{"id":64,"date":"2007-08-16T15:06:21","date_gmt":"2007-08-16T21:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d2.degen.net\/?p=120"},"modified":"2007-08-16T15:06:21","modified_gmt":"2007-08-16T21:06:21","slug":"dr-strangenet-or-%e2%80%9chow-i-learned-to-stop-fearing-life-without-persistent-ubiquitous-ip-connections%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/?p=64","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Strangenet or: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How I learned to stop fearing life without Persistent Ubiquitous IP Connections?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Come young ones, gather around the tribal elder and he will tell us of a dark, unenlightened age. I time when futility ruled the earth, and vast expanses separated people who could not instantaneously share thoughts, ideas or youtube videos to complete strangers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c dark days indeed! Now before you conclude that I speak of some distant era like the 1980\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (insert extra sarcasm here), I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m actually talking about yesterday. <\/span>No really \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Yesterday!<\/p>\n

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For those readers who might not know, I travel pretty much weekly out to many different client locations. When I walk in the door each customer is like a new come out roll of the dice at the craps table, you never know if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153win\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with good unfettered internet access or crap-out before the roll even starts.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Last week, a typical scenario played out in my line of work: a new customer installation of our corporate product. Very standard, should have been a very simple couple of days work. Ah but the dice don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always fall in your favor, for the site I was to configure was completely offline. No internal network, no network infrastructure (DHCP, DNS, etc.), and worst of all no Internet.<\/p>\n

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My trembling hands recoiled in horror as the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Server not found\u00e2\u20ac\u009d message in my browser hit me like an ice cold roll of snake eyes on far end of the green felt table. But collecting myself I knew not all was lost, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m an IT professional, surely I can conduct my businesses without the internet. After all, everyone knows the internet is just for Bittorrenting music and viewing porn right?<\/p>\n

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So first I needed to apply patches to both the OS and Applications\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 oh, well guess not. Next I discovered I could not register\/license the commercial software just installed, as there was no internet \u00e2\u20ac\u201c now this was starting to get ridiculous! Also on the no can do list, Corporate Email, IMs to co-workers, my hosted CRM system \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Holy crap, you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do anything without the net!<\/p>\n

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What was truly disturbing about this experience is the way it demonstrates how very dependent modern OSes and Applications have become on an ever present internet connection. Not only does it become inconvenient\/impossible to complete an install, but you have to wonder just how much background conversation is going on between your system and software manufactures\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. If you are not worried about the privacy issues, consider the possibility of maliware or viral infection!<\/p>\n

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So what was life like back before we had all these IM client\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, myspace pages, blogs and RSS feeds filling our screens and minds with information? No, no, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not going to make some argument for technological regression, some new Luddite movement, but I can remember sitting at a computer working free from these online distractions and one word comes to mind; Focused.<\/span><\/p>\n

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See \u00e2\u20ac\u0153back in the day\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, our computers could not manage multiple simultaneous programs. Forget about multi-core, multi-threaded environments, you did things linearly \u00e2\u20ac\u201c word-processing or connecting to a BBS on your modem or playing a game, you did not do all these things at once. Both your PC and your mind where \u00e2\u20ac\u0153focused\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on a single task at any given time, when you completed that task, project or diversion you moved on to the next thing.<\/p>\n

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Alas, times change. And with our new faster computers and increasingly sophisticated software came the connection that would enable ADHD to spread like wildfire throughout society \u00e2\u20ac\u201c The Internet. Which brings me back to the original question \u00e2\u20ac\u201c how did we live before having an always on Net connect?<\/p>\n

If you have pre-internet memories I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d love to here them \u00e2\u20ac\u201c post away!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Come young ones, gather around the tribal elder and he will tell us of a dark, unenlightened age. I time when futility ruled the earth, and vast expanses separated people who could not instantaneously share thoughts, ideas or youtube videos to complete strangers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c dark days indeed! Now before you conclude that I speak of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-networking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}