What If They Turned Off the Internet? 511
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."
(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.
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]
Re: (Score:2)
I use a Yahoo Pipe to filter the Slashdot RSS feed -- Idle and the amazing Roland are stripped. If I'm reading this, it wasn't in Idle.
I can't really complain if I clicked on the link and posted a comment... that said, I want this Cracked list off my lawn.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
google found it [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's what he would have wanted.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree. THe sad part is that it could have gone better than it did. Slashdot could have stimulated some very interesting discussions in terms of politics however, as you said, it turned out to be just another way to stir up trouble and thus page views.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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 currently have to settle for reading mildly interesting arguments about IPv6 on NANOG.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I can tell I've been up just a little too long. I spun through an amazing variety of imagery in my head. It was just enough to make me fall out of my chair.
Cat in a plexiglass box, with a pump pulling 22 in/hg vacuum.
Cat in an upright bagless vacuum cleaner. (even in my imagination, it's a tight fit)
Cat in an airlock on the ISS. Explosive decompression follows.
Cat in an airlock on the ISS. Slow decompression follows, slowly.
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.
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:5, Funny)
Uhhh yeah me too
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.
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
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there should be a sub-forum for those with UIDs of less than 10^6
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:4, Funny)
Details, man, details!
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!
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.
Re:Uhm... wrong site. (Score:4, Funny)
Interesting questions (Score:3, Interesting)
So you're saying that an idea should rejected because of its source, regardless of the value of the idea itself?
I think the title of the Cracked article is indeed interesting: What would happen if the Internet disappeared? Many of the Slashdot commenters here are responding with insight and information. And many of the doctored photos are insightful themselves: garage sales and newspapers would regain importance, brick-and-mortar stores would regain p
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.)
Re: (Score:2)
Spanning tree. My AP to your cable modem. We're back up in a coupla days.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not even necessarily long-haul. Packet radio works just as well over short distances, and you can do this *now* - just get an amateur radio licence and read up on it (as a licensed radio amateur I couldn't possibly condone using cheap crappy PMR446 walkie-talkies as an experimental platform for packet. It's illegal and if an FCC/Ofcom/other appropriate body inspector comes close enough - say, within quarter of a mile - you'll get caught).
In fact, here's a challenge for you. Get two Linux boxes, install s
twentytwelve (Score:5, Funny)
Re:twentytwelve (Score:4, Funny)
No thats the 2038 time_t apocalypse.
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?
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh yeah, another thing I had before the internet.
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.
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
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.
Re:It's not so bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
now that cars are a major part of the fabric of our everyday lives, it would be substantially more painful to give them up completely now.
This is only true in places where the physical infrastructure was designed or substantially altered to suit cars -- e.g., new-style suburbs or spread-out rural areas. Many places which developed in an earlier era, or have a more enlightened attitude towards planning, would cope pretty well. [A much bigger problem would be the lack of delivery trucks!] The USA would take a disproportionately large hit because it's engaged in pro-car planning so furiously.
So, the question is: has the underlying fabric of
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So, the question is: has the underlying fabric of mainstream society changed since pre-internet days, to such a great extent that society would fall apart without the internet? I'd say no way.
Open up your wallet.
EVERYTHING but the cash is linked to the internet in some way or another for its vital function.
Driver's License? The police officer checks it over the internet against records that essentially only exist digitally on the internet.
Checkbook? When you write a check, the payee deposits it in his bank, who gives her funds drawn from the federal reserve over the internet, then sends an image of the check to your central bank over the internet, which then contacts your branch and updates yo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It wouldn't be too bad. Bicycles work as well now as they ever did. Without cars filling up the streets, we'd have plenty of open road to bike to/from work, stores, etc.
Supply and demand would kick in, and in short order, instead of mega shopping malls on the edge of cities, there would be a large number of smaller stores throughout each town. Instead of peopl
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: (Score:2)
For me, it was bulletin board system (BBS) days. Good stuff.
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.
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.
Oblig. South Park Quote (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Fuck that. I'm heading out Californy-way. I hear they got some internet out there.
Re: (Score:2)
I heard the internet will still be running at amusement parks
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!"
BBS (Score:5, Interesting)
we'd be using our 1200bps modems connecting to the local BBS and swapping email over fido.
Re: (Score:2, 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.
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.
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: (Score:2)
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,
And once you are well on your war path you will suddenly discover that bullets [eabco.com] in your bullet belt don't come with cartridge [eabco.com], primer [cabelas.com] and powder [eabco.com] charge. You'd have to throw them, real hard :-) or perhaps study ahead of time how this whole thing works.
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.
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].)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe you are from somewhere where right-wing means socialism, communism, or fascism (which are all degrees of the same thing), but in the USA, right-wing means the opposite. Like Libertarianism but with a touch of Judeo-Christian morality.
Uh.... socialism and communism are generally considered "left" and "extreme left", fascism is considered "extreme right".
I do personally find the whole left/right distinction to be silly though - political beliefs and ideologies are not a simple line. My personal political beliefs for example often fall on both ends of the scale, but I wouldn't call myself "moderate" either since I strongly advocate some things traditionally considered "left" and strongly advocate other things traditionally considered "rig
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Guess we found a replacement for Cowboy Neal as the joke option at the end of the poll...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
f)breasts (the live nude version on a real female)
non photoshoped :(
I saw this on The IT Crowd (Score:2)
They faked breaking the internet and people panicked and stampeded over each other. Even though it is a sitcom, this is probably accurate.
