Talk:Internet/Archive 3

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Talk archives for Internet (current talk page)
<< 1 < Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 > 3 >>

Contents

Text removal

I removed the following text from the article, this texts includes POV. I don't think this stuff is suitable for an encyclopedia article. --Haham hanuka 07:46, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

How are these POV? They're actual problems. Can it really seriously be argued that the Internet has not faciliated increases in child porn, copyright infringement, viruses, and people finding each other? If you have a problem with an individual section, it can be dealt with, but mass deletion isn't the answer. If the Internet creates problems, as studies show it has, then how can not mentioning them possibly be NPOV? -- Wisq 13:08, 2005 May 25 (UTC)
I don't know when "people finding each other" became a problem.... and all of the points can be seriously argued, the views are simplistic even though some of the problems are real-world problems. agree with the removal. --Alvestrand 00:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Well done, Haham. Some of the daft statements in those sections have been irritating me for a long time. --Nigelj 19:05, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Current and potential problems

The Internet, along with its benefits, has a lot of negative publicity associated with it ranging from genuine concerns to tabloid scaremongering.

Child abuse

According to children's charities, the number of annual convictions for child pornography offences have increased by over 1000% since the Internet was first available to the public in the late 1980s. With the recent growth in Chat rooms and instant messaging services in the late 1990s, the potential for a new form of child abuse has emerged: so-called grooming. This involves a pedophile pretending to be a child in a chat room/instant message conversation, to gain the trust of a child before arranging to meet up.

Copyright infringement

Copyright infringement has also been the focus of much media attention, mainly through peer-to-peer filesharing software, but also through private members-only chatrooms, so-called warez sites (which either offer unauthorised copies of software directly or the means to crack copy protection), or even the sale of counterfeit CDs, DVDs and software masquerading as official product. Many ordinary Internet users are less concerned about the actual infringement itself but more about the effect on the Internet as a whole if tighter controls result from the infringement.

Viruses

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when very few people had access to the Internet, viruses were not a huge problem. They did exist and did cause just as much damage to computers as modern viruses can today, but there was no fast-moving epidemic because there was no means for a virus to directly infect other computers. Before the Internet, the only way for a computer to be infected was through use of a removable disc that was itself infected. As a result, virus infections were mercifully rare.

All that changed with the widespread growth of the Internet. With near-universal Internet access among computer users in developed countries, and the proliferation of high-speed broadband Internet connections, a virus on one person's computer can infect thousands of other computers. In fact, much of the disruption from virus outbreaks is caused not by the payload of the virus (e.g. deleting hard drive, shutting down computer every five minutes), but by the Internet congestion caused by the virus spreading itself.

Security cracking

Main article: Security cracking

When computers were stand alone machines (or at most connected to a company's internal network), to steal data from a system an intruder had to physically steal it. The Internet means that data from an insecure site could be stolen by someone working two blocks from the site, or just as easily from another country.

Some of the recent high-profile examples of this were when a working version of the source code for Half Life 2 was copied from the developer's computer systems by security crackers and when portions of the Windows NT codebase were copied from one of the companies that had access to it via the Microsoft Shared Source initiative. In both cases the Internet was used for dissemination of the leaked code, in particular using P2P networks.

Dated technology

Very few people outside the technical community are aware of the future problems posed by the Internet's archaic technology. It was originally designed for a small number of research institutions to share research data, and was never intended for the multi-billion user behemoth the modern Internet has become.

One serious problem is that the IP address (a unique number assigned to each Internet computer, functioning much like a street address in the real world) will run out eventually. Despite an estimated world population of over six billion, there are only a little over four billion different IP address combinations possible under the current system — see IPv4 address exhaustion for more information. This also does not take into account the fact that there is not a 1:1 person to computer ratio in current computerised countries, where many people will have a desktop machine at home, a laptop machine for on the go, another desktop machine at work, and an e-mail mobile phone, all requiring their own IP address.

This could pose serious problems in the future as more and more nations expand their computer infrastructure (the vast majority of the world's population does not currently use the Internet, that is the so-called digital divide) and even now efforts are proceeding to find new ways of running the Internet. The new version of the Internet Protocol, IPv6, which expands the address space of the Internet, is one proposal for how to deal with some of the technical problems caused by the growth of the Internet.

Self-destructive subcultures

As a decentralized, largely uncensored worldwide network, the Internet promotes free speech. Since the early 1990s, it has been widely recognized that the Internet enables broader distribution of all ideas, including those considered distasteful by any portion of the population. The most widely condemned of these ideas are those that promote, condone, or justify the infliction of violence upon innocent, non-consenting people. Examples include racism, sexism, and fascism.

Around 2000, The Atlantic Monthly and other publications revealed a similar but distinct issue: The Internet also allows people who exhibit or wish to practice abnormal behavior to find one another easily, due to anonymous search engines and online forums or services. As sparse subpopulations, it was often unlikely or difficult to find willing partners or like-minded individuals prior to the Internet.

A small number of these subcultures promote self-destructive or mutually destructive behavior. Websites and mailing lists exist that explicitly promote anorexia, breatharianism, apotemnophilia, necrophilia, and suicide. While these activities are easily recognized as abnormal and self-destructive by most adults, many people fear that children or mentally ill persons visiting such sites would lack the maturity necessary to make that discrimination.

In rare cases, people have used the Internet to find willing partners for abnormal activities, but with disastrous or fatal results. In one case, a German named Armin Meiwes (the "German cannibal") made an online arrangement with Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes to kill and eat him. Meiwes was later convicted of manslaughter.

"Internet" is obsolete

Please correct. --Dtcdthingy 15:11, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Done. HTH. Andy Mabbett 15:27, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

accommodated?

what does this mean? Can't find it anywhere...

