Talk:Internet

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3: May 2005–Mar 2006

Add a Link?

Does anyone feel that we should add a link to the following site? [http://earlyhistory.googlepages.com/historyoftheinternet Development of the Internet] - Please give your reasons as to why or why not! Thanks! West wikipedia —The preceding unsigned comment was added by West wikipedia (talk • contribs) 18:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC).

Because it does not cite it's sources, doesn't add anything already in Wikipedia, the site is non-notable i.e. it hasn't been cited as an authority by other reliable sources and it's authors are completely unknown. In fact if I google for earlyhistory googlepages com I get nothing. Please read WP:WEB (under criteria), WP:RS (e.g. Non-scholarly sources) and WP:NOTABLE and ideally please solve this one link first before you start posting to all the other entries you've been trying to make. Ttiotsw 18:48, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

The links you wish to add to all these articles do not pass any of the criteria for external links, as has already been explained to you. Even if the links did pass the criteria, your objective is obviously to promote your web site, and that objective will not be accomplished here. I suggest you consider productive content editing rather than just attempting to get your site linked from numerous pages (see WP:SPAM). -- mattb @ 2006-12-09T19:02Z

I concur. To "West wikipedia": If you fail to understand Wikipedia policy, your account will be blocked and any edits from your account will be reverted. Wikipedia editors have already encountered several sites similar to yours, and the community consensus has been that links should such sites should be deleted as spam as well as possible Google bombing or link farming. --Coolcaesar 06:55, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization issues redux

I just reverted a bizarre statement that Nohat tried to insert into the Capitalization conventions section, in which he claimed that "the telephone network," "the power grid," and "the sky" were exceptions to the rule that proper nouns are written in uppercase in English. Actually, those are all common nouns, because there are many examples of each---every country has its own telephone network and power grid, and every planet with an atmosphere has a sky. On the other hand, I could manufacture proper nouns by simply inserting qualifiers that are proper nouns in themselves: "the AT&T telephone network," "the Pacific Gas and Electric power grid," and "the Earth's sky."

It's analogous to the difference in object-oriented programming between classes and objects. Common nouns are classes and proper nouns are objects (and an object is a particular instance of a class). --Coolcaesar 03:49, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but when talking about the entire global telephone network, taken together (and it is all connected), we still don't capitalize it. Why would the internet be any different? Same with sky—there is only one sky on the planet earth, and when people say "the sky" they are referring to the one sky on this planet, but we still don't capitalize. When I say "the sky is blue" I am referring to the one single instance of sky that exists on this planet. There is only one—it is unique in exactly the same way that the internet is unique—but we don't capitalize it. This observation is directly applicable to the capitalization of internet, so I have restored the commentary as well as a reference to a knowledgeable source (a linguistics professor) who makes the same argument. Nohat 06:30, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

"Internet" was capitalised during the bubble when techies ran it and people thought it was like God - omnicient and omnipresent. Since the bubble burst, non-techies have grown to resent the implication that anything like this could be so important. Familiarity breeds contempt. We've moved to "internet" on our website because people said that "Internet" was pretentious. We're based in the UK, BTW. Stephen B Streater 08:26, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Nunberg's argument is faulty in his reference to the power grid. He is a linguist, not an electrical engineer. He is clearly discussing an area outside his own sphere of expertise. For example, I cannot take my hair dryer to Europe and directly plug it into the wall because (1) the plug will not fit, (2) the voltage is different (220V v 110 V) and (3) the frequency is different (60 Hz v. 50 Hz). Furthermore, most countries cannot shift power to each other as easily as they can share computing resources under the modern distributed computing model. If California were having another energy crisis this summer, France cannot lend us a few hundred megawatts for a day, because there is no direct link between their power grids. So it is simply foolish to speak of one "power grid."

Also, it appears that Nunberg's commentary was originally a radio commentary for a show that is not a regular news program, which meant it was not subject to the rigorous editing that regular news programs, newspapers, or academic journals usually go through. Thus, it is highly suspect and probably falls under original research. See Wikipedia:No original research.

The point is that there are multiple power grids, running on all kinds of wacky technologies. Power grid, standing alone, is a common noun. But there is only one Internet (capitalized), which is a proper noun, that runs on TCP/IP.

As for "the telephone network," there are actually many telephone networks, despite the loose appearance of interoperability. Just look at the mess with telephone numbers. But there is only one Internet Protocol.

