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IP Replaces Avian Carriers
m0rningstar writes: "In the spirit of the IP over Avian Carriers RFC, India is considering replacing a carrier pigeon network with e-mail according to this story at the BBC."
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All of the out of work pigeons can go to work at Google now, making Google even better and faster. So much for that new-fangled Tahoma search engine.
Love,
Jay and Silent Bob
this is so weird, it might actually NOT be an April Fools' joke...
I am a genius; therefore, you suck.
this IS Teoma's new-fangled secret weapon.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
If you haven't already read them (where HAVE you been?):
A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service
What were the skies like when you were young?
The amazing thing is this *isn't* an April's fool joke!
Here's an older story about the same thing.
Please God, don't let this turn into another one of those inane Slashdot debates about low paid Indian IT workers "flooding" the US jobs market.
You know the sort of thing: "I'm not racist, but how are we supposed to compete? Some of them are prepared to work for chickenfeed."
Now I can go "dumpster diving" once they throw out all the birds and pick up some spare parts. I've been looking for a new pigeon-hole router for months (My last one was destroyed when I mistook "CAT5" for "5 cats").
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
redundant pigeons will be given to the state's wildlife
And what would they do with them? How would they keep them from _not_ returning?
Perhaps they'll take the stance my father encountered as a psych. grad student. When finshed experimenting, they just threw their test pigeons out the window. Being accustomed to life in a cage, the liberated pigeons hung out on the windows of the psych. lab trying to get back in.
"The girl makes Godot look punctual." -- Buffy
American pigeons all across the United States are staging "sit ins" to protest the new influx of cheap Indian labor. Most protests are centered around notable statues and monuments and also high atop government buildings, but there are also reports of millions of birds sitting atop vital telephone wires and strategiecally placed electrical towers, threatening silently the power they hold over our nation's digital infrastructure...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Hope they dont implement the system using Windows! Just imagine in the middle of an emergency:
:))
:))
:))
"OUTLOOK.EXE has caused and ilegal operation on 0e:03aabf"
They may use pigeons as backups when this occur...
Another pro of a pigeon: B_Gates will not have a clue of what your sending!
Sorry, couldnt resist it!!
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service
Faster, lower latency.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
April fools people. Go back to sleep. I'm amazed at the lameness of some of the jokes that happen on April 1st. A local radio station tried to convince people that there was an easter parade going on...at 7 o'clock in the morning...in a torrential downpour. I absolutely could not believe that some people would fall for it.
Maybe I'm just jaded and cynical, but give me something not only original, but believable.
Back in 99 as a contingincy for the y2k bug my company had me work out a system for keeping the company comunications running should anything happen to the internet. We set up generators to keep the computers running (We had them y2k certified) with generators and I hired several temps to hang around on new years eve, If the internet would have black, they would have imediatly began reading IP packets from terminal screen and transcribing (in hex) to little pieces of paper that were attached to pigions which would then fly to our other locations, the same process would have been in full swing. The IP information was then reentered into the system. Ping times where hella long in tests, but comunications were still active...
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
They use carrier pigeons for when phones, power and radio are down, for example during hurricans.
How exactly do they propose that email is going to help in this situation? If they have no phones, power or radio, how are they connecting to the Internet?
One of the reasons the authorities in India use carrier pigeons for messaging is that when they need reliable communications the most (for example, during earthquakes, flooding, cyclones or any of the other natural disasters that part of the world is afflicted with), modern communications technology just can't hold up. In those situations, carrier pigeons are much more reliable.
I can't help thinking this is just change for change's sake, and that at some time in the future they'll regret it.
Time to storm the banks and take our money back!
Maybe they could replace the current system with email over IP over pigeons -- that way the pigeons wouldn't be out of work and would remain well fed!
Sometimes I could swear Hotmail works that way anyway, of course...
deus does not exist but if he does
I can think of a couple good ways to retire the birds. It might be a little tough, but nothing a little spice can't solve :)
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The "crapflooding community".. I didnt know there was one.
BTW Go see Monsoon Wedding! Great film, I want the soundtrack to that one on surround :]
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Pigeons are amazing creatures, and deserve a far better reputation among humans than they have. More pigeons were awarded the Dickin Medal during the WW II era than all other species combined. Yes, we have a pigeon overpopulation problem in most cities, but people should remember what amazing creatures they are.
Miko O'Sullivan
i would be willing to chip in a $10 i sure the countrys academics would help to kipperdude
I would be interested in developing a Snort module for IP over AC. It could use packet coloring to distinguish between legit and non-legit 'packets'. Maybe some sophisticated fingerprinting techniques using header and payload info...
That's a whole different type of dropped packet.
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
From the story it is clear that it isn't IP replacing Avian carriers as it is VHF radios replacing avian carriers. The major use of these pigeons was during times of natural disaster when power and communications links are down and using computers during that would be highly unlikely.
FarHat
At the intersection of computation and biology.
Well, that's the whole point. IP-over-carrier-pigeon, remember?
For people living in the U.S., it is easy to forget that most places in the world to not have a developed infrastructure.