Requested move

  • Talk:Internet – Internet ? internet – (NB I know technically this doesn't require the page to actually move, but this still seems the most appropriate forum to bring it up) Whatever the gramattical/practical arguments, "Internet" with a capital letter is already an archaic convention and has never been used by the vast majority of its users. Here's a short Wired article on the topic.
Support — Dtcdthingy 09:01, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Oppose. Unique instances are capitalised. A sun is a star; the Sun is teh star we orbit. A moon is a celestial body; the Moon orbits the Earth. A web is a network; the Web is where Wikipedia lives. An internet is a computer network; the Internet is what we're using. Since when were Wired magazine arbiters of the English language? How (and by whom) was this "vast majority" counted? Andy Mabbett 10:47, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Internet is a proper noun. I remember when the Wired article came out and from what I remember, the decision was derided or ignored. As far as I can tell, the majority of other media and publishers use a capital Internet (for instance, see a Google news search). You're right that the majority of Internet users probably don't capitalize Internet, but I think that's because the majority of Internet users don't capitalize in general. — Knowledge Seeker দ 14:59, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. I've noticed that many quality newspapers and books are now losing the I in favour of i, too. And we can take out that piece of mis-guided pedantry at the start about all these other alleged small 'internets'. Don't confuse a network of computers with internetworking, which led to the internet. Small, private sets of interconnected networks or sub-nets are universally referred to as LANs, WANs or intranets in my experience; no-one ever says 'internets'. --Nigelj 19:17, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Except certain leaders of global superpowers. —Michael Z. 2005-06-17 05:41 Z
  • Oppose. The Internet was created in the United States, and nearly all of the underlying technologies were developed in the United States. In American English grammar, Internet is a proper noun, which means it should be capitalized. The vast majority of American publications continue to refer to "the Internet" — see my previous research contribution to the earlier version of this same discussion above. ICANN, the Internet Society, and the Internet Engineering Task Force continue to refer to "the Internet" as well. American English has grammar and style rules that are much more strict than most other dialects of English, especially with regards to capitalization. In my opinion, the 290 million speakers of American English have the prerogative on how to describe the network their government invented! --Coolcaesar 21:53, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • This isn't a "US English vs. English (or any other) English" debate. Andy Mabbett 21:58, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Actually, I think it is. When I did that LexisNexis search a while back (scroll up to see my research), I noticed that nearly all of the published sources for "the internet" were located outside of the United States. I think what is going on is that there is some "linguistic drift" going on in English-speaking countries outside of the United States, while the U.S., with its slightly more conservative attitude towards written English, continues to capitalize "the Internet" as it always has. --Coolcaesar 00:26, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Well that's that settled, then. Wikipedia isn't a US-centric publication. There's no need to stick to US usage, if the rest of the English-speaking world is evolving in a different way. It's just like any of the color/colour, gasoline/petrol and other US/rest-of-world spelling debates. What normally happens? --Nigelj 09:14, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • not possible. The wikimedia software does not support article names with an initial lower case letter, see Wikipedia:Naming_conventions. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:02, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose, even though it's pointless as there are no plans to move w:en to case-sensitivity on the first character, as the Internet is a proper noun (as distinct from the concept of an internet). James F. (talk) 00:58, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose It's academic in terms of the page title, but we should use the correct orthography in the body of this article and others. Wired may be an important indicator of computer culture, but certainly not of the English language. Yes, inter-networking did lead to the Internet, but the misguided pedantry here is to call capitalizing a proper noun archaic. —Michael Z. 2005-06-17 05:29 Z
    • Tell that to the London Times, Guardian, Financial Times - archaic? Just because the US is the biggest consumer of it, do we all have to say 'gasoline'? There's no need to argue 'US is right', just let go. --Nigelj 09:20, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • How about using the compromise position that's been adopted in most Wikipedia articles for such terms? Lead the article with something like: "The Internet (American English), or internet (Commonwealth English), is ..." Of course, that still doesn't solve the problem of what to do with the rest of the article.
      • Also, WP may not be an U.S.-centric institution, but the Internet is. In the case of the Internet, the U.S. is not only the biggest consumer (though soon to be overtaken by China), but the country that created it and continues to do a large part of the work of advancing it. There was simply no equivalent to ARPA in the European Union during the 1960s — that is, there was no equivalent of J.C.R. Licklider to dispense millions of dollars to creative research scientists. Then, as you may know, European governments foolishly blew a large portion of their computer science research budgets during the 1980s on the ill-fated OSI project, while Japan wasted over a billion dollars on artificial intelligence research. That's why all of the high-level Internet institutions are based in the United States. ICANN is a California corporation based in Marina Del Rey. Both the Internet Society and the IETF are based in northern Virginia. And until recently, W3C's de facto main research center (the one where Tim Berners-Lee was actually living at) was the MIT Media Lab in Massachusetts. Until those institutions (particularly the Internet Architecture Board at ISOC) collectively vote to drop the capitalization, I feel that Wikipedia should not prop up what is really an unofficial and minority spelling at this point. Certainly, I concede it should be mentioned, but it should not be overemphasized. To point out another example, Wikipedia uses "aluminium" because that's the spelling adopted by the official chemistry institutions, even though it annoys us Americans.
      • Finally, I have to point out that although the London Times, the Guardian, and the FT are well-respected and reliable sources of information, they reflect only the minority language position of the UK on this issue. In contrast, all major American newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, etc., all continue to respect the official spelling used by the Internet Society and IETF. The WP, the Merc, the L.A. Times, and the Globe, of course, are the newspapers that serve the majority of the members of the Internet institutions I just mentioned above.--Coolcaesar 18:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
        • Sorry, no matter how big your bullet-points become, you'll never convince me that "the internet is a US-centric institution", but if it helps you sleep soundly to think so - well, hey-ho... --Nigelj 22:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • I simply cannot see where you are coming from with your perspective, because you have adduced very few factual assertions in support of your position, and in your most recent edit, you actually misstated the facts. The opening of the article does correspond with contemporary technical, practical and linguistic usage in the United States and in the broader Internet community, as I have repeatedly pointed out. In any case, as you have probably noticed, the majority of Wikipedia users responding to this point by now have expressed their opposition to the lowercase spelling. I am beginning to draw an inference that you may have some kind of anti-American bias or you are just playing troll games. --Coolcaesar 04:21, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • Fine, keep it how you like it - and try not be so rude and aggressive, please. --Nigelj 17:20, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • Also, as I noted above (scroll up to read the earlier discussion) when I ran some searches on LexisNexis in January, Internet is still clearly the majority usage at well over 70%. Note that Lexis does carry most Australian and British newspapers, so this is not an issue of overrepresentation of American and Canadian sources. --Coolcaesar 04:27, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It would be incorrect to fail to capitalize it. It's capitalized for the same reason as the Sun and the Moon. --Yath 17:14, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Maybe, by some (in the US, it seems). But not to distinguish it from some other kind of non-existent, lower-case internets, as the artcle goes to some lengths to try to establish in both its opening paragraphs. That's the problem, not whether Wikipedia uses US or rest-of-world English spelling here, but that those Americans who are perhaps a little obsessed with this have ended up distorting the whole emphasis of the opening of the article in their attempt to make a point that does not correspond with any modern technical, practical or linguistic usage. --Nigelj 22:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • I agree that the article is a bit wordy and excessively apologetic. Any explanation for the capitalization should be moved down further in the article. On the other hand, it's easy to make a strong case that there are other internets out there, such as Internet2. As for people obsessing... you'll notice that I never brought up the subject of whose version of English is being promoted. And in fact I'm not convinced that Brits and Americans are all that divided on the matter. --Yath 04:04, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Quote from Internet2: "This is misleading since Internet2 is in fact a consortium and not a computer network." But I give up on this one - I'll leave it until either you guys are too old to care, or I am :-) --Nigelj 17:20, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. violet/riga (t) 19:15, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for a compromise

