Is that what they call it when Jen has broken The Internet?
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Seems like an appropriate time to remember the Twelve Networking Truths.
Personal favourite:
(3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.
Or as Ted Nelson (we are not worthy) reported back in 1974, regarding (H J R) Groschās Law
(formal): Economy in computing is as the square root of the speed .
(informal): If you want to do it ten limes as cheap, you have to do it a hundred times as fast.
(interpretive): No matter how clever the hardware boys are, the software boys piss It away !
ā Computer Lib (p 39)
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What gets me is having to work while oneās commuting; I do remember days - and there are still jobs (I think; I havenāt worked outside the home in over eight years) like this - when my morning commute was filled with the dread of what was waiting in my cubicle. But I didnāt have to DO anything about it on my drive.
āThe corollary of this: whatever improvements are made to the network will be swallowed by a tolerance for instability as an alternative to nothĀing at all.ā One can substitute ālifeā for āthe networkā, and it STILL makes sense. Well, for the most part.
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When you work for a company that is as paranoid about data privacy as the one I work at, you have no choice but to wait until you log onto the high and mighty āRed Networkā before they will deign to allow you to see even a scrap of business information.
The downside is that it is assumed that everyone will arrive 15-30 minutes early for some unpaid overtime so that they can wade through the torrent of overnight emails and be ready to actually start work when their shift begins.
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Ah. With the last cube-job I had, overtime was expected at the end of the day, not the start. And sometimes it would be hours, but I was mostly okay with that because it meant my boss wasnāt around and I could get some real work done, lol.
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Every technology has a bleeding edge and the web is no exception. Where weāve gone astray is the mindset that āif Iām not using the bleeding edge, then Iām Doing It Wrongā.
From the article:
Why do users try to download giant media files over cellular network connections on moving trains? Because the alternative isnāt waiting until you get to the office ā itās blowing a deadline and tanking the whole project.
This is true if the media file itself is the project (a TV ad campaign for example), although in that case, making a deadline with minutes to spare is likely an example of poor project management.
If the media file is not itself the project but rather an internal document, then weāve let the ability to construct āgiant media filesā corrupt what we do at work. Iāve seen several g.m.fās, lovingly and expensively produced with high production values, which convey a message that could be just as easily conveyed by one person, who believes in the message, speaking clearly and sincerely for forty seconds.
And the perceived āneedā for excess glitz adds to the bandwidth requirements all up and down the line.
I recommend a reading of Edward Tufteās work on power point pitches, as well as Stephen Potterās Lifemanship and One-Upmanship on what Potter calls ācounter playā. When I know that the other presenters at a conference are going to be bringing āgiant media filesā in Powerpoint or one of its clones, thatās when I bring this guy along:
and do my talk illustrated by black lines and text hand drawn, on the fly, on a white screen. This has three great advantages - first, the audience has to listen. No skipping ahead in the handouts while farting around with the cellphone. Second, the bandwidth requirements are essentially zero. Third and most important, it forces the presenter to know what he or she is talking about and to keep it brief.
And if we ever get to talking about the glut of excess paper in what by now should be a paperless business world, Iāll share with you the magic of the mimeograph machineā¦
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Remember that usage of the internet is necessarily dictated in no small part by the lowest common denominator in that domain (e.g. consumer connections) - sure, youāve got a 15Mbit link available without even stretching, but the demands made of the average consumerās connection are necessarily limited to their average connection capability - which is much less than 15Mbit. Your connection isnāt being strained because not enough potential customers have 15Mbit connections to fund the majority of what will in the future strain everyoneās 15Mbit+ connections.
Except for the fact that between when I was 8 (my first modem, 600 baud), and 18 (a 56k and lusting for DSL) connection speeds went up rapidly. In the last ten years they have been completely stagnant. This might be true for the very small percentage of Americans with access to fiber, but thatās still 5-10 years off for much of the urban US, and 10-20 for those poor people living in the country whose internet speeds and dependability is crap.
Our Internet is crap. There is no competition, and thus no innovation. Worse, the existing companies stifle any chance at any improvement. Cox, locally, is suing Google to keep them out of the market. Meanwhile Cox goes down once a week, and hasnāt upgraded their services for 10 years, and the only competition is crusty DSL on again secondhand telecom infrastructure.
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Sayās Law: "Supply Creates its own demand.ā
When they open a new 12 lane highway, itās jammed in months, when it was expected to meet demand for ten years.
More practically, as long as bandwidth is seen as free or almost free, itāll be gobbled up like it is.
But āfreeā to whom?
When people type a URL into their browser, they are specifying their navigation. It is those serving the pages who are using extra bandwidth for frivolous scripts and media files which nobody asked for. It is certainly not free for those with data caps.
Itās like every time you invite one person to your house, it is soon packed with one hundred people. The one you invited, a few others you know, and 90+ strangers. What would it take to make this āthe normā? Why would people believe those who tell them that this is the cost of communication?
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