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Diploid
Cuban


Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
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The Internet Isn't A Truck, It's A Tube
#5868085 - 07/17/06 01:17 AM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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What I want to know is how someone so clueless ends up as chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation? Not just a member, but chairman!
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By Ken Belson The New York Times
Published: July 16, 2006, 7:10 PM PDT
The word is spreading: The Internet is not a big truck. It's "a series of tubes."
Two weeks ago Sen. Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, shared this information at a Senate committee hearing to explain why he voted against an amendment aimed at ensuring that traffic on the Internet be delivered equally, an idea known as "Net neutrality."
And while it is true that the Internet is not a big truck, the senator might feel as if he has been run over by one. His comments have been posted on blogs, lampooned on "The Daily Show" and have spawned musical spin-offs, including a folk version and a techno song with the senator's analogies mixed in. (A video for the latter, with shots of 1960's mainframes and big trucks, surfaced on YouTube.com on Friday.)
The senator's gaffes--"an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday; I just got it yesterday"--are not just oratorical blunders akin to Dan Quayle's spelling of "potatoe." As chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, he has significant sway over telecommunications policies.
That may explain why his comments circulated so quickly through the Internet (or "tubes"), especially among those in favor of a Net neutrality provision. Adam Green, blogging on the DailyKos, sarcastically called Stevens "one cool dude" and said he had "genuine information superhighway cred."
The senator's powerful position also raised suspicions that one of the songs making fun of him had been censored. OnIptablog.org, Andrew Raff described how his "marginally funny" song was taken down from MySpace.com, where he had set up the Ted Stevens Internet Fan Club.
Jeff Berman, a spokesman for Fox Interactive Media, the unit of the News Corp. that owns MySpace, said the company removed the song because Fox mistakenly thought that copyrights had been violated. When MySpace realized that no violations had been made, the song was put back up, he said.
But the lesson here, Raff says, is that--at least for now--there are plenty of other places to speak out.
"The goal of the antineutrality proponents is to turn the Internet into something like the cable TV system," he wrote on his site, adding, in the senator's powerful phrase, "No, the Internet is not a truck."
http://news.com.com/Senators+slip+keeps+on+truckin/2100-1028_3-6094698.html
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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TheHateCamel
Research &Development -DBK
Registered: 01/31/03
Posts: 15,738
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Re: The Internet Isn't A Truck, It's A Tube [Re: Diploid]
#5868368 - 07/17/06 06:27 AM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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LunarEclipse
Enlil's Official Story


Registered: 10/31/04
Posts: 21,407
Loc: Building 7
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Re: The Internet Isn't A Truck, It's A Tube [Re: Diploid]
#5868563 - 07/17/06 08:34 AM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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Tubes? Hell no the Internet is a series of interconnecting underground caverns where cans and strings have been strung up with Indian guys in between relaying messages.
-------------------- Anxiety is what you make it.
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Asante
Omnicyclion prophet


Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 87,640
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Re: The Internet Isn't A Truck, It's A Tube [Re: LunarEclipse]
#5868588 - 07/17/06 08:43 AM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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I think he means the Internet is not a pickup truck you shovel manure onto, but rather a sewer you shit into. I guess it backed up on him like a sewer, not a truck
-------------------- Omnicyclion.org higher knowledge starts here
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Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
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Re: The Internet Isn't A Truck, It's A Tube [Re: Diploid]
#5868772 - 07/17/06 10:06 AM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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"Ooooh, there's an internet for computers now!" -- Homer J. Simpson
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole

Registered: 02/11/04
Posts: 81,741
Loc: Fractallife's gym
Last seen: 7 years, 11 months
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Re: The Internet Isn't A Truck, It's A Tube [Re: Silversoul]
#5869355 - 07/17/06 01:32 PM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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I posted this two weeks ago.
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole

Registered: 02/11/04
Posts: 81,741
Loc: Fractallife's gym
Last seen: 7 years, 11 months
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Re: The Internet Isn't A Truck, It's A Tube [Re: Silversoul]
#5869356 - 07/17/06 01:33 PM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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Happy birthday
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