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Showing posts from March, 2009

On The Internet Nobody knows You're a Dog

An old cartoon from 1993. Back then few people knew or cared about who the actual person was visiting a web site. That all changed of course, with Google and the economy based on tracking peoples movements on the internet.  Back then it was possible to use a fake name and pretty much hide your identity from most everyone else on the internet. Today almost every web site takes the basic information like your ip address, browser type, etc... 15 years ago the internet was more of a wild wild west environment for the general public. Outside the original University environment it was not uncommon for just about everyone to assume one or more pseudonyms. It is fun to pretend to be someone else and say or do what you wouldn't normally have the courage to do in real life. We still see this unfettered open lifestyle on many comment boards. I suspect that many webmasters encourage the anonymous partisan comments because it drives up hits to the original article.  On the other hand the we