Slashdot Mirror
Are Internet News Sites Ready for Major World News?
An anonymous reader asks: "Heading says it all really - are Internet news websites ready for the next big world event? news.bbc.co.uk already switches format under heavy load (not sure if this is automatic or not) and i'm sure some other sites do the same. But should a major world event take place in the coming months/years, the Internet is going to be the primary news source for many millions of people, particularly those without access to a quality television news service. How will / can it cope?"
Certainly when the events of September 11th took place, for those of us at work in the UK without a television at hand the only way to keep up with events was via the web.
News sites failed to cope with the load - millions of people trying to access the same sites meant that no amount of bandwidth could cope with demand.
For this reason, I don't think that the web is going to replace television as a source of live news coverage anytime soon.
How many people have internet access, but no access to TV, radio, or other broadcast recievers? For major news stories boardcast medium will always be the main method of disseminating information to the masses, client-server systems aren't really designed for this purpose.
On sep. 11 last year I watched the first hour of it live from BBC's homepage without to many problems.
Seemed fine to me (not that I was thinking much about the quality). Was it really that bad?
TC - My Photos..
I mean ok performance degraded on 11/9 but that was the only event I can think of that made the news sites shudder.
;)
Do they have any obligation to serve under high load?
Do we even care? Maybe the radio is a better source of news sometimes, hell try CNN
Sites can do their best to anticpate heavy load, but off-the-map events like 9/11 tend to reveal weaknesses in systems (which potentially can be elsewhere in the network). Also, it's pretty expensive to engineer to contantly be ready for such rare occurances.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
It somehow seems unlikely to me that someone will have access to the internet but not televsion so I believe the statement above is somewhat of a canard. Now that being said, it is possible that people may not have access to unbiased television news (eg: China, Middle East, etc ) though it could be argued that most of us dont.
I do however believe that it can be used effectively as a means for distibuting important news information and really is strength will be that it can provide a broader spectrum of news commentary and analysis.
Cheers,
Ian
They can do it the same way I cope when my power goes off... A cheep battery operated shortwave radio tuned to the BBC or other quality station. IMHO, I'm pretty sure if they can't get access to a TV then what chances do they have at getting the internet?
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Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
It was Larry Niven who predicted the idea of "flash crowds". Of course, he was envisioning physical crowds via teleportation, but the basic idea still holds. It's only going to get worse as more and more people use the net.
Look at it this way: in a primative society, a clan or village would usually have a storyteller or sage who gathered the news of the world in story form and re-told as appropriate. We should not be supprised that it takes millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions of people to be the story-tellers to 6 billion (that's a US billion).
If the Internet had a higher percentage of useful sites for news (not just talking jpeg-heads, but innovative ways of conveying the STORIES that the news represents), then no one of them would be loaded down and the backbones would be the only bottleneck. Notice that so many of us flocked to Slashdot when the towers fell? Wonder why? Because Slashdot, for good or ill, is our community's storyteller, and we instinctively come here to understand how our community is reacting.
Folks,
If you don't have a portable AM/FM radio, or even better a shortwave receiver, then get one TODAY. Get some spare battteries for it as well.
The simple fact is if you want to hear what's going on during a "major event" radio is the best way to do it. And you have evacuate in a hurry, you sure as hell aren't going to be taking your 60" flat screen TV with you. You want pictures, wait for the evening news, if you want to know what's going on NOW, get a radio.
Even better, get yourself licensed as a ham radio operator so you can be part of the communication solution if needed (yes, amateur radio is still important, even today).
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
I mean ok performance degraded on 11/9 but that was the only event I can think of that made the news sites shudder.
..Err, I believe that was the author's intent when he said the next "major world news event". Obviously, that doesn't have to be "the next time that planes crash into buildings in the US, but when in recent times has newsworthy incident happened? Or at least one that draws that level of coverage? The question was not "Can major news sites cover the England vs. Brazil soccer game this weekend?", it was "If a major world event were to happen in the near future, will the current news sites be able to handle it?" The only point of asking at all is the fact that as you even noted, the last time no, they unarguably did not.
;)
Do they have any obligation to serve under high load?
No. If you walk into my store, I have no obligation to sell to you. This becomes a matter of self-appointed corporate responsibility. When it really comes down to the wire, are you about providing the public with vital, up to date information, or are you about providing content to generate revenue? If many of the advertisers' links were slowing up (as was already posted somewhere above), you're not generating all that many more hits, and if they have to click the ad, forget it.
