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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: 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.