Also, to take Nohat's ludicrous argument the other way, I could argue that the Queen of England is unique, since there is only one at any given time, so why don't we just call her queen elizabeth ii? Or how about the president of the united states? Realistically, there are many queens, many presidents, many skies, many telephone networks, and many power grids. But there is only one Internet.

That is the argument that the majority of educated Americans adhere to (including the vast majority of computer journalists, computer programmers, and electrical engineers), and nothing is going to change that in the foreseeable future. Wikipedia is not about changing minds, only about providing information on the status quo. The blogosphere is for changing minds.--Coolcaesar 18:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

First of all, this is a question about language, so a linguist is exactly the kind of expert we should turn to for providing guidance. I fail to see how the fact that his opinion was presented in the context of a non-news radio show in any way diminishes his authority to present opinions on English-language usage.

Second, even if it is "foolish" to speak of one power grid, people do still speak and write about such things. The fact that the conception of something may be incomplete does not change how one capitalizes its name. Knowledge of a topic and knowledge of how to use the English language are NOT the same thing, and it is perfectly possible to write about something which the writer has limited knowledge of and still use unimpeachable English. The relevant facts of the matter are that whether or not "internet" is a proper noun is not a res judicata, and there are arguments on both sides of the issue that warrant mention in this article.

The statement "there are many queens, many presidents, many skies, many telephone networks, and many power grids. But there is only one Internet." is begging the question. There are obviously many internets, not only internets which are completely disconnected from the internet, such as networks operated by the Department of Defense, but the internet is itself composed of many internets. The term "the internet" is the one global internet, the same way that even though there are many skies, "the sky" is the one global sky, and even though there are many telephone networks, "the telephone network" is the one global telephone network (which uses a single protocol—voice). The things are exactly analogous, and arguing that they are not is sophistry.

No one is advocating trying to change minds, but it is important to include all legitimate viewpoints on this linguistic matter. This viewpoint, presented by a linguist, is perfectly legitimate and deserves mention in the article. While it is true that the capitalized convention is currently the most prominent, the noncapitalized variant enjoys some usage by respectable users of the language, and it is important to recognize not only the variety of usage, but the variety of reasons for the variety of usage. The analogy with "sky", "telephone network", and even "the power grid", despite your quibbles, is perfectly apt. Nohat 19:23, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're on to a loser here, Nohat and friends. Coolcaesar is prepared to be rude, beligerant, to insult you, your education and your country, and will try to destroy your will to help on WP before he'll let you change a word of "his" section on this topic. He's about the only one, and almost a year ago he himself wrote "news sources in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom prefer "internet" much, much more", which is perfectly true, but I think he waits for these arguments to flare up. And it keeps happening, because he's wrong; but winning again means more to him than improving or balancing the article, it seems to me. (Feeling chewed and spat out from the last mauling I got) --Nigelj 21:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I have confidence in Coolcaeser's commitment to NPOV, that he will agree that there is room for all viewpoints on this topic to be fairly represented in the article. Nohat 23:07, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I still disagree with you, but as I am too busy with personal and work matters at the moment to get involved in another Wikipedia flame war, I will back down on this issue for now. --Coolcaesar 05:03, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for doing so, Coolcaesar. I've rearranged and tightened up the wording in the section a bit. I hope it shows in a valid way, both views on the subject and I hope you find it OK for now. --Nigelj 09:51, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

"... United Kingdom prefer "internet" much, much more", which is perfectly true ..." - nonsense. A number of pretentious (and frankly, ignorant) British newspapers may prefer 'internet', but educated Brits write 'Internet', which is the correct form. To say that a linguist is the right person to pronounce on a topic s/he understands nothing about is arrogant, as well as ignorant.

“Internet” is the proper name of the network most people connect to, and the word needs to be capitalized. ~ UBeR 02:55, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

British Invention

Wasn't the Internet a British invention? I'll edit this page with the info I found later, im going to put the info into words that other people can understand... Garfunkle20 11:39, 20 May 2006 (UTC)Garfunkle20

Well, the Web was - look up TBL.

