6597961
story
Comments: 511 +- Entertainment: What If They Turned Off the Internet? on Saturday October 24, @08:47PM
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topichumor.gif); width:58px; height:39px;
humor
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicinternet.gif); width:70px; height:73px;
internet
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topictech2.gif); width:60px; height:80px;
technology
theodp writes "It's the not-too-distant future. They've turned off the Internet. After the riots have settled down and the withdrawal symptoms have faded, how would you cope? Cracked.com asked readers to Photoshop what life would be like in an Internet-addicted society learning to cope without it. Better hope it never happens, or be prepared for dry-erase message boards, carrier pigeon-powered Twitter, block-long lines to get into adult video shops, door-to-door Rickrolling, Lolcats on Broadway, and $199.99 CDs."
Related Stories
Because I don't need to worry about finances I can ignore Microsoft
and take over the (computing) world from the grassroots.
-- Linus Torvalds
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.
(And now with more Pants!) (Score:5, Insightful)
If it gets Idle off /., it wouldn't be a complete loss.
Re:(And now with more Pants!) (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad thing is that this story *is not* in idle, but entertainment.
Parent
Re:(And now with more Pants!) (Score:4, Funny)
So, Slashdot Entertainment, Slashdot Idle, will be gone.(1) lolcats will be exterminated. Twitter will flutter away quietly. 4chan will have imploded. FoxNews will have outfoxed themselves with a false prediction of the collapse of the intertubewebnet (off by 30 days at that!), and the newsroom will spend the following days blaming the liberals, but no one outside the newsroom will know due to the demise of the Internet. (3) :)
New industries will boom. People will rediscover interpersonal interaction. Bars will thrive on singles night (as a million lonely Slashdotters hit the streets in their pathetic attempts to get laid, that will fail on or off the 'net.) (5)
I wouldn't stress too much. The future has already reported in to say the Internet is alive, well, and serving it's designed purpose. (6)
Footnotes:
1) It went poof, and everyone moved on peacefully
2) This space was intentionally left blank.
3) This actually has been happening for 2 weeks [foxnews.com], but no one has noticed. Check back in 16 days.
4) 404 - Footnote not found [youtube.com]. The FRL you requested was not found. Please check the number and dial again.
5) Who am I to argue with a Slashdot story [slashdot.org] on the subject?
6) Confirmed report from the relatively distant future [youtube.com]
Parent
Uhm... wrong site. (Score:5, Insightful)
What is this, digg? Cracked joke pages don't belong here.
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:5, Insightful)
Idle and Slashdot 2.0 don't belong on Slashdot either. Unfortunately, someone behind the scenes thought that the best way to lure new users was to emulate Digg instead of doing what Slashdot did best; allow nerds and geeks to discuss interesting articles and thus provide intellectual entertainment. I think that they'll find that the whole charm of Slashdot was the discussion after the article and it is what made Slashdot worth returning to on a daily basis.
Parent
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:5, Insightful)
+1000
I have been on /. since it launched (yeah, back then we nerds were quite resistant to ever creating logins for sites, hence my non-low account ID). And it seems in the last 6 months or so it's been going this way - I have gone to reading it in Google Reader and also have Gizmodo and Engadget in there as well. It seems like at least a third of the posts lately are just regurgitated from Giz and Engadget, a day or so later.
My thought is that the internet has grown so huge, that /. can't compete with sites that have pageviews hundreds of times higher, and this is their way of sucking in some extra pageviews.
The content on here has definitely changed. I still find some engaging comment threads, but it just seems like the truly geeky content has gotten watered down with posts about new products, jokes, etc.
Part of it may just be that the tech world as a whole has transformed from what it was in the mid-nineties. Back then, everything was awe-inspiring and amazing in the tech world, and now it's all pretty pedestrian, we've become quite jaded.
And, our attention spans have gotten so short, that spending a half hour reading an article about a distributed network cracking the latest encryption algorithm gets pushed under the three posts about new cell phones. And a simple yet brilliant idea is no longer brilliant, it's just expected from middle management in the outsourced development sweatshops.
