Internet

:''This article is about '''''the'' Internet''', the extensive, worldwide computer network available to the public. ''An'' internet is a more general term informally used to describe any set of interconnected ''computer networks'' that are connected by ''internetworking''.'' The Internet, or simply the Net, is the publicly available worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP) and many other protocols. It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic and government networks. It carries various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat and the interlinked web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web. Because this is by far the largest, most extensive internet (with a small ''i'') in the world, it is simply called ''the'' Internet (with a capital ''I''). [[Image:Opte Project map 1105841711.LGL.2D.4000x4000.png|thumbnail|400px|right|The Internet as mapped by [http://opte.prolexic.com/ The Opte Project] on 15. January 2005]] == Creation of the Internet == The story of the Internet begins in 1969 with the implementation of ARPANET by academic researchers under the sponsorship of the United States United States Department of Defense Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Some early research which contributed to the ARPANET included work on decentralized networks, queueing theory, and packet switching. However, ARPANET itself did not interact easily with other computer networks that did not share its own native protocol. This problem inspired further research towards the development of a protocol that could be "layered" over many different types of networks. On January 1, 1983, the core networking protocol of ARPANET was changed from Network Control Program to TCP/IP, marking the start of the Internet as we know it today. Another important step in the Internet's development was the National Science Foundation (NSF) construction of a university network backbone, the NSFNet, in 1986. Important disparate networks that have successfully been accommodated within the Internet include Usenet and Bitnet. The collective network gained a public face in the 1990s. In August 1991 Tim Berners-Lee publicized his new World Wide Web project, two years after he had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few web pages at CERN in Switzerland. A few academic and government institutions contributed pages but the public did not begin to see them yet. In 1993 the Mosaic (web browser) version 1.0 was released, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical internet. By 1996 the word "Internet" was common public currency, but it referred almost entirely to the World Wide Web. Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing computer networks (although some networks such as FidoNet have remained separate). This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network. == Today's Internet == [[Image:Internet.png|thumb|400px|Various internet client (computing)s, such as web browsers, FTP client, and Telnet client]] Apart from the incredibly complex physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is held together by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (for example peering agreements) and by technical specifications or Communications protocols that describe how to exchange data over the network. Unlike older communications systems, the Internet protocol suite was deliberately designed to be agnostic with regard to the underlying physical medium. Any communications network, wired or wireless, that can carry two-way digital data can carry Internet traffic. Thus, Internet packets flow through wired networks like copper wire, coaxial cable, and fiber optic; and through wireless networks like Wi-Fi. Together, all these networks, sharing the same high-level protocols, form the Internet. The Internet protocols originate from discussions within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and its working groups, which are open to public participation and review. These committees produce documents that are known as Request for Comments documents (RFCs). Some RFCs are raised to the status of Internet Standard by the Internet Architecture Board (Internet Architecture Board). Some of the most used protocols in the Internet protocol suite are Internet Protocol, Transmission Control Protocol, User Datagram Protocol, Domain Name System, Point-to-Point Protocol, Serial line IP, ICMP, Post Office Protocol, Internet Message Access Protocol, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, HTTP, HTTPS, Secure shell, Telnet, File Transfer Protocol, LDAP, Secure Sockets Layer, and Transport Layer Security. Some of the popular services on the Internet that make use of these protocols are e-mail, Usenet newsgroups, file sharing, Instant Messenger, the World Wide Web, Gopher protocol, Session (computer science), Wide area information server, finger protocol, Internet relay chat, MUDs, and MUSHs. Of these, e-mail and the World Wide Web are clearly the most used, and many other services are built upon them, such as mailing lists and web logs. The Internet makes it possible to provide real-time services such as web radio and webcasts that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Some other popular services of the Internet were not created this way, but were originally based on proprietary systems. These include Internet relay chat, ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, and Gnutella. There have been many analyses of the Internet and its structure. For example, it has been determined that the