Vint Cerf: 'The Internet Is For Everyone' 163
Joel Rowbottom writes "Vint Cerf has written a damn fine RFC (3271), entitled 'The Internet Is For Everyone'. It's a good, well-balanced document which details the 'Internet Society's ideology' about the growth of the 'Net, where we can go now, and where we might be in some years' time. Worth a read."
I don't know which internet he uses... (Score:4, Funny)
Internet for the wealthy, by the rest of us ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Things always go this way - the people built stuffs, useful stuffs, and then the wealthy and powerful will come and take it away.
Internet is just the latest "useful stuff" about to be taken away from us.
Who's the "wealthy and powerful" in this case ?
Ask Hollywood.
Ask Disney's Eisner.
And ask that "Mickey Mouse Senator".
With all the existing and upcoming draconian laws, the Net will be taken away from us.
Not just copyright. Not just royalties.
The Net is what they are after.
We, the Netizens, are "out of control", so they are here to "provide law and order".
Re:Internet for the wealthy, by the rest of us ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't know which internet he uses... (Score:2)
Slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, we all do, so let's ignore the problem.
Tea anyone?
Apparently you didn't read the RFC (Score:3, Informative)
Re:hmm (Score:1)
The RFC (Score:2, Informative)
Request for Comments: 3271 Internet Society
Category: Informational April 2002
The Internet is for Everyone
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document expresses the Internet Society's ideology that the
Internet really is for everyone. However, it will only be such if
we make it so.
1. The Internet is for everyone
How easy to say - how hard to achieve!
How have we progressed towards this noble goal?
The Internet is in its 14th year of annual doubling since 1988.
There are over 150 million hosts on the Internet and an estimated 513
million users, world wide.
By 2006, the global Internet is likely to exceed the size of the
global telephone network, if it has not already become the telephone
network by virtue of IP telephony. Moreover, as many as 1.5 billion
Internet-enabled appliances will have joined traditional servers,
desk tops and laptops as part of the Internet family. Pagers, cell
phones and personal digital assistants may well have merged to become
the new telecommunications tools of the next decade. But even at the
scale of the telephone system, it is sobering to realize that only
half of the Earth's population has ever made a telephone call.
It is estimated that commerce on the network will reach somewhere
between $1.8T and $3.2T by 2003. That is only two years from now
(but a long career in Internet years).
Cerf Informational [Page 1]
RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002
The number of Internet users will likely reach over 1000 million by
the end of the year 2005, but that is only about 16% of the world's
population. By 2047 the world's population may reach about 11
billion. If only 25% of the then world's population is on the
Internet, that will be nearly 3 billion users.
As high bandwidth access becomes the norm through digital subscriber
loops, cable modems and digital terrestrial and satellite radio
links, the convergence of media available on the Internet will become
obvious. Television, radio, telephony and the traditional print
media will find counterparts on the Internet - and will be changed in
profound ways by the presence of software that transforms the one-way
media into interactive resources, shareable by many.
The Internet is proving to be one of the most powerful amplifiers of
speech ever invented. It offers a global megaphone for voices that
might otherwise be heard only feebly, if at all. It invites and
facilitates multiple points of view and dialog in ways
unimplementable by the traditional, one-way, mass media.
The Internet can facilitate democratic practices in unexpected ways.
Did you know that proxy voting for stock shareholders is now commonly
supported on the Internet? Perhaps we can find additional ways in
which to simplify and expand the voting franchise in other domains,
including the political, as access to Internet increases.
The Internet is becoming the repository of all we have accomplished
as a society. It has become a kind of disorganized "Boswell" of the
human spirit. Be thoughtful in what you commit to email, news
groups, and other Internet communication channels - it may well turn
up in a web search some day. Thanks to online access to common
repositories, shared databases on the Internet are acting to
accelerate the pace of research progress.
The Internet is moving off the planet! Already, interplanetary
Internet is part of the NASA Mars mission program now underway at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By 2008 we should have a well-functioning
Earth-Mars network that serves as a nascent backbone of an inter-
planetary system of Internets - InterPlaNet is a network of
Internets! Ultimately, we will have interplanetary Internet relays
in polar solar orbit so that they can see most of the planets and
their associated interplanetary gateways for most, if not all of the
time.
The Internet Society is launching a new campaign to facilitate access
to and use of Internet everywhere. The campaign slogan is "Internet
is for everyone," but there is much work needed to accomplish this
objective.
Cerf Informational [Page 2]
RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002
Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if it isn't affordable by
all that wish to partake of its services, so we must dedicate
ourselves to making the Internet as affordable as other
infrastructures so critical to our well-being. While we follow
Moore's Law to reduce the cost of Internet-enabling equipment, let us
also seek to stimulate regulatory policies that take advantage of the
power of competition to reduce costs.
Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if Governments restrict
access to it, so we must dedicate ourselves to keeping the network
unrestricted, unfettered and unregulated. We must have the freedom
to speak and the freedom to hear.
Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if it cannot keep up with
the explosive demand for its services, so we must dedicate ourselves
to continuing its technological evolution and development of the
technical standards the lie at the heart of the Internet revolution.
Let us dedicate ourselves to the support of the Internet Architecture
Board, the Internet Engineering Steering Group, the Internet Research
Task Force, the Internet Engineering Task Force and other
organizations dedicated to developing Internet technology as they
drive us forward into an unbounded future. Let us also commit
ourselves to support the work of the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers - a key function for the Internet's
operation.
Internet is for everyone - but it won't be until in every home, in
every business, in every school, in every library, in every hospital
in every town and in every country on the Globe, the Internet can be
accessed without limitation, at any time and in every language.
Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if it is too complex to be
used easily by everyone. Let us dedicate ourselves to the task of
simplifying the Internet's interfaces and to educating all that are
interested in its use.
Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if legislation around the
world creates a thicket of incompatible laws that hinder the growth
of electronic commerce, stymie the protection of intellectual
property, and stifle freedom of expression and the development of
market economies. Let us dedicate ourselves to the creation of a
global legal framework in which laws work across national boundaries
to reinforce the upward spiral of value that the Internet is capable
of creating.
Cerf Informational [Page 3]
RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002
Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if its users cannot
protect their privacy and the confidentiality of transactions
conducted on the network. Let us dedicate ourselves to the
proposition that cryptographic technology sufficient to protect
privacy from unauthorized disclosure should be freely available,
applicable and exportable. Moreover, as authenticity lies at the
heart of trust in networked environments, let us dedicate ourselves
to work towards the development of authentication methods and systems
capable of supporting electronic commerce through the Internet.
Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if parents and teachers
cannot voluntarily create protected spaces for our young people for
whom the full range of Internet content still may be inappropriate.
Let us dedicate ourselves to the development of technologies and
practices that offer this protective flexibility to those who accept
responsibility for providing it.
Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if we are not responsible
in its use and mindful of the rights of others who share its wealth.
Let us dedicate ourselves to the responsible use of this new medium
and to the proposition that with the freedoms the Internet enables
comes a commensurate responsibility to use these powerful enablers
with care and consideration. For those who choose to abuse these
privileges, let us dedicate ourselves to developing the necessary
tools to combat the abuse and punish the abuser.
Internet is for everyone - even Martians!
I hope Internauts everywhere will join with the Internet Society and
like-minded organizations to achieve this, easily stated but hard to
attain goal. As we pass the milestone of the beginning of the third
millennium, what better theme could we possibly ask for than making
the Internet the medium of this new millennium?
Internet IS for everyone - but it won't be unless WE make it so.
2. Security Considerations
This document does not treat security matters, except for reference
to the utility of cryptographic techniques to protect confidentiality
and privacy.
Cerf Informational [Page 4]
RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002
3. References
[1] Internet Society - www.isoc.org
[2] Internet Engineering Task Force - www.ietf.org
[3] Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -
www.ICANN.org
[4] Cerf's slides: www.wcom.com/cerfsup
[5] Interplanetary Internet - www.ipnsig.org
[6] Internet history - livinginternet.com
4. Author's Addresses
Vint Cerf
former Chairman and President, Internet Society
January 2002
Sr. Vice President, Internet Architecture and Technology
WorldCom
22001 Loudoun County Parkway, F2-4115
Ashburn, VA 20147
EMail: vinton.g.cerf@wcom.com
Cerf Informational [Page 5]
RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002
5. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Cerf Informational [Page 6]
Re:The RFC (Score:1)
1000 million? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:1000 million? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:1000 million? (Score:1)
Re:1000 million? (Score:2)
10E6 Miljoen 1.000.000
10E9 Miljard 1.000.000.000
10E12 Biljoen 1.000.000.000.000
10E15 Biljard 1.000.000.000.000.000
10E18 Triljoen 1.000.000.000.000.000.000
10E21 Triljard 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000
Re:1000 million? (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess you don't live in america. America uses metric mesurements when dealing with a vast majority of things. It's not because we think our way is wrong or right. It's because it would cost a lot of money to change all the road signs in america. Anything scientific is measured in metric units. Many lesser educated people don't know what a millimeter is, but I'd expect they also don't know how to read or write. There are certain exceptions to this broad generalization I'm sure.
Stymied by Road Signs? Give me a break. (Score:1)
That is hilarious.