Parent
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:5, Funny)
Uhhh yeah me too
Parent
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:4, Insightful)
While much of you may lament the current days of slashdot, when I started visiting it ~4-6 years ago it was filled with memes (I havn't seen a soviet russia joke in quite some time), first post jokes (GNAA) and dupes. Now it seems like most days most of the memes have rightfully left for reddit/digg. So while the comments have gotten better, the articles have probably gotten worse. What slashdot needs to do is evaluate the story submission process and the mods currently in control to emphasize less bullshit and more tech.
Parent
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:5, Insightful)
What slashdot needs to do is evaluate the story submission process and the mods currently in control to emphasize less bullshit and more tech.
What slashdot needs is a beowulf cluster of hot grits poured over Natalie Portman
Parent
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:4, Funny)
Details, man, details!
Parent
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a long time reader myself, I'll have to say /. does have some strong competition of late with Engadget scooping stories first and BoingBoings editorial staff. But what makes this site awesome, is the commenting, moderation and user community. To this day, I often get what I need to know from the article and summaries. Engadget and other sites can not hold a candle to this community.
Kudos to us all!
Parent
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:5, Interesting)
Back then, everything was awe-inspiring and amazing in the tech world
That era was when Nvida/3dfx were first founded - the first texture mapping graphics cards came out, then full transformation and lighting in hardware, Quake, then wide screen resolutions. 450 MHz Pentium III processors seemed super-zippy fast. Microsoft introduced 'sockets' to Windows and announced that Windows NT had made UNIX legacy. SGI wanted to prove that a software based OpenGL would be as fast as custom game rendering code. ADSL broadband was becoming available in some apartments. Previously low-key student houses who just happened to have broadband connections found themselves the most popular destinations for new students. The battle between Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator had begun. Cell phones still had a long antennae coming out the top.
Just before in 1994, having a 56K modem was a major advancement, Windows 3.1 was still the main development target. Reading USENET, text based discussion boards and subscribing to mailing lists was the main method of getting news. Viewing images would require using ftp manually or using uuencode/decode to get a server to fetch a 640x480 image, encode it as ASCII, slice the file up and send it to you in chunks, which you could then reassemble manually.
Now, if your cable provider goes from 50 Mbits to 70 Mbits, that isn't noticable, though laptop screen have shrunk a bit, and everyone uses LCD monitors now. Just about every mobile phone seems to look like a touchpad PDA or has a little keyboard and allows the user to play movies and music. MP3 players are the size of credit cards. USB Keychains now store more information than a DVD let alone a 1996 hard disk drive. What could just about be done on supercomputer in 1996, can now be done on a graphics card.
Parent
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:4, Interesting)
The content on here has definitely changed. I still find some engaging comment threads, but it just seems like the truly geeky content has gotten watered down with posts about new products, jokes, etc.
Exactly. And since both nature and my cat abhor vacuums, where the hell are the good geek new sites now?
I used to enjoy Technocrat. I wish Bruce had shown an interest in letting the community move off his server.
Parent
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the old saw that "Nature abhors a vacuum" would take effect. It wouldn't take long to rebuild a network of networks again. The protocols that are used and the speed and whatnot may be still at issue, but having had an internet and knowing its potentiality, I think that if it were taken down, something would have to be invented to replace it.
Now, if it were 'taken down' because "they" wanted to silence it, I recommend to you the quote famously attributed to John Gilmore: "The internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it."
I don't know if you'd ever get it taken down for non-technical reasons (like The End Of Life As We Know It.)
Parent
twentytwelve (Score:5, Funny)
Re:twentytwelve (Score:4, Funny)
No thats the 2038 time_t apocalypse.
Parent
It's not so bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
I mis-remember it (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm always struck by my pre-Internet memories, because I have no recollection of how I learned timely, geek-related facts. I was a huge Trek fan in high school, and I knew all about conventions and movie plans and whatnot. I'm sure I got some of it from BBS's, and I must have subscribed to some 'zines, but how did I ever find those without - not just without the Internet, but without ubiquitous search?
