Sen. Ted Stevens Explains the Internet

[JPhillips]

Here he answers the question of what happens to your personal internet when someone wants ten movies.


There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across 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 and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [?]

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.

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 its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.


There you have it, the internet is a series of filled up tubes.

[wade moore]

wow.

[larrymcg421]

Yeah, Ted Stevens did NOT invent the internet.

[MJ4H]

awesome

[sterlingice]

Kindof like Strom Thurmond telling everyone to "speak into the machine" (microphone) when they were in the Senate.

SI

[ISiddiqui]

Sen. Stevens has his own personal internet? Must be lonely.

[Passacaglia]

I like the "No, I'm not finished" line. I assume someone was trying to shut him up?

[Rizon]

What?

[st.cronin]

Honestly, I should run for Senate.

[ISiddiqui]

If you can work "internet" and "tubes" into the same sentance during your campaign, I'd vote for you.

[Raiders Army]

all your base belong to us

[rkmsuf]

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

You ever try and send someone an internet? Even if you zip it the thing is huge.

[QuikSand]

On one level, you want to believe that a prominent public figure who comes across as badly as Stevens does (seemingly pretty often) is really just a victim of being quoted out of context -- it can certainly happen to most anyone who happens to say a lot of things that are either on the record or being recorded. At some point, though, you have to start wondering if there is more than just unflattering light at work.

[Buccaneer]

You wait, his PR rep will blame it on his pills, just like drunk driving (non-)incident.

[Grammaticus]

On one level, you want to believe that a prominent public figure who comes across as badly as Stevens does (seemingly pretty often) is really just a victim of being quoted out of context -- it can certainly happen to most anyone who happens to say a lot of things that are either on the record or being recorded. At some point, though, you have to start wondering if there is more than just unflattering light at work.
Must have been thinking Cynthia Mckinney on that one, huh? ;)

[QuikSand]

It's not like examples are hard to come across.

[Grammaticus]

Hey now, Ted is representing all those Harvard Law School Grads.

[Easy Mac]

The sad thing is, he's one of the most vocal senators against net neutrality... and his side is winning... despite not knowing what the hell is going on.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I must have spent too many years covering politicians or something, because I actually understand what he was saying.

Okay, granted:
1) He mixed up NetFlix with streaming/downloadable video.
2) He said "an internet was sent" when he meant "an email was sent"
3) He used the word "tubes" instead of "pipe" (which I have heard used in reference to the various flows of bandwidth) or instead of trying to explain how data moves from one place to the next in technical terms.

But I still managed to reasonably understand what the heck he was trying to say.

[bronconick]

Stevens is an asshat. Maybe he needs to go back to concentrating on getting $50 billion bridges to connect two uninhabited stretches of land in Alaska.

[panerd]

I must have spent too many years covering politicians or something, because I actually understand what he was saying.

Okay, granted:
1) He mixed up NetFlix with streaming/downloadable video.
2) He said "an internet was sent" when he meant "an email was sent"
3) He used the word "tubes" instead of "pipe" (which I have heard used in reference to the various flows of bandwidth) or instead of trying to explain how data moves from one place to the next in technical terms.

But I still managed to reasonably understand what the heck he was trying to say.

I have never heard of the guy until today and none of the above posts has talked about his party affiliation. But the amazing Kreskin is going to guess from JIMGA's quoted post above that Sen. Stevens is a Republican?

[heybrad]

I wanted to post this yesterday but it got stuck in a tube.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I have never heard of the guy until today and none of the above posts has talked about his party affiliation. But the amazing Kreskin is going to guess from JIMGA's quoted post above that Sen. Stevens is a Republican?

Actually, I had to look him up to be 100% sure myself (after you asked). Stevens has been responsible for more pork than Jimmy Dean, so I'm not particularly a fan of his, but when I read the passage the first time it just didn't seem that tough to figure out what he was saying (in spite of how mangled it was when he said it). So you can take your Kreskin act & shove it up your ass.

[Fonzie]

Stevens is an asshat. Maybe he needs to go back to concentrating on getting $50 billion bridges to connect two uninhabited stretches of land in Alaska.

From now on we will travel in tubes!

[timmynausea]

We're still working on the tube technology.

[JPhillips]

Jon: But even if you can understand what he meant, he's full of shit. A delayed email has nothing to do with a guy downloading movies. I will guarantee the problem is with the Senate mail server and no regulation or lack of regulation will change that.

