5 ms·

The real problem here, and this isn't going to be a popular position, is that you're relying on the internet for important things. The original engineering and

The real problem here, and this isn't going to be a popular position, is that you're relying on the internet for important things. The original engineering and architecture of the the internet (and the web) was not intended to create something you put all your eggs in. It was for sharing information, not building your mission critical business operations on. Right now, if you dumped your business into a cloud service you're mostly dead in the water. But those who have local infrastructure can keep working. As people have been noting here, centralization is bad.

fzzzy 10y ago
Actually, the original engineering and architecture of the internet was intended to provide reliable command & control in the event of a nuclear war. A network of last resort. I can't think of anything more mission critical than that.
- cognivore 10y ago
  ARPANET is nothing like the monstrosity we have today.
- late2part 10y ago
  No, it wasn't. That's a myth, disturbed in many sources, including [1]. Also in [2]: Many people have heard that the Internet began with some military computers in the Pentagon called Arpanet in 1969. The theory goes on to suggest that the network was designed to survive a nuclear attack. However, whichever definition of what the Internet is we use, neither the Pentagon nor 1969 hold up as the time and place the Internet was invented. A project which began in the Pentagon that year, called Arpanet, gave birth to the Internet protocols sometime later (during the 1970's), but 1969 was not the Internet's beginnings. Surviving a nuclear attack was not Arpanet's motivation, nor was building a global communications network. Bob Taylor, the Pentagon official who was in charge of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (or Arpanet) program, insists that the purpose was not military, but scientific. The nuclear attack theory was never part of the design. Nor was an Internet in the sense we know it part of the Pentagon's 1969 thinking. Larry Roberts, who was employed by Bob Taylor to build the Arpanet network, states that Arpanet was never intended to link people or be a communications and information facility. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832674 https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832... [2] http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/beginnings.html http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/beg...
  - fapjacks 10y ago
    Where Wizards Stay Up Late is a fairly dry book, but it contains interesting kernels of information (like this). It's not a page turner, but it's worth a read if you are interested in things like, for example, the information in this comment's parent.
  - mycall 10y ago
    > Arpanet was about time-sharing. Time sharing tried to make it possible for research institutions to use the processing power of other institutions computers when they had large calculations to do that required more power, or when someone else's facility might do the job better. Arpanet is distributed shared information for science. Nuclear technology is science. Surviving science is a war that requires nuclear insights. Therefore, the Arpanet was developed for surviving nuclear war.
    - sverige 10y ago
      As Aristotle might have said if he were here, you committed an error in syllogism number 56.
  - eternalban 10y ago
    A few oral history interviews with key actors also confirm this.
- braveo 10y ago
  And yet I suspect the government could pick up a phone, hop in a vehicle, etc and communicate with the right people. Which means it falls under what he said.
supergeek133 10y ago
Even still, if indeed it is the cameras doing this, it's a problem of our own creation. The internet 'is fine' without a botnet of dvrs.

fzzzy 10y ago

Actually, the original engineering and architecture of the internet was intended to provide reliable command & control in the event of a nuclear war. A network of last resort. I can't think of anything more mission critical than that.

cognivore 10y ago
ARPANET is nothing like the monstrosity we have today.
late2part 10y ago
No, it wasn't. That's a myth, disturbed in many sources, including [1]. Also in [2]: Many people have heard that the Internet began with some military computers in the Pentagon called Arpanet in 1969. The theory goes on to suggest that the network was designed to survive a nuclear attack. However, whichever definition of what the Internet is we use, neither the Pentagon nor 1969 hold up as the time and place the Internet was invented. A project which began in the Pentagon that year, called Arpanet, gave birth to the Internet protocols sometime later (during the 1970's), but 1969 was not the Internet's beginnings. Surviving a nuclear attack was not Arpanet's motivation, nor was building a global communications network. Bob Taylor, the Pentagon official who was in charge of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (or Arpanet) program, insists that the purpose was not military, but scientific. The nuclear attack theory was never part of the design. Nor was an Internet in the sense we know it part of the Pentagon's 1969 thinking. Larry Roberts, who was employed by Bob Taylor to build the Arpanet network, states that Arpanet was never intended to link people or be a communications and information facility. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832674 https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832... [2] http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/beginnings.html http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/beg...
- fapjacks 10y ago
  Where Wizards Stay Up Late is a fairly dry book, but it contains interesting kernels of information (like this). It's not a page turner, but it's worth a read if you are interested in things like, for example, the information in this comment's parent.
- mycall 10y ago
  > Arpanet was about time-sharing. Time sharing tried to make it possible for research institutions to use the processing power of other institutions computers when they had large calculations to do that required more power, or when someone else's facility might do the job better. Arpanet is distributed shared information for science. Nuclear technology is science. Surviving science is a war that requires nuclear insights. Therefore, the Arpanet was developed for surviving nuclear war.
  - sverige 10y ago
    As Aristotle might have said if he were here, you committed an error in syllogism number 56.
- eternalban 10y ago
  A few oral history interviews with key actors also confirm this.
braveo 10y ago
And yet I suspect the government could pick up a phone, hop in a vehicle, etc and communicate with the right people. Which means it falls under what he said.

supergeek133 10y ago

Even still, if indeed it is the cameras doing this, it's a problem of our own creation. The internet 'is fine' without a botnet of dvrs.