Internet IP routing structure and hypertext links of the World Wide Web are examples of scale-free networks. Similar to how the commercial Internet providers connect via Internet exchange points, research networks tend to interconnect into large subnetworks such as: * GEANT * Internet2 * GLORIAD These in turn are built around relatively smaller networks. See also the list of :Category:Academic computer network organizations In network schematic diagrams, the Internet is often represented by a cloud symbol, into and out of which network communications can pass. == Internet culture == The Internet is also having a profound impact on work, knowledge and worldviews. In fact, Wikipedia is an Internet-based project. In addition to the creation of electronic commerce and communication with clients by email and related means, the Internet is transforming other aspects of the workplace. Certain companies have adopted the use of blogs, which are largely used as online diaries, for promotional purposes. Since most people search the Web looking for information, these easily-updatable websites can be filled with advice on the company's area of specialization. The company's hope is that, when the visitor finds this free information, they will note the appearance of expert knowledge and may be drawn to the business' site as a result. An example of this practice is Microsoft, which has allowed its developers to publish their own personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work. [[Image:WorldWideWebAroundWikipedia.png|thumb|300px|Graphic representation of the World Wide Web, a service running over the Internet, as represented by hyperlinks]] ===The World Wide Web=== Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Google, millions worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional library, the Internet has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information and data. See World Wide Web. ===Remote access=== The Internet allows computer users to connect to other computers and information stores easily, wherever they may be across the world. They may do this with or without the use of security, authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements. This is encouraging new ways of home-working, collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An Accountancy sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working book-keepers, in other remote locations, based on information e-mailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private, leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice. An office worker away from his or her desk, perhaps the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can open a Remote Desktop Protocol session into his or her normal office PC using a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection via the Internet. This gives him or her complete access to all their normal files and data, including e-mail and other applications, while they are away. ===Collaboration=== This low-cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge and skills has revolutionized some, and given rise to whole new, areas of human activity. One example of this is the collaborative development and distribution of Free/Libre Open Source Software (Free, Libre and Open-Source Software) such as Linux, Mozilla and OpenOffice.org. See Collaborative software. A few other examples include Wikipedia, a collaboratively edited and maintained free encyclopedia, the [http://www.urbandictionary.com/ Urban Dictionary] project and [http://www.teis.nhs.uk/ TEIS - the UK Telemedicine and E-health Information Service] for those working in the field of telemedicine, telecare and health. ===File-sharing=== A computer file can be Electronic mail to customers, colleagues and friends as an Email Attachment. It can be uploaded to a web site or File transfer protocol server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror (computing)" servers or peer-to-peer networking. In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication; the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption and money may change hands before or after access to the file is given. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example a credit card whose details are also passed - hopefully fully encrypted - across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 message digests. These simple features of the Internet, over a world-wide basis, are changing the basis for the production, sale and distribution of many types of product, wherever they can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of office documents, publications, software products, music, photography, video, animations, graphics and the other arts. This in turn is causing seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products. See RIAA - the Recording Industry Association of America has been particularly vocal about the problems this is causing them. ===Streaming media and VoIP=== Many existing radio and television broadcasters have provided Internet 'feeds' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the [http://www.bbc.co.uk BBC]). They have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters' who never had on-air licences. