U.S. Government Proposes "Internet Kill Switch"

[goldsphinxx]

Thank god I live in Canada.
But honestly it's only for times of emergency, then it would tell interneters to gtf off and check the breaking news bulletin for what emergency is going on.

 

[Gh0st1y_H]

This topic is misleading. It should be "Joe Lieberman suggests 'Internet Kill Switch.'"

 

[Eruanno]

"Oh no! A massive crisis! I think it best we turn off all communication lines so we cannot communicate to the people, and the people cannot communicate! That way, we're completely fucked if something terrible happens. Also, I fold carrots into underpants and wear them as a tribal head ornament in my new country which I shall call The Empire of RETARDIA."

 

[goldsphinxx]

so who will be rioting when uncle sam turns off the internet?

All the men around the world who are deprived of their access to porn

That was your 420th post

 

[Wandrecanada]

On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. The Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW, patterned after HyperCard and built using the X Window System. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic, technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word Internet had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its use as a synecdoche in reference to the World Wide Web.

So the APRAnet, or whatever "prototype" there was, dosen't count. Okay then.

I just think to myself regulary - "what's with British inventing and creating absolutely everything in human history from United States to paperclips?"

Just another person who thinks the Internet is all about HTML browsers Kollega. They don't understand ARPANet and what the Internet truly is. Ask most people and they'll say Internet Explorer is the Internet.

The Internet is not just for parsing and rendering HTML (and scripting). It's about making data accessible. The only role of the Internet is strict data transmission. What the entities connected to the Internet does with the data has no bearing on the data itself. The Internet truly is information.

As an aside browsers were built essentially to translate a markup language called HTML. HTML was based on the GML standard created by Goldfarb of IBM back in the early 70s. Standard GML was used in early applications such as Wordperfect and the use of tags would render text in italics and whatnot. The CERN guy referenced above only came up with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and created it in the early 90s. HTML was not publicly used until the HTML 2.0 standard in the mid 90's. The internet was being used well before this to transmit data from machine to machine well before the advent of HTML and HTML broswers. ISPs existed prior to 1990 and ARPA Net (what would become the internet) had 15 connected sites by 1971.

 

[Sougo]

wow, even China doesn't have a 'kill switch'

Yay democracy

 

[Boba Frag]

Cyber 9/11? Am I terrible because I found that quite funny?

Terrible idea. Why should America choose when the entirety of the internet goes down?

I find it hilarious, albeit a fucking stupid idea. Ah well, Ireland for the win!

You're a bad, bad man for saying that.

And I'm even worse for laughing at it....

This is crazy though... it'd be like shooting yourself in the foot with a shotgun when you needed a funny toenail removed.

 

[FallenJellyDoughnut]

Help! I accidently deleted the internet!

Ha, I hope they make it a giant lever that a clueless guard could accidently lean on, that would be awesome.

 

[chemicalfire]

Gotta love the use of "cyber-911", you can always count on big brother to drum up scare tactics and buzz-words. On a serious note, this could herald a very bad thing. I think the bill is less for preventing a "cyber-911" and more to prevent videos getting posted on youtube during civil unrest and possible riots. Basically, they don't want what happened with Iran last June to happen here when the shit hits the fan and the people have finally had enough of a shitty economy, prolonged war, oil spill, unclean public restrooms, etc...

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

 

[Deadlock Radium]

If the killswitch actually becomes a reality, all I'll say is:
"Quick, hide /b/ before thy find it!"

But is it indeed a stupid mind-blowingly idiotic idea.

 

[cainstwin]

On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. The Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW, patterned after HyperCard and built using the X Window System. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic, technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word Internet had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its use as a synecdoche in reference to the World Wide Web.

So the APRAnet, or whatever "prototype" there was, dosen't count. Okay then.

I just think to myself regulary - "what's with British inventing and creating absolutely everything in human history from United States to paperclips?"

If he invented it doesnt he have in a way a claim to ownership? would the US need to approach him for permission to create an off switch?

 

['Stache]

Ladies and gentlemen: the Democratic Party.
Having to pick between these guys and the Republicans is the true cost of freedom.

 

[GonzoQTortilla]

Oh yeah?

Well the US government can suck my cock.

Damn strait.

 

[Wandrecanada]

I'd like to point out that the Internet exists outside of the US. Does he mean they'll somehow detonate every router in the world at once or something? Will they take legal action against Chinese servers? Wouldn't it be stupid to black out a major source of communication in the US while every other country that poses a threat still has that communication source?

There's no chance in hell any arm of the government, especially military and intelligence would support that bill.

 

[Boba Frag]

Oh yeah?

Well the US government can suck my cock.

That's not the US government.
That's Joe Lieberman.
I doubt anyone takes the guy seriously.

Not a clue who he is (I'm British), but if that's the case then I retract my cock-sucking statement and issue it directly to Joe Lieberman.

Since I'm Russian, the only way I know of him is this.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/475/475503p1.html
Yeah.

Oh, he's one of those...

*sigh*

I, too, would like to retract my vitriol from the US government and invite Mr. Lieberman to dine upon the finest bowl of penis that money can buy.

 

[Lord_Sphinx]

What the fuck is this bullshit. Lieberman needs to piss off.

 

[GonzoQTortilla]

Lesser of two evils...

Why can't we get rid of these clowns and elect people who aren't evil...

 

[cainstwin]

On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. The Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW, patterned after HyperCard and built using the X Window System. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic, technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word Internet had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its use as a synecdoche in reference to the World Wide Web.

So the APRAnet, or whatever "prototype" there was, dosen't count. Okay then.

I just think to myself regulary - "what's with British inventing and creating absolutely everything in human history from United States to paperclips?"

Just another person who thinks the Internet is all about HTML browsers Kollega. They don't understand ARPANet and what the Internet truly is. Ask most people and they'll say Internet Explorer is the Internet.

The Internet is not just for parsing and rendering HTML (and scripting). It's about making data accessible. The only role of the Internet is strict data transmission. What the entities connected to the Internet does with the data has no bearing on the data itself. The Internet truly is information.

As an aside browsers were built essentially to translate a markup language called HTML. HTML was based on the GML standard created by Goldfarb of IBM back in the early 70s. Standard GML was used in early applications such as Wordperfect and the use of tags would render text in italics and whatnot. The CERN guy referenced above only came up with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and created it in the early 90s. HTML was not publicly used until the HTML 2.0 standard in the mid 90's. The internet was being used well before this to transmit data from machine to machine well before the advent of HTML and HTML broswers. ISPs existed prior to 1990 and ARPA Net (what would become the internet) had 15 connected sites by 1971.

I would argue that the internet is an idea, and whoever thought of making a network accessible by anyone at all is the inventor of it. From what i know, and seeing as he was marked out from a team of people who would have been working on HTML it sounds like it would have been his idea to make a globaly accesible network, or world wide web.