How The Internet Works - With Tubes

Chardish writes "In an attempt to explain his reasons for voting against a Net Neutrality bill this past Thursday, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens delivered a jaw-dropping attempt to explain how the Internet works. Said Stevens: '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.'"

Comments

Subliterate Legislators

[(1 -sqrt(5))*(2**-1)]

Quoth Ted Stevens, from TFA:

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.

Arthur Clarke once said: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic;” and indeed, our senators conceive of the internet as a mysterious metaphysical entity. Ted Stevens seems to have “recieved an internet,” after all, sometime yesterday.

Isn't it bizarre having sub-literate legislators who determine the future of our livelihood: the internet?

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad part here is that this guy feels qualified to stand up and lecture everyone on why he voted like he did, despite the fact that he knows nothing about the subject.

I understand that not every legislator can understand every nuance of every issue being voted on, but this guy seems to have developed a strong opinion on the subject. To my way of thinking he needs to have some basic understanding of the subject under discussion to hold a strong opinion.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[10Ghz]

So, we have now established that this individual is 100% ignorant when it comes to this particular subject-matter. Instead of whining about it on /., has any of you actually contacted him and told him that he's wrong?

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[jkrise]

The sad part here is that this guy feels qualified to stand up and lecture everyone on why he voted like he did...

That's the BAD part.. not the sad part. The sad part is, he was VOTED to power by people like us, to stand up and lecture... The corrective action would be.. Have a set of tests to determine which senator(s) can lecture / vote on a given topic. Those who fail the test lose their voting rights...

this guy seems to have developed a strong opinion on the subject..

Or maybe he has been subjected to a strong influence, to lecture the way he did. Or maybe no one else listening knew enought o call the bluff. Or maybe the rest were lobbied to remain mute as well.. Or maybe all of the above.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[shobadobs]

If you do that, somebody smarter than you will come along and make the test too difficult for you. By the way, this was already tried. In the South. Guess why.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[jkrise]

Let's make the PEOPLE pass a test in order to be granted the right to vote!

Won't work. People don't vote senators ONLY to debate on things like net neutrality. More likely, illiterate people have problems other than net neutrality... hunger, medicare, welfare etc.

My suggestion was "Those senators voting either FOR or AGAINST a particular bill should pass an aptitude test.... "

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[rmckeethen]

Since when has a lack of understanding ever stopped a politician from meddling in someone else's affairs?

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[eraser.cpp]

You and Senator Stevens are falling for one of the lies the telcos are pushing: that there actually is a capacity problem. The telcos would like everybody to believe that they don't have enough bandwidth at the last mile to allow for widespread use of VoIP and video, but this simply isn't true. Using modern compression techniques VoIP traffic is very small, and for video there are numerous streaming media protocols that successfully send at rates exceeding real time over today's broadband lines. The proposed amendment would have resolved the only legitimate concern I can think of, which would be network jitter (variable delay between packet arrival). To more directly address your concern, it's important to remember that the people who would be charged money aren't actually even customers to these telcos. Google and Amazon would end up paying people who aren't even their upstream carriers. In fact they would need to spend presumably very large sums of money to each of the telcos just to reach their customers at a reasonable speed (or at all, it would be entirely up to the telco). While this is quite bad for the big guy, it completely shuts out the little guy. A website like YouTube would not be capable of paying the money for this access like Google can for their video services. And I believe YouTube is a good example of how popularity can be won even in a crowded market just by putting in the work to make your service better. Disrupting the ability for anyone but large corporations to innovate real-time applications would in my opinion be very costly for a society that is in reality still new to this technology.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[CastrTroy]

It's not all about supply and demand when talking about net neutrality. I pay for my bandwidth with a bill at the end of each month. Google also pays for their own bandwidth with a slightly :) larger bill at the end of each month (or however often they pay their bill). All the networks in between Google and my house have struck a deal saying that they will carry traffic between eachother's networks. But now some of the in between or end user networks want to charge more to certain companies because they feel that they use a lot of bandwidth. Ah ha, but they are already paying for their bandwidth. What they actually want to do is charge a premium to companies they feel have a lot of money. They want to charge the carwash more money per litre on the water they use, because they are making better use of that water, and making a huge profit. Imagine going to the gas pumps, and having to pay more for gas, because you're a pizza delivery guy, and you're making money off of that gas. Or because you're Walmart, and you make gobs of money, we're going to charge you 10x the amount we'd charge a regular person for gas. They are doing the exact opposite of supply and demand. They want to charge you more, simply because they feel you have more money. Not because there's only so much bandwidth to go around. Everyone is already paying for their bandwidth.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[Megane]

Imagine going to the gas pumps, and having to pay more for gas, because you're a pizza delivery guy, and you're making money off of that gas. Or because you're Walmart, and you make gobs of money, we're going to charge you 10x the amount we'd charge a regular person for gas.