You just keep telling yourself that.
"World's Richest Nation's Metric Efforts Stymied by Crushing Road Sign Debt"
Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Re:Stymied by Road Signs? Give me a break. (Score:1)
New kind of proof (Score:3, Funny)
Now we have 'proof by reference to google'
Re:1000 million? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:1000 million? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:1000 million? (Score:2)
Re:1000 million? (Score:2)
Re:1000 million? (Score:2, Insightful)
What do we do when.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What do we do when.... (Score:2)
It's called IPv6. Users in the US just need to get off their collective arses and use the thing. It's already there and working.
US will never upgrade to IPv6 (Score:1, Informative)
No thanks. We'll stay with IPv4. You use the new thing. Just like it is with the imperial vs. metric unit systems.
Re:US will never upgrade to IPv6 (Score:2, Informative)
A lot of network hardware such as your DSL bridge is 'hardcoded' for ipv4 packets. this hardware needs to be replaced (or have a firmware update if you're lucky) before ipv6 can fly.
On an ipv4 net ipv6 packets are not malformed. The hardware should simply have checked the version bits in the header and dropped the packets, but the people that made it probably didn't bother since there existed only ipv4 when they made it and they could save to transistors by not checking. So the fool at the ISP that told you that you could use ipv6 (you did call them didn't you) should have his fingers slapped.
What you tried to do was pass ipv6 packets onto an ipv4 based network, you would have needed an ipv6 to ipv4 bridge (before your ipv4 to xDSL bridge)
Anyway to get The Internet to support ipv6 a lot of the infrastructure has to be updated, I wouldn't expect to see that too soon. The 'killer app' we need to get ipv6 out may be streamed HIGH quality video (don't need cable when you have internet) that uses ipv6's priority value to get through.
No thanks. We'll stay with IPv4. You use the new thing. Just like it is with the imperial vs. metric unit systems.
So in a few years when we have got TV over the internet you will stick to your overpriced (you'll be the only customer remember) ipv4 connection, that makes your ipv4 packets get the lowest priority through the internet. Just because you tried the new stuff a little too early?
And without ipv6 we won't get that huge address space that will give everyone and his dog (and the dog's fleas) their own unique IP address
Re: What do we do when.... (Score:2, Insightful)
On a related note, the percentage of IPv4-adresses assigned to American (US) organisations, businesses, people is unproportionally high.
That 's why the European Union is trying to push Cisco et al to implement IPv6 faster then originally planned.
[Off-topic: I don't know what happened to IPv5. Maybe they follow kernel-numbering guidelines: odd numbers are for experimental use, even numbers for stable standards.]
Re: What do we do when.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, maybe because the internet was *invented* here, and the early adopters got large netblocks assigned? Lets not go all tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist over this, ok? It's not because the US is just mean to you poor downtrodden Europeans, we just had a head start and given the projected usage - that we now know was far below what actually happened - the allocation system wasn't too terribly efficient, because no-one thought it needed to be. As late as the 1996, setting up a business ISDN account with a mid-size local ISP got us a full 254 addresses assigned, even though we only really needed one of them and had just 5 employees. Now, if I still had those addresses, I could probably make more renting them out than the company paid me in salary. Who knew?
Re:What do we do when.... (Score:2)
Increasing usage of NAT and its ilk?
The end of civilization as we know it?
Seriously though, I'm sure it all works out nicely in the end.
'Mirror' (Score:3, Informative)
Re:'Mirror' (Score:1)
Fitting.. (Score:2)
That the appeal to bring the internet to everyone is an RFC.
Was anyone else kinda teary by the time they finished reading that?
Re:Fitting.. (Score:1)
Hmm. (Score:4, Insightful)
Noble sentiment, but Mr. Cerf is misguided if he thinks "the Internet for everyone" is going to be accomplished through unquestioning support of the ICANN cabal and the establishment of universal laws to "protect" intellectual property. Both of these seem to be to be a way to destroy, rather than build, the Internet.
Now, if we could replace ICANN with something a good bit more democratic, and put in some globally recognized laws to protect us from IP law's reach, then maybe we'll get somewhere.
The ICANN has left the people ... (Score:1)
... and instead it is chasing after POWER and MONEY.
I am a regular ICANN member, and I for one AM ASHAME of what ICANN is doing.
But what can I do? I am just a regular member, and the next "voting" won't take place anytime soon.
Vint said to support the WORK of ICANN (Score:1)
He didn't order us to support ICANN itself, just its WORK. Which gives a little wiggle room to those who despise ICANN yet obey Mr. Cerf unquestioningly.
Except when.... (Score:2, Funny)
SpringTime (Score:4, Funny)
Look! It's sunny out! It's warm outside!
