Snail Mail Still Winning The Bandwidth War

LR_none writes "Today's New York Times has this short piece suggesting snail mail is the leading broadband technology, at least for video movies on demand. The article states that the 8 to 9 gigs of data on a DVD would take two weeks to download at 56kb, making Netflix' three-day distribution by mail seem speedy. (Since they can send three or more movies at once, Netflix compares favorably with DSL download speeds, too.) The author estimates Netflix alone distributes 1,500 terabytes a day, which is impressive considering the Internet carries 2,000TB a day (by estimates cited in the article). The 'immediate gratification' aspect of Internet consumerism has given a huge boost to companies like FedEx and UPS, but it's surprising to think of the post office as being the leading infrastructure provider for digital entertainment, in terms of market share and efficiency, for the forseeable future. (Disclaimer: I don't work for Netflix or the post office.)"

Comments

LAG!

[Tyler Eaves]

Lag's a bitch though.

Not millisecond.
Not second.
Not minute.
Not hour.

Lag measured in DAYS.

Hell, even carrier pidgeon is probably faster ;)

Re:LAG!

[gilesjuk]

What about the packet loss statistics? :))

1GB Data Transfer

[TheOste]

What's the fastest way to move 1GB of data nightly from LA to San Fran?

Fed-Ex

Re:1GB Data Transfer

[Glonoinha]

Bah! I download 1G in about two hours on a bad night, 90 minutes on a good day. Now if we up the ante a little, say 'move 1TB of data' and FedEx will eat my cable connection for lunch.

Next they're going to tell me

[keep_it_simple_stupi]

that I could send a couch via FedEx easier than I could over the internet? These people are just plain nuts.

Oh wait...

Whew!

[Tsali]

Nothing like snail mail to remedy my need for DVD's via my 28K line.

Of course, if you're using a 28K line, you're probably not instantly gratified that often anyways. :-)

Re:Whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess it depends on how quick a trigger you have.

Really old quote

[RocketJeff]

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes" - SysAdmin humor

Re:Really old quote

[RocketJeff]

Ladies and Germs, we have a winner. The first to post this joke is Mr. RocketJeff. Don Pardo, tell him what he's won!

And I actually read the article first (not just the /. story). I must have seen it just as it hit the front page...

I was at Best Buy this weekend and saw an ad for Netflix (Best Buy and Netflix have a cross-marking agreement). I pointed to it and told my wife "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes" - of course she looked at me like I was an idiot (nothing new...).

Re:Really old quote

[Soko]

Here's the low latency patch for that, by the way. Might bring down the ping times. ;-)

Soko

Bad ping times.

[Kenja]

Tried playing Quake by snail mail. Took forever before the letter saying I'd been fraged 10^5 times for just standing there to arive.

Disclaimer

[ChaosDiscordSimple]

(Disclaimer: I don't work for Netflix or the post office.)

Thanks for letting us know. I was afraid there might be some bias. (Disclaimer: I don't work for Slashdot, the Prince of Darkness, or Illuminati.)

Re:Disclaimer

[phriedom]

You only think you don't work for the Illuminati. ;-)

Snail mail over SSH.

[pVoid]

Step 1: run your envelope through an industrial shreader.

Step 2: append 10 MAC shreads at the end of mail.

Step 3: permutate shread x with shread perm(x) where perm(x) is the chosen encryption algorithm.

Step 4: glue together

Step 5: shread, unencrypt, reglue.

voila.

Just imagine how fast snail mail would be...

[Quixadhal]

...if you didn't have to share bandwidth with all those spammers.

Re:Streaming?

[Waffle Iron]

You can't stream the mail.

Streaming snail mail doesn't work for DVDs, but you can get it to work for VHS.

The trick is to pull one end of the tape out of the cartridge, then glue it to a post card. Drop the postcard in the mail and leave the rest of the tape next to the mailbox.

Now, as the head end of the tape makes its way through the postal system, it automatically despools the rest of the tape which streams along behind it.

As soon as the head end of the tape arrives, the customer inserts it into in an empty cartridge and starts to play it . As the VCR plays, it sucks the remainder of the tape out of the postal system at the appropriate speed.

But how's the latency of the connection?

[tunabomber]

This reminded me of the time I read Penises have higher bandwidth than cable modems.

Re:Pretty good security too...

[Space Coyote]

Just think, there was a virus attack on the USPS network last fall, and it was front page news for months, even though it only infected a handful of network nodes.

Meanwhile Klez keeps popping up in my Inbox again and again..

Re:1000TB Data Transfer

[CerebusUS]

Never underestimate the bandwidth of cargo plane filled with ait-3 tapes. :-)

Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a Netflix-like service for pr0n DVDs?

Maybe called "Netfux"?

Re:-1 redundant

[EnderWiggnz]

never underestimate all your base in a beowulf cluster of hot grits down natalie portmans pants! ...

profit!

Through rain, sleet or snow

[MaryAlice]

They used to brag about delivering Christmas packages, I wonder if they will be as diligent about Christmas packets ;-)

Re:bandwidth and latency

[Ziviyr]

Yeah, it's hard to beat the bandwidth of a truckload of CD's or DVD's doing 70mph down the interstate... ...but the latency...

Yeah, Quake III would be a very interesting game under those circumstances. :-)