What is Digg?147 Comments
- jsd8cc, on 10/12/2007, -6/+103Actually the quote is:
"Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY."
http://www.futureofthebook.com/stories/storyReader$605 - droiders, on 10/12/2007, -12/+76"It's already a crime to post intellectual discussions about copy-protection schemes that are protected by the DMCA. If the American public tolerates that sort of onerous restriction, then it will tolerate anything."
That's very true, it starts in the back door, and soon enough, you're the only one who believes what you do. I really will hate to see the net become proprietary. Free speech is important, but we sacrifice freedoms for securities in this day-and-age, soon enough we won't have any freedoms left and a bunk-ass internet.
Ben Franklin said, "The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either." True... off topic, but true - peskypescado, on 10/12/2007, -3/+43The problem is, until the DMCA becomes insanely onerous for everyday people, we will never have the backlash we need to stop it. I've tried to explain the whole DRM (ex. iTMS), DMCA, etc, thing to "regular" people, and they could all care less. That's because iTMS hasn't been around long enough that crashing HDs in Macs and PCs haven't caused them to loose the ability to play their music. What are the odds you will be able to play a FairPlay (what a joke) protected song in 20-years? I could still play vinyl from 50 years ago if I wanted.
- DougTanner, on 10/12/2007, -5/+45But the internet isn't going to be destroyed in the name of safety; it's going to be destroyed by monopolistic companies seeking new revenue streams (and their lackeys in the government).
- chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -6/+46Hold on, I'm still wating for Y2K.
- shortkid422, on 10/12/2007, -5/+33Goodbye free, uncontrolled internet, you'll be missed.
- wolkengrau, on 10/12/2007, -5/+26Dvorak has been wrong so often, that you shouldn't give too much attention to what he says.
He's right to some extent this time, though: It's becoming worse.
Nevertheless he's completely wrong.
There are exactly two possibilities:
1. The Golden Age has already passed. (There're more restrictions now than ever.)
2. The Golden Age is yet to come. (The restrictions will be ceased and technology will become better than ever.)
But to think the Golden Age is now... that's wrong. - mkearl, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25I agree with Dvorak. I feel sad to see money thrown at the Internet on advertising, filtering, and more and more involvement from big brother.
- CorpT, on 10/12/2007, -10/+25Dooooooom I say!! Gloooooom!! The glass is never even 1/4 full!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19"A golden age ends either when something new comes along (as with radio's golden age, killed by the advent of TV)"
Never thought about that before ... what's the internet killer? Whatever it is, I can't wait - CadMasterAdam, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15it started with napster
back in the day when icq was king - Yankidank, on 10/12/2007, -11/+23Everyone should know by now that Dvorak doesn't know what he's talking about the majority of the time. He just likes to create controversies and plug his blog.
- dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Ever heard the term "opiate for the masses?" I read this in another post on digg, and I was so amazed by its simplicity and truthiness (heh) that I have to put it in here too. "Until people are not able to get cheap beer and 200 channels piped into their houses, nothing will ever change."
People are happy with their current situation because a) The current changes going on with the web are maybe affecting 5% of the population and b) People are too self-absorbed in their own day-to-day problems to start a revolution.
Not only that, but now revolutions have been commercialized! All of a sudden, new cell phones and ways to purchase music are revolutions. Game consoles are revolutions. The term's lost its meaning and its merit. We've let commercialization take over our hearts and our minds, and that
my friends
is the opiate for the masses. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14The Golden Age of Television began and ended in the 1950s. Something to keep in mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Television - kimos, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Yeah... I usually associate the word Dvorak with FUD, but this time he's saying something that's not too far off the mark. And the fact that most people here are saying that this is an overreaction demonstrates how even techies are taking the current Internet for granted. Most don't even notice how slowly and carefully, the US government and Big Business are snuffing out all the things that make the Internet amazing.
