April 2, 2013

"What Is The Internet Anyway?"



"And remember: If you're still in the market for a computer, make sure you tell your dealer that you're going to be using it to access the internet."

Seriously, what is the internet?

Here at Meadhouse, when we ask what is the internet, we sing this song:



Hey, I'm on a site!

29 comments:

Bob Ellison said...

"It's a series of tubes."

Ted Stevens got a bum rap on that. The analogy has utility.

Shouting Thomas said...

Back in the early 90s, during the legendary dotcom era, we dotcom-ers called it the "Enter Not!"

As in "Lest you be damned!"

alan markus said...

Thanks to the Internet I have learned about "Thigh Gaps" & "Camel Toes".

Wince said...

If only their similarly befuddled reaction to the term "limited government" would have the same portents.

TML said...

That was awesome. Bryant didn't even say "dot" inbetween the address string elements. Plus no "the" from Katie. Sounds almost fake.

"What is 'cell phone'?"

Shouting Thomas said...

Are taking the day off from the ever fabulous universe of gay-dom?

tim maguire said...

I thought I was slow to embrace this new computer thingy! By 1994, even I knew what the internet was.

tim maguire said...

I know you love all things gay, S T, but how about no thread hijacks?

virgil xenophon said...

@Bob Ellison/

Hell, Bob, LOTS of people were snarkily calling the net the "innertubes" waay before Stevens made his statement...I never could understand the "uproar" as the usage was/is so wide-spread..

Tom said...

What is a "Today Show"?

Tom said...

What is a "Today Show"?

SJ said...

@Bob Ellison.

Amusing note about "the Internet is a series of tubes" crack...

I've heard multiple IT guys refer to internet connections as "data pipelines". Because "tube" isn't as robust as "pipe" for moving lots of stuff.

But data is information, and the information "flows" through sending and receiving electrical signals.

There are lots of pipe/tube analogies for data networks, and they are used by IT people to describe the structures that support the Internet.

But the Internet? It's what people do with all the servers, write on web-pages, put up as video, etc.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Wow. That ABC news link has a nasty annoying script pop-up that will not go away.

so last night on the CW local news, predictably slanted pro-democrat (to an absurd degree) Jeremy (untrustworthy toothed ) what's-his-name-anchor of the "news" remarked how the democrats in CO want to grant people who are here illegally with drivers licenses. Ch 2 "news" went all out campaign ad style to promote the idea on the "news".

SteveR said...

Bryant Gumbel-assholed himself off TV

edutcher said...

It's what the former President of Vice invented.

bagoh20 said...

What I'm looking for is the Randy Normal brand of internet. Comfortable, friendly, reasonably priced.

Bruce Hayden said...

so last night on the CW local news, predictably slanted pro-democrat (to an absurd degree) Jeremy (untrustworthy toothed ) what's-his-name-anchor of the "news" remarked how the democrats in CO want to grant people who are here illegally with drivers licenses. Ch 2 "news" went all out campaign ad style to promote the idea on the "news".

Thanks to the Obama GOTV efforts in the last election, the Dems in CO are for the first time in a long time in full control of the government, and are seemingly trying to make up for lost time in implementing all their wet dreams. But, the state is not nearly so liberal as all that, and I doubt seriously that they will be able to maintain their majorities in both Houses in the next election (though, I give Gov. Hickendooper a good chance of reelection). Something like what happened with the 111th Congress, where Pelosi and Reid rammed through Obama's pork filled "Stimulus" bill, ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, etc., only to lose the House 2 years later. Already, I think that there are dead men and women walking due to their recently enacted gun control measures. So, they might as well go for broke, because they probably aren't going to control both Houses of the Legislature as well as the governorship again for at least another generation.

bagoh20 said...

" the Dems in CO are for the first time in a long time in full control of the government, and are seemingly trying to make up for lost time in implementing all their wet dreams."