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a TV or radio receiver. The range of material is much wider, from pornography to highly specialised technical web-casts. The simplest equipment can allow anybody, with little censorship or licencing control, to broadcast on a worldwide basis. Time-shift viewing or listening is not a problem as the BBC have shown with their Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. Web-cams can be seen as an even lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. In this case the picture may update only slowly - perhaps once every few seconds or slower, but Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal or the traffic at a local roundabout live and in real time. Some sex-workers commercially allow web-cam access into their bedrooms-cum-studios, with or without two-way sound, to those who want to pay on line. Voice over IP stands for Voice over IP, where Internet Protocol refers to the Internet Protocol that underlies all Internet communication. This phenomenon began as an optional two-way voice extension to some of the Instant Messaging systems that took off around the turn of the millennium. In recent years many people and organisations have been working hard to make VoIP systems as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the actual voice traffic is carried by the Internet, VoIP costs much less than an actual telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on ADSL or DSL Internet connections anyway. The disadvantages are that it is still difficult to initiate a call with someone, unless they are at their keyboard and expecting to hear from you (or have a special VoIP compatible phone), and that there are still a number of competing standards that are mitigating against universal acceptance. In all of these cases, existing large organisations, that have grown accustomed to regular incomes for their services, are finding increased competition in their service areas, coming directly from the Internet. While newcomers strive to make these inroads, the traditional industries are having to adapt, adopt, complain or suffer. Meanwhile the consumer in each case most probably benefits from the increased range of services and possible price reductions. Some worry about the lack of censorship and control while others see a continuing globalisation of culture and norms. ===Language=== The most used language for communication on the Internet is English language, due to the Internet's origins, to the growing role of English as an international language and to the poor capability of early computers to handle characters other than those in the basic western alphabet (see Unicode). After English (56 % of websites) the most-used languages in the world wide web are German language 8 %, French language 6 %, Japanese language 5 % and Spanish language 3 %. These numbers are probably already inaccurate as there has been a recent surge in Chinese language websites. The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years so that sufficient native-language facilities for a usable experience are available for the most widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake still remain. ===Cultural awareness=== From a cultural awareness perspective, the Internet has both an advantage and a liability. For people who are interested in other cultures and the worldviews of those cultures it provides a significant amount of information and an interactivity that would be unavailable otherwise. However, for people who are not interested in other cultures and worldviews there is some evidence indicating that the Internet enables them to avoid contact to a greater degree than ever before. ==Censorship== See main article ''Censorship in cyberspace'' Some countries such as Iran and the People's Republic of China restrict what people in their countries can see on the internet. This has made weblog very popular in Iran in order to avoid the censorship. The BBC is proposing to offer its entire range of terrestrial television broadcasting as free downloads, but only to people within the UK. At the moment most internet content is available regardless of where one is in the world, so long as one has the means of connecting to it. == Internet access == Common methods of home access include Dial-up access, which is the slowest, landline Broadband Internet access (over coaxial cable, fiber optic or copper wires) and Satellite Internet. Public places to use the Internet include libraries and Internet cafes, where computers with Internet connections are available. There are also Internet access points in public places like airport halls, sometimes just for brief use while standing. Various terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access terminal", and "Web payphone". Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and therefore can do so to the Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi#Commercial Wi-Fi, where a would-be user needs to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a notebook or Personal Digital Assistant. These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be limited to a confined location. Whole campuses and parks have been enabled, even an entire downtown area. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular or mobile phone networks, and fixed wireless services. These services have not enjoyed widespread success due to their high cost of deployment, which is passed on to users in high usage fees. New wireless technologies such as WiMAX have the potential to alleviate these concerns and enable simple and cost effective deployment of metropolitan area network covering large, urban areas. Power line communication was approved in 2004 in the United States in the face of stiff resistance from the amateur radio community. The problem with modulating a carrier signal over power lines is that an above-ground power line can act as a giant antenna and completely jam long-distance radio frequencies used by amateurs, seafarers and others. Countries where Internet access is a commodity used by a majority of the population include Iceland, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, the United States, Canada, the UK, The Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Norway. The use of the Internet around the world has been growing rapidly over the last decade, although the growth rate seems to have slowed somewhat after 2000. The phase of rapid growth is ending in industrialized countries, as usage becomes ubiquitous there, but the spread continues in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East. However, Internet access is unequally split between low-speed and high-speed accesses. ADSL or other broadband Internet access is rare or nonexistent in most developing country; even in developed countries, high prices and average performances may limit its penetration (most countries in Eastern Europe, the United States), while low prices and high performances may attract a large number of consumers (Scandinavia, France). Even within the same country, wide differences may exist between larger cities (often having multiple providers of broadband access) and rural areas (where often no broadband access is available). The expansion of the availability of Internet access is a way to bridge the so-called digital divide. == See also == * List of Internet topics * Internet art * Bogon filtering * Catenet * Central ad server * Cybersex * Dark internet * Internet democracy * Internet dynamics * Extranet * File Sharing * Flaming * Internet friendship * Hacktivism or Hacker culture * International Freedom of Expression eXchange - monitors Internet censorship around the world * Internet humor * ICANN * Internet 2 * Internet Archive * Intranet * NANOG * Netiquette * Network Mapping * Open Directory Project * Internet slang * Internet troll * Videotex - an early communications technology * Web browser * Web hosting * WebQuest * Internet Forums == External links == === General === * [http://www.isoc.org/ The Internet Society (ISOC)] * [http://research.lumeta.com/ches/map/ Internet Mapping Project] * [http://www.elook.org/internet/ eLook.org Internet Encylopedia] - An encyclopedia on how the internet works * [http://china-netinvestor.blogspot.com/ Internet in China (NewsDigest)] * [http://www.netz-tipp.de/languages.html Web content by language (old)] * Access and usage statistics: [http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/geographics/article/0,,5911_151151,00.html], [http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/traffic_patterns/article/0,,5931_3099471,00.html], [http://news.earthweb.com/stats/print.php/3096031], [http://banners.noticiasdot.com/termometro/boletines/docs/consultoras/idate/2003/idate_244.pdf] (pdf) * [http://www.glreach.com/globstats/index.php3 Global Internet Statistics by Language] * [http://www.internetworldstats.com Internet World Usage Statistics] * [http://global-reach.biz/globstats/refs.php3 Global Internet Statistics by Language] * [http://www.tbchad.com/stats1.html Infoquest! : links to different Internet surveys and statistics] * [http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/ Internet Directory @ dmoz] * [http://www.bbcworld.com/content/template_clickonline.asp?pageid=666&co_pageid=6 BBC World's Clickonline - about technical developments and the Internet] === Articles === * [http://www.worldofends.com/ ''World of Ends, What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else''] by Doc Searls and David Weinberger * [http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ John Walker: The Digital Imprimatur] * [http://www.addressingtheworld.info addressingtheworld.info] - website accompanying a book (ISBN 0742528103) on the history of DNS * [http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm How Stuff Works explanation of the Infrastructure of the Internet] * [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64596,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_7 "It's Just the 'internet' Now" - Wired.com article by Tony Long] * [http://samvak.tripod.com/internet.html The Internet as a new mass medium] === History === * [http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml The Internet Society History Page] * [http://www.internetvalley.com/archives/mirrors/cerf-how-inet.txt How the Internet Came to Be] * [http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ Hobbes' Internet Timeline v7.0] * [http://www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/e-scholarship2000.html Futures and Non-futures for Scholarly Internet. ] * [http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/internet_history.html History of the Internet links] * [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc801.txt RFC 801, planning the TCP/IP switchover] * [http://www.archive.org/ Internet Archive] - A searchable database of old cached versions of websites dating back to 1996 * A list of lectures, some of which relate to the Internet, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is available [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Comparative-Media-Studies/CMS-930Media--Education--and-the-MarketplaceFall2001/VideoLectures/index.htm here]. Of particular interest is lecture #3 ''The Next Big Thing: Video Internet'' which is delivered in Real Player format. The lecture gives a brief history of networking; discusses convergence between the internet/telephone/television networks; the expansion of broadband access; makes predictions about the future of delivery of video over the internet. Communication Digital media Internet Digital Revolution bn:ইন্টারনেট bs:Internet fa:اینترنت ga:Idirl�on iu:ᖃᕆᓴᐅᔭᒃᑯᑦ ᑎᑎᕋᖅᓯᒪᔪᑦ jv:Internet kn:ಅಂತರ ಜಾಲ li:Internet lv:Internets ms:Internet nds:Internet simple:Internet su:Intern�t th:อินเทอร์เน็ต vi:Internet vo:V�resod fiu-vro:Internet yi:אינטערנעץ