You forgot the bit where Wal-Mart has their own pizza delivery service. I think it's more like Pizza Hut owning all the gas stations in the area and selectively charging more for gas to Domino's, Papa John's, the local Mom and Pop pizzaria, UPS, FedEx, and whoever else they think is making too much money off of it.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[aliasptr]

The political compass questions are almost a joke in my eyes. The fact also that you get four choices for the questions is again a joke due to the broad and complex nature of the questions. I mean seriously, the world's not "Black or White". Saying "I strongly agree" to blanket statements makes no real sense.

"I'd always support my country, whether it was right or wrong." Who defines right or wrong? I mean seriously, obviously if you believe the actions to be RIGHT you'd support your country. The question presupposes that you can tell the difference between "right" and "wrong" in the first place and again something that's "right" economically could be "wrong" socially so I guess whichever you feel outweighs the other you'd say you agree or disagree to. The test was fun and all but I wouldn't say it's a very useful compass. I read the FAQ and stuff but I guess it just doesn't strike me as exceptionally useful.

Re:Subliterate Legislators

[QRDeNameland]

This truism speaks volumes about the current state of US political (and social) discourse - the less you know about an issue, the more likely you are to have strong opinions on it.

I remmeber reading an interview with a some media pundit (IIRC, Fred Barnes) holding up this exact quality as what was necessary to be a good media pundit. The more expertise you have on a subject, the more nuanced your understanding of it is, which leads to longer and less "black-and-white" commentary, which in modern 'Murka is b-o-o-o-ring. The more successful pundit is the one who can sound convincing knowledgeable on a subject without the slightest understanding of it, and make a good dumbed-down sound bite that of course doesn't conflict with his employer's interests.

And the humour is?

[riflemann]

Network engineers talk about 'pipes' all the time when it comes to internet links. Tubes, pipes, same thing no?

Sounds like a good analogy to me.

That's a poor choice of quote in the summary...

[vistic]

...the quote in the summary is actually the most accurate thing he said.

"I don't have to have the type of speed they're introducing, but the people who are streaming through 10-12 movies at a time or a whole book at a time... for consumers use, those are not you and me, they're not the consumers, those are providers."

Just an observation:

[carcosa30]

When they mention families, duct tape your ass cheeks together.

Re:Netwhat?/? You know, taht inter-movie-thingy!!

[hyfe]

If you voted for this asshat, do the rest of us a favor and please don't ever vote again.

A majority of the US population seem to have taken variations of this advice already.

Besides, this is a variantion of the whole 'only the intelligent know they're stupid'-problem.. if you have everybody who realise they're wrong withdraw because of their own perceived stupidity, you'll just be left with the people who weren't capable of realising their errors. Learning is doing mistakes; people who never do mistakes are just good at shifting blame.

Give the guy a break

[i_like_spam]

He has obviously been reading Slashdot.

      Internet Access Via Pneumatic Tubes -- Whooosh!

Re:The joke's on us

[LordSnooty]

No, but understanding the difference between an "internet" and (one assumes) an "e-mail" might be a start. Also useful would be understanding the notion that the presumed delayed e-mail was not delayed because I was downloading Superman Returns, for example.

Re:Geek clique

[macadamia_harold]

So the guy says tubes when he really means pipes. Given that his generation didn't even have an internet, at least he got somewhere in the ballpark.

Except that this isn't your clueless uncle we're talking about. We're talking about someone who will be deciding the future of something he doesn't understand. Understanding basic concepts like this is this man's entire job.

So, yes, it is a problem. The man's not doing his job, and we're all going to suffer for it.

No, not like Slashdot!

[Roblimo]

Slashdot has moderation. The Senate doesn't. On Slashdot, Sen. Stevens would be moderated "-1 Troll" in about 10 seconds.

- Robin

Re:No, not like Slashdot!

[AstrumPreliator]

The Senate has moderation; it's called the people who vote the Senators into office. And just like slashdot the "moderators" are usually equally as clueless.

Re:No, not like Slashdot!

[ZorroXXX]

The Senate has moderation; it's called the people who vote the Senators into office.

This moderation system is however much less sophisticated with only two possible moderations, "yes: +1" and "no: 0".

12 O'clock flasher

[DesertWolf0132]

Stevens, and others in Congress, are what the great comedy troup Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie called 12 o'clock flashers. Every electronic device in their house is always flashing 12:00. It is physically impossible, no matter how much you dumb down the terms, to explain the concept of the internet to the feeble brain of a 12 o'clock flasher. You might as well read them the writings of Stephen Hawking in Dutch. No matter how simply you dumb down the concept of email, they are still receiving an "internet", they boot to "Microsoft", Windows are what line the walls of their office, and rebooting involves kicking more than once. These are the same guys who break their "cupholders" and scream at tech support for their incompetence when they don't realize they have the program minimized. I know there are many here in this august body who have greying hair as a result of these lusers and can attest to Mr. Stevens incompetence just by hearing about his reciept of an "internet". He probably asked his secretary to download the "internet" to a floppy so he could read it in his spare time.