Slashdot Mirror
Weighing the Internet
the-dark-kangaroo writes "Jason Striegel has taken Physics to a new dimension by 'Weighing the Internet.' Well, actually calculating the total number of users online in one day. The conclusion that was reached was that there are ~519 million users per day online. Also, 'From what we calculated, it would appear that roughly 41 percent of internet users did not log in that day.'"
that their penis could be HUGE!
I want this account deleted.
It's probably overweight too.
What algorithim did they use? The one involving magic?
The awswer is 42 (metric gigatons total).
Breakdown of Internet Weight:
10 gigatons of Flames.
20 gigatons of Spam.
10 gigatons of e-dicks.
2 gigatons of information.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
In Soviet Russia
Poems write you!
Jason Striegel continued by saying that "we didn't count anyone from Slashdot, because, lets face it, sitting in front of your computer all day eating Doritos tends to skew the results".
The Internet and the computer won't really be finished until the "booting up and logging in" are replaced with "turning it on and instantly getting what you want". We had nearly instant boots with 8-bit micros and ROMs. We gave 'em up for the flexibility of putting the OS on the hard disk. There was no need to log in when the thing wasn't networked. Alas, security concerns gave rise to the login; but we don't log in to our telephones, we just dial. There is no way to bring down the whole phone network just by dialing the wrong number or saying the wrong thing into it. So there is hope that one day the whole "boot up and login" hack that we're using can be eliminated. Then this whole "computer and the internet" project will be done. Of course, it was a government project wasn't it? Maybe that'w why it's taking so long to finish.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This is so horribly full of conjectures, uncontrolled data resources, and just pure speculation. The figures are based off Alexa Toolbar users, and one website visitor ratio. The author uses these as the base of forumlating a simple division/multiplication approach to postulating the gross users of the internet.
Suggestion for more accurate collection of information. Talk to ICANN or that nifty website senderbase.org that has a broader view on traffic flow across the internet.
My Thoughts, Kyndig
The trouble with these kinds of measurements is not that it is hard to get the data. The trouble is that it is hard to get data that makes any sense and even harder to define what sort of sense it is supposed to make.
This isn't the 80's. People don't connect to the Internet in discrete blocks every few days. They are connected 24x7 either at home, work, even on their phones. Who is to say that somone who doesn't visit some popular website isn't online? Who is to say that a particular visit to a web site is even represents a person?
Damn! Foiled again by conservation of momentum!
Horrible Horrible "study".
"So we can figure out the number of people who view hackaday by dividing 72,500 by 1.4, which gives us roughly 51,800 daily viewers."
Wrong. Bad sample population, low sample size with ONE DAY, NO inclusion of error propagation across statistical barriers. When you multiply estimates, you multiply error as well.
"With this knowlege, you can easily estimate the traffic to other sites. If we go by the 471 million estimate, Slashdot gets a whopping 380,000 daily readers."
Pretty sure I F5 more than that.
"Alexa... Alexa... Alexa...etc."
I dont know about you but Alexa is bordering on adware with this. Call me paranoid, I dont care.
Also not everyone (like me) would sign up and run a dumb banner like this on their browser, so your sample excluedes pretty much everyone that got hit with the smarts bat growing up.
Perhaps im missing some gross humorous overtone, but mod article -1 Statistical Chicanery
There is truth in humor.
See, when I read "weight of the internet" I thought it was talking about Physical Weight. It'd be sweeter if you took all the bandwidth data divided it by the speed of light (or whatever), and came up with the weight of the individual electrons of data at any given moment. Now THAT would be "taking Physics to a new dimension"!
sig: Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not
'Horribly' is not accepted as standard word in scientific research publications. The description must be quantitative like 'and am 91% time attracted to women at 45% of the places'. A graph of level of attraction vs cup size would be great!!
hilarious