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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: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @01:00PM
Rule #1: Big companies will figure out how make money, and lots of it.
What happens is we had tons of kids who spent their hs and college years illegally downloading music and books and got completely hooked on it. When Internet companies experimented with paywalls, they just laughed. Then they logged onto Slashdot by the dozens and posted theories on why this was behavior was 100 percent justified. Anyone who disagreed was modded down.
But, they couldn't escape from Rule #1. Now we're back to "F*** you and all this intrusive advertising!" And "Today's music sucks, and it's because of those greedy record companies executives doing lines of coke!" What did you expect, geniuses? You refused to pay for the product.
(Score: 4, Touché) by bug1 on Monday May 18 2015, @01:11PM
So are you suggesting that by giving money to big corporation all the problems will go away ?
(am i on your lawn?)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @05:51PM
OP is saying "quality content isn't always going to be free, and free content isn't always going to be quality". The same goes for paid content.
If you want quality and/or free content, produce it. Don't assume that anyone is entitled to free content. It's nice to get it, and it's nice to share what you've produced with others, but in the vast majority of all cases the price for free content is advertising. Many don't like that business model. Some feel offended that websites have advertising on them, and others declare that the content producers should find another business model that will make content free (free as in beer, free to share, free to copy, free free free). Well, internet Einsteins, if you come up with something that is practical then share it like the content you feel you so richly deserve.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday May 18 2015, @01:11PM
AC has a point but the eternal wheel of business rotates such that all sites or technologies rise and fall. We're just watching web pages fall. Perhaps in the future we'll get to watch shitty mobile apps fall and decline.
Another analogy that works is along the lines of Dilbert always expands over time to consume all, no matter the tech. Much as computers did nothing to reduce internal friction and manual entry in big corporations because they like it that way, such that shoving in automation merely makes newer, stupider than ever manual "human robot" efforts paradoxically more sustainable rather than making them go away, the internet isn't a tool to make dumb / obnoxious / foul business models go away, its a tool to make them cheaper and more possible than ever before. Mostly for bad of course, but sometimes for good.
There might be a side dish of early adopter syndrome. Thats when early adopters hear about a tech, maybe a dead end of the tech, and write the whole thing off, only to be surprised that years and years later the bugs were ironed out or the prices were fixed. I wrote off mobile when the day the iphone came out it cost something like $3000, many hundreds up front and a (cheap) car payment per month at subprime interest rates to pay the thing off. Years later I got a non-contract phone for $20/month and only a couple hundred up front, prices have really collapsed such that it might have staying power. Thats an example of early adopter syndrome, writing off something too early. I did the same thing with twitter, heard about it WRT SXSW and thought that was interesting for a conference/block party but useless to everyone else. Its still useless of course, but twitter is still around, which is an achievement all in itself!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 18 2015, @03:04PM
It is useless, but one lesson the Twitter guys seem to have learned from the Dot-Com and other stupid startup flameouts is keep your burn rate low. They have, what, a score employees?
It seems the market is learning how useless Twitter is, too, because the share price keeps sinking. And why not? They never made money. Once the banks that float the IPO have fleeced the rubes for their nearly 100% guaranteed profit (the Facebook float is the only one in recent memory that didn't), they could care less if it never does.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @05:24PM
> It seems the market is learning how useless Twitter is, too, because the share price keeps sinking. And why not? They never made money.
Not everything useful can be monetized in a capitalist economic system.
If craigslist went public that would be the end of it too.
Just going for-profit would significantly endanger Wikipedia as we know it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday May 18 2015, @05:38PM
A good example of this is parks. Parks are all, to my knowledge, government-owned and operated, at least in the US (at least if they're open to the public). There are amusement parks which are private, but people don't go there for the scenic vistas, they go for the rides. If we tried selling off all the parks to businesses and "letting the free market work", we wouldn't have any parks left, we'd just have endless development, and there'd be no place to go take a stroll around a local lake, or anything like that. Any companies that tried would have to charge huge ticket prices, or fill the nature trails with billboards, to make the economics work. And, as SimCity shows, when you don't have any parks, you have an angry and depressed population and things go south quickly.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @05:51PM
> Parks are all, to my knowledge, government-owned and operated, at least in the US (at least if they're open to the public).
Behold the future. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @07:12PM
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait ... WTF?
There was a Liberty Plaza Park and it was renamed Zuccotti Park after 9/11???
That was unexpected. After the "freedom fries" drama, I'd assumed everything in the US had been named Liberty or Freedom something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @07:43PM
Jesus Christ. What a travesty. A parking lot with trees is called a park.
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Monday May 18 2015, @08:45PM
Wait, you say "park" is not an abbreviation of "parking lot"?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @04:09PM
In the good old times, the internet was too slow to do that. Especially given that MP3 & Co. had not yet been invented.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @12:55AM
Anyone who disagreed was modded down.
Because they're almost always the illogical sort who equate a lack of gain with harm, and repeat industry propaganda [gnu.org] left and right, making their comments emotional flamebait. They don't get modded down without reason.
What did you expect, geniuses?
Nothing, because 99% of music was always garbage, so nothing changed.
I still don't know why people bother to download this nonsense. Downloading it gives these corporations free advertisement that they do not deserve.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 19 2015, @09:58AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves