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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: 4, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday May 18 2015, @01:45PM
The free sharing of information was always infected by trolls. I was around back then. Usenet was just as bad as anything you get today. Nothing was safe back then, either. Security was nonexistent, with things like FTP.
Sure, I don't like the trend of walled gardens and paywalls. Especially if they're built on top of free software which was designed to break down those walls. (They call it "open source" software to make the pill easier to swallow.) But, if people want to brick themselves up into a ghetto, let them. You can just ignore what they're selling. Very little of this content is worth anything at all. Anything that someone has to lock down to create artificial scarcity is probably not worth much.
We're in a transition right now from a world where manufacturing costs and control of delivery pipelines more or less baked artificial scarcity into society. Book publishers, record labels, and so on controlled what we saw. They have yet to find a way to adjust to the new digital world. They try harder and harder to create the artificial scarcity that is now gone, but it not only hasn't worked, but widespread "pirate" distribution of their product has opened people's eyes to how it's just not that good. Maybe it takes a generation, but the shakeout is inevitable at some point. These sorts of companies will never conquer the web, and simply quit producing so much stuff no one wants to pay for.
Right now, as I pointed out elsewhere, we're in a retail shakeout. Old-line retailers are dead or dying, and the world is becoming dominated by fewer choices and streamlined distribution. The next shakeout will probably be digital, with less garbage being produced for consumption by the public. Companies will begin failing as they don't produce anything people want to pay for. I wouldn't download most of the output (if not all) of publishers and record companies and so on if I could get it for free. This stuff just isn't as special as the corporations wish it was. It's at best mediocre, disposable output. The world is better off without it, and I predict we're going to start seeing media companies fail left and right, including the old-line publishers.
I always say watch for mergers. Industries doing a lot of mergers are struggling and may not be around long. Publishers have merged down to a few conglomerates. They dominate the trade by controlling vast back catalogues, but you can see from the shelves at bookstores that people don't really buy that kind of stuff any longer. I suspect that big publishers will start losing ground over the next generation, leaving us with small academic publishers and vultures like Dover who pick up the pieces.
But I've been wrong before. Maybe the public will keep paying for mediocre and bad content they consume and forget about. Who knows?
This cloud computing thing is going to run its course. The appeal has always been to managers to fire staff, dump servers, outsource IT to third-party "cloud" providers, and give themselves bonuses. Eventually, though, people are going to realize putting their data on other people's computers is not a good idea, and things will swing back the other way. Servers will be brought back in-house. Encryption will be a requirement. And so on. Things like this go in cycles.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 18 2015, @02:57PM
Just in time for quantum computing to render encryption useless, right? ;-) Suppose we can pin our hopes on secure communication via quantum entanglement.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @05:47PM
> people want to brick themselves up into a ghetto, let them. You can just ignore what they're selling.
That is only true as long as they never reach critical mass. Especially if they get to the point where they buy legislation to enforce their business model. You might argue that is not sustainable in the long run, but the damage done in the meantime isn't something to ignore - both to individuals who get caught up in it and systemic damage. For example the MAFIAA is working as hard as they can to protect their business model but the collateral damage to privacy and robustness of the internet is significant - you might remember the big fight about SOPA and ACTA, legislation. The MAFIAA lost that round, but they haven't given up, they are just getting more sneaky.