After thinking a lot about our huge debate last month, and today's revert war between Dtcdthingy and Yath, I think the best position is to have either a compromise lead paragraph or a compromise "Nomenclature" section. That is, we should continue to use "Internet" (the standard American English usage) throughout the article, but acknowledge in the lead paragraph and/or in a new Nomenclature section that Commonwealth English appears to be standardizing on "internet," and that several Americans have called for (unsuccessfully so far) for American English to follow.

The Nomenclature section, of course, would have to explain that "Internet" is the traditional usage among Americans and computer scientists in general, and is still the official usage of all key Internet institutions like the Internet Society, the IETF, the IAB, ICANN, and so on.

I think this will reasonably accommodate the views of the speakers of the various dialects of English. For example, we use a Nomenclature section in the Freeway article to explain the current freeway/expressway terminology mess, and that section seems to work quite well. What does everyone think? --Coolcaesar 4 July 2005 20:49 (UTC)

Internet is capitalised in British English. It's not an Atlantic-divide issue. Andy Mabbett 4 July 2005 20:51 (UTC)
"internet" is in common usage everywhere. Whether or not it's grammatically or formally correct is kind of irrelevant. Pretending the usage doesn't exist benefits no one. I'd support a nomenclature section, as long as it was NPOV --Dtcdthingy 4 July 2005 22:53 (UTC)
I don't know that it's a US/rest of English-speaking world issue either. I think it's more likely a 5-years ago/present day issue, a title-case/body-text issue and a geek/general public issue mixed with perhaps a Microsoft spell-checker issue. But if that is the prevailing view, we're going to have to do better than dragging some anachonistic reference to the British Commonwealth into it - see Commonwealth and Commonwealth English to see what a fur-ball that could become! It feels like there's about as much of a put-down for us implied in that suggestion, as their would be for the US if we insisted on 'mother-country/former colony'! I would prefer such staunch nationalism be left out of such a discussion, rather than slipped into the argument like some kind of 'condition of surrender'. --Nigelj 22:20, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
Uh, I completely disagree. Here's a simple test. Go to Google News at news.google.com. Click on the Advanced News Search link next to the main search box. Type internet into the main search field. Then try typing different English-speaking countries and U.S. states into the field that limits searches by geography, and running searches. You will immediately notice that news sources in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom prefer "internet" much, much more than their counterparts in California, New York, and Massachusetts.
Google News searches all major newspapers, periodicals, and Slashdot, as well as many well-established blogs, so its results are quite representative of the usage of a term among both professional journalists and ordinary people. --Coolcaesar 02:52, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Being a successful netter

I've briefly compiled a user-friendly list of things a newcommer to the internet and computers in general may need to know about before they begin using the internet extensively. This was sort of a flow-of-thoughts kind of a thing, but I figured the basic list may be helpful in improving this article for "newbies" to the internet. You could possibly link to the article the things a new commer may need to know. But here is the list; do as you will with it:

read about netiquette
read about internet slang, acronyms, emoticons, memes, internet phenomenons, and cultural literacy in terms of the internet
learn to type, and the basics of using an OS and an internet explorer browser (basically, the basics of using a computer)
learn how to use a search engine (google)
learn how to email
learn how to use chatrooms, message boards, forums, instant messages
read about identity theft, viruses, privary issues, state laws, adwares, hacks, shock sites, false contests, banners and ads, pop-ups, pranksters, spyware, file-sharing, cencorship, downloading&uploading, the WWW, Usenet, blogs, viruses in email, etc., etc., and how to deal with these common internet problems (internet safety)

RE: I'm with you. I think there really should be a super user friendly wtf am I doing on the net wiki. Information streamlining and clarity for the lay man is exactly what needs to go into a how to use the internet guy. However, this doesn't really belong in the Wikipedia namespace. The format would have to be extremely biased, tailored for a standard set of recommended software: FireFox, Google, etc. A "WTF is the internet and how do I surf it" page shouldn't contrast software titles and have a user choose between specs and layouts. This is analogous to asking which editor I want to edit this wiki in. anyways... suggest... Wikibook: Windows and Firefox

I concur with the second editor's analysis. Wikipedia is not about "how to," it is more of an answer to the question "what is."

