Intel Predicts Death Of WWW

LostCluster writes "Forbes is running a report saying that Intel's CTO claims that the WWW is 'running up on some architectural limitations' that will eventually cause its downfall. He's pushing a project called PlanetLab that has Princeton, Cambridge, Hewlett-Packard and AT&T on board, but Cisco is notably absent from that team."

Right up there with Gates

[RedShoeRider]

.....WWW is going to die, DVD's are a thing of the past....blah blah blah.

Yeah, and Beta's been "dead" for 20 years. But I still can go buy tapes for it.

In other news

[A1kmm]

Intel predicts that it will be able to convince the world to abandon the unscalable approach of following standards, including upcoming standards like XForms and IPv6, and open P2P systems, and instead invent its own propietary system.

That's not bad at all

[gustgr]

WWW may reach the same level Gopher is today, it is not so popular (mainstream) but it's contents can be very interesting if you perform some data mining (geekly speaking of course).

WWW must be maturing

[BinBoy]

The end of Usenet/NNTP has been predicted many times as well. It's a stage that every successful protocol eventually reaches. Our baby is growing up!

Publicity

[crull]

They're doing what they can to get some publicity to the PlanetLab [planet-lab.org] project.

waste of time

[Docrates]

You know TFA is a load of crap when the excerpt is about the same size as the actual article...and half of the article's page is devoted to promoting some financial news service.

This is, by far, one of the worst news posts EVER on slashdot.

In fact, do go to the article and witness the historic event.

Very Vague

[Manip]

It strikes me that this 'new internet over the existing one' is an extremely vague idea.

At least to me, they have not said what the problems are to begin with and further more have not said how they are going to address each one.

All this tells us is 'X Corp is working on an unknown problem with an unknown solution'.

Adding a network on the existing one doesn't sound like a great solution either because it uses the apparently flied infrastructure to construct a method to make that structure more stable..? Sounds like building on sand to me..

the Internet is not the WWW

[Anonymous Coward]

Any article that confuses the Internet with the world wide web can't be taken seriously.

WWW != Internet

[lazybeam]

I thought that the HTTP protocol was going to die? But no, they are talking about the Internet switches and routers being overloaded. And it will only get worse as more people use broadband - that means ISPs will have to upgrade their equipment! (shock! horror!) The WWW is going to break with all the """ codes in the article, too.

Gelsinger's solution is to build a new network over the current Internet,

The WWW is a network over the current Internet... Oh well

Re:Well...

[KilobyteKnight]

Don't bother to RTFA this time, the article's about as low on info as the summary.

Complete lack of technical savvy is what I've come to expect from Forbes. They just don't get the SCO thing either. And in this article, they interchangably use the terms "World Wide Web" and "internet". Forbes is obviously the magazine for pointy haired bosses, I can't imagine anyone else taking it seriously.

Re:the Internet is not the WWW

[someme2]

If the internet really was to die (say, for example due to something or other happening to the way IP works), it would be completely legitimate for publications such as the NYT to make this "death of WWW". Because that's the effect that 90% of their readers would be interested in.

On the other hand I think it's even worse when they say on TV that some scientist "has invented a computer" that does X - when they really mean someone wrote a software that does X.

Re:Right up there with Gates

[binaryDigit]

.....WWW is going to die, DVD's are a thing of the past....blah blah blah. Yeah, and Beta's been "dead" for 20 years. But I still can go buy tapes for it.

Actually the fact that you can still get your hands on Beta tapes is not relevant, heck, I can still get my hands on new 8" floppies. And actually, once hi-def dvd's start showing up, today's dvd's will be a thing of the past.

Better analogies would be doomsayers talk about "we need to develop optical technologies because magnetic media will hit a stone wall at 1GB", or "cpu's will max out about 500mhz, better use optical computing" or "ipv6 needs to be adopted to deal with the shrinking ip address pool".

I've got the gameplan for the new internet.

[El Camino SS]

Here is how the "trusted internet" will fail:

1. Claim that the internet, with the advent of widespread broadband, is going to crash. Cause the herd to panic. Bypass your IT manager. Put it right in Forbes and Fortune 500. Make them demand it from the top down.
2. Speak of adding a new functionality (like a new and improved clippy) and then slide in DRM to prevent "hackers" from getting into your machine. This of course, will never prevent hackers. All it will do is make the hackers get into the BIOS level of your computer when you allow a shell at that level.
3. Roll out "trusted computing." Pretty soon, your computer won't trust you to let you do what you want on it. You will feel a sudden twinge as millions of Joe Users will cry out in agony, and then suddenly, silence.
4. Geeks will find and work with corporations that are not on trusted computing. They will be fine. They will know where to get the useful mobos and processors. Their side of the internet will not change at all, ever.
5. One generation of "Joe User" will find that all of the interesting things that made owning a computer are now blocked and will become frustrated. They will blame the computer instead of the architecture. "My Dell won't let me do what I want!" Gateway, Dell, and other Windows syncophants will start going belly up in the slimmest of markets after they drove all of the profit out of the business. IBM will be fine with Linux for the business market. Comcast will hemmorage profits when people can't get to what they really want, and then suddenly turn on all of the other companies. AT&T will suck it up, those losing more traction in the real world as usual.
6. The industry will dump DRM and trusted computing while it is still hot, because basically, there won't be any purchases, and people have to sell computers to pay the bills. Word will get out to the common person, quickly, and they will sit on the shelves and rot.

Why do I think it will happen just like this?

