The 'New' Internet

It's supposed to be illegal to be this stupid.

Get It Try It

Take this for what it's worth. It's based on a report from the Swedish SvD. As such SvD are not the monkeys in this context - unless of course they seem to agree wholeheartedly with what the others are supposedly saying (and thinking).

But the implications are staggering. Not for the Internet itself. The Internet itself is healthy and doing fine, thank you. No - the implications are staggering for the median intelligence of those we've depended on to know far better.

It's shameless. It's moronic. It's congenitally dumb. And it's probably sponsored by Microsoft.

What follows are accurate translations of excerpts of the original article. Read and be scandalised shitless.

[This is a long article so settle in.]

Viruses, illegal activities, shortage of addresses, and ANONYMOUS USERS. The Internet is full of problems and so now researchers are studying how they might build a NEW INTERNET to get rid of these shortcomings. But most people would prefer to improve today's Internet instead. The issue is extremely important for Ericsson - half of the corporation's researchers are working on 'Internet development'.

It only takes a few moments online until you run into trouble. Your inbox is filled with more miserable spam and if you're unlucky you suffer even more through computer viruses and stolen credit card numbers. And to that one can add the even crueller attacks that regularly hit corporations and government agencies.

These problems are far from new. And there are many who in retrospect are starting to wonder if it's even possible to clean up the mess. The Internet is despite all a creation from a completely different time and world. Because it was at the end of the 1960s that the US military and the world of academia laid the foundations to today's Internet.

The number of Internet users has grown dramatically since then. And what was once a secure communication network of almost idealist quality where everyone knew everyone else has been transformed into a meeting place where commercial interests are powerful and where anonymity has often been a problem.

The police and other authorities often have great difficulties getting at online crime. But there are other types of difficulties such as the fact the number of available Internet addresses is running out.

The solution for this latter issue is of course IPv6. This gives us an almost unlimited supply of Internet addresses but the associated costs have meant the technology has still not had a breakthrough.

But there are many many other problems that need to be solved for the Internet to function well in the future. And this has prompted some researchers, corporations, and authorities to start discussing building the Internet again from scratch. Just erase everything associated with today's Internet and build a new Internet which takes all the developments of the past 40 years into account and which can handle the fast expansion expected in the coming years.

Both in Europe and the US but also in Japan, South Korea, and China there are research projects studying how such a transformation could take place. The EU are in as an important financier and one of the objectives is that this time Europe can be in on the design itself. Today's Internet is a creation of the US.

Aside from the technical issues there's also the desire for more control, for example being able to find out the physical identity of people behind given IP addresses. This is important for commerce and banking services to be more secure but also to thwart outright crime.

That there are so many issues to be remedied is something most people are in agreement about. On the other hand many are doubtful it's possible to create an entirely new Internet. The sceptics would rather see the research into a new Internet as a path to new thinking in order to develop new technologies which thereafter can be used on the Internet everyone's already using.

'Some people think the Internet is damaged', says Internet expert [sic] Patrik Fältström who also works at Cisco. 'There's a formidable lobby working to create a new Internet backed by some of the traditional telcos particularly in France and southern Europe. But when they start talking details I start to doubt they could ever do this.'

Fältström sees two major challenges for the Internet in the years ahead. Countries must arrive at legislation that takes care of important issues such as copyright, surveillance, and other matters that have garnered a great amount of attention recently.

And then the Internet has to be able to handle the enormous traffic in the coming years. This in itself is a true challenge.

'The Internet has become such a huge structure that it's becoming difficult for packets to find their destinations', says Bengt Ahlgren at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. 'One might say that with so many narrow paths on the Internet there's a risk of self-oscillations.' [sic]

The issues are highly relevant for Ericsson who are working more and more with amalgamating the world of the cellphone into the Internet. Ericsson head of research Jan Färjh reckons that today's one billion Internet users will soon be 4-5 billion when everyone's cellphone is connected.

And it'll ten times more when cameras, automobiles, different types of sensors, and other gadgets are also connected. Many of these gadgets are always on the move and that makes the solution all the more difficult.

'The Internet was created without a thought to mobility', says Färjh. 'Today there are new system requirements when we want to access the same information no matter where we are. And Internet security has to be improved so we don't get infected by viruses and similar issues in our terminals. [sic]'

For Ericsson this further development of the Internet is tremendously important. A full third of the 600 researchers working for Färjh are researching the Internet. If you add in those who are researching Internet services it's another 100 or a full half all told. And half of Ericsson's external research funding goes to projects concerned with the Internet.

And Ericsson are also financing several projects in Europe and the US where people are studying how to build a completely new Internet from scratch. But Färjh still doesn't think there'll be a completely new Internet.

'This is going to be more of an evolution', says Färjh. 'But the changes are going to be so comprehensive that in twenty years we might have an new Internet anyway.'

So summarising and removing all the sneaky redundancies we can make a very short list of what's going on.

