Slashdot Mirror
Teledesic Comes Down to Earth
hibachi writes "Teledesic, the ambitious plan to build a constellation of low-earth orbiting satellites for global broadband services, has died on the assembly room floor. According to this press release, "the company does not believe that it is prudent, purely on speculation, to continue the substantial capital expenditures required to construct and launch the satellites consistent with the timing required to meet FCC and ITU regulatory milestones." Brainchild of Bill Gates and Craig McCaw, Teledesic held the promise of globally ubiquitous high speed Internet. It seems Teledesic's plans grew less ambitious over the years until finally the painful lessons of Iridium, and the current telecom climate, drove the last nails in its coffin. I am sad to see this happen."
right next to a cigarette-stained VAX. When are they gonna update that shit?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Gives a whole new meaning to "never got off the ground".
You'd figure the lord of the undead himself drove the first nail.
...by the plot of a little seen movie AntiTrust....not that i saw it or anything...really.
...someone DID imagine a Beowulf cluster of them.
If they're going cheap, they might make a pretty impressive IEEE 802.11 antenna.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
I could give out one eye just to watch the process... OMG - that's da pr0n :)
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
Ah-ha!
http://angelhalo.com/
Kudos to the Wayback Machine for digging up the parent company's url!
Slashdot: rejecting tech news in favor of rubber band guns since 1997.
At this rate, I would just as soon expect to see a giant round thing on a stick to block out the sun (ala simpsons)
though on a more realistic note, wouldn't it be more useful right now to focus on creating some more down to earth services that aren't going to shut down or be bought out every other month?
or even better yet, have more systems that are interoperable, so if you do have to switch services, you don't have to go through the hell of having to get new hardware as well?
Kinda reminds me of the movie Antitrust in an eerie way...
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I think that a big part of their problems comes from trying to provide internet acess to 3 billion people who previously didn't have it (is it that few?). Not that this goal isn't admirable, but I think it would be better to concentrate on getting consistant electricity, clean water, and high quality food to the world poor, instead of internet access (lack of computers/electricity to run them could also be a problem).
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Terrestrial broadband providers have a hard enough time making money. i think with the added costs of satellites, its a good thing this company stopped their work before they wasted billions like Iridium. I mean, with cheap fiber already in a glut, who needs to pay big money for satellite bandwidth?
------- sig goes here
It's already been said. Look above your comment^^
I'm not sure I understand why the author of this post is sad to see Teledesic shelved. Did he really think that LEO satellites can fulfill the expectations of inexpensive global broadband internet access? We already have Inmarsat. Price that out...
The scheme is about as hare-brained as putting solar panels in space to generate electricity for earth needs. It costs something like $200 an ounce just to launch something in low-earth orbit and that doesn't include cost of R&D, construction, and maintaining a large constellation of satellites on station. Better to spend the dollars on improving terrestrial internet infrastructure than to clutter up space even more.
I hope this wouldn't affect the McCaw's OneWorld that's now partecipating to the America's Cup ; )
Unfortunatly we see this kind of thing happening everywhere. Telecom companies devaluating their recent investments for UMTS licenses, Companies like Worldcom and KPN QWEST in serieus trouble (right to the point that at least KPN QWEST goes bankrupt). It is no surprise that Teledesic does not want to venture into a territory which is hostile to say the least at this moment. To uphold their promise they must not only build, launch and exploit the satelites but they must also create the groundstations and maintain them for the governments and regional governments. Otherwise those satelites would be very expensive space junk.
So they are looking at a very substantial investment in a time where no-one would invest because of unstable markets.
Unfortunatly there is no forseeable uplift for the telecom sector. It's a wise decision to stop now and to evaluate the situation. Perhaps when the worldeconomy is seeing some uplift the company can start again with its original plans. Until then i'm afraid those 3 billion people will still not have access. Although they will never miss it by the way, nor am i afraid that they are worse off then those who do have access.
...to have something better than ISDN in my house here in Japan. At least its better than dialup where I paid $300 a month.
Apparently, this country needs to learn what does "national coverage" mean, and that linking two islands with 45mbit link and selling it to 35000 dsl, isdn, and dialup customers is not exactly the correct way of doing things.
