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It's Just the 'internet' Now?
This morning Wired News announced that 'web', 'net', and 'internet' will no longer be capitalized in their stories. Is this the next logical step after ditching 'e-mail' in favor of 'email' , or should the global computer network still be treated with a proper name? For more discussion, see Wikipedia, The Chicago Manual, and an article profiling Joseph Turow's de-capitalization efforts.
... we should decapitalize "Google".
wired is stealing my thunder. i started this trend when my shift key broke. curse you wired.
damn shift key, i can't use the exclamation point to emphasize my rage.
www.google.com
It doesn't bother me either way, captialized or not, but I think the comparision to television and phonograph isn't quite correct at this point. As of right now, we only have one Internet, hence referring to it as "the Internet", whereas there are many televisions, etc. To me the captialization comes more from using it like a proper name more than like a brand name. Somewhere down the road maybe there will be many networks called internets and it would make more sense to use it just as a normal noun.
Or we could just not worry about it and get to work on the more pressing problems... should Microsoft be spelled with a $?
people stop writing WEB when it's not an acronym or abbreviation.
There never was a reason to capitalize "Internet"?!
Or perhaps Wired News simply don't know what they're talking about?
The "internet" is any set of networks connected with routers. The "Internet" is the largest such network, that uses TCP/IP.
From FOLDOC:
Internet
internet
I am a genius; therefore, you suck.
I see the Internet as a place, like Amsterdam or Mars.
A proper name of place is capitalized, hence i capitalize the Internet accordingly.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
The internet will continue to be a victim of capitalism.
The reason we capitalise 'Internet' is so that we can distinguish between it and mere 'internets'. 'Internet', with a lower case 'i', refers to any set of interconnected networks. Whereas 'Internet', with a capital 'i' refers to "the specific, worldwide internet that is widely used to connect universities, government offices, companies and [...] private individuals". That quotation incidentally comes from Tanenbaum's textbook, "Computer Networks" (3rd edition, page 16) where he made the exact same distinction that I have just made.
It's always been capitalised and always will be AFIAC.
A lot of people joke around about this, but the truth of the matter is that he never claimed that he "invented it," only that he secured funding for it. This funding was instrumental in its creation. Really, this whole joke is just another example of a witty Republican smear that has no basis in fact.
o re _internet/index.html
http://dir.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/10/05/g
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
(Speaking as a Wikipedia admin) - god, oh god, why did you link to the *TALK* page and not the article? Sigh...
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I almost NEVER proper-case microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation intentional). Sometimes, to get around honoring uppercasing for ms, I just use the initial msie, ms excel, NT4.0, win XP or W2K SP#... This way, it looks like a minor omission.
Hmm, I guess ms will try to use meta tags and other technology to "clean up" documents, especially those that have "microsoft" (lower-casing/deprecation intentional) in them. Or, didn't they try that, only to be blasted for over-reaching into peoples' documents?
When will we get people to correctly use:
-"log on" as a verb and "logon" as the noun?
-"insecure" for emotional states of mind
-"non-secure" regarding the nature of the Internet. The Internet cannot be "insecure", since it is not a sentient/organic/thinking thing.
When I was aboardship/aboard ship, and was Petty Officer of the Watch, I/we answered the landline/land line as "Quarterdeck, USS Flint. Petty Officer Syes Speaking. This is a non-secure line; how may I help you sir, or ma'am?"
Phone lines are never insecure, so why the Internet? I think it was because a bunch of marketers took over the security message aspect of the Internet. Or, some engineers who are FANTASTIC programmers just happened to select the wrong word from the dictionary and it "stuck".
Even "unsecure" might seem better that "insecure".
=========
Hmmm... I just ran a "dictionary.com" search on "insecure" and got these:
1. Not sure or certain; doubtful: unemployed and facing an insecure future.
2. Inadequately guarded or protected; unsafe: A shortage of military police made the air base insecure.
3. Not firm or fixed; unsteady: an insecure foothold.
4. Lacking stability; troubled: an insecure relationship.
5. Lacking self-confidence; plagued by anxiety: had always felt insecure at parties.
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Well, to me, number 2 sounds stupid, as if someone POST-COLDWAR got caught up in the "insecure Internet" description thing.
