What Does the 'Next Internet' Look Like?

Kraisch writes with a link to the Guardian website, which again revisits the subject of reconstructing the internet. This time the question isn't whether it should be done, but what should the goals of a redesign be? From the article: "'There's a real need to have better identity management, to declare your age and to know that when you're talking to, say, Barclays bank, that you're really doing so,' said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute. At the moment we are still using very clumsy methods to approach such problems. The result: last year alone, identity theft and online fraud cost British victims an estimated £414m, while one recent report claimed 93% of all email sent from the UK was spam ... Many ideas revolve around so-called "mesh networks", which link many computers to create more powerful, reliable connections to the internet. By using small meshes of many machines that share a pipeline to the net instead of relying on lots of parallel connections, experts say they can create a system that is more intelligent and less prone to attack."

Comments

It looks like

[eviloverlordx]

1984.

Re:It looks like

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Maybe 1985. I want color.

Seriously. How about plain text, maybe a standard color and graphics set, no embedded content, downloadable material only. We could even let the government have their infinite monitoring system. If it were all plain text then there'd be no secret to it. To make encoded binary workarounds undesireable, limit the whole sha-bang to 4800 bps. That'll please the recording industry too. Blank CD sales will go through the roof.

Draw a few lines to keep the network secure. Let the crowd whine and cry that it's too difficult to download a file and open it locally with the appropriate application. Those people never really wanted or needed computers anyway. Let them go back to playing dominos or Yahtzee or something.

Do you realize how many problems we could solve by putting the open network back on the terms that it should never have left?

Re:It looks like

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the primary activity of a civilized person is commerce, the new web needs to be optimally efficient for reliable business exchanges.

That means that any and every participant can be identified. Anonymity leads to fraud and hence it cannot be tolerated. If you post anything, it should always be possible to trace that back to you.

Also, there should be good record keeping of all online activity, not just for receipt verification but also for legal purposes. This gives the added benefit of making cyber-terrorism more difficult, and enabling a wider range of response options for law enforcement.

Also, there should be very tight controls on the sorts of actions that people can take online. The duplication of intellectual property is illegal, so the system should be designed in such a way that makes this nearly impossible to do (and easy to observe and pinpoint when done). A good way to do this would be to have a central registry of file transfers that administers file transfer licenses on a case-by-case bases. Vendors can pre-authorize the repeated distribution of their products while individuals will need to individually authorize each file they want to transfer. The files in question will, of course, have copies preserved for tracking purposes.

Lastly, better controls on encrypted data exchange need to be put in place. When everyone and his brother can encrypt their communications it becomes impossible to enforce the intellectual property laws which serve as the backbone of the new economy. Ideally individual users would never be able to encrypt anything unless working within the some pre-approved context, such as development on a government contract or what-have-you. Again, some central agency should serve as the distributor of encryption licenses, granting them in bulk to vendors as appropriate for the nature of their business.

Such an Internet would make it much more difficult for people to commit IP crimes, thus freeing up law enforcement resources to focus on other matters. Also, it would allow businesses to easily keep very accurate track of the activities of their clients, and trade this information with one another for demographic marketing efficiency. The greatest benefits of all go to the consumer, of course, since they will have convenient access to online products of every variety for very affordable prices...that alone being more than enough justification for requiring them to absorb the costs of all the data-tracking that needs to be done in order for this infrastructure to exist.

The future is so bright, I need to dim my monitor!

Re:It looks like

[PopeRatzo]

This is easy, the new internet looks like...

AOL!

Re:It looks like

[cayenne8]

"Given that the primary activity of a civilized person is commerce, the new web needs to be optimally efficient for reliable business exchanges.

That means that any and every participant can be identified. Anonymity leads to fraud and hence it cannot be tolerated. If you post anything, it should always be possible to trace that back to you.

Also, there should be good record keeping of all online activity, not just for receipt verification but also for legal purposes. This gives the added benefit of making cyber-terrorism more difficult, and enabling a wider range of response options for law enforcement.

Also, there should be very tight controls on the sorts of actions that people can take online...."

Wow....I don't even know where to start to reply to this, I seriously hope this is a troll and no one truly wants this. If you were serious, man, I'd be scared to live in your world.