I bet a lot of geeks are heading out into the Big Blue Room to enjoy the enhanced weather that is out there on the East coast right now.
Re:SpringTime (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:SpringTime (Score:2, Funny)
Re:SpringTime (Score:2)
Re:SpringTime (Score:1)
What sort of systems can emulation be implemented on? Did anyone patent it yet?
Re:SpringTime (Score:2)
I bet a lot of geeks are heading out into the Big Blue Room to enjoy the enhanced weather that is out there on the East coast right now.
Haven't you heard? That "sun" thing that our parents like to prattle on about has been shown to release dangerous radiation. It turns your skin to leather and leads to unsightly skin lesions and even cancer.
No thanks. This is just another one of those things that we Geeks have right and the nature boys and the geriatric crowd got wrong.
I only go outside when there's a comet or meteor shower or something Geeky to observe. Some people like to see those Solar eclipse things, but what's the point? If you look directly at it, you're eyes get fried, I hear.
Re:SpringTime (Score:2)
Not in L.A. I was coaching my daughter's softball game (at 1PM PDT), and it was COLD!
The internet *is* for everyone... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The internet *is* for everyone... (Score:1)
Free as in Speech (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure I agree with the gushing optimism of this guy. For instance, from the article:
The Internet is proving to be one of the most powerful amplifiers of speech ever invented.
While fundamentally, this is a good thing, it decreases the signal-to-noise ratio and makes it a) easier to hear only what you want and b) harder to find even that. This seems to imply that giving everyone in the world a bullhorn (and keep them from getting shot) is, in itself, a good thing.
And then we turn around and complain about child porn and hate-groups on the internet. It's part of the same thing. I'm just leery of the positive-only spin this article has.
Similarly: The Internet is becoming the repository of all we have accomplished as a society. ... But no mention on having to work through the garbage. While I have confidence that societies will eventually pick the most accurate history, I can't imagine it would be easy.
I in no way think the article is wrong (I don't), just misleadingly in its enthusiasm.
-Thenomain (NMI)
Re:Free as in Speech (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Free as in Speech (Score:1)
Re:Free as in Speech (Score:1)
Well, there is one thing you have to realize: You guys "there over the pond" you're so stuck in this freedom of speech thingie. Namely too many times I see the term taken _too_ literally. And the funny thing with it is that you can turn it anyway you like (like all stuff that became voided of meaning and is taken only literally -- see idiotic religious extremism): Child porn, hate groups, it's_my_constitutional_right_to_tell_you_to_rott_
Get fucking over it. Yes, like the Whole Wide World (heh.. joke, get it
The most notable thing Internet has done is that it brought us all together closer that we ever imagine. And forces us to get over petty differences and live just in another, larger and more dynamic society that _still_ hasn't got yet all the inherent "functioning rules" loud and clear for everyone to know and respect.
Yes, the guy is optimist. Yes, the guy focuses on the bright side. But the fact that we don't have yet everything straighened up it doesn't mean we should start whining "it doesn't work, let's kick it"...
--
Jeez, I never imagined what a globalist/pacifist/flower power boost one gets from a Campari Orange
Re:Free as in Speech (Score:2)
I'm ignoring the potential of the computer, for now, because for the most part, a computer and a person can generally get the same kinds of things done. For the internet, that's interpreting signal and passing it along.
The notion that it "forces us to get over petty differences" is a fallacy. In some cases, it polarizes differences. If there was a choice between content that promises "All Views I Agree With 24 Hours A Day" and "Cultural Diversity, Even If It's Sometimes Repugnant", which do you think people would be more likely to choose?
Being of the "Cultural Diversity" crowd, I try harder to get others onto that mentality, but I'm more likely to read Slashdot than Salon for exactly the same "Closer To My Views" reasons.
And there are almost no uniquely American views on "free speech". We got ours from other countries. Not like we had our own pool of people to start with!
And I've yet to see anyone whining about the internet not being perfect. If it doesn't work, fix it.
Re:Free as in Speech (Score:1)
So, who will be the dictator or tribunal/council to decide this?
Re:Free as in Speech (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course there's a problem of shifting through the garbage that bombards your senses. I deal with that problem every time I go to a library, or step outside in a city, or turn on the television set. In some ways, I find that the 'net is better at allowing me to filter out the crap than paper-based information sources. And I'm not just talking about google's ability to thwart pages' attempts to up their ratings, but also that if you truly want you can only visit a few websites and not deal with anything else.
Re:Free as in Speech (Score:1)
Users as consumers? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's unfortunate that the days of the beginning Internet mass media, on which everyone could publish more or less equally, rapidly become history, and nobody seems to regret it.