I look forward to seeing your information. Stephen B Streater 18:19, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Especially since the only possible contributor on the British side of the pond was Donald Davies, who was English. And Davies' contributions were more on the theoretical side; as far as I know, he didn't actually do hands-on work on the IMPs or on the TCP/IP protocol stack itself. The key people are Licklider, Taylor, Kleinrock, Engelbart, Cerf, Kahn, etc. --Coolcaesar 19:04, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake. The article I read was about Boolean expressions. I dont know where I got that it contributed to the making of the internet, mabye with the exception of Scripting languages... Garfunkle20 13:53, 21 May 2006 (UTC)Garfunkle20

Thanks for checking before you put it up on the main article. Stephen B Streater 13:55, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if I caused any hard feelings. I really should have read the article carefully. Hey! Gimmie a break! Im 16! Garfunkle20 14:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)Garfunkle20

Charles A. Petrik

Isn't this Charles A. Petrik just a figment of someone's imagination? i.e. vandalism? I'm removing him. (Rajah 04:39, 11 June 2006 (UTC))

If he is indeed a hoax (which seems exceedingly likely), then I guess he'll be no more real over at Ronald Pelton. I'll go remove him. --Ashenai 04:48, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Picture of the internet

It seems to me that this article could use a picture of the internet. I was thinking either:

A: a big nice picture of planetary bandwidth/connections, etc.

B: A picture of the standard flowchart representation of the internet, a cartoon storm cloud that says "the internet", possibly with lightning.

Any thoughts?

--Zzthex 04:53, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

• Cute. There's a "picture of the Internet" floating around with just a monitor that says "Welcome to the Internet". But, seriously, no.Danny Lilithborne 05:24, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
  • It might help certain people make the point that the Internet is not a dump truck. 66.171.45.111 23:02, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Of course not, its a series of tubes. Anyways, a picture of a router or an ethernet cable would be a great addition.

Web applications in workplace section

What is the purpose of including this minor factoid? What does this add other than a doubly redundant clause? Web applications are not even the primary reason why people can work from home, they are one among many means, all of which should not be mentioned here. Are we to add more and more about "e-mail", "remote desktop access", "also normal websites", "specialized proprietary software", "oh, and combinations of these", etc. 12:09, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

To be frank, I think the whole section is a bit waffly. However, Web applications give a new dimension to using the Internet from home or other remote location because all the data is available from anywhere without installing new software. This is qualitatively different from using traditional desktop applications with an Internet connection, where an installation is required. Web applications, for example, allow collaborative working from multiple locations including cyber cafés where installation of new software is prohibited. The cost of liccences and support for installing software on random PCs at home is a major limiting factor in working from multiple locations. If we're going to cut out something, I'd say something more like this:

• The Internet is allowing greater flexibility in working patterns, especially with the spread of unmetered high-speed connections. Today, many people have more flexibility in working hours and location. Web applications allow people to work (separately or collaboratively) through standard Web connected PCs.

This is a new area, but Web applications (which include a wide range of options such as web email, Google, Wikipedia and video editing) are a major factor in changing the work place options. Stephen B Streater 13:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but it needs something along the lines of what you wrote above, rather than repeating that it's for "web-connected PCs" and without simply plunking down "using Web applications" without a minimal description of what it is. —Centrx→talk 14:24, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I've put something up - concise but covers these points. Stephen B Streater 15:07, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

ownership and value

so who owns the internet and how much is it worth?? imagine if someone else bought it... it would be billions! 203.211.75.42 06:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

That comment's not too bright. There are several reasons the Internet could never have been created or owned by one person, starting with the issue of the initial capital costs. Please see Project Xanadu. --Coolcaesar 19:42, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, the internet would have never gotten so popular if it was a private entity, as censorship alone, which is treated quickly as damage on the internet, would have killed it. 68.228.33.74 23:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Censorship in France?

I don't think any form of Internet censorship exists in France. It is unlawful to sell nazi memorabilia in France, but there is no difference in doing so online versus offline. As far as I am aware, the French government does not block information on the Internet in any way. --194.109.232.21 19:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

No, that is censorship because a French citizen can get an enforceable court order to require an online company doing online auctions in France to police all auctions for Nazi-related material, and to remove such auctions whenever it finds them. That was the key issue in the Yahoo! case a few years ago. In contrast, in the United States, such a court order would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, because the American public policy in favor of free speech requires a much higher standard of imminent harm (where the speaker would have to be explicitly urging physical violence against particular persons and would have to be speaking to an audience which he knew was capable of such violence). This distinction is commonly taught in Internet law courses in American law schools to illustrate the difference between American and French public policy on freedom of speech and expression. --Coolcaesar 04:57, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

That is an absurd definition of censorship, not a million miles from Clare Short referring to pornographic magazines as 'censorhip of women's right not to be harrassed by pornography'. The French model is not censorhip, but a prohibition on selling certain items - SELLING, mate, not MENTIONING.

Al Gore

I could swear Al Gore made the internet in his basement in the early 1990s. What was he just bullshitting everyone?

