101–110 of 127 posts
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For another example, the telegraph and telephone networks in the US were built with private funding. Even the transatlantic cables were private ventures (at enormous cost).
I'm curious about all the downvotes with no comments. If the facts are wrong, say so.
I am aiming for 6502, but won't be sad if it takes a while...
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It's not the government's primary job to fund innovation. What we are seeing is that innovation is unable to sustain itself without government money. You've got this backwards. It is specifically the government's job to fund innovation is currently is commercially untenable. Otherwise, who else would do it? Often times after the government's grant expires, the innovation is still commercially untenable. This makes se…
I suppose everyone has forgotten about all the privately developed and deployed networks before the internet as we know it - BIX, Prodigy, MCImail, Fidonet, UUCP, Telenet, the BBS systems, etc. To presume that without the ARPAnet there would be no internet is a huge stretch.
As an aside, the best example that you could have given would have been Minitel (but still, centralized and circuit switched).
[1] http://www.sigcomm.org/ccr/archive/1995/jan95/ccr-9501-clark...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/132174/ubuntu_microsoft_is_pa...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the government's primary job to fund innovation. What we are seeing is that innovation is unable to sustain itself without government money. You've got this backwards. It is specifically the government's job to fund innovation is currently is commercially untenable. Otherwise, who else would do it? Often times after the government's grant expires, the innovation is still commercially untenable. This makes se…
You say it' the governments job because no one else would do it. That's more of a wish on your part than a fact though.
As an aside, it's not really worth joining the conversation if all you have to offer are one-line platitudes. I'd be interested in some evidence supporting your point of view, but you haven't bothered to provide any whatsoever.
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You say it' the governments job because no one else would do it. That's more of a wish on your part than a fact though.
Erm, it's most certainly a fact. Government funded projects produced the Internet, while commercial companies were producing centralized, circuit switched networks. It's self evident that no one else was doing it; every single commercial company in the world at the time was pursuing a drastically different design philosophy (the reason being that circuit switched networks were making money). As an aside, it's not rea…
Also I wasn't disputing whether Government funding produced the internet. What I disagreed with was the notion that the Internet deserved to be produced and therefore the Government was beholden to fund it. Such a discussion wouldn't be a debate that lent itself to the use of evidence for claims since its primarily a philosophical one.
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I suppose everyone has forgotten about all the privately developed and deployed networks before the internet as we know it - BIX, Prodigy, MCImail, Fidonet, UUCP, Telenet, the BBS systems, etc. To presume that without the ARPAnet there would be no internet is a huge stretch.
All the networks you listed are circuit switched, centralized networks; they really don't have anything to do with the Internet at all. The claim that without ARPAnet there would be no Internet is almost self evident, considering how fundamentally different the networks you listed are from the Internet. There's no way a commercial entity would have had the same design philosophy [1, Section 3] because a commercial en…
As soon as there were two computers, people tried to connect them. The more they got connected, the more universal people wanted those connections to be. If commercial companies wouldn't do it, non-commercial entities would (after all, look at linux and the enormous success of free software). Heck, even I worked on hooking computers together back in the 70's using ad-hoc parts and wires and (never having heard of arpanet at the time) even sketched out how a decentralized "web" might work.
The idea that a decentralized fault tolerant network is such a novel concept that it required a government to think of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Even the telephone system is decentralized. There are decentralized fault tolerant systems all around us as examples.
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You say it' the governments job because no one else would do it. That's more of a wish on your part than a fact though.
Erm, it's most certainly a fact. Government funded projects produced the Internet, while commercial companies were producing centralized, circuit switched networks. It's self evident that no one else was doing it; every single commercial company in the world at the time was pursuing a drastically different design philosophy (the reason being that circuit switched networks were making money). As an aside, it's not rea…
If the internet never existed, it's quite probable FidoNet would have grown up and fit into the same ecological niche.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the networks you listed are circuit switched, centralized networks; they really don't have anything to do with the Internet at all. The claim that without ARPAnet there would be no Internet is almost self evident, considering how fundamentally different the networks you listed are from the Internet. There's no way a commercial entity would have had the same design philosophy [1, Section 3] because a commercial en…
Most of those networks also evolved gateways to interconnect to each other. The history of technology is often one that starts out with proprietary interfaces that evolve under user pressure to standardized, open interfaces. We see that playing out yet again in the iPhone vs Android competition. As soon as there were two computers, people tried to connect them. The more they got connected, the more universal people w…
It doesn't require the government to think of it, it requires the government to implement it. It would be a massively stupid decision from a business point of view to implement the Internet as it exists today. There's much more money in centralized networks. I think this should be obvious from the fact that (1) at the time all commercial companies were building centralized networks and (2) today text messages cost upwards of $1k per megabyte. The only reason why the Internet is architected the way it is today is because of government funding. One the government set the Internet in motion towards a decentralized, packet switched network, it could not be overcome by commercial companies.
In 1983 Steve Jobs recruited Pepsi's president to Apple by asking him to choose between changing the world and selling sugared water. Much of Valley's current output is closer to sugared water than to the Macintosh.
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Erm, it's most certainly a fact. Government funded projects produced the Internet, while commercial companies were producing centralized, circuit switched networks. It's self evident that no one else was doing it; every single commercial company in the world at the time was pursuing a drastically different design philosophy (the reason being that circuit switched networks were making money). As an aside, it's not rea…
Check out FidoNet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet , a hobbyist produced global decentralized fault tolerant network, controlled by nobody. If the internet never existed, it's quite probable FidoNet would have grown up and fit into the same ecological niche.