Re:Users as consumers? (Score:1)
I regret it. An interesting side-effect of people trying to maintain the old equality is forming and joining communities like Slashdot (discussion-oriented), Sourceforge [sourceforge.net] (production-oriented) or Baen [baen.com] (product-oriented) in self-defense.
None of these things seem like a bad thing, though I do regret all the others who don't get the equal exposure they deserve. Google helps balance the scales, at least.
Re:Users as consumers? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you'd chosen Usenet or some of the IRC networks as examples, I would have agreed. Centrally administered services can hardly keep the spirit of the earlier days, but truely distributed services can do, if they supported by many companies and individuals, not only by providing content, but also by offering infrastructure.
Yes. Most users *are* consumers. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am incredibly tired of hearing people constantly spout off how everything would be so much better if service ABC was distributed. It is such a consistant refrain of:
If you stand in front of a bunch of (service-person = ) programmers, and say replace service-name with 'network services' and service-tools with 'computers', then everyone cheers. However, if do substitutions like service-name = "grocery stores/food distribution and production", service-people = "farmers", and service-tools = "farming tools and overalls", people start hemming and hawing -- unless, perhaps, you proposed that in front of a bunch of farmers. Or "sewage services", "sanitation engineers", and "septic tanks." -- unless when proposed in front of bunch of sanitation engineers.
Chaos/freedom yields innovation, but order/discipline yields production. Between the two is a varying place where the efficiency of the resources consumed verses the quality/quantity of what is produced is maximized. People may want the best in everything, but they cannot afford it -- people will pay for the best priced "good enough" -- this does not necesarily drive an improvement in quality, only efficiency. There's a reason why people don't grow their own food, manage their own waste, generate their own electricity, perform their own appendectomies, purify their own water, build their own homes, mine their own ores to hand-forge the nails they need to hammer together the boards they cut from the trees they felled to build their own home, etc. Doing it all yourself might, eventually with practice, yield far superior and customized services/products (from your own point of view), but it requires more effort.
Some people choose to put forth that effort, but equally important is to able to choose not to and buy services from some one else so that a person might focus their energies on their endeavor of choice and excell within that field, not spreading their energies around just to survive.
It is a good thing that if a person wanted to, they could grow their own food, make their own clothing, do everything for themselves -- they may come up with something interesting, after all, and they should be free to. It is also a good thing that if a person wants to buy services from other entities, even (gasp) from a centralized service so that the person may focus on their chosen endeavor -- one rather suspects Stephen Hawking would be hard pressed to grow his own food (without the purchase of considerable automation, at least.) People need to have the opportunity to choose what they want to buy and what they want to do themselves.
It's a bit of a rant, perhaps, but I just disgustedly tired by those who froth at the mouth about how centralized services are bad... while drinking coffee at Starbucks. When they are wearing/using products made in sweatshops in foreign countries while spouting off how "everyone should do their own network services for themselves because centralized service models suck", it's just adding insult to hypocrisy.
Centralized services are not inherently bad, nor distributed services inherently good. They are just models -- only when you map the model to an actual system or process and establish criteria for measuring performance can you then make a judgement on bad verses good. What is good is being allowed to make that decision for one's self and choose the model one wants to use -- no system should be entirely one or the other.
(And as far as not being able to pay for the bandwidth to run a successful site, that's why the Internet needs to go to a pay-to-play model where the people browsing should pay for the bandwith. Then no site is 'penalized' for success.)
Re:Chaos out of imposed order (Score:2)
The key issue in your statement is "attempts to impose". You can have voluntary order/discipline -- cooperation, agreed upon standards, etc. The courteous anarchy your refer to. You have made the assumption I meant "imposed order".
I would rather say that people working together produce more than people who do not work together, thus order/discipline yields production. The statement does not imply one way or the other whether or not the order and/or discipline came from within or was imposed from without.
How exactly would you propose to have a workable decentralized system without some sort of standard or order? You could easily come up with an unworkable system, granteed, but a workable one, a productive one -- a useable one -- would require some level of cooperation/standards and the discipline to stick to the cooperation/standards.
Re:Chaos out of imposed order (Score:2)
Hardly. The US has always been an excellent source of agricultural production, much more so than say the Soviet Union in its day. Freedom yields innovation, sure. But attempts to impose order and discipline on fundamentally disordered processes yield considerably more chaos than does courteous anarchy.
Anonymous Patriots strike again -- what an idiotic example! Colombia, Argentina and Chile are even better ones regardless of their governments -- have you guys even looked at the map and checked in what latitudes most of the former Soviet Union is located? Or -- gasp -- climate zones?
