Auerbach on Internet Cruft

Captain Beefheart writes "Karl Auerbach has a story on CircleID in which he declares '...Between spam, anti-spam blacklists, rogue packets, never-forgetting search engines, viruses, old machines, bad regulatory bodies, and bad implementations, I fear that the open Internet is going to die sooner than I would have expected.' The Balkanization of the 'Net appears to be upon us."

Re:The scariest part about Balkanization.

[aborchers]

I feel that the Internet is our last source of un-censored and un-biased information.

You're half right...

IPv6?

[sleepingsquirrel]

Gotta love this quote...

The net does not have infinite resources - even if IPv6 is deployed the contamination of IP address space will merely be slowed, not stopped.

He must be a long term thinker. If we started allocating IPv6 addresses at a rate of 2^32 addresses/sec (~4 billion -- that's the total address space for IPv4) we will run out of addresses in about 584 billion years. So we better all hope that protons don't decay.

Old news, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

Every few months some elitist prick looks around at all the idiots on the net, and declares that "The Internet is Dying". Don't believe it. People have been predicting this ever since AOL began allowing Usenet traffic, and it hasn't happened yet.

I don't see it.

[mblase]

His main argument seems to be that there's a lot of crap on the Internet, and because of this it will eventually become useless. But where's the supporting argument?

Junk mail hasn't brought the postal service to its knees. Telemarketers are a pain, but people still use phones and even find new ways to travel with them. Every communication medium lends itself to abuse, but that has never eliminated the medium itself. Only a superior, easier, more widespread technology has ever done that (telegraphs giving way to telephones, for instance).

It's just another guy claiming the end of the 'Net is nigh, people. Move along.

Re:The scariest part about Balkanization.

[noname3]

It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. I feel that the Internet is our last source of un-censored and un-biased information.

Hope lies in the blogs. :)

When will people learn?

[Captain Rotundo]

Things change. There is no static "open internet" that is going to 'end' abruptly one day. All social and technological systems are in a constant state of flux. Maybe the internet looks less open now than it was 'then' and maybe it looks to be trending away from the great utopia it never was, But the system is above all of this ultimately. Maybe for most people the techno-utopia will cease, but that is because that is what most people wanted.

All societies, including the 'internet society' are emergent phenomena. One thinks the 'network' is dying because they idealized it in another form, not in a 'better' form or a 'worse' form just their form. Simply put it is a case of the "good old days" syndrome, people constantly complain about society pointing out how great it once was, and they will continue to do so. If we let the internet die it is because collectively we didn't care to have it live. Sure there will always be complainers with valid points because it is very easy in hindsight to pick out what was better than you have now, while glossing over what was worse.

Sure I'd like to see Usenet and IRC be as good as I remember them, and I'd like everyone to pretned Flash was never invented and stop using it, but am I willing to give up on all the things (graphics, non-console interfaces, high-speed, mass access, etc) that both killed Usenet and brought about Flash? NO.

Always Free?

[matth88]

I'm optimistic about this. The fact is that, barring China and some other pariah states, that there is free *connectivity* (not neccessarily free communication) between everyone on the Internet. There will always be an opportunity for people to build new channels (think network layers) on top of this infrastructure. It will always be possible to encrypt communications on these channels. So there will always be a minimal level at which the network must remain free.

Is is perfect, seamless, elegant, etc? Maybe not. But it will remain "open."

The Internet is only as free as its users...

[klaxor]

In the present political climate in which government powers are conferred, without a counterbalancing obligation of accountability, onto private bodies, the loss will be much greater.

Which, I think is precisely the problem. We don't get an uncensored Net, we only get to choose the censors. In the U.S., the Net isn't censored by the government simply because allowing people to visit "questionable" sites gives the government the ability to compile a list of terrorism suspects.

Really, the problem is much more insidious than that - how many people know that AOL filters their content? When it comes down to it, while we decry other countries for their draconian censorship, we ourselves have merely moved the censorship from the government (who are 'accountable' to the public at large) to American corporations (who are accountable to no one, as Enron has shown). I fear the latter more than the former, because unlike governmental oppression, corporate suppression of free speech is not covered by the constitution!

Really, the Net is no longer a geek's toy. It is now the Net of the masses, and we can expect that things will get worse. The average person has no use for Linux kernals or for distributing free software, so you can expect these to go first. Indeed, as the SCO case has shown, Corporate America can effectively outlaw the distribution of anything that infringes on their income model by doing little more than filing a lawsuit.