But serially, it would at least be interesting to note that Al Gore said he invented them internets. ABart26 23:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Please do not engage in trolling. In his role as a legislator, Al Gore was a major force behind the privatization and commercialization of the Internet in the 1990s — but he did not invent the technology. His role is already noted in the History of the Internet article. --Coolcaesar 16:46, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Please do not engage in humorlessness. One line clarifying about a well-known misquote is entirely appropriate. It's probably not a stretch to claim that Gore's statement is the most famous quote using the word "Internet". Woodshed 07:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Could we at least put somewhere in there that "the Internet is serious business"?

Internet2

Internet2 seems to be listed as a research network in this article. However the Internet2 article says that it is a consortium which develops network technology, and that it is frequently mistaken for a network my the media. From the article: This is misleading since Internet2 is in fact a consortium and not a computer network. Could someone please confirm/disprove this? Matt73 23:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

internet

== [[Meaning of internet

             Importance of internet
             advantages 
             Disadvantages''''']] ==

---

Whoever is reponsible for the above I cannot tell.

My question is to that person(s) - May "internet" ever be written uncapitalized?

Is that a correct usage of this newly coined word?

Yours truly, Ludvikus 14:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

No, it may not. It is a proper name.

vandalism

somebody has vandalized this page.Yet-another-user 04:21, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

i have removed the vandalism. Yet-another-user 04:27, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Internet and internet

hey guys I just did a search on internet <lowercase and i got redirected to the Internet Page. I am certain that there is a difference. Internet you all know and internet being a bunch of interconnected networks using all different kinds of protocals and topologies. am i mistaken? if not should we make a page for internet and link it to the Internet page?

Indeed, there is a difference between the Internet, and an internet.

I am of the opinion that this article should be renamed as The Internet, and that this articles current heading be used for the general sense of interconnected networks. -FrostyBytes 11:42, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey that is not a bad idea at all--Sniperwolf3 06:11, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, Internet spelled with a capital I is The Internet. One generalized rule for capitalization is that a word must be capitalized if it is the name of some person, place or thing that is the only one of its kind. Therefore, since there is only one Internet, it should be capitalized. Uncapitalized internet could simply refer to any of a number of networked networks that exist; however, using the term internet might cause some confusion, I think. Then there is the term intranet but that is somewhat different in it use. Katalaveno 14:36, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Linked to on Slashdot

Here. Perhaps that could explain the spate of vandal IPs today. E. Sn0 =31337= 22:23, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Definition of Web on Internet page

I take issue with the definition of the WWW on the Internet page - a collection of documents? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the web is a graphical interface we use to access files on the Internet? Because don't lots of people now say they're going to upload a video to the web, or download a podcast from the web? They don't say they're going to go look at an HTML page with some Ajaxy stuff that allows them to view a video.

Valid point - the correct word is resources, to include files, interactive Ajax applications, multimedia etc. I've updated the article, but kept it brief. The sentence above is interesting: maybe what they should say is something like, "they're going to upload a video using the internet to put it onto the web, or use the internet to download a podcast that they found by using the web". If they could be bothered, that is :-) --Nigelj 17:58, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, this is part of the problem with the Web combining aspects of hypertext and Internet technologies. Hypertext traditionally dealt with documents (that is, textual objects). Even today, the Web is primarily about documents; HTML documents still form the primary navigational structure (and their formal structure is called the Document Object Model, after all). A true hypermedia Web that transcends the document model would be one where people could seamlessly link from the middle of one Flash presentation to the middle of a QuickTime movie to a particular page in a 300-page PDF, but we haven't gotten that far yet. Although we can embed plug-ins in HTML documents, and although some plug-ins like Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat support direct links into HTML and other types of files, the linking isn't truly universal, with Flash's and QuickTime's refusal to expose all objects as links posing the largest obstacle. This is one of the issues that really gets on the nerves of hypermedia scholars, that Macromedia (now part of Adobe) and Apple are more interested in protecting their little fiefdoms rather than supporting a truly open and seamless Web. I hope this clears up the issue. --Coolcaesar 05:45, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Because almost all 'web' browsers support protocols other than HTTP, such as FTP, I think that the issue must be addressed. For those people who are trying to really understand or study Internet concepts, I think defining and distinguishing between web and Internet in this article is valuable information. I know this isn't the exact point brought up above but I think it's still worth a mention. Katalaveno 14:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Help with Portal:Internet

I'm finding it hard to find the time to maintain Portal:Internet, and I'm looking for co-maintainers. Anyone interested? Computerjoe's talk 17:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Section about Microsoft not NPOV

The section about Microsoft is clearly not neatral. It seems to be saying that Microsoft got its employees to blog to try to "impress" people with their technical expertise. In fact, many of Microsoft's employees (for example Raymond Chen) has been writing on the Internet long before they joined Microsoft and just continued when they joined. Some companies have tried to stop that sort of behaviour, others have not. There is no devious plan behind Microsoft's actions (or, rather lack of actions) in this case. I think it is more noteworthy to point out the companies that expressively forbid their employees to blog about their work (e.g. Google). Unfortunately the page is locked now.

