell it again.

  • The Web Is Not the Internet

    Did someone say it is?

    • I have never heard anyone say that the web is the internet, or use "web" to mean "internet." Actually, I very rarely hear anybody use the term "web" anymore in this context; everyone says "internet." I suppose it's true that oranges are not cats, bats are not telephones, and the World Bank is the the Eurozone, but nobody is claiming any of those things either and we don't need articles about the distinctions. Perhaps the author conflated the two concepts for a long time and assumed that everyone else had

  • Internet is the WWW and vice versa. It's a fact and it's a matter of statistics.
    The fact that 0.001% (at best) of mankind knows the difference among DNS, IP, TCP, HTTP and HTML is irrelevant to the whole world.
    It's just one thousandth or, according to some source [internetworldstats.com], just 2.6M persons. It's just background noise!
    Say it with me thrice: "Internet is the WW" ...

  • If you point out the difference between terms (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ThorGod ( 456163 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @12:41PM (#40675933) Journal

    If you point out the difference between these two terms in everyday speech, then you are part of the problem.

    I'm not talking about IT professionals talking to other IT professionals. I'm talking about people talking to other people. I long ago gave up correcting the term "the internet is down", and you should, too. If you can figure out what people are referring to without correcting them, you will go farther in this world than by being an "always correct" dick.

  • Wait... what? It's Cyberspace! (Score:3)

    by DarthVain ( 724186 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @12:46PM (#40676005)

    I thought we were all in Cyberspace, and the Blogosphere...

    Either way we all know its tubes all the way down anyway...

  • Wrong! (Score:3)

    by DarthVain ( 724186 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @12:47PM (#40676013)

    Everybody knows it's the Information Super Highway and that it all exists within Cyberspace!

  • Your computer case is not called "the hard drive" or the "cpu", although that's what most people refer to them as.... and if you are running out of disk space, you don't need more "memory".

  • . . .and no one will care. (Score:3)

    by PeanutButterBreath ( 1224570 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @12:57PM (#40676151)

    Most of the time they can be used synonymously and no one will care. . .

    'nough said.

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