Life, Death, Time, Religion, Global Warming, War and other controversial subjects

[DairineRules!]

I spened an increadible amount of time online because my school is online but I dont go to alot of other websites.
most of my free coumpter time is spent building programs and websites.

[Maelstrom]

What do you mean, your school is online?

[Kathy Li]

Originally posted by Tuttle:
Controversial Subjects...like say, the internet?

Man. I could go on for ages about domain name abuse, alone.

Anyways: The internet should not be availiable to the general public.

Well, I'd disagree with you there. It was ALWAYS available to the general public, it's just that back in the '80s you needed a certain level of technical knowhow to access it.

Why AOL publizing the internet was a bad thing.

The thing was, it wasn't solely on AOL's shoulders. It's just that AOL was the largest and most--er--Internet-ignorant of the service providers who began gatewaying internet services to their user base. But we were actually flooded by every big service provider at the time, not to mention the home-grown Fidonet gatewaying.

This caused what was known in usenet as the Eternal September.

O.M.G. I swear, I just had a nightmare flashback. It's post-traumatic stress! Man, it was horrible. Not only did people not get the basics of netiquette, there was also the media "soundbite" of the internet being "the information superhighway", so you'd get newbies coming in and demanding that you spoonfeed them exactly the information they needed to know, without them even acknowleding that you were a) a person, or b) should require a please and thank you.

On top of that, all the software at the time had no idea what some of the more arcane techbits of 'net software were for, and either implemented them in bass-ackwards ways, or eliminated them altoghter. Instead of having rot13 buttons, or escape characters that kept a screen from scrolling/displaying, we had screens of line-returns for spoiler space.

The worst culprit, really, has been whole-quoting. The USENET style in the '80s was to trim and respond to quotes in a dialog-like manner (you'll notice that Garrett and I still do this--it's the sure mark of an old-timer from the pre-web days). At work, these days, you get multiple unedited, layered quotes as carbon-copies to cover your butt as to what someone else said. I've seen them sixteen thick (sigh) and completely illegible.

The popularized internet allowed anyone to get online without going out of their way to join the technical group which access to the Net had previously been restricted to.

Yes, just like cars and the telephone.

The whole point of the Internet Protocol, however, was to eliminate the need to know the entire backbone map in order to send a simple piece of email. Before those simple four-part numerical addresses were instituted, you actually had to know the name of every machine between you and your mesage's recipient to send an email.

This allowed the average person to access the information, as well as edit the information available as they could create a webpage themself. This popularization both allowed criminals easier access as well as targets who would be less knowledgable about what is going on. Along with the crime which could be involved, the ability to put false information online has been there as long as there was a net to have information go on.

On the flip side, you don't need to be a corporation to publish or push your message. Mass media has been democratized by the web, and while there's a ton of misinformation and the occasional scam artist, you can also read every political viewpoint (not just the one that owns the media outlets or is "in fashion"), and everybody can email their congressperson directly. In an age when letter-writer was in decline and nobody was writing or communicating via the written word--it's suddenly become "the big thing" to put words together again, and to let the popularity of your website live or die on the value of how well and what you write.

... While the net makes it easier to get information, it also makes it harder to trust the information you are getting....

I don't think it's any harder than it's ever been. The 'net has never been more trustworthy than any other mass media outlet. It's made of people writing their own thing. They have their own biases, and their own agendas. Whether it's in print, or it's on the web, it's pretty much the same--you have to rely on your internal meter to judge. The 'net is just a media, not its content.

("eternal September")... This lasted about a month and was expected every September because people did not start with the knowledge of how to act online.

This is sooooo true.

They also didn't learn within a month like the university students did, because they were not there to learn.

Actually, I think it was a variety of other factors. You're right about the volume playing a huge factor. But there was also just the broadness of the new demographic. College students are mostly the same age, from roughtly the same financial backgrounds, living similar life styles. They're more focused as a group, particularly, especially since you were at the time talking only about math/computer/engineering/science geeks--it's not like the Sociology and Music majors were getting online in droves. net.startrek had something like 50-100 messages a day, while net.theater had maybe 2 a month.