Internet

The Internet is the publicly available worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching over the Internet Protocol (IP). It is made up of thousands of other, smaller business, academic, and government networks that provide various information and services, such as by electronic mail, online chat, and on the graphical, interlinked World Wide Web. Information technology Telecommunications Computer networks Mass media br:Category:Internet lv:Category:Internets simple:Category:Internet vi:Category:Internet

Internet

/Archive 001 /Archive 002 ===Current status=== Since my attempted-NPOV edits from a week ago seem to have held, I'd like to raise two points: *Anyone for changing the name to something like 'high-risk subcultures' or 'damaging subcultures'? I wonder if the current title is a little POV... or maybe I'm just mixing up 'harsh reality' with POV. *Do we still need the POV section warning? I don't know how NPOV I've made it (since even a relatively open-minded neutral party like myself still has a point of view), but if it's sufficiently NPOV, I'd like consensus to remove the tag. Thoughts? -- User:Wisq 18:51, 2005 May 6 (UTC) :Its looking a whole lot better now than when it prompted me to start editing wikipedia back in December (oh how my life has changed!). The title is still slightly POV imo, but is much less perjorative now due to the much more NPOV content. :I think that we should change the title of the section, but I'm not certain that either of your suggestions, although better than the present one, are quite right. I can't unfortunately though come up with anything better atm. I suggest that when we've agreed a new title that we implement it and remove the POV warning tag at the same time. User:Thryduulf 20:17, 6 May 2005 (UTC) == Today's Internet == Here's my take on previously discussed subjects: The distinction between Internet and internet may be blurring, but I am happy to keep the capitalized version for now. As an aside, I think you need to take into account extranets and the Abilene Network when trying to decide how to differentiate between internet and Internet. Something that seems to have been ignored in the discussion about subcultures is Usenet and NNTP. Pre-dating the WWW, newsgroups have long been a way for individuals to reach out and find like-minded people. So the statement "Since the early 1990s, it has been widely recognized that the Internet enables broader distribution of all ideas, including those considered distasteful by any portion of the population." is fine. Personally, I would say that since its inception, the Internet has enabled broader distribution of all ideas. It's just that as it grew, the sense of anonymity grew with it, so the ideas could come into the light from the darker recesses of people's minds. –User:DeweyQ 00:22, 9 May 2005 (UTC) == Removed text == I removed the following text from the article, this texts includes POV. I don't think this stuff is suitable for an encyclopedia article. --User:Haham hanuka 07:46, 25 May 2005 (UTC) :How are these POV? They're actual problems. Can it really seriously be argued that the Internet has not faciliated increases in child porn, copyright infringement, viruses, and people finding each other? If you have a problem with an individual section, it can be dealt with, but mass deletion isn't the answer. If the Internet creates problems, as studies show it has, then how can not mentioning them possibly be NPOV? -- User:Wisq 13:08, 2005 May 25 (UTC) :Well done, Haham. Some of the daft statements in those sections have been irritating me for a long time. --User:Nigelj 19:05, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Current and potential problems == The Internet, along with its benefits, has a lot of negative publicity associated with it ranging from genuine concerns to tabloid scaremongering. ===Child abuse=== According to children's charities, the number of annual convictions for child pornography offences have increased by over 1000% since the Internet was first available to the public in the late 1980s. With the recent growth in Chat rooms and Instant messenger services in the late 1990s, the potential for a new form of child abuse has emerged: so-called ''Grooming a child''. This involves a pedophile pretending to be a child in a chat room/instant message conversation, to gain the trust of a child before arranging to meet up. ===Copyright infringement=== Copyright infringement has also been the focus of much media attention, mainly through peer-to-peer filesharing software, but also through private members-only chatrooms, so-called ''warez'' sites (which either offer unauthorised copies of software directly or the means to ''Software cracking'' copy protection), or even the sale of counterfeit CDs, DVDs and software masquerading as official product. Many ordinary Internet users are less concerned about the actual infringement itself but more about the effect on the Internet as a whole if tighter controls result from the infringement. ===Viruses=== In the 1980s and early 1990s, when very few people had access to the Internet, Computer virus were not a huge problem. They did exist and did cause just as much damage to