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posted by n1 on Monday May 18 2015, @12:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the 4-da-lulz-and-$$$ dept.

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?

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday May 18 2015, @01:09PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Monday May 18 2015, @01:09PM (#184505) Journal

    Welcome to the real world.

    Anything in its infancy is "better" simply because the number of people who participated are small and dedicated. Then the unwashed masses come pouring in. This is just the human condition.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday May 18 2015, @01:38PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday May 18 2015, @01:38PM (#184519)

    Another, more poetic way of putting it, is that the lifecycle of just about anything good goes like this:
    "In the beginning, the pioneers of our people created ______, and it was good. Their work was fruitful, and they continued their efforts to make it truly great. The masses of people began to see that their work was valuable, and began contributing time and resources to the effort, and the bounty of the work became truly apparent.

    But with the resources available, following in the wake of the great pioneers came the asshats who just wanted to gain as many of those resources as possible for themselves. And these asshats did claim to be staying true to the pioneers, hiding their true intentions behind claims of wishing to contribute. They came in many forms: The tribes of the MBA, the MCSE, the GNAA, and the GOP all did great damage. These in turn spawned many others: The marketdroid, the political junkie, and the mere dupe.

    The asshats worked tirelessly to create illusions that appeared to match what the pioneers had created, to draw more of the dupes to their cause. Because the illusions could be created and experienced for much cheaper than the real thing, the illusions became more popular than the original work. The pioneers, now in the form of elderly dodderers, attempted to continue the work as best they could, knowing that if they attempted to become illusionists their legacy would be forever tainted, but the asshats gained power while the elderly dodderers diminished and went to the West.

    Thus the idea fell to the power of the asshats, and all that was good about it was lost. Soon, none lived who remembered the great pioneers."

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by rts008 on Monday May 18 2015, @01:53PM

      by rts008 (3001) on Monday May 18 2015, @01:53PM (#184530)

      I think you have summed humanity up rather well.

      Lather, rinse, repeat...ad nauseum, and you have the complete history of humans and their civilizations.

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 18 2015, @02:32PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday May 18 2015, @02:32PM (#184555) Journal

        Shouldn't we improve the garbage collection in the next release? I mean, it seems obvious to me. It should come at the top, or very near the top, of the feature requests. I also rather think there should be more/better validation before we instantiate object [politician|CEO|banker|generic_corporate_wanker] and release it into the wild of the ecosystem but hey I'm a simple caveman lawyer who doesn't understand your modern, technological ways.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Ken_g6 on Monday May 18 2015, @03:40PM

          by Ken_g6 (3706) on Monday May 18 2015, @03:40PM (#184592)

          They're working on anti-troll software. [popsci.com]

          I also blame the nine admins who decided that "Corporation" should be a subclass of "Person".

          • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday May 18 2015, @05:04PM

            by frojack (1554) on Monday May 18 2015, @05:04PM (#184633) Journal

            It occurs to me that the article you linked to, to the extent that it could ever be accomplished, probably includes people who incessantly jump up to blame everything on corporations, even when the discussion thread is about bad behavior of individuals, and worse behavior of governments.

            --
            No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @05:32PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @05:32PM (#184647)

              > to blame everything on corporations, even when the discussion thread is
              > about bad behavior of individuals, and worse behavior of governments.

              Wow, you really live in a different reality from the rest of us.
              Here are some quotes from the discussion thread you think is about not-corps:

              > ... The tribes of the MBA, the MCSE,
              > ... better validation before we instantiate object [politician|CEO|banker|generic_corporate_wanker]

              And then from TFS:

              > ... 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
              > ... 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.

              And after all that what you took away from the discussion is that corporations were not part of the discussion.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @08:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @08:27PM (#184776)

      GOP? How about the Democrats too? Your bias is showing. Politicians of both major parties have screwed this up. Remember Al Gore and the PMRC? Bill Clinton and the Cryptography mess? Remove your bias.

      • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @10:20PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @10:20PM (#184849)

        GOP? How about the Democrats too? Your bias is showing. Politicians of both major parties have screwed this up. Remember Al Gore and the PMRC? Bill Clinton and the Cryptography mess? Remove your bias.