Do we even care? Maybe the radio is a better source of news sometimes, hell try CNN
Do you get cable at work? I don't. I don't have a radio either. This happened when most people were at work, getting ready for work, or on their way to work, most of them probably have internet access, but relatively few have access to cable. Radio is a possibility, but on average probably less ubiquitous in the work place than internet access.
--- What
> you might not get the actual site it links to
If you can't get to the site, how can the Google spider?
To state the obvious, the major news sites would have to have not only leaner pages, but also have the infrastructure to withstand a slashdotting-with-hair-on-it. Leaner, lower bandwidth web pages benefit every one, every day, but for daily needs the infrastructure is going to be expensive overkill.
In contrast, more of the tech sites were already used to heavy loads and I would guess that his brought in a larger than normal number of new and infrequent visitors. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed that after that many mainstream newspapers, magazines, and radio magazines started to carry more cutting edge tech info and topics and providing in a much more timely manner - days instead of weeks or months.
It would be interesting to map how much the coverage and timeliness of tech issues by the mainstream press changed, when it changed, and how much was related to being able stay on line.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
"Information wants to be paid"
Multicast news services worked well during 9/11 and there is no reason to think that they won't the next time. Multicast is specifically designed not to "melt down" under extreme changes in audience.
The trouble is that not everyone is multicast enabled, but this shows real promise in handling news and emergency information over the Internet.
The "major catastrophe" it is designed to survive is something that physically destroys or isolates many nodes of the network. This was a simple traffic spike.
multicast would be better for streaming media, not loading of webpages. In a case of a Sept 11 scale news event, local caching would be better, as the ISP could cache major news sites (CNN, Yahoo, MSNBC, etc) and serve those up, refreshing the cache something like every 5-10 minutes, forwarding requests to the real site for pages not being cached.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
the Internet is going to be the primary news source for many millions of people, particularly those without access to a quality television news service. How will / can it cope?
Huh?? I'm not sure what you're talking about but I'm pretty sure I don't recognize it. Quality television service is much more widespread than the Internet. I'm N. American, but I've lived for years in Africa and Asia. I can assure you that in "None of the above" has the web surpassed broadcast media as a source of news for any but an elite few. And the comment is irrelevant for the elite since they have access to "all of the above"-plus.
Seriously, even in the smallest, poorest villages around the world several people will have radios and access to VOA, BBC, a national broadcast network and one or two regional stations. In addition most villages will have at least one television.
The internet is a bit player if it's a player at all
The internet is not most people's main source of news.
But it is most people's main source of news _during the working day_. If an event happens during the evening people are most likely to tune to their TV. But if it happens during the day they are more likely to use the internet, simply because that's more convenient. And as you say, they want real time audio and video - from the internet if it's during the day.
There will always be bottlenecks, simply because it doesn't make economic sense to plan for such rare events. But as traffic in general grows on the internet, available bandwidth/server capacity will grow to meet the average demand (including pictures). This should make it easier for news sites to cope with peaks in demand by switching to low graphics formats.
But should a major world event take place in the coming months/years, the Internet is going to be the primary news source for many millions of people, particularly those without access to a quality television news service.
Please be advised that your set needs adjusting... It's pretty clear from the evidence (and from a phenomenological point of view if you observe your own reactions) that the experience of watching a major event on television as it unfolds barely qualifies as useful information, due in part to the nature of the medium, but largely due to the nature of media filters and techniques. When you see something like 9/11 going on, it's much closer to entertainment, unfortunately, than providing one with reconnaisance leading to rational behaviour. The drama of the moment helps you develop powerful emotions in relation to the event, but what kind of info do you really get?
When it comes to war, TV obscures. For instance, see this study on media and the gulf war. [Remember that? Oh wait, it's still happening.] A salient quote:
In other words, you'd actually be better off combing through usenet than sucking on the immediacy of the glass teat.
Qualifier: I've worked in media-democracy-oriented film/video for years, I'm involved and devoted to the medium!
Damn those pesky terrorists
Unless it's on slashdot, and then there's bound to be 17 moderators who mod it down for the hell of it before people start realizing it on their own.
This makes a very good point. Multicast won't work with a static (request, responce, close) connection like websites (because you won't necesssarily have people downloading the same content at the same time)... but it works great for streaming content. Theoretically, if multicast were implemented properly and universally, it would be easier on bandwidth and server load for everyone to view streaming video than static websites (because the server only needs to send out one multicast stream, except if you hit a limit as to the number of destinations that a packet can have).
Interesting to think that streaming audio and video could be easier on bandwidth than websites...
--Dan