computers as modern viruses can today, but there was no fast-moving epidemic because there was no means for a virus to directly infect other computers. Before the Internet, the only way for a computer to be infected was through use of a removable disc that was itself infected. As a result, virus infections were mercifully rare. All that changed with the widespread growth of the Internet. With near-universal Internet access among computer users in developed countries, and the proliferation of high-speed broadband Internet connections, a virus on one person's computer can infect thousands of other computers. In fact, much of the disruption from virus outbreaks is caused not by the ''payload'' of the virus (e.g. deleting hard drive, shutting down computer every five minutes), but by the Internet ''congestion'' caused by the virus spreading itself. ===Security cracking=== ''Main article:'' Security cracking When computers were ''stand alone'' machines (or at most connected to a company's internal network), to steal data from a system an intruder had to physically steal it. The Internet means that data from an insecure site could be stolen by someone working two blocks from the site, or just as easily from another country. Some of the recent high-profile examples of this were when a working version of the source code for Half Life 2 was copied from the developer's computer systems by security crackers and when portions of the Windows NT codebase were copied from one of the companies that had access to it via the Microsoft Shared Source initiative. In both cases the Internet was used for dissemination of the leaked code, in particular using P2P networks. ===Dated technology=== Very few people outside the technical community are aware of the future problems posed by the Internet's archaic technology. It was originally designed for a small number of research institutions to share research data, and was never intended for the multi-billion user behemoth the modern Internet has become. One serious problem is that the IP address (a unique number assigned to each Internet computer, functioning much like a street address in the real world) will run out eventually. Despite an estimated world population of over six billion, there are only a little over four billion different IP address combinations possible under the current system — see IPv4 address exhaustion for more information. This also does not take into account the fact that there is not a 1:1 person to computer ratio in current ''computerised'' countries, where many people will have a Personal computer machine at home, a laptop machine for on the go, another desktop machine at work, and an e-mail mobile phone, all requiring their own IP address. This could pose serious problems in the future as more and more nations expand their computer infrastructure (the vast majority of the world's population does not currently use the Internet, that is the so-called ''digital divide'') and even now efforts are proceeding to find new ways of running the Internet. The new version of the Internet Protocol, IPv6, which expands the address space of the Internet, is one proposal for how to deal with some of the technical problems caused by the growth of the Internet. ===Self-destructive subcultures=== As a decentralized, largely uncensored worldwide network, the Internet promotes free speech. Since the early 1990s, it has been widely recognized that the Internet enables broader distribution of all ideas, including those considered distasteful by any portion of the population. The most widely condemned of these ideas are those that promote, condone, or justify the infliction of violence upon innocent, non-consenting people. Examples include racism, sexism, and fascism. Around 2000, ''The Atlantic Monthly'' and other publications revealed a similar but distinct issue: The Internet also allows people who exhibit or wish to practice abnormal behavior to find one another easily, due to anonymous search engines and online forums or services. As sparse subpopulations, it was often unlikely or difficult to find willing partners or like-minded individuals prior to the Internet. A small number of these subcultures promote self-destructive or mutually destructive behavior. Websites and mailing lists exist that explicitly promote anorexia, breatharianism, apotemnophilia, necrophilia, and suicide. While these activities are easily recognized as abnormal and self-destructive by most adults, many people fear that children or Mental illness persons visiting such sites would lack the maturity necessary to make that discrimination. In rare cases, people have used the Internet to find willing partners for abnormal activities, but with disastrous or fatal results. In one case, a Germany named Armin Meiwes (the "German cannibal") made an online arrangement with Bernd J�rgen Armando Brandes to kill and eat him. Meiwes was later convicted of manslaughter. == "Internet" is obsolete == Please correct. --User:Dtcdthingy 15:11, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC) Done. HTH. User:Pigsonthewing 15:27, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC) == accommodated? == what does this mean? Can't find it anywhere... ==Requested move== * Talk:Internet � Internet ? internet � (NB I know technically this doesn't require the page to actually move, but this still seems the most appropriate forum to bring it up) Whatever the gramattical/practical arguments, "Internet" with a capital letter is already an archaic convention and has never been used by the vast majority of its users. Here's