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Ted Stevens, Senator – R.I.P

Ted Stevens, Senator, Alaska, died in a plane crash a few days ago. How would I know who Ted Stevens was? I do not follow US politics. Ted Stevens became a celebrity some time back, when he spoke about the net neutrality debate in the Senate/Congress (do not know which one – now you know, how ignorant, I am of US politics). The Senator is a total newbie with respect to Computers, much less the internet. He made waves across the geek community, by referring to the “Internets” to be a system of tubes. And how the tubes can get clogged sometimes, and delaying his delivery of emails.

A snippet from the transcription of the speech:

Ten movies streaming across that, 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. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.

[…] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big 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 it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.[4]

More links:

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes

BoingBoing: http://boingboing.net/2006/07/02/sen-stevens-hilariou.html

Anyways, Ted Stevens, may you rest in peace, where the clogged tubes of the Internets wont disturb you.