That first statement...I dunno, I work, I earn money, but only to live and have fun...it is NOT my primary concern. And commerce can and did exist quite well before the internet. Believe it or not, commerce was a late commer to the internet age...it wasn't invented for commerce, and I see no reason it should change and lose the things that make it great just to accomodate commerce. If they want a separate network for that, ok, but, not the common internet.

I can see the 'wild west' days of the internet coming to a close already, kinda sad. I personally like it unregulated, where any crackhead is free to spout off anything they want, and rant as long as their modem holds out. In the midst of all that's out there, I've found some interesting stuff, and some valid viewpoints that have changed my views on many things.

I hope they never take away the ability for Joe Sixpack or Thomas Genius to freely get on and publish what they want. That scares the govt. and those in power in some cases. That's why anonymity is often needed too.

If they lock down the internet (Web, USENET, etc...), it sure will make a day of surfing around a lot less fun and informative.

Re:It looks like

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you realize how many problems we could solve by putting the open network back on the terms that it should never have left?


The OP meant 1984 in an Orwellian sense. Which is much likelier than the scenario you describe.

I dread an overhaul of "The Internet", whatever that even means, because there is no way in hell it would be allowed to be the Wild West that it is today. It would certainly be much more like television or radio in that large corporations would "broadcast" to you and user generated content would be completely on their terms. Gone would be the days where anyone could start up a website about anything; some sort of expensive license would be required and personal pages would be relegated to whatever version of Myspace or Facebook still exists. Anonymity would, of course, be impossible.

The goverment and communications companies were taken by surprise the first time around.. That's not happening again.

Re:It looks like

[Eravnrekaree]

These sorts of schemes to restructure the internet make me uncomfortable, because it is fine as it is. From some of the comments I hear from these people it also shows they often know very little about how the internet works, such as "instead of having parallel connections it might be better to have a mesh connection with computers sharing an internet connection". These people sound like they have no idea about network design, for instance, in many cases, networks do multiplex data from many different computers onto a single cable.

I also am concerned they want to turn the internet into a corporate controlled broadcast medium where the only people who can do things with it are big corporations, basically turning it into a computerised television, compared with how worthless television and shallow it is compared to the diversity and spectrum of the open access internet, where it seems small individual average users can put together better contne than huge media corporations, this is not appealing to me.

I know what it looks like

[Skreech]

A series of pipes.

Re:I know what it looks like

[Nefarious Wheel]

A series of hoses;

You're saying it will be mostly Canadian?

Meet the New Internet...

[Zontar The Mindless]

Same as the old Internet...

My ideals on the "next internet".

[necro2607]

What should the "next internet" be? Wireless. Configuration-less. Always connected. High speed. Low cost. Cross-platform, cross-device, and accessible by even the simplest devices (wristwatch syncing to online time server?). Access/infrastructure not controlled by single corporations.

Ever seen the Ghost in the Shell movies and series? Make that "Net" real. :)

Re:My ideals on the "next internet".

[CastrTroy]

I don't see why you'd want a wristwatch to be contacting the internet. They only drift by about 10 seconds per year, and any extra exactness that you'd get from syncing with the internet, would probably be lost in battery life. The only time my watch drifts any noticable amount is when the battery is low, at which point it would probably be unable to contact the internet anyway.

Re:My ideals on the "next internet".

[TheRaven64]

A wristwatch has an alarm function. I want this alarm to automatically sync with my calendar, and beep at me when I'm meant to be doing something. I also want it to be automatically updated to changes in daylight saving times, and to set itself to local time when I am travelling.

Oh, and I want it to be not more than 5mm thick, never need recharging, and be stylish and elegant. And a pony.

Re:My ideals on the "next internet".

[David_W]

And a pony.

No, you can't have a pony.

This sounds familiar

[thatskinnyguy]

"Many ideas revolve around so-called "mesh networks", which link many computers to create more powerful, reliable connections to the internet" Sounds like Web 3.0 will be built on one massive Beowulf Cluster after another connected together by a "series of tubes".

Missing the point

[orclevegam]

We don't need a new internet, the internet serves a purpose, and it does it well. What we need is something like the internet but designed to solve particular problems. A network with certified identity of all participants would be good for banking, and financial transactions, although it would be terrible as a internet replacement because part of the good of the internet is the possibility of anonymity. Similarly, I think the push to cram ever more rich functionality into JS and AJAXish things is probably a bad idea, when what we really need is a application browser in the same vein as a web browser. Don't take working systems and cram more stuff into them, make new systems designed to do what you want.

the internet is for porn

[garlicbready]

exactly the same as the old one
except with more high quality Blu-Ray porn of course

There is no next.