Bush's education improvements were
You clearly don't remember the spaghetti trees news report ....
I can't smuggle LSD on the legs of email !
Man, I guess those guys only want to surf the net and search for some porn. I believe they cant justify it that way so they tried this. Hope they are going to continue using the pigeons!!! :)))
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
unless you like meals by candlelight...
I can't help thinking that they will regret this move. The reason pigeons have been used for so long is because they are reliable. Even though pigeons aren't the swiftest or most secure means, I would rather place my bet on thousands of years of successful survival instinct than on any amount of technology.
They should at least keep them for redundancy. $10k a year? Well worth it.
Good heavens they did not want to replace Email by Avian Carriers!
Think about it!
...Gun Toting Happy Campers..
Oops!! there goes my urgent message to the District Collector of Orissa.. Oh well..
Rapid Nirvana
Being an Indian, I know the strikes we have and the reasons for it. I just hope the pigeon keepers recieve pension ;)
The idea is great excluding the frequent disconnects , high call rates and an ISP that you can't trust. (I'm suffering from BSNL -- Bharath Sanchar Nigam Limited !)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
pigeons still have a job! Yay google! All those pigeon children won't have to starve!
They already implemented the e-mailing system, now they are going to replace their current INSTANT MESSAGING which today is done by smoke signs! :))
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
"It's the worst
Slash-dot day,
Of the year!"
Why bother.
This wouldn't have something to do with Sesame Street's Bert (recently revealed to be a Bin Laden ally in Bangladesh) and his fondness for pigeons, would it?
Soon, there will be no paper clips or oatmeal left on the entire Indian subcontinent. The grip of Al-Qaeda is closing in on India, one muppet at a time..
".sig,
I can understand your concerns, but solar power for amateur radios have been around for a long time.
Given the small size of today's amateur radio units, they can easily be powered by a set of solar arrays just in case regular power becomes unavailable.
It looks like birds havent completely been eliminated though. Take a look at the secrets behind googles pagerank technology! And April Fool's day, BTW
l
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.htm
all my
Believe it or not! They're replacing a information system that needs to be highly reliable with... e-mail? Ye gods! I'll take the pidgeons, thanks!
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Now more than ever we need to get rid of spam! Think about how many birds die each time someone uses an open relay to tell you about their special deal that isn't a pyramid scheme or that you should buy their penis enlarger? Truly horrifying!
I think that they'd face a huge packet loss rate if they are using pigeons in a hurricane.
Actually, avian IP transmission schemes face some of the same limitations as token ring networks. You can only have a limited number of packets "on the fly" at any particular time. Each avian carrier is similar to a token. If it fails to reach its destination, the bandwidth of the entire network drops. Unless there is a pool (or "coop") of backup carriers, you would have to wait a considerable period for a new carrier to be created (or "hatched" as it is sometimes called by those running these types of networks).
Using this type of network in hurricane conditions virtually guarantees that you're going to lose all of your packet carriers. This will bring down your network completely, until the next brooding season.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Even in the world of high technology, one believes in the concept of a backup link. Sure, maybe you've got a full DS3 right into Qwest, but there's no guarantee it's always going to be up, either. The link could be severed physically, Qwest could get bombed - literally, or with packets... anything could happen. So maybe you have a T1 running into sprint or something - Sure, it wouldn't be your first choice, but maybe they gave you a great rate. And hell, you might even have a 128k frame relay to back THAT up, if you're serious, just to keep email going if everything else craters.
Similarly; In this case, they have internet, and their radio system, but what's your last resort? It is currently pigeons, in their case, and it appears that it will next be a human courier. In case of insurgency, of course, this becomes seriously impractical. No one is going to shoot every bird, but they WILL be on the lookout for people.
In addition, using modern technology (I understand that if the carrier pigeon program is rendering them bankrupt, they can't really afford modern technology, which is why they buy a bunch of our surplus electronics in India) allows a pigeon to carry quite a bit of data. An MMC card is small enough to attach to a pigeon; You could easily be sending 64MB packets. Very high latency, but pretty good bandwidth.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magtapes.
Hmm, maybe it's time for a "P" protocol for UUCP. You could easily batch your data and attempt to send it via carrier pigeon (during the day, when there are less predators to worry about, as opposed to the "G" protocol, which was handiest at night, when long-distance rates were at their lowest.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, I'm fucking kidding.
too many hawks attacking and stealing packets.
"...the service - employing some 800 birds - has become redundant..."
Isn't that the whole point? What kind of wide area communications backup system is going to cost less than $10k/year? The system obviously isn't obsolete since it was used as recently as 1999. I don't know 'bout y'all but I _want_ some redundancy in my government emergency communications network.
Hi, how are you? I send you this pigeon in order to have your advice. See you later. Thanks.
"Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing - and it was everything that I thought it could be."
...but the swiss army dismissed their well-kept pigeons and the soldiers taking care of them just three years ago...
If they would kick out their bicyclist corps sometime soon, you might actually call them an army sometine soon.
+++ath0