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Wired's bullshit "The web is dead" graph
- msy 16y agoIt's a pity because I usually find a needle or two of interesting ideas in Wired but having to sift through a haystack of hyperbole and poor logic is deeply unenjoyable.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- dotcoma 16y agowell, but it's Wired. So, it's normal.
- api 16y ago#!/usr/bin/ruby vapid_pronouncement = "#{dictionary.get_noun} is dead."
- MicahWedemeyer 16y agoWhy the downvotes? It's totally true. If the title includes "is dead" or "killed so-and-so" then it's going to be bullshit.
- StavrosK 16y agoBecause who puts ruby in /usr/bin?
- jacquesm 16y agojam@jam-desktop:~$ which ruby /usr/bin/ruby
- Nwallins 16y ago#!/usr/bin/env ruby # you insensitive clod!
- ROFISH 16y agoIt's /usr/bin/ruby for the default preinstalled 1.8.7 on OS X.
- digitallogic 16y agoSame for Ubuntu 8.04
- joey_bananas 16y agoI'll tell you who: People who aren't sexually attracted to donkeys.
- cookiecaper 16y agoArch Linux does.
- wwortiz 16y agoThat's not really fair because everything goes into /usr/bin in arch, they don't even have /usr/local/bin in the path ( though I'm pretty sure they do still have /bin)
- maw 16y agoYou should. Who doesn't use package management? Nobody I want to have bits on systems I have anything to do with, that's who doesn't.
- StavrosK 16y ago(It was a joke, I know it usually goes in /usr/bin/. That's where mine is)
- dasil003 16y agoI'd like to make a graph of the percentage of people that actually see a comment at negative reputation when there is a "why the downvotes" comment immediately following it.
- shadowsun7 16y agoManipulated data sets are like bikinis - they show you what they want to show, and hide the bits that you want to see.
- barrkel 16y agoThe way I heard it was that what they conceal is more important than what they reveal.
- jokermatt999 16y agoIt seems to stem from the whole "A good sermon is like a skirt: long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to maintain interest" (paraphrased). Not the same meaning, but it appears that the phrasing came from there.
- ugh 16y agoThe data set is not even manipulated. The graph in itself is not worthless, not wrong, not even uninteresting, it’s all the stuff around it (the interpretation) that’s bullshit. You should probably never use such a skewed graph alone, though, without showing growth or decline. Relative shifts are genuinely easier to see with a graph like that (but internet traffic is probably not the right measure if you want to know something about cultural changes, time spent would probably be better; to wit, reading 1 MB is a heck of a task, listening to 1 MB won’t keep you busy for very long and blink and you will just have missed your 1 MB video).
- mikeryan 16y agoMeasuring "the web" based on amount of bandwidth used is kind of a ridiculous metric. Time spent engaging (or some such metric) with a particular internet service might be more relevant. Video uses a seriously disproportionate amount of bandwidth per use.
- StavrosK 16y agoNext up: Ants are extinct! Their proportion of total mass compared to elephants is almost zero.
- kwamenum86 16y agoI see you point but... "Their proportion of total mass compared to elephants is almost zero." ...that...doesn't seem true.
- StavrosK 16y agoHold on, I'll make a graph to prove it to you.
- kwamenum86 16y agoA graph on relative usage was used to prove something absolute...and you offering a graph on relative mass to prove relative mass...so almost but not quite. I didn't see anyone dispute the accuracy of the graph. People balked at the notion that the graph is proof that the web is dead.
- amirmc 16y ago"On average, ants monopolize 15–20% of the terrestrial animal biomass" http://www.pnas.org/content/97/26/14028.full http://www.pnas.org/content/97/26/14028.full
- Naga 16y agoElephants are almost extinct because their proportion of mass is almost zero compared to ants!
- TravisLS 16y agoThank you for actually taking the time to make the graph we all instantly thought of when we saw that ridiculous wired article.
