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The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

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Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#151

Post by thodin »

drran wrote: post #108
cambalache wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely anti-soviet, almost propagandistically so. It wouldnt be out of place as a work made at the request of Voice of America, although the author is an Englishman.

It's good that it antisoviet, isn't? Soviet Union was responsible for millions of deaths. In Soviet Union, you will be prosecuted as American spy just because you have account on HN.

Not really. In Soviet Union it was possible to have connection to the outside world only in case you were completely trusted (checked by KGB many times). No one was prosecuted in SU for unauthorized access to western computer resources because they had not a single chance to get it without state permission.

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#152

Post by refurb »

zackmorris wrote: post #140
jandrese wrote: post #89

IMHO the project was doomed from the start. Top down design on a scale that massive and distributed is nightmarishly complex, and when the designer is well ahead of the state of the art like this it doesn’t stand a chance. ARPANET by contrast started from the bottom and worked up. This is crucial because it makes it easy to iterate on the design until you get it right. With a top down design mistakes get baked in and…

It's interesting to hear you say that. When I was growing up in the 1980s, everything was top-down (NASA, IBM, even pop culture). '95-99 was when the internet popularized the idea of barely controlled anarchy leading to success that we take for granted today. On a tangent, I personally feel that bottom-up design has been an almost complete failure. The US has lost its ability to articulate what it needs to do, and th…

Most of those things you mention - Post Office, elections, IRS, NASA are all examples of top down planning.

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#153

Post by Angostura »

zackmorris wrote: post #140
jandrese wrote: post #89

IMHO the project was doomed from the start. Top down design on a scale that massive and distributed is nightmarishly complex, and when the designer is well ahead of the state of the art like this it doesn’t stand a chance. ARPANET by contrast started from the bottom and worked up. This is crucial because it makes it easy to iterate on the design until you get it right. With a top down design mistakes get baked in and…

It's interesting to hear you say that. When I was growing up in the 1980s, everything was top-down (NASA, IBM, even pop culture). '95-99 was when the internet popularized the idea of barely controlled anarchy leading to success that we take for granted today. On a tangent, I personally feel that bottom-up design has been an almost complete failure. The US has lost its ability to articulate what it needs to do, and th…

I think from your timings that you are conflating the Web and the Internet.

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#154

Post by Bloggerzune »

Good I think this is one of those cases where the most correct answer is simply "yes". Realistically, the guards were put there to halt the transfer of people, goods, and currency: to be the physical manifestation of a hard border. Although, the motivation for this border (who it benefits, is it to keep "others" out vs "us" in) was a dynamic concept that evolved over time.

However, if you integrate the motivation function over the entire time of separation, which is one way of reducing the complexity, the primary result is to keep easterners from escaping. In the early days of widening division, there was a mass migration of people fleeing "The East"; each person carried a multitude of reasons for their flight. One effect of the border was to halt this flow. https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/whatsapp-web-scan.html?m...

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#155

Post by coding123 »

jandrese wrote: post #89

IMHO the project was doomed from the start. Top down design on a scale that massive and distributed is nightmarishly complex, and when the designer is well ahead of the state of the art like this it doesn’t stand a chance. ARPANET by contrast started from the bottom and worked up. This is crucial because it makes it easy to iterate on the design until you get it right. With a top down design mistakes get baked in and…

Like IPv4

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#156

Post by LoSboccacc »

ethbro wrote: post #135
Eyas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The key innovation of the internet was the invention of TCP/IP for the purpose of inter-network communication. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite#Early_...

I'd say the kernel of that was the idea of encapsulation and separating functions by layer (really the same idea, from packet and flow perspectives, respectively).

I'd say the core is that anyone could link up and start talking with other parts of the network; the arp/ip technology was the stepping stone of course, but a key differentiator from previous machine networks[1] is that you can just hook up to the internet, it was truly decentralized from its ideation.

[1] ie. stock tickers, terminals of time share mainframes, or see plan 55-A for a wider interconnected switched network this russian idea

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#157

Post by yesenadam »

drran wrote: post #108
cambalache wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely anti-soviet, almost propagandistically so. It wouldnt be out of place as a work made at the request of Voice of America, although the author is an Englishman.

It's good that it antisoviet, isn't? Soviet Union was responsible for millions of deaths. In Soviet Union, you will be prosecuted as American spy just because you have account on HN.

Well, the USA was also responsible for millions of deaths in countries around the world, but don't suppose you think being anti-US is good on that account.

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#158

Post by tus88 »

tus88 wrote: post #92
jandrese wrote: post #89

IMHO the project was doomed from the start. Top down design on a scale that massive and distributed is nightmarishly complex, and when the designer is well ahead of the state of the art like this it doesn’t stand a chance. ARPANET by contrast started from the bottom and worked up. This is crucial because it makes it easy to iterate on the design until you get it right. With a top down design mistakes get baked in and…

Sounds like something else the USSR attempted :D

Downvote if you are from Portland :P

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#159

Post by thrwway34 »

toyg wrote: post #68
xxpor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were the armed guards there to keep the western trains from stopping or for keeping easterners from escaping via the tunnels?

Don’t forget keeping spies at bay. Berlin was a notorious hotbed of espionage, for obvious reasons, and East German authorities had already enough trouble controlling the existing checkpoints without having to add new ones.

You really think only East Germans had issues with espionage?

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#160

Post by thrwway34 »

thodin wrote: post #114
wwarner wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is interesting. The value of tcp/ip was the ability to form logical networks over and across existing physical/electronic networks. That only makes sense if you have an abundance of physical networks to start with.

Glushkov was never about packet switching, he had an idea to build new dedicated physical network for this project, he estimated that this project will need more resources than nuclear and space program combined (!). It was actually a waste of materials, resources and completely incompetent. And access to that network was planned as very secure, even the project itself was partly top secret. In real world, we in USSR…

Actually it appeared a little before 1991, in 1989. There was first Internet connection to Finland in Demos institute (their demos.su domain is still operational) and I can remember reading their Usenet posting about communist coup d'etat in 1991.
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