[clubhi]

This internet fad is about to die. BTW, it's kind of funny how close this is to an article about the next web bubble bursting... It seems like to me we would need a lot of programmers to work on the next internet.

No more anonymous cowards?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Identity Management" implies the existence of "Identity Managers", which I find a bit distasteful.

Also, a non-anonymous internet provides even more incentive for identity theft. "No, no it wasn't me who was looking at gay porn. See, look at the ID"

The "new internet"

[Lendrick]

The new internet, if it ever comes to pass, will be designed by governments and large corporations. This will mean the following:

* No more anonymity. You'll need to identify yourself just to get onto the network, and protections will be in place to keep you from hiding behind a proxy. Your computer's unique ID will be registered in your name, and it will be available to the FBI, CIA, and RIAA upon request (no warrant required).

* Large barrier to entry. No more setting up your own server without getting special permission to act as a server. There will be a barrier between servers and clients, and consumers will be second-class citizens in this regard.

* Probably less spam. Tighter controls will make it harder for spammers to get their unwanted traffic into the intertubes. Also, now that it's possible to implement an email tax, email spam could be made prohibitively expensive.

* Better security. Locking the internet down will help somewhat in keeping the criminal element out, because it will (theoretically) be a lot easier to trace where they're coming from.

So, you win some, you lose some. There's a use for this kind of network, but only for secure transactions. I don't think a "new internet" is something that anyone here would want to use.

Re:The "new internet"

[Dachannien]

Less spam, but more ads. Digital signatures through encrypted browsers with DMCA-backed hack prevention to prevent filtering out the ads. More ads means more annoying ads, to distract you from the other ads on the same page.

In general, I'd take our current Intarweb over that, warts and all.

Re:The "new internet"

[halcyon1234]

A couple disagreements:

* Probably less spam. Tighter controls will make it harder for spammers to get their unwanted traffic into the intertubes.

Correction, less unauthorized spam. You'll get more than your daily dose of Real Official Good For You spam straight from whoever owns the Internext.

* Better security. Locking the internet down will help somewhat in keeping the criminal element out, because it will (theoretically) be a lot easier to trace where they're coming from.

I'd lean heavily on the "theoretically" part. There's still registered handguns killing people, licensed drivers doing illegal things on the road, and scammers using Ma Bell's network. The Internext might change the frequency and face of Bad Shit Going Down, but won't eliminate it.

Re:The "new internet"

[Tom]

I doubt the "better security" part, but maybe that's just because I work in that industry.

Large corporations are horrible with regards to security. It's a rare exception that they have better security. More importantly, on this level they will - if at all - have the better security for them, not for the users. Which means we will face the same virus, trojans and bot networks problem as right now, with the spam coming right out of those owned machines.

The most likely bullet point that you forgot to mention is this one:

* It won't work. There will be 500 incompatible, competing, closed protocols for everything. And players like MS will add new variations on purpose all the time, so every time the market consolidates, it'll be splintered again, except among less players.

Privacy concerns

[CaptainPatent]

Wiretapping and privacy concerns are already very prevalent as even at this point in time it isn't outrageously hard to track someone down online unless they are very good at covering tracks. I can't imagine how bad this would be when such information is kept and record as a standard.
I view this much in the same way as why a presidential election is kept as a secret ballot. Much of the information about browsing history and activities can reflect both positively and negatively on your own personal views which one should have the ability to keep private if they wish. In this way we can choose our religious, moral and personal views much more freely and need not tolerate unwarranted persecution.
I just hope this idea isn't being considered too seriously.

Where are the trolls?

[east coast]

Where is that idiot with the goatcx photo when it's finally appropriate?

Re:Anonymous cowards?

[iknownuttin]

How does that jive with anonymous cowards wanting to keep thier identity hidden?

It would help keep your identity from being stolen. Which, I think it has. Just look at all the folks who have been posting under your name!

Change will be evolutionary

[davidwr]

Whatever the change, it will be evolutionary not revolutionary. We've got too much invested to have another red-letter day like the USENET Great Renaming.