• It doesn't really matter when the Internet was created. The basic mover and shaker is the connectionless IP - Internet Protocol - and it's doing nicely, thank you. On top of that is the connection-based TCP - Transmission Control Protocol - and it's doing just dandy too. Addressing width is an unassociated issue on a par with the feared Y2K bug. That's it. The protocols are fine and it doesn't matter a rat's buttocks when they were created. They're epoch-agnostic.

• Carla Bruni and her friends in the copyright lobby want total surveillance. Of course they do. So do Monique Wasted, Peter Danowsky, and Håkan Roswall. (Actually Roswall wants the Internet outlawed because as with all things related to computers it scares him.) So do Henrik Pontén, Tomas Norström, and all those talentless bench warmers in Hollywood. They can naturally go stuff themselves (into themselves so to speak). They can do this now and they can themselves choose between 32-bit addressing and 64-bit addressing to accomplish this. Nous vous en prions. S'il vous plaît.

• 64-bit addresses are needed. Gee whiz. What a news flash. Wow, really caught us all by surprise with that one! The article points out the solution's already here. And has been for years now. Another shocker! But here's the point: There's. No. Issue. It's already been solved. LONG ago.

• You want to connect your toaster to the Internet and it needs its own IP? Fine. We all want you to be able to connect your toaster to the Internet! But this has already been solved too. See the point immediately sabove.

• You want to get rid of viruses and you think the Internet is to blame? Welcome to the Hall of Monkeys.

Talking turkey here: if any engineer, whether in the Microsoft Kool-Aid™-drinking Bill Gates-fellating Sweden or elsewhere, really thinks the Internet is somehow responsible for viruses then said engineer is - by definition - not qualified to sit on any research team for any research topic whatsoever. Not even the future of tea cozies. These people are instead tantamount to criminally stupid.

And most likely being paid big kronor by Bill Gates to look the other way.

Now here's the score.

• The Internet must remain free. And must remain (or become again) completely free. This business about connecting toasters with IPv6 is irrelevant. IPv6 will happen when it needs to. That's a technical matter and is relatively easy to take care of.

• But there are, as everyone understands by now, any number of beady-eyed greedos who don't like the Internet to be free. These are the people and the interest groups who have suffered for the sake of this openness. They are the big multinational corporations and the politicians. They continually get caught out in lies and other acts of deception and manipulation and it's the Internet and the people assembling on it who time and again expose them, out them, and remove them from power.

• The planet we live on is billions of years old. Yet it's only within the past five hundred years things have advanced so much that people are able to communicate to an extent made possible by the printing press. And it's only within the past fifty years things have advanced to computerised Internet communications.
  
  The Internet represents the single biggest cultural upheaval since the printing press and in absolute terms the biggest upheaval of all time.

• The Internet must be safe to use. This is accepted by every conscionable netizen. But the Internet itself has never been 'unsafe'.
  
  It's been that abomination called Windows that's been unsafe (and downright dangerous).

Looking further at that last point: what are the possible 'evils' of the Internet as perceived today?

• Spam.
  
  Spam has to rate at or near the top. But 95% or more of all spam today is generated by compromised Windows computers. Read that again. 95% or more of all spam today is generated by compromised Windows computers.
  
  At no time has any other platform (such as Mac OS X, Ubuntu, or Solaris) been involved in any significant proliferation of spam. This because it's simply not possible to compromise these Unix-based systems.
  
  So the culprit is Windows. And as Windows itself is 'evil' then the cure for spam is to remove Windows from the Internet.
  
  Piece of cake.

• Computer viruses.
  
  Computer viruses have to be near the top too. But what platforms are susceptible to compromise by computer 'viruses'?
  
  The answer is the same as before. Only Windows.
  
  No other platform anywhere is in any significant way susceptible to compromise. None. It's. Only. Windows.
  
  Are you running Windows? Are you complaining about computer viruses? Then you're stupid.
  
  You don't like viruses? Really? Then get the F off Windows.
  
  Problem solved.

• Anonymity.
  
  But anonymity is a good thing! Ask Tim Berners-Lee who invented and founded the World Wide Web, who like many others was threatened by the Unabomber. What if Tim and the others hadn't been able to obfuscate and hide their own ICANN information? Anonymity is a condition for guaranteeing freedom of speech. The only people against anonymity are the very people who don't bat a lash when persecuting you - repressive governments and other forces everywhere. Such as the Hollywood companies in both the movie and music industries.

There is no issue with the Internet that is not related to either Microsoft Windows or abusive governments and corporations. None. Is IPv6 an issue? No. It's been solved. Long ago. The Internet has no issues - but the wrong people - the 'evil' people - will always have issues.

But remember: huge amounts of money are being spent to find new ways to enslave you. This money comes either from tax coffers or from higher prices for goods and services you will buy. At the end of the day you're paying for your own enslavement.