Steve Jones is very blatantly a fake name, it even states that in TFA. However, it also stated that his Wikipedia entry revealed his true name - which, upon inspection, is no longer there. Two changes were made to his entry today, but whether or not those changes removed his name is unknown. I don't think the WSJ has done anything wrong in writing this article, and I'm sure "Mr. Jones" has at least taking some precautions to hiding his true identity. Saying that the WSJ has "ruined his credibility and his life" is more than a little extreme.
A peer-to-peer network would work, just not very well. The Internet as we know it would cease to exist. Routers would become useless - hell, IP would be pointless. Very loosely speaking, you can think of an IP address (IPv4) as a representation of a four-tiered hiearchy, as was (for the most part) its original intent. For example (once again very loosely speaking) the IP address of 192.168.1.21 can be viewed as the 21st machine one tier beneath the 1st network that is one tier beneath the 168th network that is one tier beneath the 192nd network. A four tiered system inherient in the addressing scheme of the Internet.
The Internet has the potential to become extremely efficient and fast - and in many cases that's what it is, relatively speaking - because of this hiearchy. The data from a given web server is sent upstream through thin pipes into switches that are sent further upstream through thicker pipes to routers(their ISP) that are sent on to other routers through even thicker pipes (the Internet backbone) and then back down again (your ISP, your switch, your PC). Peer to peer networks don't allow this.
On a side note, the notorious "two-tiered" Internet is an enormous, gargantuan step backwards.
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Steve Jones is very blatantly a fake name, it even states that in TFA. However, it also stated that his Wikipedia entry revealed his true name - which, upon inspection, is no longer there. Two changes were made to his entry today, but whether or not those changes removed his name is unknown. I don't think the WSJ has done anything wrong in writing this article, and I'm sure "Mr. Jones" has at least taking some precautions to hiding his true identity. Saying that the WSJ has "ruined his credibility and his life" is more than a little extreme.
A peer-to-peer network would work, just not very well. The Internet as we know it would cease to exist. Routers would become useless - hell, IP would be pointless. Very loosely speaking, you can think of an IP address (IPv4) as a representation of a four-tiered hiearchy, as was (for the most part) its original intent. For example (once again very loosely speaking) the IP address of 192.168.1.21 can be viewed as the 21st machine one tier beneath the 1st network that is one tier beneath the 168th network that is one tier beneath the 192nd network. A four tiered system inherient in the addressing scheme of the Internet. The Internet has the potential to become extremely efficient and fast - and in many cases that's what it is, relatively speaking - because of this hiearchy. The data from a given web server is sent upstream through thin pipes into switches that are sent further upstream through thicker pipes to routers(their ISP) that are sent on to other routers through even thicker pipes (the Internet backbone) and then back down again (your ISP, your switch, your PC). Peer to peer networks don't allow this. On a side note, the notorious "two-tiered" Internet is an enormous, gargantuan step backwards.