Links Policy

It appears that every marginal web business (you know, the kind who's business plan depends on generating popups rather than displaying actual content) wants a link from this page, presumably for PageRank purposes.

I suggest that a site should only be linked from this article (in the general links section) if it meets at least one of these three criteria:

1. It is authoritative; e.g. it is a well-known and respected archive of RFC documents. The link to the ISOC site comes into this category.

OR

2. It illustrates, demonstrates, or further explains specific points of article content. The link to Hobbes Internet Timeline fits in here.

OR

3. It is otherwise genuinely useful to someone who would read an encyclopedia article called "Internet". The internet statistics links would fit in here (although perhaps we don't need so many of them?)

Lastly I'd suggest we should avoid duplication. If two sites cover essentially the same material, we should think very hard about whether both links should be kept or if the poorer one can be dropped. For instance, we currently have two links to two different "show my IP" sites. I think this (marginally) qualifies under (2) above (although perhaps it would be better on the IP article, since this article doesn't actually discuss IP addresses at all). But we sure don't need two of them.

I have already deleted some links which in my opinion are clearly poor quality:

Silly number of gaming links (gaming is a very minor topic in this article)

Out of date statistics

News sites with no original content (but lots of ads)

Borderline kookery

Thparkth

Good work. I agree with your suggested policy. I've pruned some more.

, * provides information about your computer relating to the internet. All of these are IP address viewers(some with other "about your computer"-type info - the article does not talk about IP addresses, and IP viewers are a dime a hundred - we could add a google link if it is really necessary.

(forgot to sign) JesseW, the juggling janitor 02:39, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

OK JesseW the junggling Janiter :) cheap shot I know but it made me feel better about you and your chainsaw approach to things.... OK let me guess. This article is about the 'internet'. Right? Yes! Right. So I add an external link, NO advertising, NO products, NO service, just information relating to the 'INTERNET' and you, duuuuuuuuuuuuh? delete it? Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh? :) 0waldo 02:54, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

(Copied from User_talk:JesseW) JesseW :) you bad boy you! OK so all I have to do is add a page of text to getmypc.info and that is all it will take to get an external link to park? 'talk' about the internet? 0waldo 03:23, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

No. External links need to provide material that adds value to the article, and should not be added by their controller, if there is opposition. I find your persistence in trying to "do Wikipedia a favor" after that favor has been rather strenuously, but mostly politely, refused, to be quite odd. In any case, this should be discussed at Talk:Internet. JesseW, the juggling janitor 03:35, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

(End copied text) For the sake of any uninvolved viewers: For the considerable previous discussion, see Talk:IP address. Search for 0waldo. JesseW, the juggling janitor 03:35, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

OK JesseW my friend: I see how your mind works so I will narrow my scope and play your game. "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" - gee, I wonder what that means? 24.214.176.87 04:16, 13 September 2005 (UTC)


It means anybody; it doesn't mean any kind of edit is legitimate. If there weren't rules it would be anarchy, whereas wikipedia has been described as a benevolent dictatorship, and not as a social experiment, SqueakBox 05:06, September 13, 2005 (UTC)

question

can someone tell me how do you clear the list on search engines when you look for something?

Pece Kocovski 07:13, 13 September 2005 (UTC)


For pretty much any dropdown box you can hold down the shift key and press delete to delete items from the list. That will remove individual items, for removing the whole list just look around in the options for clearing the cache and history and stuff. Charles (Kznf) 13:26, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Net access list stats

Hi

I see that India and China are included in the list where the majority of the population has internet access. Does majority mean more than 50 percent ? Looking at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/internet/population.html (outdated stats from 2000) India and China don't figure in the above 30% list. Has the growth been that sharp in India and China from 2000 to 2005 ?

-Kghose 14:38, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

no. For India & China, the pencentage of internet access in population is probably less then 25%. In China, for some regigions such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai... it's probably above 70%, but in rural areas, almost zero. Xah Lee 03:34, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Censorship countries

USA has laws about nudity, any photos that may be thought of as “underage” sexuality, the censorship of encryption codes... See the internet censorship article... and of course, the censorship of publishing bomb making etc. Xah Lee 03:23, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, in that case every country on the planet censors the 'net - why single out the US? Seems like you are just trying to make a point. The other two countries mentioned make a particular point of restricting access to the certain web pages and even cached Google content. Since when did the USA do that? --PhilipO 14:50, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
well, then aren't you being selective? What makes you to be the judge of the type and severity of censorship? The word censorship does not mean Speaclized Censorship. For example, in much of Europe, you can have nudity just about everyday life on the web. (car ads, etc.) But in US, you can't. Even the full article of wikipedia on censorship listed USA. Please check that. Xah Lee 04:21, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Xah Lee, I am not certain what you mean. It is certainly possible to access nudity on the Web in the United States. — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:40, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Not only that, some U.S. states, like California, have some of the most liberal policies on free speech in the world. See Pruneyard Shopping Center and San Fernando Valley for more information. --Coolcaesar 21:32, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I am taking out the section on censorship, it's very ill thought out, you tech guys are good when it comes to bits and bytes, but when it comes to coherent abstract thought and synthesis, you are not, the person who made the initial argument here refers to the fact that you cannot be selective about what is or isn't considered cencorship of the internet, and to some extent or other ALL countries are guilty of it, regardless of the overt or covert way this is done, or the exent way to which it is done. And he did mention some examples too, about depictions of underage sex, material that can be considered "terrorist activity". Lets not forget that with the new totalitarian lass passed in the u.s. I could be shipped to guantanamo bay and subjected to all sorts of horrors for merely writing this, and I am pretty sure as I am writing this too some cia carnivore-like program is filtering bits and bites and tagging me in their files. This is not a matter of speculation, it's a matter of fact and I need not quote anyone or anything on it, just wikipedia or google it, or read a few pages of your u.s. legislature. So, before passing any moronic self righteous value judgement on how much censorship goes down on the internet in foreign nations, take a look at yourself. For all the above I am taking this ill conceived, and superflous paragraph out. 213.5.31.209 06:24, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Ugly white space