Stevens is saying, quite poorly, what he's been told by someone else. He has no business deciding how the internet will function for the rest of us.

I should have added that the problem is with the mail server if he's not lying, which I would lay odds that he is.

[rkmsuf]

Jon: But even if you can understand what he meant, he's full of shit. A delayed email has nothing to do with a guy downloading movies. I will guarantee the problem is with the Senate mail server and no regulation or lack of regulation will change that.

Stevens is saying, quite poorly, what he's been told by someone else. He has no business deciding how the internet will function for the rest of us.

I should have added that the problem is with the mail server if he's not lying, which I would lay odds that he is.

someone emailed him a whole internet though

[Wasabiak]

How many tubes could this forum fill?

[st.cronin]

Btw, I'm pretty sure my internet is 100% transistors.

[JonInMiddleGA]

JPhillips -- remember, what I said was that I didn't find what he was trying to say all that hard to figure out ... which was initially what some of the reaction in the thread seemed to be focused on.

And the Senate mail server was the first thing I thought about too, FWIW (although it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out that a staffer was receiving something they shouldn't have been and that the Senate mail server was indeed wonked up by something less than official)

[timmynausea]

Please stop causing tube problems.

[Glengoyne]

I guess I've been in the industry long enough to know what people who have no clue about the technology they are talking about are trying to say.

Same as JIMG says internet=email, and tubes is a bad play at the pipe bandwidth analogy. I also don't think he confused Netflix with a Streaming Video business. I think he was saying that soon there will be a business like this... You know like all the places you can go and download bootleg videos, but for a fee. So he arguably is making some valid points, but he has no idea how to make his argument. He's attempting to regurgitate things he's been told. He has only the slightest freaking clue what he's talking about, and it isn't his clue.


While I'm all for Net Neutrality, I do see that with all of these growing technologies that are consuming an ever growing amount of bandwidth, the companies that own the backbone of the internet are going to have to add capacity to their infrastructure. That costs money, and the natural place for a company to to look for money is the userbase that is most utilizing their product. Personally I think we need to educate the powers that be until they understand that the companies or private individuals utilizing high amounts of bandwidth are already paying for it. They pay for the T1s, T3s and OC3s that are pulled into their datacenters. There is no need for a second charge.

[Grammaticus]

it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out that a staffer was receiving something they shouldn't have been and that the Senate mail server was indeed wonked up by something less than official
You mean porn.

[Glengoyne]

Oh yeah, and the bit about not receiving the email for hours or days. That is completely bogus. His mail server was down.

[SnowMan]

Stevens is an asshat. Maybe he needs to go back to concentrating on getting $50 billion bridges to connect two uninhabited stretches of land in Alaska.Yes, Anchorage and the MatSu valley are VERY uninhabited... :rolleyes:

[JHandley]

This is exactly like when Wilson would try to teach Tim Taylor a life lesson. He gets all the words right, he just puts them in the wrong places.

[AZSpeechCoach]

You mean porn.

Doesn't Sen. Stevens know that the internet is for porn? :eek:

[Rizon]

Does anyone know when the Maximum Internet is supposed to be released? I heard it's tubes were fully customizable.

[MrBigglesworth]

Oh yeah, and the bit about not receiving the email for hours or days. That is completely bogus. His mail server was down.
Wouldn't it be great though to work for someone like Stevens?

Stevens: Where is that budget I told you to have to me by today??
You: Uhh...I sent it this morning! It must be caught in the tubes!
Stevens: Damn you internet tubes! Damn you to HELL!

[Drake]

Hehe.

[-Mojo Jojo-]

Apparently a week ago Stevens made another impassioned (and similarly incoherent) rant against net neutrality in committee about how we can't have a policy that creates a tiered internet, not realizing that this is exactly what the telcos (openly) are seeking to do if net neutrality is defeated. One of the Democrats (Inoue, I think) thanked Stevens for making his argument for him.. The man clearly doesn't know up from down. Nice to know that the fate of the internet is in his hands...

[Passacaglia]

Wouldn't it be great though to work for someone like Stevens?

Stevens: Where is that budget I told you to have to me by today??
You: Uhh...I sent it this morning! It must be caught in the tubes!
Stevens: Damn you internet tubes! Damn you to HELL!

Not just the tubes...he also blames it on Netflix's streaming downloads.

I think that the improper punctuation by whoever transcribed the speech makes it sound dumber, but it's still really dumb.