Accuracy of statistics

In the article, it says "As of September 18, 2006, over 1.08 billion people use the Internet according to Internet World Stats.", but on the page that links to, it lists the total number of users as "1,086,250,903", which should be properly rounded up to 1.09 billion, not 1.08 billion. Monsday 21:21, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Autonomous Systems

I feel there is a need to cover the subject of autonomous systems, with respect to the internet. 202.54.176.11 09:47, 28 November 2006 (UTC)nr, 28-Nov-2006

That is way too much information for 95% of Wikipedia users. Remember, most users don't know the difference between a compiler and a interpreter, let alone the difference between the Web and the Internet (yes, there is a difference). Perhaps a See also link at the bottom might be appropriate, but autonomous systems are too much of a tangent for any in-depth coverage here. --Coolcaesar 21:59, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

See Autonomous system (Internet) --Nigelj 22:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Would it not be correct to state that the internet is a conglomeration of interconnected autonomous systems? 59.93.32.35 13:49, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

CERN or USA

Who actually started th enet is it CERN or the USA Military?--Darrendeng 07:25, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Section: Terminology

It feels to me as though the second paragraph in this section pretty much repeats the first, albeit in more complicated terms. The first paragraph gives a very clear and easily undertsnable, if basic, explanation of the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web and then the second paragraph continues on to explain it in more complex terms, but will ultimately do nothing more than confuse the person reading this article. I may just be nitpicking, but I just thought I'd share my two cents on the way that section reads. --IndigoAK200 10:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I think I originally wrote what is now the first paragraph (I may be wrong about that - but if I didn't actually create it I certainly wrote a large part of its current wording, and have helped maintain it for some time now). At the time it was a second paragraph in the lead section. On the 21st November, a user at 70.50.237.242 added the new material with the comment, 'as suggested, merged "define and distinguish between" paragraph from Web vs. Internet which will now redirect here' (diff). I don't know what discussion led to this - maybe it was on the other article, or maybe I just missed it. The two paragraphs were later given a separate heading.

I agree that they both say the same thing in two different ways. My feeling is that the second paragraph is overly-technical for this early in the article, before any of these terms have been introduced or discussed. My suggestion would simply be to delete it: (a) it would also be redundant to come back to the issue later in the article and (b) I strongly feel that this confusion is so rife and so wrong that it needs to be laid to rest right up front - prefereably in the lead as it used to be.

But maybe I'm too close to this, due to my involvement in the original text. If this is all that remains of a whole previous article, probably someone somewhere feels it should be kept too. What the second paragraph says is not wrong, it just isn't the way I would explain it to anyone other than a trained and experienced network engineer - and they, most likely, would already be very familiar with the distinction! I'd move the original text back up into the lead too. --Nigelj 14:52, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Internet vs. Internet Service

I'm seeing a growing trend here in the U.S. of people referring to having internet service as having an internet. ISPs are doing this too when marketing their services (AT&T and Earthlink are notable examples). I personally find this rather odd. I can't think of any other service the average person consumes to which we refer in a similar manner. For instance, we don't say that we have a cable, we say that we have cable. The former would be confusing -- I personally have many different cables including network cables, power cables, phone cables, etc. Granted, there are some who can honestly say they have an inter-network (internet for short). Some businesses for example. However, that generally does not apply to everyday consumers. Comments? Siggimoo 15:53, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I haven't heard the precise usage you are talking about and I live in the Bay Area too. I have seen/heard the AT&T TV commercials where they say, "you can get Internet, cable, and phone all on one bill." Can you cite a particular advertisement or describe a particular TV commercial so that we can understand what you are talking about? --Coolcaesar 07:00, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Earthlink ran a TV ad campaign not too long ago in which their "staff" spoke about their Internet services, working at Earthlink, etc. One of the people stated, "...I will do all I can to get you a high-speed Internet that goes up to 70 times faster than dial-up." I've been looking around for an online copy to which I can link, but I'm not finding it. If I do, I'll post it here. -- Siggimoo 16:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)