Same her in California. I see it as the peak of liberalism. Their total control could not come at a better time - just before the collapse. A California judge just allowed the CA city of Stockton to file for bankruptcy. The flood gates are open, and it's clear who overloaded the dam.

Unknown said...

Bryant Gumbel is unable to refrain from being annoying. Even that small clip shows what a complete jerk he is.

Bruce Hayden said...

Fond memories. Interesting to me is that it really started to explode while I was in law school in the latter 1980s, with mostly email, FTP, etc. I had been working as a software engineer in data communications, and so was familiar with the underlying technologies, but was caught completely by surprise by what happened when TCP/IP was ported to run over phone lines and Ethernet. The government was moving in just the opposite direction at the time, towards what was the 7 layer ISO OSI model for data communications, which was being mandated for all new computer large system purchases. At the Dept. of Agriculture, we were tying together maybe 3-4 thousand computers of maybe 5 or 6 different types, and that was extraordinarily big for the time. Heck, our interconnection of 600 or so Forest Service computers over X.25 in the mid 1980s was noteworthy. We designed and wrote our own protocol for that, and then were tasked at connecting those 3-4 thousand minicomputers to the four USDA data centers. Tried to port TCP/IP and failed (low level addressing issues, ultimately resolved with DNS for the Internet), so ended up with implementing a second generation of our own protocol.

And, then, just a couple of years later, the Internet was connecting hundreds of thousands, then millions, then hundreds of millions of computers. All with technology that we thought wasn't scalable (and, it really wasn't, until a couple of inherent problems were solved with small tweaks, plus the addition of DNS).

My orientation in law school was computer law, and while doing that, my ex was getting another master's degree. This one was in data communications (we met as contractors on a data communications software project). And, she was the one who told me that if I wanted to work in computer law, I needed to get involved in the related discussions on the brand new Internet. Most of the discussion groups I followed back then are essentially dead now, but still find occasional discussions from the Cyberia-l (Cyberspace Law) listserve group, which I joined over two decades ago.

Fast forward until the second half of the 1990s, and I found myself as an inhouse patent attorney at a high tech company. At one point, the VP who ran our office mandated that there would be two computers in the office that could access the Web - one for him, and one for the other maybe 20 patent attorneys in the office, because if we had such access ourselves, we would waste a lot of time. None of course for the support staff. That lasted less than a year, before the filters were removed, and we got full Web access.

Fast forward another 6-8 years, and I found myself using the Web fairly constantly all day at work as a patent attorney. Pretty much all our technical and legal research was done online. Patents were online, and, ultimately almost all filing was done electronically.

When I was first introduced to the technology that became the backbone of the Internet, it was being used to tie several dozen large computer systems together primarily for reasearch. Today, it ties many hundreds of millions of computers together, and consumes much of our lives. I get almost all my news there, and wouldn't have TV service if it were my choice.

Pianoman said...

Jan, from IT Crowd:

"What isn't the Internet?"

Humperdink said...

It's good to see that Gumballllls idiocy did not occur overnight. He's always been a maroon.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

"What isn't the Internet?"

I can't believe no one has linked to this yet. It explains what the internet is all about. LINK

Deb said...

Yeah, we're laughing now. The otehr day I thought, hmm, what did we need computers for before the Internet?

Dust Bunny Queen said...

what did we need computers for before the Internet?

GAMES,of course :-)

Zork!!!

Astro said...

Hey, I've got one of those free internet coupons, but I've been waiting to use it, since I think the cost is soon going to skyrocket, making my coupon more valuable. The place that gave it to me forgot to put an expiration date on it!

(Yes, yes, I am kidding.)

Kevin Walsh said...

Katie appears to have been inspired by Eero Saarinen for her 1995 hairdo.

TML said...

Enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRDAtZMSzdA

ampersand said...

When the internet first showed up at work ,we were still using dumb (text only) terminals attached to the mainframe. We could hook up to any url but the interface displayed text only. Any graphic was marked indicating image.