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"Series of Tubes" Metaphor Implemented
meisteg writes to tell us about Tubes: a beta application that uses a tube metaphor to enable users to share files over the Internet. The Windows-only app is free and the company hopes to make money on an enhanced version targeted at businesses. See this video for some details of how Tubes works. From the article: "[Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens] endured ridicule last year for his assertion that the Internet is 'a series of tubes.' But one Web startup hopes to bring that metaphor to life with a new service that makes it easy for people to share videos, songs, pictures and other big files."
writes to tell us about Tubes: a beta application that uses a tube metaphor to enable users to share files over the Internet.
Good. Because we all know that it's not a big truck.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Initially it will be a series of pringle tubes duct taped together and connected to users computers thru which they can share files.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
OK so let's hear your explaination. And NO geekspeak.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am the marketer at TubesNow.com and my name is Steve. And no, we didn't name it Tubes because of the Senator from Alaska although we do get a chuckle out of it here in Boston. We named it Tubes because of the metaphor we borrowed: the pneumatic tube used at many bank drive ins to transfer documents & cash. You know that cool thing at the bank the teller uses to send you money with a whoosh? Tubes is the digital version of that - letting you share with many people at once. Just like that bank tube, Tubes is secure, bi-directional, personal (you see and wave at the teller behind glass while she counts out your money), private, nearly instantaneous and fun. I remember getting lollipops in the tube when my Dad would drive to the bank (way before ATMs) and I practically begged him to use the bank tube because I was trying to figure out how it worked. We could have called it Star Trek (but we didn't, that would really be bad marketing) since some people think of it as part Replicator and part Transporter. We think it is cool and I hope you try it. It is beta software and we're hoping the slashdot crowd helps us make it better.
And to the other person worried about getting his computer filled with stuff that other people send you, be aware that we implemented a feature called "On Demand" that lets you see what people are sending you before you accept. Or you can accept it all, delete your local copy, and request a local copy any time you want, on any computer.
Hope that helps. If you have any other questions, feel free to post them on our forum!
Yes, but it uses a series of waves. many small waves from other users combine to become a tsunami of information washing over you.
This is an entirely different type of software. It uses a series of tubes coming from other users. The more tubes you have pointing to you, the more internets you can get at once!
So, the Linux equivalent to tubes would be, what?... pipes?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Here is why he gets mocked:
...
"There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.
"But this service is now going to go through the internet* and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.
"Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?
"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. Why?
"Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
"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.
"Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?
"Do you know why?
"Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people."
This quote (more fully found here; there is also a link to the audio recording on that page) doesn't actually get at what the Senator was talking about--how corporations clog the "tubes," causing them to be unavailable to the average consumer for sending "internets," and therefore telephone companies should be allowed to charge fees to content providers to discourage clogging the "tubes."
Here is a tracking of the Senator's delayed "internet."
Also see, of course, the relevant Wikipedia entry.
[and this is why we should probably hand decisionmaking authority with regard to this type of regulation to an expert body, rather than leaving it to congresspeople who don't even know the proper use of the word "email."]
I don't get it. The techie link does not explain in the least bit how it actually works. Does the data transfer happen directly between the users? Does it go through a server first where everything has the potential of being logged? In the case of multiple recipients is it unicast or multicast? What level of security have you done (I assume that the file transfers are encrypted). The email looked like a custom app to me, not any old email client, does that go through a centralized server before it is sent out as 'real' smtp email? What ports do you use for transfer, and does it work through a NAT?
All right - going through their website quickly before I hit submit I got most of my answers. It's TCP 80 and 443, it appears to use a centralized server (thereby having a 2GB limit, and logging all access), and does not work through NAT yet.
But this information should definitely have been available in the techies video. There was no technical information in that video at all.
So if you have some "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters", by all means share it with us. We'll want to know all the gory technical details that the mainstream press gets turned off by. If we think it rocks, you'll hear no end of it. We'll be bragging to everyone about how we know about this cool new thing that's really clever and is going to be huge. I should imagine that scenario to be a marketer's wet dream.
However on a more cautionary note, if you should ever try to use or misuse us, or this site, purely as a marketing tool, we'll tear your product to pieces. It'll be mocked by us mercilessly and swiftly forgotten. The overall marketing effort would be starkly hindered by the historic mauling that we gave it in its infancy. That sounds a lot like a marketer's worst nightmare.
So please, tell your marketer friends our message. Bring us genuine, interesting news and we'll do your job for you better than you could have ever hoped. Bring us tired, overhyped, nothing new to see here slashvertisements and we'll get mad. Then we'll get even. Then we'll go back to being odd.
If you think there's something truly new or special about your product, double-check with some really hardcore geek friends. If they say things like "so it's just a file sharing app?" or "and?" then it's probably best not to bring the hype to our door. IMHO you should only bring it here if they say things like: "Holy crap - why didn't I think of that?" or "Damn that's smart. I thought I knew what I was talking about but your guys must really know their shit!" or even "You're shitting me! When did that happen?"
Good luck with selling the software.
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and the rest of the Senate are a series of giant assholes.
No, the Internet is NOT like a superhighway
"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.
(author unknown)
My bicyles
... my ferrets have had internets for years! They love 'em! I even got them a router, that connects one of the 25' innernets to two of the 12' internets. The other three 25' innernets are simple PPP, however, and the routes are a tangled mess. I'm hoping to upgrade to a six port router in a few weeks, because as hard as the weasels try, the internets are DEFINITELY half duplex. They're not Cat5, either... he can stuff his head in, but that's all that'll fit without fragmentation.
The thing that sucks the most is when one of the internets get a hole chewed into it. The damned packets end up misrouted, on the floor, and you have to twist the innernet so that the hole is facing up to make it stop. Having a kitten who repeatedly cannonballs the array doesn't help much, either, because he uses the holes in the web to intercept the traffic.
In Ferret Internets, PACKETS SNIFF YOU!
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
...we'll tear your product to pieces. It'll be mocked by us mercilessly and swiftly forgotten. The overall marketing effort would be starkly hindered by the historic mauling that we gave it in its infancy.Yeah, just like the thrashing we gave the iPod. You suck, Apple!
That's OK. It takes quite a bit more than mere paragraph formatting to make sense out of anything GWB says.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!