[52136] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Vulnerbilities of Interconnection
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Maxwell)
Mon Sep 16 14:28:50 2002
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 14:26:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Greg Maxwell <gmaxwell@martin.fl.us>
To: Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch@muada.com>
Cc: Gerald <gcoon@inch.com>, <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20020916192217.N26474-100000@sequoia.muada.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Mon, 16 Sep 2002, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> > The internet sucked as a means of getting information on 9/11. I spent
> > about 20 minutes hitting every news site I could think of, and they had
> > all tanked. I set an away msg on IM:
> > "Internet news sucks, I'm going to watch CNN."
>
> There are several ways why "internet news" wasn't as good as TV news:
>
> 1. Using an infrastructure that is built for many-to-many communication
> for few-to-many communication is problematic
>
> 2. Look at the budgets for online and TV news
>
> 3. This type of situation doesn't lend itself well to typing in the news
>
> What the net did do, was permit people to communicate while the phone
> network suffered from massive congestion.
I had a good experience using the Internet for news on 9/11, because I used
it in a way that fit the model.. I didn't bother trying to load cnn.com or
whatever, but rather.. I sat in IRC, talking to people whom I trust to
various degrees, who were in turn watching every conceiveable news source
available, they transcribed, and summerized, some setup mp3 streams of the
EMS/Police radios from DC and NYC, other people read old news sources
online. People at ground zero went outside and took pictures, setup
webcams, etc..
I have to say that I doubt I missed anything... So sure, the internet
sucks as a 1:1 replacement for TV (at least without multicast)... but so
what? I think my experience was better... I wouldn't have bothered wasting
my time drooling over the TV anyways... welcome to News 2.0.