Within a few years, expect almost every computer to have a TPM-like chip installed. It will be up to the user and the operating system to provide support for this chip. However, banks and similar web sites may refuse to talk to customers who are not using these chips.

What will the future hold? Some entities, like Banks, will insist on stronger authentication than today's 2-factor authentication schemes. In some countries, all web site owners and managers will have to register themselves in an authenticated way, so the government can track the owners down if the web site is used for illegal purposes.

Citizens in free countries will be torn between the need for accountability and the need for anonymity and privacy.

In non-free countries this will not be an issue except for those trying to evade regulations requiring all Internet users to register with the government or those trying to avoid tracking.

In relatively free countries, expect government regulations in the name of fighting terrorism, thinkofthechildren, and fighting fraud. Barring a major scare, expect such regulations to creep up slowly so the general public won't rise up in revolt.

ID theft is not an internet problem.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The root cause of identity theft is that the credit industry wants to lend without too much of checking and authentication. If someone has an impulse to borrow, they want to lend it immediately before the moment passes. If they issue a few bad loans they consider it cost of doing business. If criminals take advantage of it and borrow both the identity and the money, the credit industry does not care because there is no serious liability to the lender who lent the money. A few thousand dollars, big deal, cost of doing business for them. It is the victims of id-theft who raise a hue and cry.

ID theft is not limited to the internet. The waiter who takes away your credit card, or people who steal from your mailbox, or people who file a change of address form to intercept your mail, or employees who have access to the credit card numbers in the sales/accounting dept, employees in doctor's offices or hospital billing dept, can steal identities.

It is stupid to assume id theft is an internet problem or to find technical solution for it when there is no incentive for the credit industry to cut down on it. If a lender damages my credit rating by lax lending, the lender is liable for a sum like 10% of my annual income. Then they will clean up their act in a hurry.

Re:ID theft is not an internet problem.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

What are you talkin' about? None of my friends are in serious credit card debt. In my extended circle of friends nobody owns a car more than five years old. None of them rent. No body has serious debt credit card or HELOC.

In America there is no reason to drown in debt except for the extremely poor people. There is no public transportation infrastructure here. So the poorest of the poor are just one fender bender, one alternator failure, one radiator failure or one medical emergency from bankruptcy. Their car breaks down, they cant get to work, they get into very high interest rate credit and get into an never ending circle of debt. But for this section, everyone else is drowning in debt because of their own poor financial skills.

People drowning in debt still have digital cable and cell phones, they eat out in restaurants, live in huge homes they cant afford ... I dont have much sympathy for folks who borrow without knowing their limits.

Re:ID theft is not an internet problem.

[HomelessInLaJolla]

I disagree with you. But, please, continue on telling me about the things which you think you know.

Re:The first thing to come to my head...

[lilomar]

"Normal People do not look at porn on the internet!"
"Ooooooohhhhhh? You have no idea!
Ready Normal People?"
"Ready."
"Ready."
"Ready."
"Let me hear it!"

Re:Save us from morons

[TheRaven64]

I want identity in the sense that SILC provides. I have no way of knowing who a given 'fred' is, but I do have a way of ensuring that the 'fred' I'm talking to today is the same as the 'fred' I was talking to yesterday. If mapping a person or corporation's online entity to a physical identity is important then it should be done out of band, or via a trusted third party.

encrypted, decentralized p2p network

[lawpoop]

I personally would like to see a decentralized, encrypted p2p network. Using PKI, we could create a system where you send an encrypted email out into the p2p network. It's passed around until it gets to its intended recipient, who has the decryption key. Since it's encrypted, nobody else can read it. Because of the PKI, you can be certain of who sent you the email, that it's really from them, and that nobody intercepted it on its way.

Now instead of just email, change this to any kind of data. Create your own username with a private key, and you can use it to get access to data directed to you on any machine connected to the PKI network.

Want anonymity? Just create another identity.

Re:encrypted, decentralized p2p network

[AnyoneEB]

I think a large part of FreeNet's slowness comes from anonymity being one of its goals. Although it is a good feature, anonymous communications tend to be very slow. In general, I do not think anonymity is required for anonymous communications and a system like FreeNet could be used when necessary, taking the performance it associated with it. I think you could probably design a protocol such that content gets signed so you always know who it is from and then knowing an IP address they have used as well is not a big deal.

There is no next, just evolution

[deckert_za]

It's not as if the Internet is going to be turned off one day and the guys in the hard hats will say "okey folks, turn on the new one!".