Re:Users as consumers? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Users as consumers? (Score:2)
Look at IRC: If there was only a single IRC server for the whole world, it would require a tremendous amount of bandwidth (and processing power). The way IRC is distributed, individual servers have got moderate bandwidth requirements (a constant rate of 200 kBit/sec or so for IRCNet, IIRC, and substantial bandwidth reserves for resyncing). Similar rules apply to Usenet (although the bandwidth requirements are moderate only if you don't need binaries).
Slashdotted - IETF works fine though (Score:1, Redundant)
Enders Game anyone? (Score:1)
Re:Enders Game anyone? (Score:1)
Is it just me or... (Score:1)
By 2008 we should have a well-functioning Earth-Mars network that serves as a nascent backbone of an inter- planetary system of Internets
Anyone else finds it absurd to have a round trip time of almost half an hour?
And imagine the chaos when a site on Mars gets slashdotted by earthlings or vice versa
Re:Is it just me or... (Score:2)
Anyone else finds it absurd to have a round trip time of almost half an hour?
This does sound crazy at first when one looks at conventional TCP as the basic data transfer mechanism. Latency is a bandwidth killer, and the bandwidth delay product here would mandate enormous window sizes and low tolerance for errors. The latter could be reduced with forward error correction on a lower layer, but I supsect that many or most of our mainstream apps would need to be tuned for the latency.
On the other hand, consider the UUCP, BBS, Fidonet, USENET, or other services we used to use (or still do). Those file transfer mechanisms are not well suited for interactive use, but are perfectly usable for bulk transfers. One obvious application here is for intelligent (preloading) web cache servers. Email would take longer to arrive, but would otherwise not suffer.
I am intrigued with the possibilities of some of the P2P file sharing clients in this application. While Napster seemed to bring the expectation of immediate, almost interactive, file transfers, others like edonkey seem to have the idea of finding the desired files from an index, and having your client wait (possibly for days) until one or more copies are available for transfer. The current approach is probably well suited for the case of distributed copies where the peers are often off the network, but might be readily adapted to the extremely remote, high latency environment.
Re:Is it just me or... (Score:1)
So, what happens when a hunk or "cloud" of space debri (of which there are many) goes between us, blocking signal? I'm no transmissions expert but the thoguht of it seemed comical.
"goddammit i had 96% of the mp9 down when it happened!!!" urgh nevermind. im bored.
Re:Is it just me or... (Score:1)
Re:Is it just me or... (Score:1)
A SYN for breakfast, a SYN/ACK for lunch and a sensible dinner.
One would think that interplanetary latency falls well outside the range of "things we can tune application-side". Calling an Earth/Mars link a backbone is probably about as fitting as calling an IP-over-Avian-Carrier link a backbone.
That RFC raises a lot of good points, but "backbone to Mars by 2008" really shattered the sensationalist illusion for me. :(
Ping (Score:1)
Re:Ping (Score:1)
Even CERF supports Intellectual Property (Score:3, Informative)
Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if legislation around the world creates a thicket of incompatible laws that hinder the growth of electronic commerce, stymie the protection of intellectual property, and stifle freedom of expression and the development of market economies.
Even internet hero Vint Cerf agrees that we need strong protection for intellectual property! Surely now you must agree that mass piracy, sharing, and general abusive hacking is causing far more harm than good, and in fact preventing the internet from being for everyone.
He's right. Those who use content should pay for it.
Re:Even CERF supports Intellectual Property (Score:1)
As for the "protection of intellectual property", there have been laws on the books for ages that concern protecting copyrights and patents for ages. However, none of this is about protecting copyright, but rather controlling its creation, controlling it's distribution, and controlling its use. For that reason alone, most of these protections do not deserve our support.
Re:Even CERF supports Intellectual Property (Score:1)
Everyone means simple technologies (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm always struck by how much value there is in simple language presented simply. No flash, no java, no PDFs, no PS, no markup, no bold, no underlines, just straight text. Would this, or any other, RFC be any better presented in HTML? I know there are HTML rendering of the RFCs, but are they really any better.
Whenever I go into a business that really uses their computers for customer service, I note how simple the user interfaces usually are. Most POS,Airlines,Car Dealerships and COMPUTER STORES are still green screens with text. Some are GUI, but have they proved to be any better?
Look, hypertext is great, having multiple applications on the screen (simple GUIs) is great, beyond that has all of our complex presentation really bought us much except narrow the audience of who can receive the information or applications?
The Internet is for Everyone, unless the technologists insist on making it only for a few.
'The Internet Is For Everyone' except ... (Score:2)
The Internet is NOT for Everyone. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since it's an RFC, here's my C..
The Internet should not be "for everyone", much the same way as driving a car should not be legal for everyone.