- bl4k 16y agoChris Anderson and Wired manipulate facts to forward their theories with whatever new theory and bandwagon they are jumping on. The data cited in 'The Long Tail' was not accurate[1], and actually supported the counter-argument. 'Free' was similarly vague[2] and inaccurate[3]. The entire m.o of Anderson seems to be to take a concept or theory that sounds interesting and package it in laymans terms for a gullible public. It is presented as 'research' or a 'breakthrough' and most average readers suck it up, but these theories are usually far from. To see them doing it again with this latest theory is no surprise. Anderson really doesn't let the truth get in the way of a good story, especially when there are magazines and books to sell, and high-priced speaking gigs to book. (see also the excellent: http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/free-criticism-and-science-without-data.html http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/free-criticism-and-science-wi...) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail#Criticism [2] http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/criticism-of-chris-andersons-free/#comment-3630 http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/critici... [3] http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/09070...
- jonknee 16y agotl;dr Chris Anderson is like a less convincing Malcom Gladwell.
- kmfrk 16y agoFree also ran into some nasty plagiarism accusations: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/06/24/the-chris-anderson-plagiarism-controversy/ http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/06/24/the-chris-anderson....
- davidw 16y agoPart of the reason behind Squeezed Books (which I recently sold on) was to 'deflate' books like that. Why buy something that's just a fad and can be summed up in a page or two.
- 16y ago
- sbov 16y agoI don't know about anyone else, but I generally need the web to find my videos. Same with my peer to peer downloads (assuming thats BitTorrent). If the web literally died, it would take everything else in that graph with it.
- lostbit 16y agoVideo became part of the web experience long time ago. It can't be placed in a separate class unless it's IPTV or something that does not use a browser. I don't understard why DNS was ever proportionally bigger than e-mail or Telnet. In addition, if they wanted to say that more non-HTTP applications are on the net, they should point an increase in the "Other" class in the graph. I guess they've choosen the wrong graph to support their article.
- Gormo 16y agoDNS was used to resolve hostnames for almost every other type of internet traffic, including email and telnet, even in the early '90s. As the size of data increased over the years, the size of DNS queries didn't change much, so its proportion of overall bandwidth usage quickly disappears from view in the graph. Most of the video traffic is likely transferred over HTTP and accessed via web interfaces such as YouTube, so it's a bit disingenuous to distinguish video from web traffic - if you're going to make that distinction, why not put images in their own category as well?
- shortformblog 16y agoMy problem with the graphic, beyond the proportional vs. accurate argument, is that it's misleading even in the context they show it. Outside of things like Skype, P2P is not an active-use process. Streaming video is clearly something that people largely watch on the Web. When I saw that article today, I just thought it was complete crap. It's simply alarmist, the magazine form of using scary headlines to try to sell newspapers.
- nir 16y agoYou don't read Wired for the articles.
- dasil003 16y agoWired is Maxim for people who can't get laid.
- josefresco 16y agoMaxim is for dumb guys who don't get Wired (or laid).
- dasil003 16y agoThat too.
- ugh 16y agoDoes anyone remember ye olde times before 2000 when we all still had to rely on DNS? Good thing that clunky crap is long dead!
- jacquesm 16y ago> Does 50MB of YouTube kitten represent more meaningful growth than a 5MB Wired feature? I'd hate to have to answer that one with a clear consciousness. That particular article, probably not. But wired has had some excellent stuff in that past: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html I wished they did a lot more of that stuff than they do.
- jokermatt999 16y agoIt seems like they're mostly focused on geek culture and various things that will get them hits/attention. I haven't really read Wired in the past, so I can't make a comparison to their previous habits, but that definitely seems to be their tone/focus. I subscribed to their RSS feed, but quit after a while because they simply had too much noise to signal. They do post quality stuff occasionally, but I prefer to just let that come to me rather than try to sift it out.
- randallsquared 16y agoAssuming web traffic means HTTP, it's curious that it's not zero in 1990.
- thelibrarian 16y agoSo, by this metric shouldn't they be arguing that DNS died in the mid-90's, and that nobody uses it anymore?
- palish 16y agoIt's not really acceptable on HN to editorialize the title like that. In fact, I believe it's explicitly forbidden.
- davidw 16y agoI don't get why people are upvoting this story so much. Yep, Wired's wrong, but it's really not very interesting.
- NewHighScore 16y agoLOL, Wired likes to predict the future - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1612808 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1612808