The Internet as we know it will always improve a series of small steps and as time goes by it will get faster, and improved. The one year your local Telco will offer 512k DSL lines, the next they suddenly have 4mbit lines available. But inbetween there was 768k, 1024k, etc.

--deckert

Re:The first thing to come to my head...

[Kratisto]

You're not alone. also... FOR PORN!

Re:These people have serious free time...

[TheRaven64]

You don't have a system of 'connect directly to your bank' unless you dial up their account with your modem (and even then you probably don't these days). I just checked with a couple of my banks. I had around 15-20 machines between me and each of them. All a mesh network does is make the routing a little more dynamic.

The real issues, and how to fix them.

[Animats]

There are only a few major issues:

• Identifying sellers. If you're a seller, you can't be anonymous. That's the law in California and the European Union, but enforcement is weak. We're dealing with that at SiteTruth, where we try to find the business behind the web site. If we can't, we downgrade their search ranking.
• Identifying buyers. That's a problem for the credit card industry. If they really considered it a problem, they'd fix it. They have the tools. One-time credit card numbers, confirmation by cell phone, smart credit cards - solutions are known.
• Spam Spam by legitimate businesses mostly died with CAN-SPAM, because anything clearly identifiable can be easily filtered. Everything left comes from crooks. And not very many different crooks. Notice how few different spams get through your filters. What's left is a law enforcement problem. Someday the main Viagra spammer will be found and arrested, and that problem will shrink. The US SEC is working the pump-and-dump problem.
• Vulnerable clients Make Microsoft financially liable and the problem gets fixed, fast.

We don't need to redesign the Internet, much as some telcos would like to so they can raise rates. All the major problems are at the endpoints.

I don't care what it looks like

[spun]

As long as I can stab someone in the face through it.

Re:Anonymous cowards?

[TubeSteak]

How does that jive with anonymous cowards wanting to keep thier identity hidden? When I think online identity management, I don't think name, social security number, age, etc.

There just needs to be ubiquitous and robust means to confirm that Anonymous Coward 2058436658 is Anonymous Coward 2058436658. Whether you attach that identification to a real name & information (or not) should be immaterial.

I'm divided over any attempts to create a mandatory means of identifying internet users by age. On the one hand, maybe the government will create a walled off under 18 internet, which means the "think of the children" crowd can leave the rest of us alone...

OTOH, people under the age of 18 have lots to contribute to and learn from their elders.

Yes

[newr00tic]

Good enough idea, but internet[0] can already do this.

Proceed to shitlist everyone that you've yet to arrange a keyswap with, and enjoy fully encrypted communication.

(--If both parties agree that a bond via electronic communication is 'important enough,' you'll soon see your f[r]iends converted to encryption in an eyeblink..)

Should you wish to 'invite' more people once they turn responsible, you're free to do so.

(Effectivity by using lowest acceptable sanity-denominator.)

Multi langauge urls.

[kabocox]

English not being the dominate net character set. The main character sets of the Indian, Chinese, and Russian languages being dominate in most net content and urls.

Just having most Chinese and Indians on the net. The governments quickly find that they don't need grand cultural firewalls. China and India making editing/expanding wikipedia a primary school class that students start in elementary school and have every year thereafter.

Re:It looks like...

[Anonymous Coward]

The word you were looking for is "Viruses." They existed on UNIX before Microsoft was a wet dream.

oblig. futurama

[Joe the Lesser]

Fry: Wow. In my day, the only reason people went on the Internet was pornography.

Professor Farnsworth: Actually, that's still the case.

Re:Is this the one?

[Burz]

No kidding.

We wouldn't even need to raise the question of a "next internet" if people were trained to pay attention to the domain info in their browser address bar, and in the links underneath their mouse pointer. That's in addition to using and paying attention to certificates/SSL status as you pointed out.

Every person who opens a browser window should have an intense awareness of the various certificate alerts that the browser may display (what what to do about them).

That all is not a lot to ask of the average Internet user. I'd even bet its far less complicated and frustrating than what a "Next Internet" with remote attestation scheme would demand from users' time and attention.

Woooooosh...

[lilomar]

The sound of the sarcasm whizzing by over your head.

It looks like this one:

[ThousandStars]

The "next" Internet looks like this one, except with censorship and less spam.