As soon as I load the page, the first thing I see is that big ugly white space next to the index. I'm not that great with wiki formatting, but is there any way we could put a picture of something there, maybe with a table? Just looking for aesthetics here.

Article suggestion

Perhaps someone can find out the web page codings...for example, <img>... and make an artical, or at least some sort of list, about it. I just think it would be helpful to those trying tomake their own web page. -Dr.Cribbit (message posted by editing the page)

No, that would not be in compliance with Wikipedia's editorial policies. This issue has already been heavily debated many times and the consensus has been that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (which tries to comprehensively describe things) and not a how-to guide. If you want to draft such an explanatory article on Web markup elements, the appropriate location for that would be Wikibooks. --Coolcaesar 00:54, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Cribbit: Darn. Oh well, thank you anyways! PS: wow, that was faster than I expected.

The article you want is here, Dr Cribbit, called HTML element. --Nigelj 18:47, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

See Also section

This section is FAR too long. The link to List of Internet topics covers the majority of the other links listed. I am going to reduce the clutter in this section, feel free to revert if this seems innapropriate.

Internet v. internet redux

I just reverted a very subtle edit by Nigelj, in an apparent attempt to upset the delicate consensus that was reached back in mid-summer. His edit would have omitted the fact that "Internet" is both the traditional usage and the majority usage (I just checked the major periodical databases again to reconfirm this), and left article readers with only the impression that the issue is up in the air (without indicating which was the traditional usage). --Coolcaesar 21:38, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

<smells google> What's your 'major periodical database?' markmtl 24.202.31.120 12:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't like being labelled 'deceptive' by this man in his edit summary, when I clearly stated my intentions in mine; but what can you do? --Nigelj 10:32, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Is this written by 10-year-olds?

"Online gaming began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer"

According to MUD, MUDs are a type of online game, the first of which was created in 1977. According to GameSpy, GameSpy was founded in 1995. Saying online gaming "began" with GameSpy and such is completely absurd. 207.59.86.5

I agree fully, I've added a sentence to the bigining as a tempory measure, but that really really neads looking at. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.43.76 (talk • contribs) 17:27 16 April 2006 (UTC)

first sentence confusing

Presently, the first sentence reads: "The Internet, or simply the Net, is the worldwide system of interconnected computer networks which makes information stored on it accessible." I find the final clause, beginning with "which," to be confusing. The internet makes accessible the information stored on what? On other computers. I think it would be improvement to write, "which makes data stored on one computer in the world accessible to others."

Further, I think the internet does much more than make available stored data. More generally, I would say it makes possible the exchange of data. Thus, I think a further improvement would be, "which makes possible the exchange of data between geologically distant computers."

I just figured out how the first sentence was screwed up. In this edit [1], the anonymous user at IP address 72.240.78.211 split what was one sentence into two sentences. The original sentence was "The Internet, or simply the Net, is the publicly accessible worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP) and many other protocols." I believe the original sentences was much more comprehensible and I am switching back to that version. The 72.240.78.211 user was grossly incorrect in stating that parts of the Internet are not publicly accessible.
After all, if a network is not publicly accessible over the Internet (meaning that it is a closed network like the various military networks), then it is not part of the Internet even if it uses Internet protocols internally. The whole point of the term Internet is to refer to its very character as an internetwork of networks. --Coolcaesar 06:17, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

IANA

Would someone please add a mention of the IANA to the article? I'd research it myself, but… Wikipedia is a huge time-suck as it is :) — mjb 01:17, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to rework the sumary section I created for the Internet standards bodies at History of the Internet#NIC.2C InterNIC IANA and ICANN --Barberio 03:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Wrong information

"In the Western world, it is Germany that has the highest rate of censorship. Internet Service Providers are required by law to block some sites that contain child pornography or Nazi or Islamist propaganda."

This is just wrong. ISPs are not forced to block these sites, but the state can and will file a lawsuit against the owner. I can access every internet site. If you don't believe me tell me a site, you don't think I can access because my ISP would have to block it and I'll email you a screenshot

neverpanic

  • Is there a chance we could get a verifiable source on this information? Also the tone of your edit is bad, you may be annoyed but the article shouldn't sound that way. Also if you could regester it would be nice. Drn8 17:34, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • You can edit it yourself, my tone might not be that good... you know, english is not my native language.

Sources? What about being from Germany? I never heard of such censorship here and my ISP doesn't even have a forced HTTP proxy, so they can't filter my web content. Also there is no article in our laws that forces ISPs to block content. neverpanic

/* Criticism */ merge|World Wide Web

The critisism is not of the Internet, but of weblinks. Benn Newman 21:03, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I concur. Also, we already had a section for criticism of the Net, which was taken out precisely because many people thought it was POV (just scroll up this page) although I thought it should have stayed. The consensus is to NOT have a criticism section! --Coolcaesar 23:19, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Discrepancies on language usage b/w Internet and World Wide Web articles.

From World Wide Web:
According to a 2001 study [6], there were more than 550 billion documents on the Web, mostly in the "invisible Web". A 2002 survey of 2,024 million web pages [7] determined that by far the most Web content was in English: 56.4%; next were pages in German (7.7%), French (5.6%) and Japanese (4.9%). A more recent study [8] which used web searches in 75 different languages to sample the Web determined that there were over 11.5 billion web pages in the publically-indexable Web as of January 2005.