Yeah, it's changing. The Internet is only as free as its users, and slaves are signing up in droves.

Is this Trolling from a /. Editor?

[globalar]

I never much paid attention to editors. But you might consider it after looking at this story. Really, this is inane.

Stop the presses!

[MhzJnky]

My goodness, is he saying there's useless crap flying around the internet! My goodness what ever will we do !?

In all seriousness, the internet, like all things, will reach a balance. To give and exapmple, if everyone's email is to full of spam, people will stop using email, the spammers won't reach anyone, and it will no longer be profitable to send spam. People will utilize a new form of comunication, similar to email but more controled.

We, esspeicaly Americans, are so used to balances being forced on us, though government regulation, that we're not willing to wait for natural processes to work.

The internet is the internet and will always be the internet. That what people want. The protocols may change but the idea will stay the same.

(yes, I can't spell, get over it)

Just as I suspected...

[jared_hanson]

I was hoping, by posting this, that I could point out the complete lack of originality in Slashdot posts that get moderated funny. You see, I wrote a step-by-step plan to create one of these overly abused posts, which cleverly resembled a different overly abused post.

Lo and behold, I got moderated funny! Who woulda guessed. I am tired of seeing crap like this and I'm glad to see there are others as well, judging from the response I received.

Moderators on Slashdot encourage these "me too, me too" posts by constantly rewarding them with +1, Funny points. Pavlov would have a field day with this.

Read my other posts regarding the abysmal quality of Slashdot moderation, ranked in order of my favorites: 1 [slashdot.org], 2 [slashdot.org], 3 [slashdot.org], and 4 [slashdot.org].

Re:The scariest part about Balkanization.

[mi]

I feel that the Internet is our last source of un-censored and un-biased information.

Are you sure, you want it un-censored? Before answering with the enthusiastic: "Yes, I am!" however, consider that anti-spamming is censorship, for example. Also, I would not want Jerry Falwell to be able to reach my children any more, than Jerry would not want his children to be reachable by pornographers (or so he says).

In other words, beware of what you wish for. Internet used to be the hangout of the few, who did not need many rules and understood each other. It is now the place for everyone -- like a nice park frequented by picnickers. At some point you have to start fining people for leaving garbage on the grass and for playing their stereos too loud -- something, that, of course, violates their freedom.

Once you accept the need to control people's behaviour, you have to accept the need for some authority to do that. ICANN or SPEWS or anything in between :-)

Re:The scariest part about Balkanization.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-spam lists are no more censorship than changing a radio dial. Just because someone want's to say it in no way obligates another to listen.

Not dying, but becoming a sewer

[Junks Jerzey]

The physical internet is not dying, of course. That's just silly. But some internet services--especially email and the web--have been abused to the point where the benefits are cloudy.

Imagine a random person who buys a computer and gets connected to the internet. Within a few months she gets more spam and virus emails than regular mail. Some of them contain pornographic images, many appear to be from people she knows, because their PCs are infected. Some are just plain misleading, such as a message from someone who says he has the information she requested. One is a message that appears to be from eBay, asking to confirm her userid and password. Sometimes she emails friends, but they are incorrectly deleted because her friends get so much spam too. She clicks on the wrong link in a Google search and gets a site that opens 20+ full screen windows and has to kill the browser to get rid of them. Sites contain misleading popups and ads about security vulnerabilities and potential viruses and system updates. Instant messaging windows with ads pop up every fifteen minutes or so. Clicking on the wrong button is a dialog--or misunderstanding what is being asked--results in some spyware being installed that pops up messages even when off-line.

You can fix all of these things. You can learn what to avoid. You can become horribly paranoid about everything. But most people don't want to be a system administrator that has to keep up with all of this nonsense.

Basically he's right.

[Goner]

My kneejerk reaction was, "yeah right." But after doing a teensy weensy bit of skimming at his site, he has a very good point. As major points of access are bought by large corporations, control becomes easier and easier. Perhaps in ways that savvy users can circumvent, but one would bet that for example, most Chinese internet users don't have any idea how to circumvent the great firewall.

Also, spam really does prevent email from getting through. I know that nearly anyone actually trying to email me at nutate at hotmail isn't going to get through to me unless I know them already... (and in which case they wouldn't be using that email address to contact me.)

