Video: Repent, Websurfers, The End Is Near
posted at 8:00 pm on July 7, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
This sounds like the Y2K problem, only a lot more realistic. According to PC Magazine’s Lance Ulanoff, we may be just a couple of years away from the end of the Internet — or at least the end of its expansion. It’s not from lack of interest, but a built-in limitation of the addressing system known as Internet Protocol, or IP:
Like Y2K, the solution is easy, but getting people to spend money on it is the problem. It took a lot of hyperbole and sky-is-falling hysteria in 1999 for users to finally get rid of their old DOS 3.0 machines and old database systems that couldn’t recognize a year that didn’t start with 19. Unfortunately, the pressure this time won’t be on the people with IP addresses already, but the people who want new addressing.
Maybe the Internet will be a club — closed to new membership, only allowing replacements for those who opt off the system or die. It’ll be a case of who you know. That means … you’d better start being really, really nice to those of us with our own IPs.
Update: As always, South Park has foreseen the catastrophe (h/t RightWinged):
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Nanobots coursing through the brain will connect to the worldbioweb (wbw.) directly through thought impulses, rendering all of this worrying obsolete.
IP will be replaced by the Id.
(Although such “Forbidden Planet” tech brings its own problems.)
profitsbeard on July 7, 2008 at 10:53 PM
AAwwwwwwwww! Ed has a soft SIDE! **Hugs** to Ed and his Family.
**Trying not to tick Mrs Ed off.**
upinak on July 7, 2008 at 11:00 PM
[njcommuter on July 7, 2008 at 9:47 PM]
Thanks, njc. I’m usually pretty compulsive about looking things up before commenting. I don’t know why I didn’t even bother this time.
Dusty on July 7, 2008 at 11:03 PM
Sounds racist to me. How are Michelle’s kids supposed to start their own blogs?
Bishop on July 7, 2008 at 11:09 PM
What would Michelle’s kids call their own Blog!
Now that would be interesting.
upinak on July 7, 2008 at 11:10 PM
Golly! when does the calander of Hotair girls come out?
*Ducks quickly*
KIDDING!
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on July 7, 2008 at 11:16 PM
Well you know it owuld be a winner… Cause Michelle would be the Cover and Center fold!
upinak on July 7, 2008 at 11:19 PM
On second thought I don’t think Michelle’s children would have blogs, daddy would simply force every family to listen to a nightly broadcast from his little darlings.
Better tune-in the radio at the appointed time or else. Remember: Uncle Baracky is watching.
Bishop on July 7, 2008 at 11:40 PM
Darth, no worries. He’s classy in that way and would never ban you for such stinging humor.
Entelechy on July 7, 2008 at 11:55 PM
Sorry, the question wasn’t meant to be in quotes…it’s not the technology, for sure :)
Entelechy on July 7, 2008 at 11:58 PM
Oh hum, y2k was solved by changing the data base year from 2 digits to 4 (which it should have been anyway). Phone user expansion was solved by making local phone numbers 10 digits from the previous 7 (okay, the area code was already there being implied for local calls). I perdict that Internet expansion will be solved in a similar way (larger number, alpha chars, etc).
docdave on July 7, 2008 at 11:58 PM
You are correct, it will take a new addressing scheme to update the internet. The current version we all know and use is called “IP version 4.” The new version will be “IP version 6″ (not sure what happened to version 5, maybe global warming melted it).
However, it will take lots and lots of work and hardware replacement to make all internet routers work with the new system. Think of it as similar to changing from analog to digital television, but lots more people need to do it and the upgrade cost is exponentially higher.
The internet will not go away, it will all be fine, with or without Al Gore.
cannonball on July 8, 2008 at 12:25 AM
Dang! I thought Y2K was solved by the year rolling over and nothing happening.
Oldnuke on July 8, 2008 at 12:33 AM
More scare mongering from a propagandist. Hey isn’t this the same Lance Ulanoff who recently decided that PC Magazine should go green?
I suppose he never heard of shared IP hosting? How does he think they are dealing with it now? It is called a ROUTER! What a dumbass.
Poptech on July 8, 2008 at 12:40 AM
This bears repeating.