        Current actions are more relevant than past actions. You're probably the same kind of person that puts the GOP on a pedestal for being against slavery in the 1800s, somehow thinking they're still the same party as today.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @08:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @08:46AM (#184980)

      The asshats worked tirelessly to create illusions that appeared to match what the pioneers had created, to draw more of the dupes to their cause. Because the illusions could be created and experienced for much cheaper than the real thing, the illusions became more popular than the original work. The pioneers, now in the form of elderly dodderers, attempted to continue the work as best they could, knowing that if they attempted to become illusionists their legacy would be forever tainted, but the asshats gained power while the elderly dodderers diminished and went to the West.

      I'm not sure it requires "asshats". Look at a scientific field such as psychology, there was a vibrant research effort that was slowly building up a set of "laws" until the idea of p-values and testing a null (rather than a scientific) hypothesis. You can read publications covering 75 years now of people decrying this "new way", but it had no effect. Why? Because a significant p-value gives the illusion of having learnt something, and it is very easy to get when studying complicated systems like humans.

      The practice started because many mathematicians didn't understand science and most scientists didn't understand math. By some evil alignment of the stars it got into the schooling and then people using the new method simply don't know any better. Neither did they have any time to figure out the problems. When they did get time, it was too late. Once you graduated and published using that method, you had a vested interest in not questioning it.

      If you don't believe me that the way stats are used is often to generate illusory results, think about this. Who is studying the more complicated phenomenon, particle physicists or psychologists? Who has more difficulty controlling the experimental conditions (just due to the nature of the problem)? Who should be more wary of a false positive or otherwise misleading result? In all cases I'd say the psychologist.

      But, what significance levels are used by each field? Partical physics: 5 sigma (ie p[less than]3x10^-7), Psychology: p[less than]0.05. The people studying the more complicated phenomenon, doing the more difficult to control experiments use a method of decided what counts as evidence that is 10^5 times weaker! And I don't mean to pick on psychology, that is just where this all started. Medicine now has this same problem.

      Anyway, thank you for that post. It was apt.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Monday May 18 2015, @02:38PM

    by Bot (3902) on Monday May 18 2015, @02:38PM (#184561) Journal

    Yep, the "mainstream" is a nice, placid, warm, muddy river, once it engulfs something it ruins it forever. Yet I would make a distinction between the unwashed consumer masses, which are pretty harmless if ignored, and the unwashed producers, which see a new phenomenon and think: this is the new thing. How can I make a buck out of it... The buck is not the problem of course, the problem is that they don't care about anything else. They destroy arts, things, information, people.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 18 2015, @07:30PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Monday May 18 2015, @07:30PM (#184746) Journal

      You can make it hard for the mainstream by putting up minimum demands. In the beginning, the internet required technical skills and a appreciation for text and other less stimulating input. Not to talk about being curious enough to figure out that it even existed.

      Perhaps this can serve as a hint on how to put a "mainstreams end here, step up or stay out" ;-)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @08:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @08:54PM (#184806)

        On the other hand, the mainstream brings lots of benefits.

        For example, lamborghini has a reputation for being maintenance nightmares, while toyota corollas are rock solid. When you are young tweaking code and working around bugs is fun. I'm willing to bet most soybeans are well past that point and just want shit to work without a lot of fucking around.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @09:34AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @09:34AM (#184991)

          For example, lamborghini has a reputation for being maintenance nightmares, while toyota corollas are rock solid. When you are young tweaking code and working around bugs is fun. I'm willing to bet most soybeans are well past that point and just want shit to work without a lot of fucking around.

          But why should "shit [just working] without a lot of fucking around" be synonymous with "no forum ... safe from endless idiotic, threatening, and increasingly offensive trolls and bullies", finding "things behind paywalls, registration pages, or removed after threats from lawyers", "geographic blocks and other restrictions that keep out some of the people, some of the time" and being "buried alive with ads, pop-ups, and stupid YouTube ads in front of every video - unless you want to pay them to remove them"?

          Do we _really_ need to go back spending more time getting things working than actually getting stuff done? Or will going to web 5.1, which only works on 300 baud dialup, do the trick?

  • (Score: 1) by chucky on Monday May 18 2015, @09:28PM

    by chucky (3309) on Monday May 18 2015, @09:28PM (#184826)

    And that's probably why this website is still worth reading. A few articles in a day, few comments, but people trying to say something, not just anything. Stupidity of every debate grows with number of participants squared. Heck, this article had 85 comments when I started typing this...

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Balderdash on Monday May 18 2015, @10:43PM

    by Balderdash (693) on Monday May 18 2015, @10:43PM (#184862)

    Eternal September.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September [wikipedia.org]

    --
    I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.