The Internet is Defective

Topic(s): me,computers
2004-05-06 22:49:21 PDT

Happy Birthday, Lori! Both you and Garret have been such good friends to me. I'll always appreciate everything you guys have done for me. Even little stuff, like Garret showing me the mall when I first moved here, means so much to me. I don't know where I'd be without y'all.

Everybody help celebrate Lori's birthday by visiting baby Faith's Homepage!

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I caught a bit of Frontline on PBS tonight. It caught my attention because it started out with a piece on the city where I live, Mountain View. That piece turned out to be extremely lame. The next bit was about some letter that 50-some scientists wrote and signed and delivered to President Bush.

The letter is a cry paper. I can't stomach it. Read it for yourself here: A Letter From Concerned Scientists.

"The critical infrastructure of the United States, including electrical power, finance, telecommunications, health care, transportation, water, defense and the Internet, is highly vulnerable to cyber attack"

No it's not. You cannot attack the internet. The internet isn't like a bus or a building. The internet is an agreement. It's an agreement between your computer and my computer. The best way to "attack" the internet would be to rearrange the keys on my keyboard.

"Consider the following scenario: [science fiction disaster flick follows]."

Ridiculous. Imagine a giant meteor is spotted millions of miles from Earth, and it will collide with Earth a few months from now. We have no way to stop it. Oh, wait, we already had that movie.

"The consequence of successfully exploiting these vulnerabilities would be significant damage to the U.S. economy, degraded public trust with concomitant long-term retardation of economic growth, degradation in quality of life, and a severe erosion of the public's confidence that the government can adequately protect their security."

No. The consequence would be, the engineers who use the internet and understand its shortcomings would architect a new internet. The new internet would not have the shortcomings of the old internet.

"Aggregate damages resulting from amateur cyber attacks (e.g., 1998 Internet Worm, Melissa Virus, I-LOVE-YOU virus, Code Red Virus and the Nimda virus) are estimated to have been $12 billion for the year 2001 alone."

Yes, due 100% to Microsoft Windows. Not due to a vulnerability within the internet.

"To detect attacks, we need to permeate our critical networks with a broad sensor grid imbued with the capability to detect large-scale attacks by correlating and fusing seemingly unrelated events that are, in fact, part of a coordinated attack."

By introducing a sensor grid, or whatever it is, now something that can be attacked has been introduced. Now there is a target. What's going to protect the broad sensor grid?

"We estimate the project would require an investment of $500 million per year initially, and could reach the billion dollar level in the out-years."

Oh, now I see. I understand. We're going to pay government employees hundreds of millions of dollars. And I'm guessing, these 50-some concerned scientists would be inline for how much?

Let me say this. The internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement. The agreement can be corrected when the agreement is exposed as defective in some manner. Introducing some mechanism to protect the internet will only waste time and money. No doubt the internet will fail at some time, far in the future. No doubt the internet will fail at some time, far in the future, even if there are safeguards to ensure that it does not.

No big deal. Really.

Look, the internet has already been exposed as defective: you can't send email without a computer. Oh, no, wait, that one has already been fixed - you can send email from your cell phone.

Look, the internet has already been exposed as defective: computer viruses slow down the internet. Oh, no, wait, that one has already been fixed - you can install Linux.

Look, the internet has already been exposed as defective: DSL lines can't reach out into rural communities. Oh, no, wait, that one has already been fixed - you can buy a modem from your cable company.

Look, the internet has already been exposed as defective: there's so much garbage that you can't find what you're looking for. Oh, no, wait, that one has already been fixed - you can search on Google.

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