Does this conflict with the information given under the Language section on this site:
After English (32 % of web visitors) the most-requested languages on the world wide web are Chinese 13 %, Japanese 8 %, Spanish 6 %, German 6 % and French 4 %. (From Internet World Stats)

I'm unsure whether the way I'm interpreting 'most requested' is preventing me from seeing something obvious. :)

Also, there's inconsistent capitalisation of Web/web/World Wide Web/world wide web/etc.

I'm new to Wikipedia, so I'd prefer to just point it out and get some opinions, rather than dive in and change things.

--wht.rbt 11:53, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

It is possibly that both are true, but someone may want to look into that. Benn Newman 14:54, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I think they're probably both right - the 2001/2 studies were of the apparent or main languages used in the documents surveyed. The Internet World Stats are much more recent (2005) and refer to the requested or preferred language of the users or readers of WWW material. These latter figures are based upon the fact that web browsers send the logged-on user's preferred language as part of almost every web page request. This normally defaults to the selected desktop language on the client machine, but can be set independently in some cases (e.g. Firefox). Note that in both cases these only refer to web usage - it would be much harder to work out language use in other internet applications such as chat, email, file-sharing etc. --Nigelj 20:49, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Semantic web

should we not mention the semantic web over here?...

1st generation 2nd generation: now 3rd generation: semantic web..

No, the Web is not the Internet. Benn Newman 17:24, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I concur. Please do not mix up the two! --Coolcaesar 20:08, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

'Marketing' section - merge|World Wide Web

I've been watching it for a while and now I am convinced that this section is propagating the old confusion re internet/WWW. What it talks about is buying and selling on the web, without a doubt. --Nigelj 11:00, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Unsure - ecommerce on the Internet is more than the Web; it includes B2B EDI protocols, and it includes the delivery of stuff over the Internet, such as p2p. But I wouldn't mind - it adds very little value to the article, which is plenty long enough. Alvestrand 11:05, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Population or demographics?

It's a shame there's nothing in this article about Internet population or demographics. Or possibly that's a new article. Johnh 05:38, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Future trends

Future trends ideas (suggestions): 1. On demand resources like application when high speed networks and larger servers are available 2. Distributed variable space and resource available at each operating system connected to internet to compute or share resources managed by a new internet layer based on criticality and priority of resources and computation to be shared

Neil Harwani

I don't think a future trends section is appropriate. This issue has been debated many times in the context of many, many Wikipedia articles and the consensus is that such speculation is generally inappropriate as it violates the No original research policy. The obvious exception is for paraphrasing of widely held beliefs about future trends as articulated by prominent futurists (and backed up with appropriate citations). --Coolcaesar 06:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
On a similar note, I've been wondering if there should be an article on the End of the Internet, detailing scenarios in which the Internet is no longer a viable medium. I remember in the early days talk about IPv4 address exhaustion and an entropy-related "heat death" of sorts in which there are so much active connections eventually lag the Internet to the point it becomes unusable. Recently, and what made me consider this as an article was, in light of BellSouth trying to extort Google by reducing the speed of traffic to their site, there has been talk, such as this article in The Nation, about greed between companies tearing the open and free worldwide web into a privately run, branded services localized around regional networks. --YoungFreud 13:24, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Living Internet

I've had to comment out two links to livinginternet.com as they have upset the spam filter for some reason. I don't know why (it looks a good site from my superficial investigation), so I'll investigate further. See also m:talk:Spam blacklist. Thryduulf 11:20, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I've just added the lnk in the references again, and it now works. Very odd. Thryduulf 00:17, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

AL GORE

I don't know why this article ignores Al Gore...he's AL GORE! He invented the internet...without him, none of you would be here on wikipedia.

Al Gore is one of the greatest men of the last two decades for creating the internet. Its too bad that you and old Floridian jews can't see that. *sigh*

165.123.186.179 21:37, 26 January 2006 (UTC)FatAlbert

Please tell us your source for the claim that Al Gore "invented" the internet. I think you'll find it quite difficult :) Eurosong 22:11, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I concur. All reputable published sources agree that if the Internet was invented by any particular person, the persons responsible are Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn. --Coolcaesar 01:04, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Internet and nuclear attack

It is often stated that the internet was not created for military communication lines to remain open in case of nuclear attack. In a very limited sense this is true. This is only true to the extent that the idea for the internet was a civilian idea. At MIT Leonard Kleinrock published the first paper on packet switching networks in 1961 called Information Flow in Large Communication Nets. As the main article here already says, in 1958, the USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the U.S. to create the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to regain a U.S. technological lead. It should be noted this was a defense project. Defense against what? The USSR. What did we need to defend ourselves against? Nuclear attack. Sputnik was thought by the military as a first step to launch nuclear weapons from space. It was not simply a desire to be more advanced technologically such as the race between the US and Japan for superior technology. This was about Defense. Don't be naive. In the same year that Leonard Kleinrock published his paper (1961), there were several meetings with the US Air Force by the Rand Corporation about the viability of creating the internet. Written by Paul Baran (see main article here to see who he is) "Various aspects of the concept as reported in this Memorandum were presented before selected Air Force audiences in the summer of 1961 in the form of a RAND briefing (B-265), and contained in RAND Paper P-2626, which this Memorandum supersedes." These memorandums were published and are available for free on the internet where it states "The present Memorandum, the first in the series, introduces the system concept and outlines the requirements for and design considerations of a digital data communications system based on the distributed concept, especially as regards implications for such systems in the 1970s. In particular, the Memorandum is directed toward examining the use of redundancy as one means of building communications systems to withstand heavy enemy attacks." -- http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420/RM3420.preface.html. Creating the internet took money and that money came from the military. In October 1962 Licklider was appointed head of the DARPA information processing office, part of the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The military has tried to water down the media hype, but the fact still remains, this article starts with DARPA, a military defense organization and yet this article refuses to conclude that the internet, although conceived of by civilians, was not powered by the money from the military in an attempt, to quote Paul Baran, "to withstand heavy enemy attacks."--Voyajer 16:35, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