Vic on July 8, 2008 at 1:39 AM
NAh I don’t mind. Its from where I live out in the desert.
and originally it was an idea for a low budget movie me and some pals were wanting to make. (Making fun of the 1980′s run of post-apocalyptic movies…which I am a big fan of.)
SO since I live out here and love it, the moniker stuck.
I also tend to be a little bit of a survivalist, trying to build that bunker just for nostalgia… or Iran which ever comes first.
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on July 8, 2008 at 2:09 AM
Speaking of Y2K… hubby’s uncle worked for a very large corporation with a very large base in Jakarta. To say that they were flipping over Y2K was an understatement of the vastest proportions. After years (literally years) of mulling the problem over, fixing all the systems they could, and coming down to the deadline with a huge problem still looming, they solved it in the simplest way they could think of: someone got a perpetual calendar, matched up the date of whatever this to whatever that, and turned the clock back. I believe it was to 1972, could be wrong, somewhere around there. Come Y2K, the system rolled over, none the wiser, and gave them time to work on it at their leisure. I always thought that was just the funniest thing. Did everyone show up Monday morning in bellbottoms and platforms? Afros? Hotpants? Was Disco back with a vengeance?
Wasteland- I always loved a good low-budget flick. USA used to play ‘Up All Night’ on the weekends, and it was nothing but cheesy B movies. I still love them, but no one has them anymore. Why I remember this one in particular, I don’t know: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075378/ . That, and all those Nuclear movies. They scared the crap out of me, but to see them now, it’s hilarious!
LickyLicky on July 8, 2008 at 2:45 AM
Here’s my submission for the Calender.
Mr. August 2009.
-Wasteland Man.
P.S. yes its me.
WastelandMan on July 8, 2008 at 2:49 AM
Yeah yeah! thats the Ticket alright!
heres one of my fav bad ones
Poor Patrick Swayze though Hope he’s doing ok….
Hey! wasn’t this thread about the internet apocalypse?
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on July 8, 2008 at 2:55 AM
You have reached the end of the internet, please go back,…. NOW
Kini on July 8, 2008 at 3:03 AM
What’s the problem? Reclaim the addresses given to China and the Muslim World.. tell them to build their own internet and life goes on.
VinceP1974 on July 8, 2008 at 4:02 AM
IPv 6 fixes this problem. All the routing and switching hardware has been ready to use this address space for at lease 4 years. Parts of Asia have been using IPv 6 for a while now.
Most business won’t have to change a thing. A company uses an internal IP system that is specifically designed not to work on the internet. All that has to be changed is the few systems that are on the internet and the internal structure can remain. This is true for household networks as well.
This is far less of a problem then Y2K was. The PC Magazine editor, also known as Chicken Little, is one of the reasons I stopped reading his magazine. For a “Technical Person” he doesn’t know what he is talking about and as a “writer” he isn’t giving the whole story.
evilned on July 8, 2008 at 5:08 AM
Yes. Of course. The phony “problem” has long been solved and the prepared, mundane, next-gen, ratified solution has been well in place for years.
A non-story, except to those like PC Magazine hoping to get page hits from manufactured hysteria.
Gilda on July 8, 2008 at 6:25 AM
I thought they rolled out IP6 years ago.
I first heard of it almost 15 years ago. What happened?
MarkTheGreat on July 8, 2008 at 6:51 AM
Using 2 digits for the year made lots of sense when it first came out. You young whipper snappers don’t remember the days when memory was expensive and very, very scarce.
Early disk drives, even for large mainframes, were measured in 10′s of megabytes, and were very expensive.
Memory for these units was measured in kilobytes, and was also hideously expensive.
Knocking two digits off of the year saved lots of money and made the programs run noticeably faster.
The problem was the two digit year became habit, and then became standard.
MarkTheGreat on July 8, 2008 at 6:55 AM
The problem with IP6 is that older servers don’t understand it. Before it can be fully adopted, all internet servers have to be upgraded.
MarkTheGreat on July 8, 2008 at 6:56 AM
.Has to be a chicken little liberal. Didn’t he also say that the surge would never work? /heh
docdave on July 8, 2008 at 8:18 AM
This should be no sweat for our throw away forced obslescence society. Really how many software systems do we have today that are fixed with automatic updates that you never see? Internet addressing could be fixed the same way.
docdave on July 8, 2008 at 8:26 AM
It should be no problem, but it is.