Oh, and no signs of current-gen satellite internet in Japan either. DirectPC Japan sells "only to enterprises" with $2000-some for setup and after that billed PER MEGABYTE downloaded.
These sinners were hoping to make filth (money) from the Heavens, surely a blasphemous plan of the Evil One. It is too much to be hoped that these sinners repented of their ways and chose to follow His guidance. Instead it is probably the fumbling of Mr Naughty that tripped up this evil plan. Praise be to God for saving us from Teledisc!
Does anyone know what the bandwith would have been? I dread to ask about ping...
it in fact harks back to the original, literal, meaning of those words.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
It's a common fallacy to ascribe a lack of telephony, electricity/water to a definitive lack of net access. Cybercafes, I might point out, are leading the way in providing cheap access to those without phones or electricity.
More than mere navel gazing.
The Helios project will provide the same functionality, but with cheaper maintenance and launch costs. It is a solar-cell powered flying wing that will soar at about 60000 feet or so, with 200 pounds of payload. It may very well be the specific reason they pulled the plug on Teledisc, since they realize that most satelites will be obsoleted too soon for them to proceed with the project.
Stop the brainwash
Iridium bugs me. I've seen a lot of people claim it failed because of the technology. But this just isn't the case! It *might* have failed based on the technical [de]merits, but it never made it that far.
I know this because I tried to buy an Iridium phone. I spent months and months trying. I tell you they WOULD NOT SELL ME ONE. It was a joke! No resellers had them, and there was no plan. The best I ever did was find a fly-by-night in Taiwan who would sell me a phone, but not a service plan. Who would buy a phone with no service plan?
It was frustrating too, reading their glossy pamphlets and their web sites. They actually gave you (the customer) examples of what type of people would use an Iridium phone. Topping the list was Saudi Oil Sheiks! I'm not kidding! I tried to tell them, im not an oil sheik, but I HAVE MONEY and I want to BUY.
Iridium failed because of internal failures inside the company (and motorola). They got caught up in internal politics and self-absorbsion. Apparently they forget to do marketing and build distribution channels.
Antitrust was quite possibly the worst movie i have ever seen. I can say with certainty that the worst movie i have ever seen was either Antitrust or The Robe, but i've never been able to decide which was more painful.
The composition of the film was an absolute joke. The number of plot developments that weren't plot holes can be counted on one hand. None of the actors except the Chinese kid, and the Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer lookalikes, came across as even remotely believable. The sum artistic worth of the movie comes down to some decent imagery in two or three scenes, which is not enough to justify watching the movie.
The political message of the movie outright offended me, and i am a die-hard macintosh-and-linux user who has been following in great detail the possibly-irreversable damage Microsoft does every day to the art and industry of software since i was 12. I believe that the things Microsoft does are horrible enough they speak for themselves, and exaggerating things the way Antitrust did implies the anti-MS movement has no worthwhile arguments. Antitrust's "message" came down to just yelling "yeah, well you're a mass murderer" at the mean kid on the playground and running away. It invoked some form of Godwin's Law. And yeah, i realize they were just trying to make some generic human epic about the corrupting influence of power and the mercilessly all-for-the-ends drive that motivated the Bill Gates character... but if that was what they wanted, they could have very easily genericized the MS workalike, and divorced the situation just ever so slightly from reality, and they would have been able to make their points without in the process cheapening all those who fight against the injustice of MS.
Sorry. OT, i know. The parent post simply compelled me to speak.
-- super ugly ultraman
I ask the same question. You'd think his well-being depended solely on this half-baked idea. If that makes him sad, think how he's going to cave when gates kicks.
The USA is hampered by regulation, not lack of technology. Other countries are laying fiber and getting on the net without the domestic issues found in the US....think about it, pls.
Ideas like this die everyday as part of the process. Get a perspective, please.
brains? did you say brains? you been drinking out the toilet again? bill brings money...not brains....give me a break.
Oh...wait...that was another gem from the MS Shill group - never mind.
Were they supposed to have Mac support?
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
Since when are satellite signals not affected by storms?
I guess it's just a coincidence that when it snows my feed goes down....where's that brochure?
