Ok, so I'm watching tv, and see an ad for Gears of War featuring the song "Mad World"(the version performed by Gary Jules). I couldn't remember the artist's name, so I decided to do some research so I could find out which of the 10000 cds my dad has would have it on it. I find that Gears of War has some reference to the whole "the interenet is a series of tubes" thing. I'm bored and curious as to what wikipedia has to say on the subject, and discover the two following facts, which I found amusing.


Wikipedia

Why is that funny?

It is funny to those who followed the 'Net Freedom' stuff a few months ago. Basically, a senator got up, and compared the internet to a series of tubes, and that to help everyone, certain high traffic sites should have priority to those tubes...

Of course anyone with half knowledge of the Internet called BS, and Microsoft loves to take jabs at the US Congress whenever possible. Not the first swing they made.

Poor Ted Stevens. He's not a network engineer, he's a senator.

He doesn't need to know anything about how the Internet works. He's just the man in charge of regulating it.

I don't understand... whats the difference between network administrators using "pipe" lingo, and a senator using the word "tube" instead?


Was youtube popular then yet? I don't remember. If not, he was a prophet.

It's not so much the 'tube' thing as the context he put it all in. If you read the original phrase he said, it's clear he has no idea what he's talking about .

The moment he said his colleague sent him an internet, everyone who knew jack about he web called BS.

I wish I had my own personal internet...

he ment email, I thought that was obvious...

If my grandparents explained the internet that well to me, I'd be impressed.

He used crappy verbage and nouns, but his basic picture was spot on in comparison to older technologies that the law is compared to, such as telegraphs, telephones, television and radio.

I'm sorry. If you're the guy in charge of regulating the Internet, you're expected not to sound like a complete retard when you talk about it.

And if you're an elected member of the legislative power, you're expected not to sound like a corporate shill at all times.

Funny...


That has never been the standard for anything in the U.S. goverment ever. your position on comittees to regulate stuff has nothing to do with your knowledge on the subject. Maybe you think it should, but it doesn't.

Try changing the government instead of making fun of someone who was alive when Telegraphs were the main form of communication. He probabbly has more perspective than your average "intelectual elite"

Being an elected member of anything is not what people are mocking him about, they mock him because he is old and used an analogy which is 90% correct, like snobs.

People mock the term "tubes" they don't mock any other aspect of what he said. "tubes' although being more in line with the old tubes from the 60s that ran across offices (and people called it receving a "tube") is just as valid as a term to explain the internet as "pipelines" or "packets"

Also, Google, the company who brought "net netutrality" to congress in the first place, was a coperation worth billions of dollars last time I checked, and now the corporate owner of YouTube.

Everyone in congress is a coporate shill, at just about all times, the only question is which coporation and which industry. It would be more accurate to call them industry shills instead of corporate shills, by the way. Industries which are made up of hundres of smaller corporations.

Seriously... when you put a technological society in the hands of people who are utterly ignorant about technology (It takes ten minutes to get a working knowledge of how the Internet works, if you're smart, and if you're elected into an office like that you'd better be damn smart) and then call the fact that they're old (Like being old equates inability to learn - If they're senile, they shouldn't have been elected in the first place) 'perspective', it's pretty worrying. We trust politicians with numerous aspects of our lives. They should be expected to be better-informed than the average person, but then again, they're usually not.

Also, you really have to hear it to get the full impact of the thing... Stevens speaks as if he has no idea of what he's talking about, like he's rambling on, which definitely adds to the comedic value. This is the partial text from Wikipedia:


Off to a bad start. He's trying to make the point that if someone has ten movies streaming across that Internet, something happens to your own personal Internet. The point he makes, essentially, is that streaming video clogs the tubes and makes your connection slower - This argument is used by the telecom companies, but we know all too well that the impact of real-time applications on the Internet isn't really different from the impact of, say, downloading an ISO file of a Linux distribution you want to burn. - Packets travel as fast as they can.

This bit is apocryphal. If he means email, then he's using anecdotal evidence which is, to say the least, dubious. Email doesn't take days to arrive. It just doesn't. He's talking about what is either a freak of nature (Unlikely), an event that didn't happen (More likely) or something totaly unrelated to the tubes in question, and presenting it as evidence and blaming the 'massive amounts of information'.

Ironically, this is accurate. But it's also not an argument for what he's saying - How does the fact that it's a tube, and not a truck, relate to streaming video? And how is streaming video different from another large file? This bit is also apocryphal, comically so.

Here he's making the Internet seem like pneumatic tubes. It's not. The Internet, in fact, doesn't transmit data continuously, but rather in chunks carried individually. 'Pipe' is just slang for the size of your bandwidth - Network engineers don't use pipes or tubes as an analogy, generally; tubes imply that there are predefined paths, centralization, or a specific direction of flow, when we know there are none.

I am sure you know all the answers to the questions you posed. They are simple things only requires a brief reading of the proposed legistaltion to understand. Or just watch the entire hearing instead of just "the funny parts"

You have three options:

1. Enjoy mocking people and keep spreading the decay of human decency, keep reminding people that its better to lie to change world opinion than it is to actually care about other people, and remind me why so many people are keeping mass media out of thier homes.

2. Try to understand what people are saying instead of endlessly mocking them for no reason. Contribute to the world and help people understand whats really going on, and maybe in the end let people use mass media for something constructive.

3. Go become a lobbyist. So you can use your wise knowledge to influence "coporate shills" to do things the way you think they should be done.

I don't care who you are, or what you have done, Mocking people without any foundation of context is about as evil as you can get. Its a disgusting charachter trait that I would hope more people would recognize how heartless and cruel it is. Its the worst form of "griefing" in existance.

Yeah I know, standards and morals suck... sorry for trying to remind people about thier conscience

google != internet service provider
Google may be worth billions of dollars, but they don't have the power to restrict where users go that comcast or at&t would have, which is what the bill was aimed at.
Google complains and pushes for net neutrality because they could be affected by it, if internet service providers decided too.

Except that the only ideas in circuit, only affects big corporations, like Google, ABC, CBS, Microsoft, and the like. Ideas that normal people will have thier websites cut off is just ludicrous. These companies will be making money off of me downloading HD Videos for free. I don't think its right for them to try to force Comcast to make me pay for it, especially if I might have no interest in downloading said HD Videos.

No, normal people whose websites are not popular enough wouldn't be affected.
But people trying to offer some sort of good or service could be affected, depending on how much of a threat they could pose to another wealthy site.

Let's say we have site A, a rich company that's been established and can pay to basically cut off competitors.
Then we have site B. Site B is relatively new and not as wealthy. Site B also provides a similar service to Site A's. Site B starts becoming a little popular, and Site A notices. Site A pays aol, comcast, etc. to "benefit Site A", in that they impair Site B's capabilities. Site B is destroyed, due to lack of speed or connection, and goes bankrupt. Site A now continues their monopoly on their service.

Wonderfull fantasy story...

Odds are a situation like MySpace and YouTube would happen way before that stage accured.

i.e. Murdock bought MySpace, and Google bought YouTube.

I do not believe I have ever read a post more worthy of mockery than the one quoted above. Nevertheless, to prove my spotless moral character I will refrain.

Ahhh, I'd forgotten about 'net freedom' and things. I should really stop reading posts when it's either late at night, early in the morning, or any other time I'm being stupid.