Panic! At the Cisco
Ah, networking and popular music jokes. But the "blogosphere" yesterday was all abuzz about routing problems the American NorthEast near Boston getting to Google related sites. GMail, the world's most popular search engine and all related kind of programs were unavailable for about three hours. Which means all of people were unable to search the latest news on Paris Hilton, look up what their house looks like on GoogleEarth or any of the other fine, fine programs associated with Google. More importantly, whenever anything hpapens to threaten the delicate nature that is the internet viewing in America, all kinds of people panicked and flamed each other like it was going out of style. Possibly because they thought it WAS going out of style. And the people got political. If there is one thing that brings about chaos faster than anything else, it's the rapid adding of technology to politics.
Initially, people were commenting that this is what the internet would like without net neutrality. Net neutrality being the new cause celebre among the tech savvy who want to fake being politically knowledgable as well. It's become the new reason we all hate the bigger technology companies, it's the new reason we want the government to regulate, or not to regulate at all, the internet. The very basic premise is a long time ago the government laid down all the cable and fiber that connects routers to routers. Internet Serivce Providers build more routers and provide access to all this, kind of like your phone company puts in new PBXs to allow more phone lines to connect to the existing phone cables we see everywhere, thanks to the Wichita Lineman. It's a complicated issue that has all sides on the technology divide fighting it out.
In any event, it was a fight of fights on fark as people said it was a router issue, some said a DNS issue and some said it was a plot by any number of people or groups. The problem on this beautiful forum, which is representative of fora at large, was that people had only half the facts to play with. People get one little factoid in their head and assume they have the whole story. This is also common ot jsut about any kind of idea, theory or plot that comes across the internet. This is why research is your friend. This is why I try to be fanantical about sourcing. (Programming note: there will be some edits to the rant two nights ago since I sourced nothing about the Saudi royal family). Internet fights are the most fun, especially about technology and theoretical policy. After all, you don't need to cite sources from any kind of studies made, field tests or any kind of empirical evidence. Use a couple of facts from god knows where, throw a little half baked analysis and you've got a good technical flame war.
We've all heard Senator Ted Stevens' (R-AK) famous comments about the internet being a series of tubes. We ll know that when politicans get invovled in something, all kinds of agendas get involved and people put favoritism over facts. Technical types get pissed at Stevens for not knowing enough about technology and make fun of him for his ignorance. He, in turn, feels his wounded pride and gets it into his head to not care anymore about technology. Or, CEOs who are more politically savvy then get ahold of politicians, tell them what's good for them, which is not the whole story and the politicians vote and make policy. Bad policy is made, techies get more pissed off and hate political system more and political system responds with its coldest weapon: ignoring until it goes away.
And people wonder why technology and pollitics are so hard to understand.
So it is written, so do I see it.
Initially, people were commenting that this is what the internet would like without net neutrality. Net neutrality being the new cause celebre among the tech savvy who want to fake being politically knowledgable as well. It's become the new reason we all hate the bigger technology companies, it's the new reason we want the government to regulate, or not to regulate at all, the internet. The very basic premise is a long time ago the government laid down all the cable and fiber that connects routers to routers. Internet Serivce Providers build more routers and provide access to all this, kind of like your phone company puts in new PBXs to allow more phone lines to connect to the existing phone cables we see everywhere, thanks to the Wichita Lineman. It's a complicated issue that has all sides on the technology divide fighting it out.
In any event, it was a fight of fights on fark as people said it was a router issue, some said a DNS issue and some said it was a plot by any number of people or groups. The problem on this beautiful forum, which is representative of fora at large, was that people had only half the facts to play with. People get one little factoid in their head and assume they have the whole story. This is also common ot jsut about any kind of idea, theory or plot that comes across the internet. This is why research is your friend. This is why I try to be fanantical about sourcing. (Programming note: there will be some edits to the rant two nights ago since I sourced nothing about the Saudi royal family). Internet fights are the most fun, especially about technology and theoretical policy. After all, you don't need to cite sources from any kind of studies made, field tests or any kind of empirical evidence. Use a couple of facts from god knows where, throw a little half baked analysis and you've got a good technical flame war.
We've all heard Senator Ted Stevens' (R-AK) famous comments about the internet being a series of tubes. We ll know that when politicans get invovled in something, all kinds of agendas get involved and people put favoritism over facts. Technical types get pissed at Stevens for not knowing enough about technology and make fun of him for his ignorance. He, in turn, feels his wounded pride and gets it into his head to not care anymore about technology. Or, CEOs who are more politically savvy then get ahold of politicians, tell them what's good for them, which is not the whole story and the politicians vote and make policy. Bad policy is made, techies get more pissed off and hate political system more and political system responds with its coldest weapon: ignoring until it goes away.
And people wonder why technology and pollitics are so hard to understand.
So it is written, so do I see it.