5 ms·

Universities Lost the Internet

35 points by ColinWright 3y ago

andai 3y ago
Merely shifted from DARPA to NSA. See also: Microsoft buying Skype and disabling the P2P features so all calls get routed through NSA-enabled servers for PRISM. (Side note but this also made calls objectively worse.)
aftbit 3y ago
It still bothers me that my Slack domain is https://workplace.slack.com https://workplace.slack.com instead of https://slack.workplace.com https://slack.workplace.com. The enplatformification of the internet has affected the corporates as well as universities.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  You want a server from slack to get cookies from workplace.com?
  - moritzwarhier 3y ago
    Ha, I assume you are joking but of course this is a valid point. If you use your own domain, that should equal self-hosting. Using another domain than your company's does not mean it can't be self-hosted, but it is a strong signal. And AFAIK, Slack does not offer anything like redirecting to on-prem instances from slack.com. And conversely, there is no way to self-host Slack, right? Which was gp's point.
    - bawolff 3y ago
      > If you use your own domain, that should equal self-hosting. Plenty of SASS solutions take the CNAME approach.
  - pgraf 3y ago
    perfect use case for the public suffix list (https://github.com/publicsuffix/list https://github.com/publicsuffix/list) e.g. add *.ext.workplace.com
bawolff 3y ago
Its sad, but i think its a natural consequence of the internet growing up. You could do whatever you wanted when nobody cared about the internet. Now that its business critical, all the burocracy has come home to roost.
PaulHoule 3y ago
When I first came to Ithaca in 1993, Cornell’s Central IT (CIT) had developed a suite for online services such as email and gopher called “Bear Access” the the more technically oriented people called “Bear With Me Access”. They also created early video chat software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe By the mid 2000s they had backed away from client software but were still contributing to an effort to build a web-based accounting package for higher ed. They were badly disorganized at the time, going through channels worked about 50% of the time, otherwise you had to use “vendor management” tactics verging on “social engineering” to get things done. (For instance I had a problem w/ the backup system and put in a ticket… Two days later I found out who was in charge of backup and he told me their ticket system had been down for more than two weeks) Today they are scarily competent at managing managed Windows machines but the only dev team that I know about there today is identity management.
dudeinjapan 3y ago
Cats won the internet.
- jcrash 3y ago
  In what way? It seems to me like big business won the internet
  - dudeinjapan 3y ago
    Cat videos everywhere. It's like Lenin said, you look for the person who will benefit...
- hagbard_c 3y ago
  Porn won the internet, then cats. Now probably cat porn or porn cats, somewhere.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
irowe 3y ago
"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for" The author's experience aligns with my own, both at university and working with government-funded scientific and engineering organizations. I suspect that many well-intentioned cybersecurity, outsourcing, and streamlining measures have, on the whole, significantly harmed the ability of these organizations to fulfill their missions.
ordersofmag 3y ago
When all those creative, skilled IT people found they could make double the money moving out of higher ed into start-ups and industry at the same time that the administrations realized that crazy IT stuff was actually mission-critical and that they needed to use what cash they had to double-down on reliable rather than creative the die was cast.

35 points by ColinWright 3y ago

Merely shifted from DARPA to NSA. See also: Microsoft buying Skype and disabling the P2P features so all calls get routed through NSA-enabled servers for PRISM. (Side note but this also made calls objectively worse.)

aftbit 3y ago

It still bothers me that my Slack domain is https://workplace.slack.com https://workplace.slack.com instead of https://slack.workplace.com https://slack.workplace.com. The enplatformification of the internet has affected the corporates as well as universities.

PaulHoule 3y ago
You want a server from slack to get cookies from workplace.com?
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  Ha, I assume you are joking but of course this is a valid point. If you use your own domain, that should equal self-hosting. Using another domain than your company's does not mean it can't be self-hosted, but it is a strong signal. And AFAIK, Slack does not offer anything like redirecting to on-prem instances from slack.com. And conversely, there is no way to self-host Slack, right? Which was gp's point.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    > If you use your own domain, that should equal self-hosting. Plenty of SASS solutions take the CNAME approach.
- pgraf 3y ago
  perfect use case for the public suffix list (https://github.com/publicsuffix/list https://github.com/publicsuffix/list) e.g. add *.ext.workplace.com

bawolff 3y ago

Its sad, but i think its a natural consequence of the internet growing up. You could do whatever you wanted when nobody cared about the internet. Now that its business critical, all the burocracy has come home to roost.

PaulHoule 3y ago

When I first came to Ithaca in 1993, Cornell’s Central IT (CIT) had developed a suite for online services such as email and gopher called “Bear Access” the the more technically oriented people called “Bear With Me Access”. They also created early video chat software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe By the mid 2000s they had backed away from client software but were still contributing to an effort to build a web-based accounting package for higher ed. They were badly disorganized at the time, going through channels worked about 50% of the time, otherwise you had to use “vendor management” tactics verging on “social engineering” to get things done. (For instance I had a problem w/ the backup system and put in a ticket… Two days later I found out who was in charge of backup and he told me their ticket system had been down for more than two weeks) Today they are scarily competent at managing managed Windows machines but the only dev team that I know about there today is identity management.

dudeinjapan 3y ago

Cats won the internet.

jcrash 3y ago
In what way? It seems to me like big business won the internet
- dudeinjapan 3y ago
  Cat videos everywhere. It's like Lenin said, you look for the person who will benefit...
hagbard_c 3y ago
Porn won the internet, then cats. Now probably cat porn or porn cats, somewhere.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

irowe 3y ago

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for" The author's experience aligns with my own, both at university and working with government-funded scientific and engineering organizations. I suspect that many well-intentioned cybersecurity, outsourcing, and streamlining measures have, on the whole, significantly harmed the ability of these organizations to fulfill their missions.

ordersofmag 3y ago

When all those creative, skilled IT people found they could make double the money moving out of higher ed into start-ups and industry at the same time that the administrations realized that crazy IT stuff was actually mission-critical and that they needed to use what cash they had to double-down on reliable rather than creative the die was cast.