Having been a SysAdmin for a number of years, I can tell you that the vast majority of Internet users are law-obiding, decent and considerate people. Then, of course, you have the 1% who want to take such a wonderful gift, and abuse it. They will abuse it for their own personal or financial game, or simply because they get off on making someone else on the other end of their "attack" miserable.
I propose that people should be required to carry a Computer License, which proves they are capable of using the Internet responsibly, in much the same way as you're required to carry a Drivers License to prove you know how to use a car responsibly.
To the vast majority of us, its no big deal. Having a Computer License is no more a threat to one's personal freedoms and rights to privacy as carrying a Drivers License is. For people who have demonstrated a clear-cut lack of understanding of the fundemental governing principles of behavior and usage, their license should be revoked, just as it is for people who have demonstrated a lack of understanding for the basic principles of behavior and usage for a car. While I wouldn't impose fines, and I would not create a police force to apply the law, I would leave it up to the individual ISP to decide how to best apply this for his or her system.
Its only after we do something like I've just described that the net can be cleaned up, and relatively free of abuse, garbage, and other miscellaneous mindbarf.
Cheers,
Re:Oops..typo. (Score:1)
Re:The Internet is NOT for Everyone. (Score:1)
But I don't know. Which is worse? Having a Federal Culture Control (you don't get a license because we just don't like you) burocracy to contend with is a cure worse than the disease if you ask me. Give me good ol' messy human freedom, with all the spam, crime, etc anyday. Just hunt down and punish the few criminals, not the entire system.
Not. (Score:2)
A 'computer license' could and would be abused.
Re: Computer Driving License (Score:1)
Internal Computer Driver's License [icdl.org.za]
I resigned from a small Caribbean country's Computer User's Society when they spent upwards of USD$25K to implement this....
Re:The Internet is NOT for Everyone. (Score:2)
It's a nice thought, but since the laws and regulations for licensing would be set up by an elected body of people who most likely would not qualify in our estimation for the licenses, we might not get what we want.
Licensing might require that you not use any non-DRM-including software. Or might somehow prohibit your choice of operating system. Or any number of other things.
Free Speech is NOT for everyone (Score:2)
Having been a Nazi for a number of years, I can tell you that the vast majority of political speakers are law-obiding, decent and considerate people. Then, of course, you have the 1% who want to take such a wonderful gift, and abuse it. They will abuse it for their own personal or financial game, or simply because they get off on making someone else on the other end of their "attack" miserable.
I propose that people should be required to carry a Speech License, which proves they are capable of using free speech responsibly, in much the same way as you're required to carry a Drivers License to prove you know how to use a car responsibly.
To the vast majority of us, its no big deal. Having a Speech License is no more a threat to one's personal freedoms and rights to privacy as carrying a Drivers License is. For people who have demonstrated a clear-cut lack of understanding of the fundemental governing principles of behavior and usage, their license should be revoked, just as it is for people who have demonstrated a lack of understanding for the basic principles of behavior and usage for a car. While I wouldn't impose fines, and I would not create a police force to apply the law, I would leave it up to the individual publishers to decide how to best apply this for his or her system.
Its only after we do something like I've just described that free speech can be cleaned up, and relatively free of abuse, garbage, and other miscellaneous mindbarf.
Yuck! (Score:2)
A member of the Internet Society told me there was a power grab there recently where they took away the voting rights of the members and gave most of the power to corporate sponsors and the IETF.
Should Cerf now be reclassified as enemy of freedom?
Calling a decree to take away the internet under that friendly headline is the same tactic used when the US congress calls internet censorship bills "child protection" bills. He may just be ignorant, but I think we have to consider he may just be evil now. It happens.
It stopped being for everyone when ... (Score:2)
All those ass-holes want to do is to get you to buy more shit. They don't give a fuck about content except that its something that the media companies use to string the ads together.
As for the copyright scamming content providers they don't make money one all the new shit, the old stuff that they own the copyright to makes them money. They only reason for promoting the new artists du jour is to churn the inventory and screw the consumer.
There is NO room for originality, creativity or for the artist to make a dime from it.
Might as well throw in the towel on the media outlet controlled web and use an alternate [packet.org] channel of what's left.
An insecure Internet is not for everyone (Score:1)
End-To-End Transparency (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything that prevents this, NAT, DHCP with static DNS, "transparent" proxies, draconian firewalls or usage policies, is bad. Unfortunately, many Internet users are second-class citizens, limited by technology or corporate policy to the status of "information consumers".