The whole "trusted drinking" thing worked so well during prohibition. A group of Holy rollers thought that banning things or preventing them would stop bad activity. All prohibition did was make "bad" activity more expensive... and much more aggressive and organized. These "trusted computing" twits are insane. If they think that it is going to work, they're nuts. Go ahead and delay Longhorn or whatever. Simply put, it ain't going to work. Look, if geeks need to get their chips from Burma, or Morrocco, or wherever, rest assured that they will find a way.

Re:Well...

[johnhennessy]

I agree completely.

What has been hogging IT resources for the last 2 years - viruses. So every single director of IT will definetly buy something that will instantly fix all their resourcing woes.

Intel, Symantec, etc, etc are all picking up on this and trying to sell products based on this. Do we trust the moral fibre of all of these companies with our freedom ? I think not.

Education is what people need, not products. I don't think people willfully leave their computers as Zombies.

On the other hand - if they are worried about the effects of flash crowds , /. effect etc. then its a different matter. But I suspect they're just looking for more excuses to generate revenue.

Let me see what killed Unix and like so the Net

[Rares Marian]

A bunch of companies have different solutions which disrupt the original shared code cooperative model and Unix dies.

A bunch of companies have different solutions which disrupt the opriginal standards based model and the Internet dies.

I might accept the idea but it does not belong to Intel, Princeton, AT&T, nor Cambridge. It belongs in the bucket with all the other ideas that eventually get implemented. Otherwise the Net will be just like television.

Re:Hurray, another XXXXX is dead story.

[southpolesammy]

Hmmm...I wonder how much of the Net's resources are taken up by dupes. [slashdot.org]

death of TCP/IP

[peter303]

The ethernet (and mostly internet) protocol was predicted to die 30 years ago. People offered alternatives like ATM and MicroSofts early 90s protocol (failed attempted hijacking of the Net), but none really caught. A mediocre standard used by billions of computers perseveres.

Re:Watch out for DMCA

[Alsee]

reverse engineering such a system would be illegal under the DMCA

I've been putting quite a bit of thought into this, but actually no. Cracking the security on your Trusted Computer should technically not violate the DMCA. At east not the generic break itself. The DMCA specificly applies to circumventing the access control system specifically protecting someone else's specific copyrighted work. When you first receive/activate your Trusted Computer it is either protecting nothing, or only protecting your own files. It is perfectly legal to circumvent a system protecting your own works or protecting nothing.

Furthermore, the Trusted Computing Group and everyone else involved is busy swearing up and down that Trusted Computing itself *is not a DRM system*. They go on and on about how it is merely a platform and all sorts of applications can be built on top of it.

[sweet innocent voice]
You see, it's merely a coincidence that people happen to be able to write DRM software on top of Trusted Computing. And if someone were to actually do such a thing, well then it would be their mean nastry software that was the DRM! It's not our fault! We just made a sweet innocent Trusted Computing system and all sorts of wonderful features, there's no mean nasty DRM inside Trusted Computing itself! We are all sugare and spice and everything nice!
[/sweet innocent voice]

Chuckle. If you dig around you can find countless rock solid quotes you could cite in court that Trusted Computing is not itself in any way a DRM system, heh heh heh.

Between those two points, no, there should be no problem cracking the Trust system itself.

However if you crack your Trust hardware and then proceed to circumvent some DRM software trying to run on top of it then you might well have DMCA problems, but it would be a particularly complex case. It could go either way.

Oh, and a third point: The DMCA has been around for about 6 years, but there STILL has never been a single conviction for any of the circumvention provisions. Not a single one. I personally think it should be tossed as unconstitutional (I'll skip the explantion), but you generally can't get a law thrown out as invalid until someone is actually convicted and gets a chance to appeal.

-

Better ideas?

[HotGarbage]

I was wondering.. Now, I understand that Intel is trying to drum up some business. Ok, fine..but I also understand that there is a natural progression to evrything, and without getting into religion, there is an evolution to things as well. That being said, was not a major part of the history of the Internet the direct result of a collaboration of Digital, Intel and Xerox (DIX)? If so, (and I could be confusing my facts here), but does it not make sense that such a collaboration be necessary to evolve the Internet into it's next state? Also, it seems to me that the whole other network overtop of the Internet amounts to little more than a bandaid on a sucking chest wound.

If at first you think this may be evil...

[D4C5CE]

What it really amounts to is that if you do not "voluntarily" submit to Trusted Computing and turn over control of your computer you will be locked out.

Intel Outlines Strategy For Making The Internet Smarter, Safer, More Reliable And Useful [intel.com]
(...)
This would transform the Internet from a data transmission pipe into a vast platform for hosting a wide array of services available [add: for ________ $ / __ (+ your immortal soul where applicable)?, ed.] to the world's six billion inhabitants. Gelsinger referred to this approach as the ability to provide planetary-scale services.
(...)
we are confident that we now can begin deploying and testing revolutionary, planetary-scale commercial services that will change the way business is done on the Internet.
(...)
"A planetary-scale overlay of computational services would open the Internet up to a new era of innovation while complementing other Internet initiatives," Gelsinger added. "It would provide a platform on which Web services can run and a way to connect grid computing sites and utility data centers. It sits above the new physical infrastructure supplied by Internet 2 and above the networking layer where IPv6 functions, adding a new stratum of higher-level functionality to the Internet."

Oh, glad it's only about World Domination! ;-)
Nothing scary there, just what almost every computer company strives for.
How reassuring...
SCNR

Relationship to Internet2 effort?

[cubicleman]

I wonder if this has any relationship to the Internet2 academic network that's been going on for a while with nodes at various universities, incl. my alma mater. http://www.internet2.edu/