I'll take the spam.

The "Problem" Is Open Endedness

[CodeBuster]

The trap which the Guardian falls into, and it is a common one among the public, is the notion that because people now use the Internet for certain tasks, which it was not specially designed to accommodate but rather *could* accommodate in a layered approach, that it must be redesigned to carve out special support for tasks which it now coincidentally supports, but may or may not in the future. They forget that among the original design goals of the Internet (the ARPANET rather) was to have the most robust, generic, expandable, and scalable system possible, even at the expense of support for more specific and advanced features which could be built on top of the basic protocols anyway (and they have been). In networking it is not so much what one puts into a protocol, but rather what one judiciously leaves out in order not to limit what can built on top. The basic protocols of the Internet have served us well for over 30 years now and really do need to be changed much if at all. If they want to offer new "services" then they should submit their proposals to W3C and build a special banking layer which clients must support, on top of basic HTTPS, to support the features that they want so that the principle of least knowledge applies. Alas, the principles of good engineering and good software engineering are lost on the consumer society which loves all-in-one devices that do nothing really well and don't force people to think about really *good* solutions.

Re:The "Problem" Is Open Endedness

[Bluesman]

Amen.

The layered approach is the greatest thing ever. The network we use today looks nothing like it did in the 80's, and yet nobody had to build a "new Internet" to get us here. Does anyone remember the big wavelength division multiplexing upgrades in the 90's? Or the shift away from ATM? No, you don't, because it happened without you having to realize it. (I know, unless you work for a communications company...)

In order to have this flexibility, you need to have a dumb network at the base, that simply routes packets as quickly as possible. Any tradeoff designed to increase performance will adversely affect flexibility, and I think we can all agree the flexibility is a huge win.

I want it

[uberjoe]

just like the internet is now, but with porn. Lots and lots of porn. . .oh wait. Nevermind.

hmmm.

[Lehk228]

WINTERMUTE

Poorest of the poor?

[Pfhorrest]

I think you have an odd sense of "poorest of the poor".

I'm 25 years old, just finished at university (with a crappy degree that won't be of much use to me), and have been working between half and full time at about 2x minimum wage for the past five years while in school. I rent a room in a four-bedroom house with some friends of mine, at the lowest rates I can find in this town. (Admittedly an expensive town - Santa Barbara, CA - but it's where I grew up and I'm still here). I couldn't afford to rent the whole house out at these rates, much less make payments on a house of my own. I have a crappy 15-year-old car (which I own outright), a five year old computer, and not many other possessions besides clothes, bedding and kitchen wares. I've got no debt, and I managed to save up a few thousand dollars before moving out of my father's shit hole of a house (parents are dirt poor), but if it weren't for those meager savings, "one fender bender, one alternator failure, one radiator failure or one medical emergency" would put me in the dire straights you describe.

Yet apparently, I'm well above the government-defined poverty level (I make between $17K and $20K a year; poverty level is apparently around $10K/yr), and I appear to be better off than most of the people my age I know in person (though people I meet online seem remarkably more wealthy for some reason). The only reason I have any money saved up is because I worked a year or so without paying any rent before moving out on my own, and because my folks are poor enough that most of my education has been free; and because I work every waking hour I'm not in school and live within the limits of what I can make off of that. I don't have to live off ramen or cup-o-soup. But I'm still in with the "poorest of the poor" in your book - because I rent, I own an old car, and one big catastrophe could put me back at ground zero or worse, into debt.

I'll totally agree with you that people who make $50K+ a year and are drowning in debt just don't know how to live within their limits, but not everybody who makes less than that is "the poorest of the poor" - some people are a lot poorer. (And this is only considering within America; by comparison to most [though certainly not all] of the world, we're all stinking rich). I honestly don't know whether or not to consider myself poor anymore; in comparison to most of my friends I seem to be rich, but then the impression I get from people like you online is that I should be paying off my own home and investing in a retirement fund by now.

I guess the point I'm making is regarding your comment "But for this section...". Not everybody reading Slashdot is a successful engineer making big money in Silicon Valley; and the people besides that group aren't all "the poorest of the poor". We may be poor (I really don't know anymore), but there's a lot of us out here, and we're not some kind of marginalized minority fringe group with no representation on the Internet, so please don't talk about us in the third person and lump us in with the poor kids working the fry basket at McDonalds.