"Funded by the U.S. government, the ARPAnet became a series of high-speed links between major supercomputer sites and educational and research institutions worldwide"[2]; "The Internet was founded on a simple vision: to build a highly decentralized and resilient worldwide network infrastructure that would scale and that could resist any denial-of-service attacks."[3] [my emphasis added in both quotes]. I haven't taken the time to dig back to contemporary source documents, but what I'm saying is well-documented common knowledge. I think what Voyajer may be thinking of above actually became the "digital battlefield" or whatever they call their current military comms system. Both end-products depend on packet-switching, routers, limited-range broadcast packets and lots of other common tech. Why would the US Miltary pay for such a thing for their own use and survival, then let everyone else use it too? The answer is that at that time the technology was emerging and lots of people worldwide were thinking how to apply it in their problem-space. Some of the early R & D was probably done in common, but the thing the military wanted became the digital battlefield, and the thing academia wanted became the internet, and commerce soon piggy-backed onto the internet - but (thank God) they've not been allowed to buy it or own the rights to any of it. Yet. --Nigelj 18:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree

I agree

blackout

In the Malfunctions and attacks section, there is alink to 2003 North America blackout - August 14, 2003. I flipped through this article, and found no mention of anything internet-related a a cause of the blackout. Unless some wikipedian is, contrary to the evidence, taking credit for this incident, I don't understand what it is doing on this page. Shaggorama 08:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Physical Structure?

The section on the physical structure of the Internet was unclear. There was no section. I'd like to know how exactly my computer accesses the network, whick is routed to another network, and so on. Please include an example of data transfer from Wikipedia to an ISP, then a home computer. I really think this would help.70.25.138.179 04:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Internet Communication

A huge part of the internet and its most common use (majority of people's use) is simply for communication (email/im/chatroom/myspace/etc.), and this issue is kinda ignored by the article, don't know if anyone agrees that there should be a section for this (or maybe this is the wrong article for it), perferably including a www.bash.org link when mentioning the idiocy that sometimes arises from this form of communication. Qballony 08:24, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

"Teh Intarweb" vs "The Interweb"

12:49, 2 March 2006 Computerjoe m (Reverted edits by Biederman to last version by 2dogs)
12:48, 2 March 2006 Biederman m (Revert edit by 2dogs - see Interweb for explanation of "teh intarweb" - I think you broke it ;-))
12:37, 2 March 2006 2dogs m (changed teh to the intarweb to interweb)

"Teh intarweb" is a deeper parody than "the interweb". As is explained in the Internet article, public confusion between the Internet and the 'Web is often parodied by such phrases as "teh intarweb". See Interweb, to which Intarweb redirects, for an explanation that "intarweb" is a deliberate mis-spelling. "Teh" is also a deliberate mis-spelling. See Teh and L33t. Perhaps using both "teh intarweb" and "the interweb" would be best? I don't wanna change again w/o consensus. How 'bout:

The confusion between these two by the general public is often parodied by phrases such as "the interweb" and "teh intarweb", as in "You broke teh intarweb!".

Biederman 21:05, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the "Interweb" concept needs to be discussed in the first paragraph (with either spelling), as it may further confuse newbies who come to Wikipedia looking for clarity, not confusion. Furthermore, the term is not generally used in the mainstream media by reputable publications or well-known television shows. A single show on Comedy Central, while interesting, does not have the same cultural impact as Saturday Night Live, which is well-established and reaches a much larger audience. Please read Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research. --Coolcaesar 04:21, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Humour section

I just removed the following three paragraphs, added earlier today. I don't want to 'bite the newbies', but I really think this is mostly personal experience and in-jokes, and so not of widespread or encyclopedic importance. Furthermore, most of this is actually about the WWW, not the internet, so was in the wrong article, and further adds to the confusion over the two terms. Lastly the 'joke' in the last para is really quite offensive, and is certainly not in widespread use.

Begin removed text

Because of some of the Internet's major uses and limitations, physical contact for example, some on-going jokes about the web have been spawned. O RLY, Interweb, and the Internet is for porn are a few examples of more widely known jokes about the Internet. "The Internet is for Porn" is a song from Avenue Q that tells the character Kate that although regular users of the net perform common activities such as online auction, stocks and trades, and research, its main purpose is searching for erotic material to masturbate to.

In response to the large amount of porn involving childhood memories Zoom Out Webcomics drew a comic strip that is commonly known as 'Internet Rule #34'. The rule is that there is porn of everything and nothing is excluded from this rule. The comic shows the character Yokai viewing a computer monitor in shock. The viewer infers that he sees an image of Calvin and Hobbes performing some type of sexual act. The bottom of the comic states that the Internet has been raping your childhood since 1996.

Disagreements in chatrooms or forums may sometimes get serious to the point that users will make threats of bodily harm or death. Because one cannot actually damage a person on the Internet some have publicly made wishes along the lines of "God, please grant me the ability to hurt someone over standard TCP/IP. Amen." A common phrase used when an Internet argument begins is "Arguing on the Internet is like running in the special olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded." An image was created to go along with this sentence showing a chubby boy running on a track field with his arms outstreched. The order in which the phrase and picture were created is unknown and it is possible that the phrase came from the original image.