a short [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64596,00.html Wired article] on the topic. :: Support � User:Dtcdthingy 09:01, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::: Oppose. Unique instances are capitalised. A sun is a star; the Sun is teh star we orbit. A moon is a celestial body; the Moon orbits the Earth. A web is a network; the Web is where Wikipedia lives. An internet is a computer network; the Internet is what we're using. Since when were Wired magazine arbiters of the English language? How (and by whom) was this "vast majority" counted? User:Pigsonthewing 10:47, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) *Oppose. ''Internet'' is a proper noun. I remember when the ''Wired'' article came out and from what I remember, the decision was derided or ignored. As far as I can tell, the majority of other media and publishers use a capital ''Internet'' (for instance, see a [http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=internet&btnG=Search+News Google news search]). You're right that the majority of Internet users probably don't capitalize ''Internet'', but I think that's because the majority of Internet users don't capitalize in general. — User:Knowledge Seeker User talk:Knowledge Seeker 14:59, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) *Support. I've noticed that many quality newspapers and books are now losing the I in favour of i, too. And we can take out that piece of mis-guided pedantry at the start about all these other alleged small 'internets'. Don't confuse a ''network'' of computers with ''internetworking'', which led to the internet. Small, private sets of interconnected networks or sub-nets are universally referred to as LANs, WANs or intranets in my experience; no-one ever says 'internets'. --User:Nigelj 19:17, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) : Except certain leaders of global superpowers. ''—User:Mzajac User talk:Mzajac 2005-06-17 05:41 Z'' *Oppose. The Internet was created in the United States, and nearly all of the underlying technologies were developed in the United States. In American English grammar, Internet is a proper noun, which means it should be capitalized. The vast majority of American publications continue to refer to "the Internet" — see my previous research contribution to the earlier version of this same discussion above. ICANN, the Internet Society, and the Internet Engineering Task Force continue to refer to "the Internet" as well. American English has grammar and style rules that are much more strict than most other dialects of English, especially with regards to capitalization. In my opinion, the 290 million speakers of American English have the prerogative on how to describe the network their government invented! --User:Coolcaesar 21:53, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) ** This isn't a "US English vs. English (or any other) English" debate. User:Pigsonthewing 21:58, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) *** Actually, I think it is. When I did that LexisNexis search a while back (scroll up to see my research), I noticed that nearly all of the published sources for "the internet" were located outside of the United States. I think what is going on is that there is some "linguistic drift" going on in English-speaking countries outside of the United States, while the U.S., with its slightly more conservative attitude towards written English, continues to capitalize "the Internet" as it always has. --User:Coolcaesar 00:26, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) *** Well that's that settled, then. Wikipedia isn't a US-centric publication. There's no need to stick to US usage, if the rest of the English-speaking world is evolving in a different way. It's just like any of the color/colour, gasoline/petrol and other US/rest-of-world spelling debates. What normally happens? --User:Nigelj 09:14, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) *not possible. The wikimedia software does not support article names with an initial lower case letter, see Wikipedia:Naming_conventions. -- user:Rick Block (user talk:Rick Block) 22:02, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC) * Oppose, even though it's pointless as there are no plans to move w:en to case-sensitivity on the first character, as the Internet is a proper noun (as distinct from the concept of an internet). User:Jdforrester User_talk:Jdforrester 00:58, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC) * Oppose It's academic in terms of the page title, but we should use the correct orthography in the body of this article and others. ''Wired'' may be an important indicator of computer culture, but certainly not of the English language. Yes, inter-networking did lead to the Internet, but the misguided pedantry here is to call capitalizing a proper noun archaic. ''—User:Mzajac User talk:Mzajac 2005-06-17 05:29 Z'' ** Tell that to the London Times, Guardian, Financial Times - archaic? Just because the US is the biggest consumer of it, do we all have to say 'gasoline'? There's no need to argue 'US is right', just let go. --User:Nigelj 09:20, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) ***How about using the compromise position that's been adopted in most Wikipedia articles for such terms? Lead the article with something like: "The Internet (American English), or internet (Commonwealth English), is ..." Of course, that still doesn't solve the problem of what to do with the rest of the article. ***Also, WP may not be an U.S.