Created in early 2004, UNEASYsilence aims to deliver daily coverage of offbeat & generally geeky news. Subscribe via RSS or Email.

READING single

“It’s a series of Tubes”

Posted in Stupid, Tech by Dan at 12:10 pm
closeThis post was published 3 years 3 months 26 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.

CJ014 I leave the country for ONE WEEK, and I miss this gem! Apparently Senator Ted Stevens, Republican from Alaska, who is the CHAIRPERSON of the committee regarding our new telecommunications laws has decided to teach the world the importance of the web, but somebody obviously forgot to teach him.

In a debate on net neutrality, Senator Stevens launched into a tirade about how his staff tried to delivered him the internet on a Friday, and it didn’t come until Monday, and how the internet was simply a system of filled up tubes. You can listen to the full audio clip here, to hear all the fun little analogies he uses. Kinda sounds like Porky Pig doesn’t he?

None the less, his hysterical rant has reached cult status on the internet receiving commentary from Jon Stewart, having his own remixed techno video, as well as MySpace page.

Someone do the good senator a favor, and brief him on how the Internet really works

Click Read More to see the Transcript, and additional videos.

There’s one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service is now going to go through the internet* and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [¿]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. [¿]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.

[¿]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.

It’s not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.


2 Responses to ““It’s a series of Tubes””

  1. [...] I guess Hillary Clinton, the senator from the great state of New York, was not happy with Senator Ted Stevens stealing the limelight in regards to his internet is a series of tubes gaffe. [...]

  2. [...] But what about saving videos on the other more adult orientated ‘Tubes (And we are not talking Ted Stevens Tubes here). We have gotten a bunch of requests not only how to download these videos, but how to play them on your Mac, PC, or iPod. [...]

Additional comments powered by BackType