Slashdot Mirror
You Won't Recognize the Internet in 2020
alphadogg writes "As they imagine the Internet of 2020, computer scientists across the country are starting from scratch and re-thinking everything: from IP addresses to DNS to routing tables to Internet security in general. They're envisioning how the Internet might work without some of the most fundamental features of today's ISP and enterprise networks. Their goal is audacious: To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management. Researchers are trying to build an Internet that's more reliable, higher performing and better able to manage exabytes of content. And they're hoping to build an Internet that extends connectivity to the most remote regions of the world, perhaps to other planets. This high-risk, long-range Internet research will kick into high gear in 2010, as the US federal government ramps up funding to allow a handful of projects to move out of the lab and into prototype. Indeed, the United States is building the world's largest virtual network lab across 14 college campuses and two nationwide backbone networks so that it can engage thousands – perhaps millions – of end users in its experiments."
The question is will a government-funded internet make big-brother-ing easier?
I believe that the government (at least in the U.S.) funded the original Internet.
Well the internet is very much a creation of a bunch of academics with state funding, so lets not stereotype so much.
And Al Gore actually had a lot to do with changing the Internet from being a few universities, government agencies, and big businesses into a tool that gazillions of people use. Say what you will about his other political stances, but he deserves quite a bit of credit for his work in the Senate that makes it clear he thought the geeks had a very good thing going.
I am officially gone from
Ha? You are talking about prepaid cash cards. They exist for a while now. A lot of places in the USA no less, like Walgreens (as Mom and pop as you get), sell them, and visa logoed cards too. slysoft uses it for their **aa averse customers for example.
Actually, it's not the whole system that has to be inviolate, just the kernel. There are projects to produce a provable L4 microkernel, for example. This would allow the user to have a machine that they could then trust to only give away resources they chose.
Don't confuse a locked down kernel with a locked down computer. With the current OS selections you have, it's not possible to make a distiction, but it doesn't have to be this way. The problem boils down to the default permissive environment that we're all used to thinking and modeling our systems on top of. Capability based systems are a default deny environment, but you are free to give away as much as you want to a program of your choice.