The man's been looking at the internet since 1974, so he seen what's happened firsthand. But here's an analogy (of sorts) that just popped into my head. Last week I saw the documentary film Catching Out [catchingout.com] and the filmmaker did a Q&A about it afterward. One of the audience members asked her whether she thought that freight train hopping (the centerpiece to the film) was dying. She said that there are two schools of thought. One is from the old folks, who say "It's just too hard these days. Security's too tight, so I quit" But the young kids, she said, who'd grown up with this higher security think it's still a thriving enterprise.

Personally, I'm young enough to think the internet is going to be used and free for me for as long as I can concieve of. But for those who don't care to fight the restrictions (or don't notice them), they'll be, for lack of a better word, stuck (w/ msnbc as their homepage?...).

Re:Waaah

[Rimbo]

"Geesh, get over it pal, nothing is static."

Death is static. The changes in the Internet are signs that it is still alive.

Re:IMMINENT DOWNFALL OF THE INTERNET PREDICTED

[vanyel]

I'm really surprised to see Karl write such an article --- he's been around longer than I have, and *I* remember the continual cries "death of USENET!" whenever it filled the last generation of modems' capacity, starting with 1200 baud. It now takes a T3 to handle a full feed, and it's still alive and kicking 20-25 years later. The Internet is far more useful, and it will survive too. It will evolve ways to cope, but that's life. Literally.

It's not dead, it's just growing up

[Anonymous Struct]

I think that for people with the pioneer spirit, like the folks who were building webpages back in 1994, the internet as we knew has been dead for a while. Much of what made it interesting was the fact that it was new and mostly undiscovered, and there was a lot of anticipation and excitement about its potential.

Now that it's gone mainstream and its direction has gone into the hands of large corporations, it just isn't that interesting anymore. It's kind of like the western half of the United States -- now that everybody lives there, it's just another place. Sad to think that the most interesting days are well behind us, but honestly, when was the last time you were really excited about anything internet-related?

Re:Not dying, but becoming a sewer

[jdreed1024]

You can fix all of these things. You can learn what to avoid. You can become horribly paranoid about everything. But most people don't want to be a system administrator that has to keep up with all of this nonsense.

Easier said than done. Until people realize that a computer connected to the Internet is very very different from other consumer electronics, and even quite different from computers they used in the past, this isn't going to get solved. It's real easy for the /. crowd to criticize these folks, but you have to see it from their mindset. I don't have to be a telephone company representative to use my telephone. I don't have to be a filmmaker to use my DVD player. I don't have to understand how electron guns work to use my TV. And I don't have to be a plumber to use my dishwasher. These are all common household appliances, and they just work. They need dusting off now and then, and when they break you get them fixed, or buy a new one.

But a computer is totally different. Sure, when you get it out of the box, it does what you want it to. And when you first get your broadband Internet connection, you can view these great websites really fast. So how should people intuitively know that this is somehow different from the rest of their electronic devices? How are they to know that someone, somewhere can seize control of their computer, if they don't take the necessary precautions? How are they supposed to realize that allthough your TV just works, your computer needs constant updates to make it work correctly, and more importantly to keep it safe? How are they to understand that there are viruses out there that spoof e-mail addresses, and really, their friends aren't sending the porn?

I work in support. I've seen how difficult it is for the average user to comprehend that there could exist a virus that would find their e-mail address in someone's address book, and then pretend to be from them. They can't understand why this would happen unless they themselves were infected. To you and me it's simple to understand that a virus does that. We take it for granted that Outlook updates its address book with the addresses of everyone in the user's inbox. The average person doesn't understand this.

So what's the solution? Several options:
1) Force a mandatory computer and security education course for every customer at BestBuy, CompUSA, and other big outlets.
2) Make the Internet experience suck less.
3) Some combination of 1 and 2.

Seems to me 3 is the option. End users need to be made aware that their computer is not just a plug-in-and-forget-it device like their home theater system. However, spam needs to die too. And services enabled by default installations. How are we going to accomplish that? No idea. But there's a lot of crap on the Internet - even if you don't think it's dying, it's full of crap. And until users learn that once they connect their computer to the Internet, they need to act as though they're walking through a bad part of town at night, we're not going to see any changes.

Re:Unclear on the concept

[southpolesammy]

Exactly. The Internet itself is not the problem -- it's the chaotic nature of its unchecked and unmoderated usage that puts us at risk. Kind of like the streets of a big city and its neighborhoods -- there's areas of the city you don't go into because you can't be sure for your safety, but that doesn't mean that the roads leading there are at fault. The difference is that there's little protection from the Internet thugs coming into your neighborhood.