If Al Gore invented the internet, it will probably be Crazy Ol' Uncle Joe (Biden) who breaks it.
I'd be in a foxhole.... (Score:2)
Ignoring for the moment that I generally grab what I might want from the net in the future as I find it (too many sites go "poof"), the only context in which "they" would turn off the Internet would be one of dire civil war (e.g. worse than what recently happened in Iran).
I doubt I'd actually be in a foxhole (that sort of implies you're fighting by the other side's rules), but I wouldn't take it laying down, nor would a lot of people like me.
Re: (Score:2)
> I doubt I'd actually be in a foxhole (that sort of implies you're fighting by
> the other side's rules)...
Having dirt between you and the bullets is good.
Re: (Score:2)
> I doubt I'd actually be in a foxhole (that sort of implies you're fighting by > the other side's rules)...
Having dirt between you and the bullets is good.
"You may find me one day, dead in a ditch somewhere. But by God, you'll find me in a pile of brass."
-- Trooper M. Padgett
Re: (Score:2)
True enough, and it is best to remember the difference between cover and concealment ... but perhaps it's best (in this sort of thing) to be somewhere no one is shooting at. If you must shoot, then fire only once---very hard to tell where a supersonic bullet comes from due to the sonic boom it makes---and then "scoot".
Re: (Score:2)
Excellent plan. Trouble is, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
Make a new internet. (Score:2, Funny)
Profit!!
Ad-Hoc Network (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
What you are saying is that if The Internet was turned off, you'd start building an internet.
I'm sure others would start doing the same too. You could peer with them.
Re: (Score:2)
Could the internet eventually be replaced with a mesh network? Maybe because I'm in student housing right now, but without the internet, we'd probably go about setting up an Ad-Hoc network in our building, then expand that to others we want to talk to (like a cantenna to the university buildings across the way). Sure, I wouldn't be able to post on Slashdot, but I could probably scrounge up enough movies to keep playing for a couple of years. Porn on the other hand, we'd have to get creative.
Congratulations! You just re-invented FidoNet.
I didn't know we had a pool. (Score:2)
After the riots have settled down and the withdrawal symptoms have faded
I expect to see a geek in a riot about the same time BnL perfects the all-terrain hover chair.
How would you cope? (Score:2)
Having lived most of my life without it, easily. I'd miss it, but I'd survive. I still remember how to do business via telephone and snail-mail. I still have most of my old reference books and the magazine publishers would spring back to life and bombard me with subscription offers. Bookstores would make a comeback.
(And we'd revive the old dialup UUCP-based Usenet, of course.)
Television, record stores, and movies would be revitalized, but that doesn't matter to me.
A much more serious problem would be the
Radioamateurs would rise to the occasion (Score:2)
And once again, glory would be ours.
- You'd dust off your old US Robotics modems.
- People would set up BBS'es.
- We'd WiFi honeypot each other...
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.
It's the not-too-distant future? (Score:2)
Next Sunday, A.D.?
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot is one of the few places where a future spent trapped on a satellite watching bad movies with sarcastic robots could be considered utopian.
having lived pre-internet.. (Score:2)
Books will be read, assignments will be completed by students, TV will return to the entertainment center of the livingroom, people will not stay up all night, games will be payed on a board, you'll have to pick up a pen and write to people, or dust off your printer. (you do know that impact printers were cheaper to run and lasted longer than inkjets) I would welcome that future. There was data transfer before the 'net, BBS, forums, chat, can all work without the net, thus we may just find a different way t
DEAD.MP4 (Score:4, Funny)
MPEG at 11.
WARNING (Score:2)
Sites like cracked.com (and tvtropes.org) need an explicit warning:
"Caution: After clicking on this link you may lose all awareness of the passage of time. If you have anything that you need to do in the next 3-4 hours you probably don't want to go there"
I would sence a disturbance... (Score:2)
Maybe I'd Be Capable... (Score:2)
... of doing a goddamn crossword again. My *shortcuts* have shortcuts to Google. How the hell am I supposed to resist the sum total of all human knowledge when I'm stuck with "42D: 1972 Red Sox shortstop (8 letters)" and all I've got is a tentative P crossing through the second space?
Doug Adams wrote about it ten years ago.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Doug Adams wrote about it ten years ago, and it still applies.
http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html [douglasadams.com]
The Series of Tubes... (Score:2)
OMG WTF?!? (Score:2)
Goods times bring back BBS'S (Score:4, Insightful)
If anyone needs me I'll be leveling my L.O.R.D. character.
The Future (Score:3, Funny)
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!!
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... no internet, no stupid people using stupid memes. Sounds like a deal to me. I for one welcome our internet-stopping overlords.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... no internet, no stupid people using stupid memes. Sounds like a deal to me. I for one welcome our internet-stopping overlords.
Thanks to the advertising and PR industries, the stupid meme predates the Internet. By a long shot.
Re:Riots? You've got to be kidding. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
See prohibition of alcohol. It was bad enough that they repealed it.
awww.. you gave away the end
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If they turn off the internet , we will create our own version, which will be better than the previous.
Keep the marketers and all of Africa off it.
Replace flash with something less nasty.
Devise some auto-healing thing that disconnects misbehaving ( windows ) machines. No more botnets or DDOS attacks.
If we had to we could not only rebuild it but build something far better.
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.