End removed text --Nigelj 20:15, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Alex Jones' Opinion on the Internet

How many people here think that the opinion of Alex Jones on the Internet warrants mention in the article? (See [4] [5])--Jersey Devil 16:12, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

NPOV demands all views to be represented. I really dont see why that is even a issue. --Striver 16:32, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

No, NPOV means only that representative views should be presented in a neutral fashion. If you want all points of view then you want the WP fork known as Wikinfo (which does allow for all points of view), not Wikipedia. Even if we need to mention neo-Luddite critiques of the Internet (which I will concede are probably worth mentioning), they have been argued far more cogently by reputable intellectuals like Bill Joy (co-founder of Sun Microsystems).
Also, while we're on the subject, I think we need to get rid of the Seth Breidbart quote. I just ran a Google search and it's not often-quoted. Of the 161 hits, most of them appear to be mirrors of this article! --Coolcaesar 17:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay, no one has defended that idiotic Seth Breidbart quote, I'm taking it out. When someone gives me a cite to a reputable publication then they can put it back in. --Coolcaesar 01:05, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Seth Breidbart, Internet pioneer, is hardly Alex Jones, whoever he is.... Paul Vixie, the guy who wrote BIND, the most-used DNS server, used to carry his quote in his .sig file (accounting for most of the 907 hits *I* found on Google for the quote). I've asked him. --Alvestrand 04:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I still don't think 907 hits is very much, but if Paul Vixie thinks it's important, fine. Yes, I'm aware of what BIND is and I know it's a very important part of the Internet infrastructure. --Coolcaesar 17:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Alex has four large websites and over 2 miljon subscribers. His views are controversial, but he represents a significant minority, and their views are to be represented according to NPOV. The line is NPOV:

Alex Jones on his site Prisonplanet.com raises grave concerns on the future of Internet, specialy with the development of Internet 2 [6]

Everything in that live is 100% true. And no, you dont need to even know anything about internet to be able to have a view of it, but incidently, Alex has four large websited and uses internet as his main medium. --Striver 14:38, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

actually that line is not 100% true. The term "grave" is a value judgment; my personal value judgment would make me write the line as
Alex Jones, writing on his site Prisonplanet.com, tries to raise alarmist, misguided concerns about the future of the Internet, invoking the name of Internet 2.
The words "alarmist" and "misguided" are as much fact as "grave".. in my opinion. --Alvestrand 17:49, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
In my mind, part of the problem is that this Alex Jones, in his own piece at [7], seems completely muddled on the differences between
  1. the internet and the world wide web,
  2. a website and a network hub (or perhaps he means router?),
  3. an internet backbone and a web-hosting provider
  4. and on the nature of Internet2, for which the WP article contains the important sentence, "This is misleading since Internet2 is in fact a consortium and not a computer network."
With so many important category errors in his central argument, even if he is onto a point that some feel is relevant, then as Coolcaesar says above, he does not carry the intellectual credibility to represent the view. Others may say that this view borders on the irrationally Luddite, or the hysterically conspiracy-theorist, and with only his dimly argued exposition, who could doubt them?
Find some better, more respected, intellectually more heavy-weight citations and I'll defend the viewpoint to the end, but as it stands it sounds like just one of gazzilions of whacky bits of background noise that could be pulled into here from the blogosphere. Sorry, but as such it has to go. --Nigelj 17:24, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Well argued. I and Nigelj have had our differences elsewhere, but on this point I believe we concur. See What Wikipedia is not. In particular, Wikipedia is not a soapbox.
I should also point out that the ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is a key component of psychological maturity. Sounds like Striver is still striving to grow up! --Coolcaesar 17:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Agree totally with Nigelj's succinct arguments. On the same basis, Striver should stop trying to include the same ill-informed opinion in Internet2. -- uberpenguin 05:04, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

"Size" of the internet

According to a paper published in early 2005, the size of the internet in January 2005 was 11.5 billion pages. Should we include that information in the article?

Is there a more recent update on the size of the net and its growth?

That's the size of the World Wide Web, not the Internet. The Internet is much more than the Web, as any computer science professional knows. The Internet includes all the other application protocols that run on top of the TCP/IP stack, not just HTTP (the Web protocol). There's streaming video/audio, email, instant messaging, file transfers, Internet Relay Chat, etc. Please do more research before making a fool of yourself! --Coolcaesar 18:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow, never expected a rude response such as this. Is this how every member of wikipedia treats good natured questions (which I guess falls under the category of research)? Thanks for the correction, but that was uncalled for.

Now another question - has there been any attempt to gauge the size of the internet?

"Cleanup"? What's the problem?

The "cleanup" tag was added to this article, without comment or explanation, at 10:14, 1 April 2006 by User:Haham hanuka. There has been no discussion that I can find here in the talk page.

I assume it was an April Fool's Day joke. Unless someone can come up with at least one specific thing that needs fixing, I'll delete the "Cleanup" tag tomorrow. --Nigelj 22:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't really see a problem with removing the cleanup tag. I was thinking of removing it myself and replacing it with unreferenced. --GraemeL (talk) 22:43, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
What you're proposing is {{unreferenced}}
Wouldn't it be more helpful to go through and put {{fact}} templates where you think citations are needed? Like[citation needed] --Nigelj 22:56, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
there are only about 3 or 4 references in the whole article. Almost every paragraph would end up tagged. --GraemeL (talk) 22:58, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I have removed it - like I have been removing every POV and similar tag that was placed by User:Haham hanuka withouot any rationale on the corresponding talkpage. But if you feel the article is truly lacking I will not be revert anyone bar HH (who has been banned for over a week now). Agathoclea 23:08, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

British work creating the net

I recall seeing a British tv programme about the internet, which showed that a large amount of the work that contributed to what we know as the net today was done by a couple of scientists working in Middlesex, England. Does anyone know if this is true, and if so, can the correct information be added so the article does not claim the net is a purely American invention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.17.208.173 (talk • contribs) 21:58 7 April 2006 (UTC)