Parent
Re:I mis-remember it (Score:4, Interesting)
I was a huge Trek fan in high school, and I knew all about conventions and movie plans and whatnot.[...] but how did I ever find those without - not just without the Internet, but without ubiquitous search?
Word of mouth amongst friends. Local game/comicbook shop poster boards.
Parent
Re:It's not so bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Add to all this the fact that a large percentage of us would have to find something else to do for a living, and many of us would have to emerge from the basements we've been in since 1987, and you have a real problem.
Parent
Re:It's not so bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
In counterpoint, a friend of mine survived the "special times" in Cuba (basically, a massive powerdown) and said that the first six months pretty much sucked ass. But then you started to smile again, because the water was still warm and inviting, and you still had your friends, and you began to have fun. Only no one drove cars, and you invented things to do that didn't require money, electricity, or petroleum. A year after - you're fine. Different and less comfortable, but fine.
RS
Parent
Re:It's not so bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which side of the fence?
I was in Cuba (Gitmo) in the 80s. We went to the beach, we played D&D, we skated, we did all kinds of things. You read a lot. Hell, we didn't even have cable or a McDonalds until 1986 or so. You really have to make do with what you have.
It's amazing what you learn to live with and what you find to entertain yourself with.
Parent
Re:It's not so bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember an age before the internet.
Me too. For-profit copyright infringement was a bigger problem back in the days of dial-up.
Bittorrent and iTunes took the wind from their sails.
If the internet was turned off, I imagine that commercial copyright infringers will return with a vengence.
Re:It's not so bad. (Score:4, Insightful)
I started out on a BBS in the mid 80s and later BBS networks like fido and WWIV. Back then I paid for longdistance. The main allure of the internet, that came along later, was being able to access a computer outside of my area code without a per minute fee or paying the BBS's longdistance fee. Bandwidth of the internet then wasn't all that special. Pirate BBSs were common. Porn BBSs were common. "EMail" and messageboards and turn based games on BBSs were common. Of course you had CompuServe as well. All of that folded their tents when almost anyone could set up a server to the internet and talk to anyone else on the internet.
I guess if I woke up tomorrow and there was just no internet anymore, I'd set up a BBS network. I'd expect it to be really busy since long distance is so cheap and data is so bloated now. But it's really a ridiculous question unless it's specified what it is that no longer works. No DNS? That just requires ip addresses. Cumbersome, but doable. Go much further than that and nothing works, including phones and BBSs. In which case my basic engineering, practical fabrication, and hunting/looting skills should become useful.
Parent
South Park had this covered (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/166179/ [southparkstudios.com]
They covered basically every topic in there
Re:South Park had this covered (Score:5, Funny)
I think that if you actually look into it, you'll find that The Simpsons covered all of the topics even before South Park did.
Parent
Oblig. South Park Quote (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oblig. South Park Quote (Score:5, Funny)
That was the best quote you could manage? You missed out on the epic chance to quote
"We can't go back to Playboy now!"
Parent
BBS (Score:5, Interesting)
we'd be using our 1200bps modems connecting to the local BBS and swapping email over fido.
Re:BBS (Score:5, Interesting)
"we'd be using our 1200bps modems connecting to the local BBS and swapping email over fido."
exactly what I did in the old days. As long as computers are around, people will find a way to connect them and connect themselves to each other using them. I suspect that while dial up might not be answer people run to these days I could see people setting up wireless networks within their own neighborhoods, and extending them into WANs that cover a good part of their city.
This has already been worked out [wikipedia.org]. It has a tremendous advantage, too: it would be more difficult for a company or government to either shut it down or personally identify individual users.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Work? (Score:5, Funny)
What I would do? (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's face it, by then the shit will have hit the fan. Mankind will have been put under its own boot, with either one of two situations occuring: Men ruled by man or man ruled by men. Neither world is acceptable to me, not like this one is a model existence either.