All dead. (Score:1)
Radio over the Internet - Napster, Kazaa, Bearshare, etc, - you content providers better become good friends with Cydoor 'cos that's as good as it's gonna get. Users with lots of shared files don't get money, just loads of people leeching off of them, pissing off their ISP, which will then enforce a restrictive usage policy of "No filesharing, no servers". The RIAA will shut the rest of you down unless you pay them off with ad revenues (which don't cost the cost of streaming radio anyway) or set the lawyers (hounds) on them.
Telephony over the Internet - on hold until IPv6 backbone QoS. Over corporate LANs or to PBXs it's OK. When encapsulated in SONET (which guarantees stuff) it's mmmmmmkay, over the Internet IPv4/IPv6 itself - some Chinese DDoS or SNMP router hack or some dumb MCSE at the ISP/telco will see to the reliability and latency of that. With <4% of households on broadband there will only be a gentle transition to broadband phones.
Newspapers over the Internet - when we buy a newspaper we pay 30 cents, some goes to the publisher to pay his journalists. Journalists want money or they'll just flip burgers. Therefore the Internet kills free media, it doesn't encourage it (ironic really). If you want newspapers over the Internet, it could be really cheap because the medium is cheap (no middle man or distribution network), but at the end of the day you're gonna have to get 500 million Americans to whip out their credit cards and send it over the Net. Doh! Newspapers on the Internet suddenly seems like a bad idea.
End result: ISPs and telcos will have to pay for Internet content if ad revenues dry up. The Internet won't be free unless the telcos and ISPs want it to be. Judging by TV coverage of WTC attacks, has anyone shown binLaden's persective? Nope, okay scratch Internet free speech then.
Yeah, and the dot-coms also said that they'll make money in unexpected ways. Dude, sorry you're just clutching at strawsIf doubleclick.net can barely pay for terrestrial content sites, how the heck are they gonna pay for that infrastructure? I told everyone my XML search engine [avishek.co.uk] could be used over the interplanetary Internet, so what?WHATTTTTTT? So the RIAA and DMCA can follow me to Mexico???? How about if I code DeCSS v2 WHERE THE HELL WILL I GO?Let us give thanks for the food on our table.... Maybe if I give ICANN a donation they'll give me my own static IPv4 addressDude, you should get a dog, Golden Retriever maybe, and perhaps take a chill pill.Score: -1, Pessimist, it's people like you that burst the bubble a@@hole.
While we're talking IPV6, how about new domains? (Score:2)
And while we're passing out numbers, let's pass out letters as well. Why we can't have at least several hundred thousand or a million top level domains still escapes me. The domain name system was supposed to humanize the network by making addresses easy to remember. Bravo, good work. But the next step is to allow complete sentences because it is really a sentence rather than a word that encapsulates a thought and serves as a convenient unit of memory. I'm sure this will provoke some harsh facts of life lectures on routing tables or some esoteric aspect of DNS that I'm not aware of, but that's cool. It's a request for comments and those are my comments.
Re:While we're talking IPV6, how about new domains (Score:2)
--
Benjamin Coates
Slashdot poll on meaning of Internet for Everyone (Score:1)
...with a PC (Score:2)
Why the internet isn't free for all (Score:3, Interesting)
Booger me! (Score:1)
An alternate URL [not /.'d yet] (Score:1)
The internet is for everyone... (Score:2)
<sarcasm>Thanks a lot, Vint.</sarcasm>
Vint is the Chauncey Gardner of the Internet (Score:2)
Vint works for Worldcom, the largest backbone/commercial ISP and second-largest long distance company. He has Worldcom's interests in mind, not the public's. He has learned to say "Internet" all over the place, making his about as "k3wl" as the bozos who were putting "dot com" in company names a few years ago. But he never, ever actually understood the Internet. His most significant early work was TCP, but if you examine the protocol (and compare it to, say, TP4), you notice just how ugly and stupidly written it was. Nice experiment but it should have been thrown out 20+ years ago. Proof that good enough is the enemy of the best.
Vint's the bozo who changed his IAB vote from TUBA to IPv6 about ten years ago. They were ready to move ahead to TUBA as a new IP. It was already implemented in many end systems and most routers. But for political reasons, the grotesquely inferior IPv6, which is a Yugo-quality work, was adopted when Vint put IETF politics above quality.
Now he's flogging ICANN, which is trying to turn the Internet into a private club for copyright holders, leased on a per-use basis to sheepish consumers. Jones & Day, the law firm that created ICANN to enrich its own pockets, uses Vint as window dressing (a Chauncey role) and to keep Bernie Ebbers in line. If Worldcom dissented, ICANN would be toast, and the Internet maybe would have a chance of being for everyone. Vint's vote is with Disney.
Re:Stop telling people this! (Score:1)
hear! hear!
I second that! Down with stupid people!