I think it's perfectly clear that we're at a crossroads with respect to the current open access to the Internet and the need for protection from the direct and/or indirect damage being perpetrated by those who either exploit it for their own means without paying for their usage of it, or those who actually want to destabilize its very foundation. Even though I'm not generally in favor of governmental controls (I'm a libertarian), even I can see that there's a problem here that needs to addressed from a socio-political standpoint. I want to see laws made that have real teeth against Internet abuse, have the enforcement of these laws be strong, and levy severe enough penalties against the abusers to show others that we will not put up with this anti-social behavior. If it goes against the will of the public, then the public needs to force their governments to take action.

Until social reaction finally catches up to deal with the spammers, virus/worm writers, and DDoS script kiddies, we will continue to have to figure out ways to fend them off. But in spite of that, partitioning the Internet is not the answer, nor the problem. This needs to be made perfectly clear. It's not a technological problem, it's a sociological one.

Re:Always Free?

[Second_Derivative]

Unfettered connectivity between all Internet nodes? I'll remember that next time I try to connect to someone with an ISP-level NAT and dynamic IP. The internet isn't becoming read-only, it's already largely BECOME read-only. Just as the corp wants it I'm afraid.

Re:The scariest part about Balkanization.

[ATMAvatar]

Are you sure he's even half right? If you get unlucky and use a particular ISP (library computers, AOL, etc.) or live in a particular country (China and Saudi Arabia are good examples), the former is no longer true. If you read any Microsoft story here on Slashdot, you know the latter can't possibly be true.

Content Free

[MegaFur]

Error. Although this may be the full text of the FUD (er... I mean "article") this is most emphatically not informative. People have been predicting the imminent death of the 'net since before it went commercial. Now there was an event sure to kill the 'net--how could we ever possibly get by with all that commerical junk? Surely that would kill the 'net. Right? Right?

Yes, there will likely be many problems with the Internet in the future--just as there have already been many problems with it in the past. I anticipate at some point people will undergo "clean up efforts". Various groups going around and convincing private bodies to move away from this or that broken/outmoted protocol onto the new, shiny, more robust protocol. This sort of thing has already been going on for some time now.

Re:IPv6?

[karl.auerbach]

The unit of blocking may very well fall along the basic proposed unit of IPv6 allocation - the /48 prefix.

Sure, that potentially leaves 2**80 such blocks - a number that I've heard is akin to the number of electrons in the universe.

But we'll probably find that the IPv6 space is, like the IPv4 space, carved up, significantly reducing the number of really usable address blocks.

You are right in that the result will still be a huge number - and it seems that it is big enough to accomodate some lossage - but then again, we once thought that the oceans were too big to be polluted.

If you have an opinion...

[KalvinB]

you're biased. Nobody exists on the planet who isn't biased unless they have no opinion of anything.

"bias" is just a buzzword to excuse your brain from the conversation.

As for being censored, that's not an internet phenomenon. Every form of media has been, will be or is being censored somewhere in the world.

Don't like it? Revolt, circumvent or move. Welcome to the human race where assholes exist that would like to label people as being and then censor people for being "biased" (e.g. presenting information) in a way they doen't happen to like.

Ben

Re:I don't see it.

[jBabel]

That's not his whole point. His fear of 'balkanisation' of the Net is well founded, in my view. Hell, it has already started, with some ISPs blocking SMTP ports, and even sometimes the WWW port, to avoid all those IIS-cracks and spamming problems.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see full-fledged ISP-level firewalls spreading, because of said ISPs getting fed up with dumb users not setting up their own firewall and not keeping their anti-virus up to date, and then getting cracked from the Windows Hole-du-jour. Only geeks will complain, so they won't care.

When that happens, only "legitimate" (whatever that means) hosts will be allowed to setup servers outside of their LAN, and your ISP (or beyond) will get to decide what goes in or out.

The upshot is that, on the one hand, spammers and crackers will not go away on their own. On the contrary, they are merging and getting ever more radical, as the recent DoSes on blacklists show. On the other hand, the net is taking a more and more critical role in the economy and everybody's lives. At some point, unless some radical technological breakthrough happens on the security front, the powers that be will demand action due yesterday and they won't give a rat's ass if they throw the baby out with the bath water, as long as Jane User gets her emails and can get to yahoo and the bank.

Hey, call me Cassandra...