Internet Collapse - Comments Page 1

I agree with your opinion. The last paragraph was the best.

Well, Youtube, now that Google owns it, maybe they should fix this little dilemma. There's just way too much invested that would allow a collapse. Permanent collapse, anyway. Just my opinion. In the context: "If new hardware is needed, it will be invented. If new software is needed, it will be developed..." My, how I wish this attitude could apply to the energy 'situation.'

Yep, I was thinking that all along. It won't collapse, because everyone is seriously invested in making sure it will not collapse.

Unfortunately too many people listen to the doomsayers without even thinking about the fact that no one knows the future. There are far too many people trying to make a name for themselves by pretending to be omniscient, and this includes the "experts" in the field. If the experts were right, the United States would have accumulated about 6 computers today. Much of this is an attempt to either get famous or to raise money, or just sheer egotism..."I know more than you do, so listen to me!!. When a baby hiccups or coughs do we say that the baby will die as a result? The Internet is still a baby and still growing, despite the fact that people too often feed it the wrong food, and then have to change the diaper. Unpleasant, but necessary. Will the baby die? Possibly, but odds are that it will grow and thrive. There are millions of new users every year. Per http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=849 only 10% of the world now uses the Internet, and as long as money can be made and technology can solve problems, there is no end in sight. It's just the beginning, not the end.

What is going to happen when December 31st, 1999 rolls over to January1st 2000?!?!? Oh, wait...did that all ready happen?

Actually, what does worry me is all the talk about large ISPs monitoring what travels on the Internet. Not that I do any peer-to-peer that is illegal, but this does concern me.

I agree with you. I rememebr Metcalfe's doom & gloom prediction. I was surprised that such a bright guy would stumble like that. But he also wanted to call the web the "I-way" a very wimpy moniker.

It seems that the camelback breaking straw is the video server site like YouTube -- OK, ask this question -- how important is this in terms of e-commerce and e-government? More important than Amazon.com or irs.gov?

There's your answer -- if video on demand services are going to break the net, take them down -- if no other method will work, a DDoS certainly will.

So the idea that there will be a *general* collapse of the InterWeb, er, the NetTube, er, well you know what I mean, is pretty far-fetched.

I certainly hope you're right, and it seems most likely you are. However, history contains many examples of civilizations which failed because the unthinkable was allowed to happen. See Jared Diamond's book Collapse.

I suppose it's possible that a Cisco engineer could plant malicious code in their routers, and have them all go boom on a certain day. Or a particularly nasty virus could clog up the pipes to the point where no other traffic was able to move. But even these would cause only temporary (and probably regional) outages.

I agree with your opinion on this. The Telcos have too much invested in it to let it collapse, plus technology tends to sustain its self, they are always coming up with new or improved ways of doing things. The internet will advance as the technology does. As the saying goes necessity is the mother of invention.