Unique Coincidence :)

[Deepak Shah]

I logged in to Javaranch after LONG LONG time today and happen to figure out that my last post was EXACTLY a year ago (9/20)

LOL

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

This is actually the best day of the year for posting to JavaRanch. Historically, the Tubes are always working their best on this day.

[Deepak Shah]

Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
This is actually the best day of the year for posting to JavaRanch. Historically, the Tubes are always working their best on this day.

Did I lost the lingo in years gap? Can't comprehend

Anyways, looks like its good to be back here

[David O'Meara]

probably all the damage to your frontal lobe?
If you haven't been on the net for a while you may have missed the upgrade to the tubes. Apparantly they were full.

[Greg Charles]

I believe they are alluding to the esteemed Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska.

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.

[Gail Schlentz]

Thanks, Greg! I wanted to know to, but was afraid to ask!! :-)

[marc weber]

Originally posted by Greg Charles:
Quote: "...It's a series of tubes."

And as vacuum tubes become increasingly difficult to replace, the internet will gradually slow down as traffic is routed through our diminishing reservoir of functional valves. Ultimately, it will all stop. Since February, the world wide web has been functioning on less than 39 vacuum tubes. (Most of these are vintage EL-8's left over from the Soviet space program, although a few are thought to be less exotic 12AX7's. All are maintained in copper-lined boxes north of the Arctic Circle). This is why I'm championing an initiative to bring "solid state" technology to the internet (the Solid-State Internet Initiative, SSII2). A 1963 survey by the Alliance of Core Engineers anticipates this will require over 199 "transistors" soldered into place at various points across the network (typically between wires). A variable capacitor might also be required. But once this is completed, the internet will effectively become the electronet, solidifying the vision of an infrastructure capable of making "e-mail" and floating-point calculations a virtual reality.
[ September 21, 2006: Message edited by: marc weber ]

[marc weber]

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

~Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (Ref: O'Reilly Emerging Telephony)

One of the more thoughtful reactions to Mr. Stevens' perspective was presented in The Engines of Our Ingenuity, Episode # 2117: The Internet of Tubes, which concludes...

...in the end, perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on Senator Stevens. After all, he wasn't entirely wrong. He was just a century behind the times.

[Devesh H Rao]

D�j� vu

Was talking to a person who was supposed to send me a mail a week back, still not having received it, I land up as his place and the reason I get is�

�he was facing some fluctuations in the network recently due to which the mail must have got stuck somewhere� , not knowing what to say, all, I could retort was to suggest that the person could try giving a shake to the network cord to see if it could free up the e-mail. I did not wait long enough to see, if he actually did that, I would'nt be shocked if he went ahead with it though.


Now I know better, he was right after all� internet tubes do get choked.
So typically dumb of me

[marc weber]

Originally posted by Devesh H Rao:
...he was right after all... internet tubes do get choked...

You betcha. It's not like there might be a router problem or something. It's clearly The Tubes.

The next step is obvious: We need to commission a multi-million dollar secret study to characterize the effects cosmic rays have on The Tubes, and whether this represents a vulnerability that might someday be exploited by enemies of information.

[Deepak Bala]

The next step is obvious: We need to commission a multi-million dollar secret study to characterize the effects cosmic rays have on The Tubes, and whether this represents a vulnerability that might someday be exploited by enemies of information.

Psst... I dont know what you are talking about but when my internet tubes are blocked i just call a plumber.

Hmmm... thank god i remembered to put the word internet back there

[Jeroen T Wenting]

Your electroweb initiative sounds interesting but it's never going to work.
I've tried shunting kiloWatts through solid state components and they just can't take it, depending on what they're made of they burn, melt, or just vaporise.

[Devesh H Rao]

Originally posted by marc weber:

You betcha. It's not like there might be a router problem or something. It's clearly The Tubes.

The next step is obvious: We need to commission a multi-million dollar secret study to characterize the effects cosmic rays have on The Tubes, and whether this represents a vulnerability that might someday be exploited by enemies of information.

what if we put sentries at the entry points of these tubes, these ways no "bugs" or "viruses" will get into the tubes and choke them up. How is that for a start ?

[marc weber]

So when Mr. Stevens said, "Maybe there is a place for a commercial net, but it's not using what consumers use every day," was he really suggesting that anything "commercial" be isolated from "consumers"? Wouldn't that make transactions a bit difficult? :roll:

[Devesh H Rao]

Originally posted by John Meyers:


Psst... I dont know what you are talking about but when my internet tubes are blocked i just call a plumber.