I guess I'll have to go to pre-Internet boom dictionaries to find out if "insecure" back then was described as in item #2 above...
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Wikipedia has a good write-up at the top of its entry for Internet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
and I appreciate the manner in which it addresses the "popular parlance" for "internet" in terms of the commonly used services on the Internet, e.g. "A system running internet services." (my example, based on Wikipedia's narrative).
There is also a good discussion of Capitonyms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitonym
I think Wikipedia got it right.
(a) Nobody cares. Nobody, most of all Wired (which tries to coin terms and screw with the language unsuccessfully on a very frequent basis) has the ability to just decree that everyone is going to change capitalization or spelling of a word. The includes dictionaries -- they just codify common usage.
(b) Insofar as there is a correct way of doing things, "Internet" should be capitalized. We use "the Internet". It is a proper noun (which, surprise surprise, should be capitalized) that refers to something quite different from "an internet" -- I can build "an internet" running IPX attaching a couple of networks, but "the Internet" runs IP and is a rather large entity that currently spans the world.
(c) I hate journalists that try to leave their mark on the world by affecting the language.
(d) Tell you what. I think that there's "no reason to capitalize 'Wired'" -- after all, there's another term, "wired", which exists, and surely we should just merge the two. So from now on, "Wired" can be referred to as "wired". Of course, the newly-redubbed "wired" people will probably take issue with this, as it's confusing and doesn't gain anything, and violates English rules, but I want to get my name out there on etymologies for mucking with a word. It's "wired" now. Oh, and "Tony Long", the editor pushing this? He can be "tony long", or just "long" for short.
May we never see th
Actually, if you're just trying to be Wired (which means being relentlessly hip to try to avoid losing their self-assumed position as authority on Internet culture), there's a fair number of predictable "next moves":
Internet becomes "iNet". This is to fit with Apple's product naming scheme, which is cool, and therefore something that Wired is terribly concerned about associating itself with.
"I see" becomes "i c". Wired constantly promotes the claim that the Internet (oops, sorry -- "internet") is going to completely drive our lives and our culture, and currently most authorship is done via chat. What better way to argue their point than to let themselves be completely swayed by typos and shortcuts from chat?
Micropayments are "hip", so Wired stops selling "subscriptions" and starts selling "micropayments in twelve chunk block minimums".
"Internet time", or "beats" (a desperate attempt by Swatch, who has put every useful gadget and more onto a watch, to produce new required features to drive watch sales) will be adopted by Wired. I'm not sure that "beats" are hip or not, but they're certainly stupid and Internet culture-oriented, so Wired should love them. They can say "It took me @45 to write this article".
Wired will no longer refer to themselves as a "magazine". "Magazines" are pre-Internet culture, and "'zine" is only marginally more "hip". No, tablet computers are "hip", and so Wired will sell "paper tablets".
Speaking of "'zine", almost any word can be made more hip by chopping some prefix off and replacing the prefix with an apostrophe. We know this because a couple of sci fi authors have done this. Therefore, I won't "Download and read Wired on the Internet by 4:00 PM". Instead, I'll "'nload 'n rez wired on the internet by @3452". Where would we be without Wired for entertainment?
May we never see th
A collection of machines that can talk directly to each other over a common link layer (like ethernet) is a network. A network may use IP for convenience, but if everyone's using the same subnet, its just a simple network. (Calling it an intranet may be correct, but it's not very informative (unless you're talking about administrative domains), since an intranet could be a network or an internetwork.)
A collection of interconnected networks that communicate using a common link-layer independant internetworking protocol (like IP) is an internet (regardless of whether it is connected to the Internet).
The Internet is the largest connected internet.
-jim
"Intranet" is meaningless marketspeak which usually applies to a Web site.
The technical term "internet" applies to a collection of "networked networks".
Genius.
Apparently you haven't made it into the real world yet. Intra means within. Inter means between. You have interstate roads (crossing boundaries) and intrastate roads (stay within the state). A corporations network that is not open to the public is an intranet. It is used only within (intra) the company.
intranet is most certainly not meaningless marketspeak.