/cry - Bostonsox, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13It has less to do with the internet and more to do with restricting freedom and privacy. It is not as if the government and corporate heads are doing it because they are evil or terrible people. The government does if for votes. If you don't agree with blocking porn, your a pervert, or blocking neo-nazi websites your a nazi, and so on and so on. The private sector sees it as a way to earn money. Shut down youtube, napster, bittorrent, and millions will be had, so they think. In 20 years the internet will be as watered down and boring as radio and tv are now. Something else will emerge though.
P.S. That Ben Franklin quote has numerous versions, there is no correct one, but we all get the general idea. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Some of us think the golden age has long since passed, the "long september" being the catalyst. I say we're in the silver age.
- 1911wolf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9It's a rare occasion when Dvorak speaks with reason, I've been reading some of his writings for 16 years. This is one of those rare events. Dugg.
- o0joshua0o, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I agree. Remember when the Internet was like the wild west? Remember when you could literally do just about ANYTHING online, and the legal system hadn't even had time to legislate it yet? For example, you could make a website with your name on in and just post direct links to all your music files, and not even have to worry about being sneaky or anything. I think that was the golden age of the Internet.
- jleblanc, on 10/12/2007, -12/+20John C. Dvorak , making Steve Ballmer look completely sane since 1986.
- odyss3y, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
The article could have been a lot better. Just because content is filtered at work doesn't mean that the Golden Age of the 'Net is over. As someone who sets up sites for blacklists, I don't block sites because I disagree with them. They are blocked because they have no business with our business. The internet is a tool for those who use it appropriately and a burden for those who don't. Users have more power when they have the right to what they are trying to access. What we need to fear in terms of the golden age ending is an oppressive government, and isp's that will cooperate with such requests without batting an eye. Thats my 2 cents, I'll see if I have change coming based on the gospel of green and red thumbs. - sundancekid503, on 10/12/2007, -14/+21I'm so tired of Dvorak's articles.......
- Rice, on 10/12/2007, -9/+16Not quite. I agree with him this time, I think others might too.
- flyingbuddha, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I remember seeing "MP3" in big bold letters on the front of Yahoo magazine about 8 years ago and realized it was all over.
- tslag, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11Or 17 years old...
- vertinox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Well... At least the trains will run on time.
- pumacub, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11The Internet is in serious danger, and with it will go convenience, technological advancement, collaborate expression, countless jobs, and the global economy. The world as a whole is about to take a huge step backwards, all because of greedy Telcos and corrupt political officials.
This needs to stop, and it needs to stop now. We need to take it upon ourselves to go door to door, informing people of the importance of these issues. Personal attention is the only thing that will prompt people to sit up and take notice. - jrmcgrath13, on 10/12/2007, -7/+13Just plain old government and big buisness greed. I don't really see any other internet killer right now... just the man.
- thomble, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11The Golden Age of the internet is long gone.
The Age ended shortly after people stopped capitalizing the "i" in internet. IRC and UseNet filled up with spammers and hackers. Spam crippled the innocent SMTP protocol. The death knell was the sound of a billion teenagers signing up for MySpace. Oh internet, I hardly knew ye. - gmerin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Does anyone still believe anything dvorak writes? Why are we still paying attention to Dvorak, the self-avowed manipulating fraud?
- codemonkey420, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Wow, you know... you actually have many great points. I recall being able to have an e-mail address and only get email from people I cared to talk to. Now I get (no joke) 356 e-mails of junk a day on one of my accounts... it is like a spam magnet. I had to shut the account off because I couldn't tell what was a friend, and what was spam, fishing, or scams. How does that fit a "golden age"? I say it doesn't.
Perhaps the golden age ended in 1998, when the internet was fairly clean and people were just starting to figure out how to destroy it with junk.
-CM - a2fan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Porn? Kills my Internet connection all the time.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I sure miss those days when porn was plentifully available on the radio.
- crashflow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4**message automatically deleted due to unfavorable comments regarding service provider, software company and official softdrink sponsor**
**Have a nice day** - Pogue_Mahone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Well, there is noise/rumors that Shaw has already degraded Vonage and some other VOIP (no credible source, other than the odd angry user at broadbandreports.com), and all the major ISP's have degraded Bittorrent speed at one point or another. I think one of the higher ups even admitted to the bittorrent degredation - but that was swept under the rug under the guise of misuse of their services and breaking of their TOS (i.e. bandwidth overuse).