The internet is a co-operative arrangement, so there is no ability to send out an e-mail stating that you will upgrade.
If the internet authorities (actually there is no such thing as an authority when it comes to the internet, just people who are listened to more than others) try to force an upgrade when there are sections of the internet that aren’t co-operating, and there will be chaos for years.
In short, it’s a political problem, not a technical one.
MarkTheGreat on July 8, 2008 at 8:48 AM
You can count on some Demonrat politician to come up with a mandated fix that one of his family members or close personal friend will make a few million from. Happens very time.
Ltmousseman on July 8, 2008 at 9:06 AM
I’m more worried about the Y10K problem – it’s just around the corner, you know….
Think_b4_speaking on July 8, 2008 at 9:35 AM
Umm… this is nothing new at all. This is why we have private address ranges, NAT, and IPv6.
Just what we need. Ignoramuses (ignorami?) panicking about another non-issue. See? I’ve worked in this field for over a decade, and I’m more concerned about the plural form of “ignoramus.”
Beo on July 8, 2008 at 9:36 AM
What a load of poo.
There’s plenty of room out there with virtual servers, NAT etc, not to mention the inevitable move to IPv6 (a well-understood software solution).
This goon is simply mugging for attention. Pillock.
LimeyGeek on July 8, 2008 at 9:58 AM
Awesome
RushBaby on July 8, 2008 at 10:21 AM
WastelandMan, thanks for the moniker history and the pic – “awesome”, as RushBaby already said :) At least we can see the eyes.
Entelechy on July 8, 2008 at 10:48 AM
So…the IPv6 address space is 128 bits for a total number of addresses 2^128. The total surface area of the Earth is around 5.5 * 10^15 square feet. 2^128/5.5*10^15 is 3.4*10^38/5.5*10^15 or 6.19*10^21 (Six Billion Trillion!) addresses for every square foot of the Earth. Unless we start individually addressing bacteria I think we’re OK.
MMW on July 8, 2008 at 11:48 AM
Oops…off by a factor of 10. 61.9 *10^21.
MMW on July 8, 2008 at 11:53 AM
People don’t know how much they owe to “80/20 windowing,” do they?
Kralizec on July 8, 2008 at 11:56 AM
Me worry, not at all. Because with enough time and TAXPAYER MONEY, Barack Hussein Obama WILL SOLVE ALL of our problems! /Sarcasm
byteshredder on July 8, 2008 at 12:26 PM
Capt. Ed:
Maybe the Internet will be a club — closed to new membership, … you’d better start being really, really nice to those of us with our own IPs.
ELITIST!
Seriously, I didn’t know you were a “Two-Ameica” Edward’s fan, the HAVEs and the HAVE-NOTs.
Sir Napsalot on July 8, 2008 at 12:35 PM
The intranet Toooobes are broke.
Less Awesome.
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on July 8, 2008 at 12:55 PM
Holy crap. The end is far from near. There are too many network tricks and efficiency measures that can be put into place yet. By the time the end really is near, our old equipment will be totally EOS/EOL and we’ll have long upgraded to IPv6. I hate one-sided reporting.
craig on July 8, 2008 at 1:55 PM
“What did he say?”
“The end is near”
“No dag gummit! I said the sherrif is a ni….”
LimeyGeek on July 8, 2008 at 8:56 PM
And to think, all we had to do to bring the Internet crashing down was do forget to null our strings and reverse our CRLF
LimeyGeek on July 8, 2008 at 8:58 PM
WastelandMan on July 8, 2008 at 12:55 PM
Nice pic by the waterfall (I believe it’s a waterfall…) It’s an interesting shot. All are awesome, but be careful with sharing them. Must keep anonymity.
Entelechy on July 8, 2008 at 11:21 PM
so, why do you sign your name when you already have a signature?
Mazztek on July 9, 2008 at 11:07 AM
yup. All your little problems will go away and be replaced by one BIG problem.
/shudder.
Mazztek on July 9, 2008 at 11:08 AM
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