Posted on 12/11/2009 12:55:09 PM PST by FromLori
The 40-year-old system might be vulnerable to technical collapse or cyberattack, which could cause widespread chaos in fields from banking to health care to government.
When your Internet service goes down it's at best an inconvenience. If you rely on it for business, it can quickly cost you money.
The fight over 'net neutrality' So imagine: What happens if the Internet breaks? Picture people wandering the streets lost without GPS or maps on their iPhones, unable to pay for food or other goods with a simple swipe of a card.
Companies would have to resort to faxes and phone calls instead of e-mail; they'd quickly reach capacity and be unable to function. Credit cards wouldn't work; stores and hospitals would run short of supplies. Even electrical power to our homes could be disrupted. "It would be a mess," said Dave Marcus, the director of security research for McAfee (MFE, news, msgs). "You would be taking businesses that were designed to do all their point-of-sale and financial transactions through the Internet and going back to pen and paper and taking checks in a car to the bank. People would lose their minds."
On the 40th anniversary of the first transmission over the earliest version of the Internet, it's more than an idle question to examine the network's fragility. It's been more than 20 years since the last systemwide overhaul, and Internet infrastructure is still based on 1970s ideas about computer networks. Headline-making outages of popular Web sites such as YouTube and Twitter merely hint at the damage a full-blown failure could wreak. The Internet protocols that allow computers to communicate in networks have infiltrated every sector of our economy.
"The Internet has moved from being a toy or orn
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.moneycentral.msn.com ...
ping
Al Gore will fix it. After all, he invented the internet.
What does GPS have to do with the Internet?
A better question is: What happens when the White House takes control of the internet?
Picture people wandering the streets lost without GPS or maps on their iPhones...Now that's serious... :-)
Henry Blodget - Dec. 5, 2009, 8:32 PM
Jenna Wortham explains the power of Apple's mobile app platform in a long article in the NYT.
Apple has the opportunity to do in mobile what Microsoft did on the desktop: Own the standard platform upon which every popular application is based. The irony of this cannot be lost on Microsoft, which has flubbed its own opportunity to do the same.
Google's Android could mount a strong charge here because it's hardware agnostic (the same way Microsoft Windows is, ironically). But otherwise it's Apple's game to lose.
Jenna Wortham:
IAN LYNCH SMITH, a shaggy-haired ball of energy in his late 30s, beams as he ticks off some of the games that Freeverse, his little Brooklyn software company, has landed on the iPhone App Store’s coveted (and ever-changing) list of best-selling downloads: Moto Chaser, Flick Fishing, Flick Bowling and Skee-ball.
Skee-ball, Mr. Smith says, took about two months to develop and deploy and then raked in $181,000 for Freeverse in one month. The company’s latest bid for App Store fame? A game featuring a Jane Austen character in a lacy dress who karate-chops her way through hordes of advancing zombies.
“There’s never been anything like this experience for mobile software,” Mr. Smith says of the App Store boom. “This is the future of digital distribution for everything: software, games, entertainment, all kinds of content.”
I wish the librarian wouldn't suggest that you go home when you fall asleep in the lounge.
Expect cost to consumers to rise and service deteriorate.
Those with AT&T phone service probably know what I mean.
To Ms. Lewis:
Kate...really?
Really? You penned this as a serious piece? Really?
How old are you...10?
If you’re using an iPhone (or other ‘net-dependent device) as your GPS, all your location/mapping/satellite info & pictures comes from the Internet; shut off the ‘net connection and all your iPhone can do is tell you latitude/longitude.
I reckon we’ll go back to libraries and Playboys.
“I broke the internet”....call from a clueless user
It would be a blessing in disguise.
(though I’d miss FR)
I remember using something called a “Map”.
The key phrase here is "on their iPhones". The Google Maps application downloads maps and images in real time, using the phones data connection to the 'Net.
Thats what I was implying in my comment below the article. He wants a new electrical grid and a new internet.
Propaganda leaked by our government
Propaganda
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/15/spies-hackers-electrical-technology-internet-infrastructure-spies.html
ACTA
http://www.thenewfreedom.net/wp/2008/05/29/fighting-the-anti-counterfeiting-trade-agreement-acta-and-pro-ip-act/
Secret
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/16/white-house-declares-copyright-treaty-state-secret
GE Smart Grid
http://www.businessinsider.com/look-for-a-big-ge-smart-grid-project-next-week-2009-4
Greenhouse Gasses
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2009/12/10/mean-street-the-lost-cause-of-ge-and-jeff-immelt/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.