Also, last year during the strike, Telus blocked access to some pro-Telus-union websites on their DSL network. There were no real repercussions from that.
Basically Canada isn't dealing with the draconian copyright laws the US has, because previous laws and court rulings have been relatively sane - but we're still in uncharted waters (and very much at risk) with regards to Net Neutrality. - Ben174, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Other famous claims by Dvorak:
The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse'. There is no evidence that people want to use these things.
- San Francisco Examiner, February 1984
The Noisiest buzz in the industry lately has been over the emerging use of cable TV systems to provide fast network data transmissions using a device called a cable modem. But the likelihood of this technology succeeding is zilch.
- PC Magazine., Sept. 1995.
Microsoft is dead in the water.
- On This Week In Tech
I get NO SPAM!
- TWiT Episode 18[3]
All I know is that due to Grand Theft Auto, if my children wanted to be car thieves, they would be damn good at it!
- On This Week In Tech
When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing?
- PC Magazine, "XP Decay", Sept. 2003
(http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1304348,00.asp) - DougPenn, on 10/12/2007, -8/+12"The internet is for porn"
- tiger2base, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7If we all end up like China....
- CorpT, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I love how everyone who normally thinks Dvorak is wrong but agrees with him on this one thinks that it is Dvorak that is getting it right and not themself getting it wrong.
- SpyDerMann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Golden age WTF? With all the spam, splogs, spam in blogs, spim, viruses, botnets, rootkits... no, we're NOT living in a Golden Age.
- nytcrawlr, on 10/12/2007, -8/+12Not sure why you're being dugg down since your absolutely right...
- Hurricane, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://pirate-party.us/
- Cyborg771, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I have only one question, I live in Canada and as far as I know we havn't yet had any problems with net neutrality or anything. Can anyone tell me if I have missed something about it up here in the north?
- tekmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This sort of thing makes me want to be a politician... :-P
- joshwehatetech, on 10/12/2007, -27/+30The Golden Age of the internet die in the late 90s or a few years after that. There might be more technology, but the greatness that was the internet has long died a foul horrible death.
- Quix, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9Dvorak's hot air = the REAL cause of global warming.
- openartist, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I think it's hard to tell how these things will end. We're only able to see one emergent trend of privatization at the moment along with huge wars between media providers. Another Digg (http://digg.com/security/AT_T_rewrites_rules%3A_Your_data_isn_t_yours) points to AT&T saying that it owns your personal info. And while the public doesn't seem to take notice of many of these trends I like to hope that at some point they will. Which makes it even more important for the web-savvy community not to fall prey to the typical elitism but instead really take part in educatiing the public in many of the "dark forces" that may take hold of the internet.
On another note, obviously the internet will evolve as well. From wires to waves the network will become increasingly non-local and non-physical. My personal belief is that the internet will become increasingly distributed as smaller devices contain more and more power and replace our sense of the server. This isn't the golden age yet, I think it's only a ripple a foreshadowing of the kind of impact the internet will have on our culture, societal structures, and ultimately our consciousness.
As the late christian philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, "Humanity. . . is building its composite brain beneath our eyes." - Zikes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Am I the only one thinking the probable result will be a second internet? This internet started out with geeks dialing into each others' PCs, and took off when people saw the potential and started building on that. If enough people get fed up they could jump ship and rebuild the internet using new protocols and technologies.
Let big business keep their porn & spam-ridden internet, and choke on it. - deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Saddly Dvorak is right about the American internet. We're going to slowly be tricked and scared into adopting a closed internet. The rest of the world will laugh at us the way we laugh at China's great firewall today. When it finally happens we're going to face the choice of staying in America and stealing free internet access through secure tunnels or leaving for a country that respects our freedom and privacy. Personally I'm thinking it's time to get out. America is just getting way too scary for me.
- mateo60, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I'm depressed now. He's right.
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