I'd put on my headband, boots, camo pants, and grab whatever black market guns I could find (by then guns will be outlawed so we can become more in-line with the more "progressive" nations) and maybe grenade or two. I'd light a cigarette to go with my 5 o'clock shadow, strap on a bullet belt, and teach any of the dogs responsible for this mess, including those that tried to stop me, what the inside of hell looks like, all while Foetus's Anything (Viva!) [www.last.fm] played in the background. Rule of law? I'll show you Newton's first law: my bullet will hit their heads which will cause their brains to spray out.
There's no coping in my world. Only the blood of those responsible for this mess. Everywhere.
Re:What I would do? (Score:4, Funny)
You are mistaken, sir, I plan to do it exactly like they do it in the movies. I even have the little "jumping out of an exploding train" sequence planned out in my head.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I was only picking on GP's mistake of calling ammunition "bullets" - this mistake is quite popular. Bullets alone won't do you much good, unless you are familiar with the reloading press.
But with regard to leftover ammo and guns in case of major troubles ... ok, let's assume some people decide to abandon their homes and go ... where? Ok, let's assume they are gone. You are standing on the road, and there are presumably empty houses around you. You can break into some, but if the house is not empty you wil
Re:What I would do? (Score:4, Interesting)
You must have a lot of squirrels in your area.
Millions, actually. Hunting doesn't even make a dent in their population, and they cause a lot of damage to farmers and ranchers. I'm talking about ground squirrels [wikipedia.org], not about tree squirrels - the latter are game species. I had more than a hundred ground squirrels last summer near my house alone, running everywhere like rats, eating my plums right off the tree, and such. Don't know how many will be there next March. I had to work on their numbers because their burrows are eroding the hillside, and because I like plums very much :-)
In 2010 I expect to use those 17HMR, and a good deal of high velocity 22LR, in Modoc County [wikipedia.org] starting in March, and later, during whole summer, in Central Valley (Carrizo Plain [wikipedia.org].)
Parent
chans (Score:3, Funny)
new poll (Score:5, Funny)
What would replace the internet?
a)sneaker net
b)ip over avian carriers
c)johnny mnemonic
d)radio killed the itunes store
e)cowboy neal
f)breasts (the live nude version on a real female)
Millions of voices (Score:4, Funny)
would cry out in terror... silently.
Except for the calls to their ISPs...
SB
There is no point in this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it would never happen.
Why I'm so sure? Because there is no "they" in the Internet. Everybody can connect to his neighbors' wifi router, if needed. And the moment when no company on the planet is interested in using the now unused wires and cell phone towers, to sell services to customers, is the moment when humanity itself ceases to exist.
I don't see a point in imagining not having the Internet. And I know how it would look anyway, since I already lived when there was no such thing. I even know how life in a monastery without electricity is. Or in a hut in the middle of nowhere.
Now, that we know of the concept of a Internet, as long as there is a critical mass of humans exists, there will be such a network. :)
What would happen if Microsoft turned it off (Score:5, Insightful)
All it would take is one really bad Windows Update to turn off 70% of the Internet.
Question for Homeland Security: who has access to the master signing key for Windows Update? Who does the background check on those people?
Re:What would happen if Microsoft turned it off (Score:5, Funny)
> All it would take is one really bad Windows Update to turn off 70% of the
> Internet.
Yes but we're discussing the part that would actually be missed.
Parent
DEAD.MP4 (Score:4, Funny)
MPEG at 11.
Goods times bring back BBS'S (Score:4, Insightful)
If anyone needs me I'll be leveling my L.O.R.D. character.
Re:OMG (Score:5, Funny)
But we'd have no more lost carrier jokes, so it might balance out.
You would think so. Whole world would be filled with nerds running all around yelling LOST CARRIER, LOST CARRIER!!
Parent
Re:Riots? You've got to be kidding. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Arrr (Score:4, Insightful)
More like trade DVDs, books etc. with your friends. Don't copy them, just engage in some barter for the physical DVDs/books etc. The legal way to tell the RIAA + MPAA and such to frak themselves.
Parent
Re:Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Right up until someone decides that "misbehaving" includes "submitting content of which we do not approve." The last thing we need is for the internet to give some powermonger the tools to easily silence dissent.
Parent