Click on Picture to go to Audio link

Wired – June 29, 2006:

A-hole Senator Ted Stevens explains why he’s against network neutrality, and in the process, demonstrates why we’re all screwed. God, you’d think he’d have staff members who could understand and brief him on this stuff! Here are a few choice quotes:

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.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

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.

Again the audio link is here. Please listen. It’s incredible. Fans of Professor Irwin Corey will love this guy.



  1. Jason says:

    Not sure who to blame. This uniformed idiot or the idiots who put him in office.

  2. Danielle Winters says:

    Both. Both are full of crap. As are the telco’s.

  3. Johnny-Cakes says:

    Hey, I got an Internet the other day too! It was mailed out and it took 3 days to get here because of all the flibbity-floo that’s happening….it got all tangled up with all the jibber-jabber.

    It’s all pipes I tells ya! Corroded and broken clay pipes! We need new copper pipes so the internets people get can flow quicker. Maybe even some PVC pipes!

  4. GregAllen says:

    Maybe Stevens and Bush have the same speech coach.

  5. Mike says:

    Actually, this is more painful than listening to Bush speak.

  6. Danielle Winters says:

    More painful than listening to Bushie, hey? Hmmmm…. Tough one, tough one….

  7. 2xbob says:

    “an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday.” What? Now I’m no expert on the inner workings of the internet but I thought I was well off till I read that line. I must be a moron because I had know idea you could send an Internet.

    Sarcasm aside I have to wonder whats wrong with people. This proves that the people voting for these laws dont know what they are voting for.

  8. Max Bell says:

    What’s amazing is that viacom and the telco’s figure it was worth $96,550
    to have him spew this crap on their behalf.

    Interweb computer screen. The internets. A series of tubes.

    Jeff K. has got to be behind this…

  9. Raff says:

    I have a tube tester. Maybe we can use it to see if they are full or not.

  10. John Scott says:

    In another comment the Senator was heard to complain that the “little people in his tv set have been more and more profane over the years”, “he wonders why people are upset at the price of gas, when his horse and buggy still work fine”.

  11. Improbus says:

    [SARCASM]
    I am so proud of our legislators that it makes me want to cry.
    [/SARCASM]

  12. JimR says:

    Does anyone have Senator Ted’s email address? I would like to send an internet up his tube.

  13. Max Bell says:

    senator_stevens@stevens.senate.gov

    Of course, he wants you to use some cheesy little web form…

    “Open up your hate and let it flow to me…” – The Sickness (Richard Cheese Remix)

  14. Baud Stupid says:

    We’re only screwed if Network Neutrality comes in making SLAs and any kind of traffic shaping and traffic management illegal.

    Jim Lippard drafted a version of a “neutrality” bill which doesn’t screw the internet, unlike the Save The Internet mobs’ version: CLICK HERE

    Note:

    How this differs from what many network neutrality advocates are arguing for:

    1. I don’t prohibit QoS or tiering, as that is a genuinely useful network feature where I expect to see future innovation of services that depend on it.
    2. The nondiscrimination provision is written to allow some kind of less-than-full-Internet walled garden service at low cost–so long as customers can still purchase real Internet service. (I think such a service would be under competitive pressure to allow access to the full Internet, for the same reason AOL ended up allowing full Internet access–otherwise the service wouldn’t attract enough users to be a successful product offering.)
    3. I don’t prohibit differential pricing for different services and classes of service.
    4. I don’t set any restrictions on contractual arrangements (apart from these two restrictions), including interconnection agreements or who pays. I think that should be left to private negotiation and competition.
    5. I don’t extend these requirements to other types of Internet providers such as backbone providers or those providing business services, as those are areas with plenty of competition.
    6. I don’t extend these requirements to wireless providers, because I think that with sensible market-based allocation of spectrum, there could be plenty of independent competition with much less capital expenditure than for wireline deployment.

  15. Mr. H. Fusion says:

    #3, they could go with glass pipes, but all the hippies are using them to smoke their dope.

    Anyone know where that picture of Stevens could be found. The one where he is picking his nose while a speaker drones on in front of him. I believe it during Clinton’s impeachment hearings.

  16. RTaylor says:

    Politicians only need to worry about their constituents. In this case it’s the state of Alaska. Like people from all states Alaskans want protection from federal intrusion and a nice piece of the federal budget. This is the Senators job, and sometimes it takes strange alliances to bring home pork. That was the system in Republican Rome, that’s the way of any republic. It’s not pleasant to witness, the old law and sausage making line.

  17. Matthew says:

    I think by ‘tubes’ he means pipes.

  18. I like the idea of tubes..going round and round.


    Ted Stevens Internet

  19. Sounds The Alarm says:

    Perhaps he really said that he was a bribe-able tube steak.

  20. GregAllen says:

    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?

    Why? If his staff sent him the WHOLE INTERNET it is gonna take a while to download!

  21. Frank IBC says:

    Someone (a Republican, IIRC) once said that “listening to Bush speak is like watching a drunk walk down an icy sidewalk”. But Stevens is simply incoherent.

  22. Mr. H. Fusion says:

    Baud Stupid. You are living up to your name. What you suggest is what UNREGULATED internet is all about. That is NOT net neutrality.

    That provides for regulating the content of the internet by the carriers. If there was competition then this wouldn’t be a problem, however, over the last six years the telecommunication industry has consolidated into four (soon to be three) regional companies.

    I don’t want some faceless conglomerate / government to control what I might read in a newspaper, say on a telephone, or do on the internet.

    Net Neutrality would keep the status quo. The carriers would not be allowed to discriminate or charge extra fees to specific companies. They wouldn’t be able to censure sites they don’t like or agree with.

  23. ECA says:

    Amazing all the NON-TECH persons that think they have a handle on WHATS WHAT. Being fed Tech knowledge by those who AINT seen the NET, or know that much about it, except, FORMAT REBOOT kills most everything.

    Regulating the Adverts would be nice.
    Regulating the net speed?? We are already 4-6th in the Internet speed race, running on OLD lines, that havent been touched in 40 years.
    FIX IT, then lets discuss what can be done.

  24. JohnnyM says:

    that interent he got is probaly 98% porn hes gonna be busy for a while…………

  25. Tom K says:

    So… the guy doesn’t know a thing about the internet. Ya think he has ever heard of an oligopoly? Where the market is turned over to a close knit group of companies that will control price and level of service to be funded by………you got it………….us.

    More tubes, don’t bend over their on the way.

  26. Gary Marks says:

    Geez, how would you like to have to produce a transcript from such halting speech? I don’t envy the Senate transcriber at all. Also, if Stevens thinks his email is going to travel faster with a non-neutral, tiered system, he’s got another thing coming. Email will travel in the slow lane.

    His talk of internet “tubes” reminds me that maybe Stevens’ mother should have had her own tubes tied.

  27. AB CD says:

    I don’t see much of a problem with his tubes comment. That’s probably how someone explained it to him, and it’s not that bad an analogy, though how are trucks infinite capacity?

  28. ECA says:

    Umm,
    ARNT federal employees SUPPOSED TO either DIE, or retire at 65-67…
    Why is this 120 year old, FOG, sitting around.

  29. SN says:

    “I don’t see much of a problem with his tubes comment. That’s probably how someone explained it to him”

    The fact that a moron explained it to him that way doesn’t make it any less of a problem. Tubes aren’t even a close analogy. Why not wires?! Is the guy so old he doesn’t even understand how electricity works?!

  30. Mark T. says:

    And all these new fangled pushbutton phones you people are using is what is causing the Senator to get busy signals with his trusty old dial telephone.


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