Slashdot Mirror

Orange Austria (until recently known as One Austria) has a far better rate to offer: 1 Euro per day

Anyone know of similar offers in France? I am going to be there (as well as Italy and Switzerland) shortly and need some way to get online for a reasonable price. In Switzerland I found Sunrise which has a CHF3/hour deal, not exactly bargain-basement but within my price range.

It's not exact... There are no concurrence in Switzerland because there is only one Cable-provider (Cablecom). So, prices are really high compare to other countries, for example, France. Broadband cost 50-70 CHF per month (~45-60$).

There is some competition because of the ADSL wich is supported by many other provider(Swisscom or Sunrise). ADSL broadband is a bit more expensive than Cable.

In city, there is independant provider, managed by the city itself. This is the main advantage.

The closest they get is HD 10307. The entire list is:

Tau Ceti, 11.9 light years
Alpha Centauri B, 4.35 light years
Epsilon Eridani, 10.5 light-years
Epsilon Indi A, 11.8 light-years
http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/stars/keid.html">Omic ron 2 Eridani, 16 light years
Beta Canum Venaticorum - 27.31 light years
HD 10307, 41.2 light years
HD 211415>/a>, 44.4 light years
18 Scorpii, 45.7 light years
51 Pegasus, 40 light years

There is also a top 50 list

>For example, if I can only get 50% of the way to the Shannon limit using hardware in a real-world environment, could I boost that number by ignoring symbols that are indistinguishable and just let error correction (like reed-solomon) take care of the missing parts?

Yes, it's called "coding gain" and it can be measured in dB. If you want to get the results you would have had with twice as much signal to noise ratio, you need 10*log(2)=3dB coding gain. Unfortunately, putting in forward error correction reduces the data rate or increases the bandwidth, so you need to make sure you're coming out ahead.

If you're interested in experimenting with these topics, try reading about ham radio digital modes for HF (3-30Mhz). The cost of entry is low, and with open source software such as gMFSK it's possible to do your own experimentation. You might start with this historic article that started a new set of experimentation on a phase-shift keying modulation scheme called PSK31, which packs all the power into a tiny 31Hz wide bandwidth. You can read a less technical description, or read about other modulation techniques using multiple carriers (MFSK, Olivia, which uses Walsh functions for FEC and can be copyable with low power in noisy conditions).

For a long overview of HF digital mode performance in practical circumstances, see this paper from the Radio Society of Great Britain.

There's also plenty going on in UHF as this 900 Mhz work is doing, but it's a little harder to experiment there, but if you are already comfortable building 802.11 equipment and have the skills necessary there, there's plenty to do. Some hams recently conducted Earth-Moon-Earth bounce communcations using 47GHz (which I heard one of the 24GHz pioneers say would never happen!).

And at the other end of the spectrum, US, Australian, and European hams are experimenting with LF in the 137KHz region (under special license in the US) and have made super-slow communications across the oceans. There are challenges here as well, and the data rates are extremely low, not unlike the 76KHz signal that we used to send to our nuclear submarines underwater, which I think is roughly one bit (a repeated "don't-blow-it-up don't-blow-it-up don't-blow-it-up...).

When India and China are on the moon, the U.S. and Japan will have robotized space and have humans on Mars. When India or China is on Mars, the U.S. will have spacecraft travelling to Alpha Centauri.

So here's a big Bronx cheer to you!8~(!)

For those not familiar with the three envelope joke: The three envelopes

• USB camera to record events
• some face tracking abilities(neat!)
• A wireless (bluetooth or 802.11b) connection between other robots for cooprative tasks(soccor match anyone?)
• Voice synthizier (just grab rsynth)
  
• enough RAM to do accurate mapping
  
• inexpensive to connect a GPS unit up to USB or serial (often these units have a built-in electronic compass as a bonus)
  

This will also solve the problem of losing the "kite". Well, if you lose it you will have a serious problem.
--

There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels - St IGNUcius

The differences is in your perception of who fired first.

IT DIDN'T MATTER!

Well, when you click here you see a damn good reason why GSM and why a global standard DOES MATTER.

Granted, that the north american coverage might be a tad optimistic in rural areas, for the rest of the world (marked in dark blue) GSM works just damn fine.

Check this link (French) or this one (German).

Check this link (French) or this one (German).