Hmmm... thank god i remembered to put the word internet back there

Sssshhhh, Have ypu ever looked at what the plumber carries in his kit, He carries a Plasma blaster gun, De-Humidifier gloves, A Zillion watt electro-magnetic zapper and the works. No doubt they get paid that much.

[marc weber]

Originally posted by Devesh H Rao:
...what if we put sentries at the entry points of these tubes, these ways no "bugs" or "viruses" will get into the tubes and choke them up. How is that for a start?

I advocate periodic flushing of The Tubes with a mild nitric acid solution.

[marc weber]

Originally posted by Jeroen T Wenting:
Your electroweb initiative sounds interesting but it's never going to work.
I've tried shunting kiloWatts through solid state components and they just can't take it, depending on what they're made of they burn, melt, or just vaporise.

I wasn't envisioning any current.

Is that really necessary?

[Jeroen T Wenting]

I tried running it with very low current, but the voltage jumped into the megavolt range.
That was when the electricity board started getting nervous, seems I overloaded the safety system on a nuclear plant.

[marc weber]

As "Jack" said in Fight Club, "I suppose these things happen."

Looks like the internet is destined be just a fad after all.

[Jeroen T Wenting]

yeah, it'll never catch on.

[David O'Meara]

But if we're only ever going to need a handful of these 'computer' things, is it really a problem?

Assuming the computers are located in the same place, the operators can just talk to each other (they can use tubes if you like, but should announce the initiation of a conversation using a whistle). Moving these machines to different locations would create problems that would quickly become insurmountable.

Also, the necessity to move 'information' from one machine to another implies some sort of 'solid state storage solution' (ssss, or just 'dribble' for short) and how much do you really expect to store? An efficient solution would involve modular components that could be removed from one and added to the other. A so called 'sneaker net'.

This information transfer would certainly support 'tubing' if designed at the same time as the tubing mechanism, but lets only solve real problems, people. Stop wasting your timer on this interweb thing which is only interesting in a scientific perspective.

[marc weber]

Originally posted by David O'Meara:
...Moving these machines to different locations would create problems that would quickly become insurmountable...

It won't be easy, but barring undue complications, I think my team can have the entire computer functioning in its new location within 8-9 months.


[ September 25, 2006: Message edited by: marc weber ]

[Sameer Jamal]

Originally posted by marc weber:

I advocate periodic flushing of The Tubes with a mild nitric acid solution.

What a unique coincedence I also do the same. Well what was the original topic.

[Devesh H Rao]

Originally posted by Sameer Jamal:


What a unique coincedence I also do the same. Well what was the original topic.

This is MD at the best.....

[David O'Meara]

I'm not sure what Senator Ted Stevens was worried about. As long as you keep your tubes straight (as shown above) then you can send your internet, but if you get your tubes tied then the '1's get clogged and you may not receive your internet till the next day.

When I saw the initial design I shouted "Come see the violence inherent in the system!". Sending ones and zeros down the same tube is clearly inefficient and (in my opinion) the root of the problems with the tubes. Image a system where the tubes for ones were thinner, preventing them from jamming, and the zeroes tube was slightly greater in diameter than the zeroes themselves. Each piece of data could then be tagged with the destination location for use on receipt (obviously not using zeros or ones).

We experimented briefly with a system where a store of the (larger) zeroes were kept at the destination and we only sent the ones required to complete the transmission. While we were able to get a faster flow of ones the effort required to reassemble the information at the destination was much greater. Therefore there is no benefit in attempting to reduce the amounts of data sent and everything should be sent raw.

[Devesh H Rao]

Originally posted by David O'Meara:
Sending ones and zeros down the same tube is

Now I know why the tubes are cylindrical in shape....if they were square, zeros will not be the best fit and would waste space... Hmmm how intelligent and all the while I was thinking if 1 and 0 was all that was required why was I made to learn all those extra numbers like 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 in school.

[David O'Meara]

It's probably time someone posted this again:
The Daily Show - Ted-Stevens - Tubes

[marc weber]

Originally posted by David O'Meara:
... Sending ones and zeros down the same tube is clearly inefficient and (in my opinion) the root of the problems with the tubes...

We've known since 1966 that "you can't mix matter and antimatter cold." But because they had no computer-generated special effects at that time, they were still able to pull this off. (In fact, a faulty analog chronometer was used to indicate their 71-hour regression -- going from 7:59 to 7:00, then to 8:01.)

Fortunately, the risk is academic, because there's no need to transmit any zeros. In fact, it's not even possible, because transmission of zero is a non-event. There's no way to know when a zero has been sent or received. Besides, what value could zeros (in any quantity) add to a message? All that's required is to stream a precise series of ones, which can be reconstituted at the other end with zeros already on hand.