The Internet Is A Series Of Tubes

Monday, July 03, 2006

Saw this in an entry over on Wired Blogs, which also links to a recording of the speech. Alaska senator Ted Stevens speaks about net neutrality and gives a technical explanation on how the internet works:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Look, this dude is probably old, and I can understand him getting certain details wrong about how things work on the internet. If I have my facts correct, Ted Stevens is on the Senate Commerce Committee, which voted on net neutrality amendments to a telecommunications bill. Stevens voted against adding these amendments.

Common sense would dictate that if you’re on a senate committee voting on important issues, you be knowledgeable about the issue at hand, and that you have a good understanding of said issue. Stevens clearly has no clue about any of this, and it boggles me how he got a seat on this committee.

Desktop Of The Future

Thursday, June 22, 2006

The BumpTop:

BumpTop aims to enrich the desktop metaphor with expressive, lightweight techniques found in the real world.

Blinged Mice

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Folks, do we really need this?

Wipple? Appdows?

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Great news! Apple officially supports Windows on Mac with the release of Boot Camp! With the ability to run XP natively! Dual boot!

Good business decision by Apple, IMHO. If you can’t get Windows users to switch to OSX, why not give them the ability to run Windows on Mac hardware, along with OSX, on a dual-boot platform? Give them the best of both worlds. Although i’m sure hardcore Apple fan-boys out there will say there is no “best of” in the Windows world.

Now, who would like to buy my Dell Inspiron 6000 so I can purchase one of these:

Bill Gates Talks About How He Works

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

On CNN, via DIGG: It sounds like one big advertisement for Microsoft products, but that’s not shocking, since he is the head of Microsoft. He writes about the virtues of Sharepoint and OneNote, and states that he has only the following up on his PC at all times:

The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is usually the specific e-mail I’m reading and responding to. And my browser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new has come in while I’m working on something, and to bring up a link that’s related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me.

It is good to be a CEO. Perhaps the best line is this:

On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you’ll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.

I remember the days when I worked on one screen, and I am amazed that I ever got any work done. Two screens should now be the default setup for anyone working in more than 3-4 applications at any given time. There really is no option. So to anyone out there still on one screen, go to your boss and say you want a second. If this proves to be futile, point them to this article by Bill Gates. Bill Gates says so, and he is worth more money that your boss will ever be.

“My Site Doesn’t Work in Netscape 4!”

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

I had a client notify me that their newly developed site was working in all newer versions of Explorer and Firefox/Mozilla, but breaking in Netscape. A screenshot was provided, clearly showing an older version of Netscape, likely v4.5 or below.

Said site is developed using mostly CSS for its structure, which as most designers and developers know, older Netscapes have poor support for. This brings to light the frustration that most of us feel when developing sites: lack of proper cross-browser support across multiple versions. Of course, we strive to make sites work on all (relatively) newer browsers, on most platforms.

Some clients, however, don’t know about browser support and CSS and other technical jargon, or even understand it. At times it becomes difficult to explain these things to them in non-technical speak.

As a solution, I propose the following: Self-Destructing Browser Software(TM). Browser software that is at least 8 years old would automatically destroy/erase/uninstall itself from computers. It would then prompt the user to upgrade the software to the most recent version, or even better, it would automatically upgrade.

This would help all of us designers and developers tremendously. All you Netscape, Internet Explorer, Opera and Mozilla developers out there, please add this feature into your next software release. Thank you.