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I go back on the 'net to the days of Mosaic, and earlier on Usenet and BBSs. I'm feeling pretty nostalgic, but also saddened. Between the crooks, the government, and fun loving pranksters it seems that there is no corner of the 'net that can be considered truly secure. I now routinely assume that nothing I do is safe.
I remember when the 'net was 90% thoughtful discussion, it was about web pages, pure HTML, and the content that they served up.
Now it seems as if no forum is safe from endless idiotic, threatening, and increasingly offensive trolls and bullies. Many good smart people just refuse to participate. In its early days the whole idea behind the 'net was the free sharing of information. Now you find things behind paywalls, registration pages, or removed after threats from lawyers.
Each week seems to bring another attempt by government or business to regulate the 'net, both what you can put on-line, and what you can look at. Add to that the many geographic blocks and other restrictions that keep out some of the people, some of the time. We rely on multiple layers of flash and java and other technology, each requiring some special software to make it work on your computer. Inevitably stuff breaks.
It was only a decade or so back that the very idea of marketing on the 'net was considered ridiculous. Now we're buried alive with ads, pop-ups, and stupid YouTube ads in front of every video - unless you want to pay them to remove them.
Increasingly using the 'net feels like more of a chore than a pleasure, and I can't see it improving. Is the Internet broken beyond repair?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @12:56PM
The Internet is fine. It's the World Wide Web that's broken. And we can thank Google and Mozilla for breaking the World Wide Web, thanks to the shitty things they've done to their now-shitty World Wide Web browsers.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday May 18 2015, @02:48PM
the shitty things they've done to their now-shitty World Wide Web browsers.
Specifically... what?
Are you thinking of the crazy overuse of JavaScript that now plagues the web? I'm not sure that's the browsers' fault.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Monday May 18 2015, @04:08PM
Any browser that enables ecmascript *by default* is broken by design. It's impossible to secure that browser or anything that browser has access to.
All the major browsers are broken by design, and have been for many years.
And it has a circular effect - script abilities *and permissions* are now assumed, and as a result web servers no longer bother to send out web pages at all in many cases.
The web is dead, the cause of death is poison, the type of poison was ecmaascript.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by NoMaster on Monday May 18 2015, @08:58PM
What's that got to do with the way people & organisations have started to act like [nasty | selfish | officious | manipulative | restrictive] cunts to each other on the 'net?
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @04:18PM
Yes it is. It is the "you will build it, they will come".
Today, the web is more about the internet is the disk drive with abusive / poor coding styles. So we are now back to the early days on LANs (where the LAN was the disk drives. Developers have moved the processing to the browser and waste the user's power grid. Oh, "we" can make "programming" easier. So you setup an event that tells your code when something changed. But under the covers hundreds/thousands of packets are streaming back and forth going, "did it change?". Cookie are equally waste full because of poor development practices, not to mention privacy.
Just sat through 2 OOD meetings going over how things work... YUCK! Developers thinking "push tech" because the event tells that a change occurred - did not understand that it was PULL - keep asking if change was made. That the lower functionally that they were consuming was badly done. But not their fault, it is tool builders fault. We are going change how we code because of them. It is not them paying for network access. ARGH!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday May 18 2015, @04:52PM
And why does Internet Explorer get a free pass?
Or are we supposed to assume that anything affiliated with Microsoft brings out the torches and pitchforks so we don't need to say it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @05:32PM
Microsoft didn't create Web 2.0. So they do get a free pass when it comes to the hipsterification of the web.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday May 18 2015, @08:14PM
But to be fair, compared to the ActiveX web Microsoft did dream of, Web 2.0 is relatively harmless.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @06:50PM
Clearly, everything went downhill when the browser developers decided we no longer need <BLINK>
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:58AM
At least the name lives on in another form. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Touché) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday May 18 2015, @03:31PM
The Internet used to be SMART PEOPLE in front of DUMB TERMINALS.
Now, the reverse situation prevails. ;-)
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Funny) by saracoth on Monday May 18 2015, @07:09PM
What's the problem with putting dumb terminals in front of smart people? I don't get it.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday May 18 2015, @07:16PM
I remember BIFF...
You're betting on the pantomime horse...