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Monday, July 3, 2006

It’s a Series of Tubes

Posted by on July 3 at 10:44 AM

During a debate on net neutrality, Senator Ted Stevens (R - Alaska) explained how the internet works. I started highlighting the misleading, false, and just totally boneheaded statements, but it turns out it’s the entire thing.

There’s one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn’t going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

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.

[…]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.

It’s not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on how much of an asshead he is, send Senator Stevens an internet of your own.

If you want to know how the internet actually works, start here.

Audio of Stevens’ comments can be found here.


CommentsRSS icon

Oh. My. God. As Bugs Bunny used to say: "What a maroon!" "What an incowpoop!"

This reminds me of how Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-Confederacy) used to refer to the microphone as "the machine."

When I was a little kid, the Seattle City Hall had a pneumatic tube system to send documents to various departments. I think that maybe Senator Stevens confused the internet with that.

But then again, when you have your tongue so far up a corporation's ass, it's hard to see anything but the cheeks, and you can't really hear that much, so I understand where he's coming from.

The really sad thing is that his argument is probably persuasive to lots of voters. They're going to get net neutrality confused with pro-spam.

I just sent him an Internet. I just hope there isn't a movie someone's downloading blocking my message in the Internet tube between here and DC.

This man makes decisions that affect us.

God Bless America.

You know, I thought this was funny, right up until I realized this senile old asshat sits on the senate committee that oversees issues of commerce and technology. Someone this completely half-witted is making decisions that affect worldwide use of technology. Suddenly, this rambling mishmash of utter idiocy no longer amused me.

Oh, and Teddy? The Department of Defense had their own Internet from the very beginning. Go ask someone who has a functional brain about ARPAnet, 'K?

What a dildo. Anything to a) get publicity for expounding at length on a subject on which he knows less than my Beta fish, and b) suck corporate dick.

Someone remind me, just how many heartbeats away is Grampa from the Presidency? Three?

Welcome to America, Geni. This nation's companies are rife with elderly dipshits who know nothing except how to point a finger and bark orders at some subordinate. It's a problem all around us as well as at the top.

I think I just had a stroke after reading that.

"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?"

Gotta watch out for those internets.

I just internetted him too and asked him to please hurry up and join Ken Lay.

Okay... I know Sen. Stevens is a dipshit for a number of other things, but I am not quite seeing the big deal about his statement quoted above.

Sure, he's a little confused, and using "old person" technology to describe a system to other seniors, but he's not entirely off-base.

Try using an interstate analogy instead. If an event gets out and dumps a large number of vehicles on the freeway in front of your car, it either takes you longer to get where you're going, or your car needs to be routed a different way.

That is, after all, actually how the Internet works.

It's still a poor and misleading analogy. The internet is designed from the ground up to provide nearly limitless paths for data to travel, unlike an interstate or a "series of tubes." Having problems at a certain node doesn't slow things down appreciably, the network adapts nearly instantly. The idea that some big piece of data may "get in the way" of your data is just plain wrong.

Hey, the contact link doesn't work any more! I wonder if they took it down on purpose?

Why do Americans elect people this stupid?

oh nice, way to get in a jab against America. how clever and unexpected! Are you telling me that over in the EU you don't have a bunch of power hungry morons spending your money unwisely, talking about things as though they're experts to whom you should be listening? he's just uninformed.

He's just uninformed? You've got to be kidding. He's responsible for setting policy. He doesn't get to be uninformed.

And the fact that other countries have stupid leaders isn't a very good argument that we shouldn't expect more from ours. It's... how do you say... idiotic.

Unbelievable. Perhaps he should confer with Al Gore.

Remember, we could not send internets had al gore not have invented it. Al gore is absolutely brilliant for inventing this fantastic series of tubes.

Remember, we could not send internets had al gore not have invented it. Al gore is absolutely brilliant for inventing this fantastic series of tubes.

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