ryoung: blog 
ryoung5367's blog
information superhighway
Published Jul. 23, 2008
I found this quite funny and all to true. I would like to give the writer credit, but I just don't know who they are.
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"Think of the Internet as a highway."
There it is again. Some clueless fool talking about the "Information Superhighway." They don't know didley about the net. It's nothing like a superhighway. That's a rotten metaphor.
Suppose the metaphor ran in the other direction. Suppose the highways were like the net. . .
A highway hundreds of lanes wide. Most with pitfalls for potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. A minimum of 237 on ramps at every intersection. No signs. Wanna get to Ensenada? Holler out the window at a passing truck to ask directions. Ad hoc traffic laws. Some lanes would vote to make use by a single-occupant-vehicle a capital offense on Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 9:00. Other lanes would just shoot you without a trial for talking on a car phone.
AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking bus with hundreds of ebola victims on board throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the other cars, most of which have been assembled at home from kits. Some are built around 2.5 horsepower lawnmower engines with a top speed of nine miles an hour. Others burn nitrogylcerin and idle at 120.
No license plates. World War II bomber nose art instead. Terrifying paintings of huge teeth or vampire eagles. Bumper mounted machine guns. Flip somebody the finger on this highway and get a white phosphorus grenade up your tailpipe. Flatbed trucks cruise around with anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot down the traffic helicopter. Little kids on tricycles with squirtguns filled with hydrochloric acid switch lanes without warning.
NO OFFRAMPS. None.
Now that's the way to run an Interstate Highway system.
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GOLO member since August 16, 2007
July 23, 2008 8:55 a.m.
Back then, the 'Net was a collegial place that was self-policing. It was also text-based and it required some knowledge to make it useful.
Even though the first spam was sent in 1978, it wasn't until 1994 that spam as we know it began to be the problem it is today. That was because in 1994, the Internet was opened to commerce and the DoD project that was its predecessor, ARPANET, had come to be a close.
Today, Internet2 is more like the original, and even though it has its own problems, I for one hope Internet2 is NEVER EVER opened to the public for general use. I2 is three times as useful to me as the commercial Internet and if it is made available to every Tom, Dick and Harry, then Internet3 will surely be right behind.
GOLO member since August 16, 2007
July 23, 2008 8:54 a.m.
Add too, that the fuel is free to get on and stay one that highway. I know, I'm a hitchhiker.
There is a move to give over the internet domain rights to the UN, who plan to tax it (to pay for poor places to have it). I jealousy crave keeping the internet free.
GOLO member since January 20, 2008
July 23, 2008 8:35 a.m.
STS
GOLO member since June 7, 2008
July 23, 2008 8:28 a.m.
It is, after all, the dream distribution system for the porn industry.
The nightmare of the music industry.
The dream of every ripoff artist, pill peddler and Nigerian scammer.
The nightmare of parents trying to protect their children from all of the above.
And so forth and so on.
GOLO member since August 16, 2007
July 23, 2008 8:18 a.m.
GOLO member since February 21, 2008
July 23, 2008 8:14 a.m.
GOLO member since July 20, 2008
July 23, 2008 8:10 a.m.
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