-centric institution, but the Internet is. In the case of the Internet, the U.S. is not only the biggest consumer (though soon to be overtaken by China), but the country that created it and continues to do a large part of the work of advancing it. There was simply no equivalent to ARPA in the European Union during the 1960s — that is, there was no equivalent of J.C.R. Licklider to dispense millions of dollars to creative research scientists. Then, as you may know, European governments foolishly blew a large portion of their computer science research budgets during the 1980s on the ill-fated OSI project, while Japan wasted over a billion dollars on artificial intelligence research. That's why all of the high-level Internet institutions are based in the United States. ICANN is a California corporation based in Marina Del Rey. Both the Internet Society and the IETF are based in northern Virginia. And until recently, W3C's de facto main research center (the one where Tim Berners-Lee was actually living at) was the MIT Media Lab in Massachusetts. Until those institutions (particularly the Internet Architecture Board at ISOC) collectively vote to drop the capitalization, I feel that Wikipedia should not prop up what is really an unofficial and minority spelling at this point. Certainly, I concede it should be mentioned, but it should not be overemphasized. To point out another example, Wikipedia uses "aluminium" because that's the spelling adopted by the official chemistry institutions, even though it annoys us Americans. ***Finally, I have to point out that although the London Times, the Guardian, and the FT are well-respected and reliable sources of information, they reflect only the minority language position of the UK on this issue. In contrast, all major American newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, etc., all continue to respect the official spelling used by the Internet Society and IETF. The WP, the Merc, the L.A. Times, and the Globe, of course, are the newspapers that serve the majority of the members of the Internet institutions I just mentioned above.--User:Coolcaesar 18:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) ****Sorry, no matter how big your bullet-points become, you'll never convince me that "the internet is a US-centric institution", but if it helps you sleep soundly to think so - well, hey-ho... --User:Nigelj 22:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC) *****I simply cannot see where you are coming from with your perspective, because you have adduced very few factual assertions in support of your position, and in your most recent edit, you actually misstated the facts. The opening of the article does correspond with contemporary technical, practical and linguistic usage in the United States and in the broader Internet community, as I have repeatedly pointed out. In any case, as you have probably noticed, the majority of Wikipedia users responding to this point by now have expressed their opposition to the lowercase spelling. I am beginning to draw an inference that you may have some kind of anti-American bias or you are just playing troll games. --User:Coolcaesar 04:21, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC) *****Fine, keep it how you like it - and try not be so rude and aggressive, please. --User:Nigelj 17:20, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC) *****Also, as I noted above (scroll up to read the earlier discussion) when I ran some searches on LexisNexis in January, Internet is still clearly the majority usage at well over 70%. Note that Lexis does carry most Australian and British newspapers, so this is not an issue of overrepresentation of American and Canadian sources. --User:Coolcaesar 04:27, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC) *Oppose. It would be incorrect to fail to capitalize it. It's capitalized for the same reason as the Sun and the Moon. --User:Yath 17:14, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC) **Maybe, by some (in the US, it seems). But not to distinguish it from some other kind of non-existent, lower-case internets, as the artcle goes to some lengths to try to establish in both its opening paragraphs. That's the problem, not whether Wikipedia uses US or rest-of-world English spelling here, but that those Americans who are perhaps a little obsessed with this have ended up distorting the whole emphasis of the opening of the article in their attempt to make a point that does not correspond with any modern technical, practical or linguistic usage. --User:Nigelj 22:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC) ***I agree that the article is a bit wordy and excessively apologetic. Any explanation for the capitalization should be moved down further in the article. On the other hand, it's easy to make a strong case that there are other internets out there, such as Internet2. As for people obsessing... you'll notice that I never brought up the subject of whose version of English is being promoted. And in fact I'm not convinced that Brits and Americans are all that divided on the matter. --User:Yath 04:04, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC) ***Quote from Internet2: "This is misleading since Internet2 is in fact a consortium and not a computer network." But I give up on this one - I'll leave it until either you guys are too old to care, or I am :-) --User:Nigelj 17:20, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC) User:Violetriga User_talk:violetriga 19:15, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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