Suddenly, we had everybody, kids to seniors, geeks and English majors and blue-collar workers getting on. Who didn't have the geek-thang to teach them to see past the machinery and computer face to the people on the other side. Who were, furthermore, hampered by the very software they were using from doing so.

In general the addition of the general public to the users caused the culture of the net to be mostly lost.

True. And there are days when I still mourn its loss, but what we got in its place was, in many ways, better.

However, the eternal september did, in most people's minds eventually end.

Riiight. That's why we still use terms like "newbies." But, yeah, it'll never be quite that bad again. Those teaching vs. those being taught were at something like a 1-10,000 ratio. Some days it really felt like you were trying to keep the tide from coming in, and you also had to re-interpret everything you knew about netiquette for a larger (non-UNIX-based) audience. A lot of us oldtimers got incredibly arrogant and obnoxious, especially after the 200th--"Tell me what I want to know, NOW!!" request.

I remember at the time that it was an essay by Stephen Fry that turned my head around and made me rethink a few things about what the net was and ought to be.

The internet has allowed criminals to commit crimes which are harder to track as well as more serious is amounts.

You know, I really hate that all anybody ever mentions about the 'net's coming into being is the criminal element. Chat rooms, internet safety. Omigod, the internet is where socially backwards misfits hang out to molest your children.

The internet has allowed money to move in patterns it never has before. The stock market has become democratized in less than a decade since online trading was established. eBay has allowed an entirely new online model for the second-hand market and small business to flourish. Amazon has completely reshaped the retail market.

But, of course, the only thing that matters is that perverts lurk about on the 'net. (eyeroll). Sorry. I know. I know. It's easier to write about.

but the problems on wikipedia are the same with the internet in general. Any random person can create a webpage and pretend that the information shared is true.

Balanced, however, by the fact that any random stranger can also correct or delete a false fact and insert a true one. There are levels of arbitration, and all things being equal, Wikipedia is still more up-to-date and accurate and comprehensive than a traditional paper-based and printed encyclopedia would be. The turnaround time to "correct" an edition has effectively been turned into a constantly living document.

Ditto the internet movie database.
Ditto the New York Times.
Ditto the BBC website.

I don't think professional informational sources on the internet are any more error-prone than their paper-based counterparts. The big difference is that they can hide that they made the mistakes in the first place even more easily.

[DairineRules!]

Originally posted by Maelstrom:
What do you mean, your school is online?

I mean that I do a vertuial school
I go to connections academy to go to there website click connectionsacademy.com

[Dragon Writer]

No one trusts wikipedia, with projects esspecially, but it's actually a great place for information with people constantly adding to it, and changing things back to normal as you pointed out.
I suppose it's still not a good idea to use it as a project TOO often, and you should probably back it up with something from other sites, make sure it's valid, but still...It gives a lot more information then some other online encyclopedias. :P


I have friends who go to online schools

[nelina]

I have a Wikipedeia account myself, and I agree that it is a great place to find information quickly. But, when you find a disparity between what is in a wiki article and the truth, you should fix it, if you have the time.

I don't know if anyone has brought this up yet, but what are your opinions on the death penalty? Personally, i beleve that they should not take their life, but rather, devote it to service in the comunity. an eye for an eye may be one thing, but a life for a life is not. the energy lost is not regained by murdering the murderer. You simply loose twice the energy. the energy that is still around with us, the murderer, should be used to make up for the good that the deceased could have done.

[Silverclaw]

Nelina, I agree with you about the death penalty. Some people may deserve to die, but it's not anyones place to decide. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. And if we kill murderers, aren't we as bad as them?

[EricG1793]

How about this weather we've been having in New England? It seems like global cooling at the moment! I don't think it's gone above 80 degrees this year since April or May. We had a few days when it was really hot back then, but it's been cool and rainy ever since.

We had a long class discussion about whether a person making stupid decisions all the time makes them a stupid person in my History class this past year (we got off topc fairly often in that class ). By the time the discussion ended, the general opinion was that a person making stupid decisions does not make them stupid unless the decisions are repeated. For example, if someone got in to a car accident because they decided to go too fast around the curve, that could be called an accident because they might not be familiar with their car and/or the curve. However, if they got in to another accident for the same reason on the same curve, they could be classified as stupid.