Natural disasters? You mean like when the ground station goes offline after an earthquake, and they have to retrain the dish?
Localized military action? Like this week when the Falun Gong hacked into the Chinese TV network that works off satellites?
...isn't that a contradiction in terms? Or at least redundant?
This posted on slashdot? I call troll!
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
They probably kept getting blue-screened while trying to install the satelite's OS (Gee, with Bill Gates at the helm, wonder which OS it was using). Either that, or they wanted to use another OS, and Bill wasn't having any of that.
I'm glad it's grounded. One less thing for Microsoft to try and monopolize. And before you mod me troll, think about it. It's the truth. He wants his hands in everything. Anything that he doesn't get is a good thing. No one person should have THAT much power and control. Especially not Gates...
Here in the UK it was perfectly possible to buy an Iridium phone. Almost every electronics shop on Tottenham Court Road stocked them. I even once saw someone buy one.
The problem Iridium had was deeped. When the economics were first calculated in the mid-1980s, nobody envisaged a ubiquitious cell phone service and global roaming. (Nor did they imagine that cell phone services would price their minutes at $0.20 or less.) The key demographic of Iridium users - i.e. travelling businessmen - already had cell phones, and weren't prepared to swap them for larger devices, with lower quality sound, and which cost 30x as much per minute.
--- My dad's political betting
There was unbelievable stupidity at every level, both in marketing and in technical operations. The facility they built in Leesburg, VA had punch codes on every door, whose main function was to slow down employees going from room to room. Because the doors didn't have windows, doors would suddenly burst open from the other side and break people's noses. In spite of this, there were only about 5 unix accounts for the whole facility (about 100 people per shift) and everyone knew what the passwords were. So, they invested millions of dollars in useless security that annoyed employees, but zero in actual software security. They also had invested literally millions of dollars in the triply redundant electrical backup generators, with state-of-the-art lead sulfide batteries and hydrogen detectors, but it had no protection if some mouse decided to chew through the cables. It had zero protection against flooding either, given that it was just a mile from the Potomac River.
The ground operations system was designed by electrical engineers from Texas who hated living in Virginia. They described all software in terms of circuit diagrams. Since writing satellite control software was "trivial", it was done by some no-name company from Florida, resulting in a system that crashed every 5 minutes. The machines in the server room were all mislabelled, so figuring out which machine crashed took hours, but nobody thought it was a good idea to put correct labels on them. The documentation for ground control software made stacks of books about 20 feet high, all of which were totally outdated and inaccurate.
People at the facility knew that Iridium was never expected to make money. It was Motorola's way of getting into the satellite business. Apparently, the higher-ups at Motorola became victims of their own hype and kept pumping billions of dollars into the project. Iridium phones, when they were available, could not work inside buildings or near tall buildings outside; it required "user dexterity" to go to an open field so they could use the fucking things.
Perhaps related to the Texas cowboy mentality, there was a lot of physical violence at that facility too. Throwing phones against walls was common.
Being a "victim" of the telecom crash myself, I feel like speaking freely about the not so positive parts here...
In the last 5-10 years, there's been a constant push to develop more and newer technology to sell to willing customers (in the highly developed parts of the planet). This was in blind disregard of then common sense that enough is enough, if you don't need more features you're not going to buy it.
Meanwhile, the amount of technology standards and "blueprints" for communication systems is advanced enough to last quite a while without new developments. Some refinement is good, but wider implementation of this technology would do much more good in the world, for peace and equality (thereby reducing risks of conflict between nations and peoples!). If every moderately developed country would have basic internet and telephony services available for 80-90% of the people for reasonable prices. The world would be much better off than with another way to get broadband for a few above average rich people.
Of course, the need for food, shelter, education and freedom rises far above the need for communication and internet facilities. Also 3 million people a year are dying of aids, and so on and so forth... Life is not about more bandwidth (really!)
Simon
This is an example of BILL GATES NOT GETTING HIS WAY for a change.
And like we need more space junk floating in the upper atmosphere...they're having trouble keeping track of all of it as it is. Plus those satellites would have created havoc for radio astronomers.
GOOD RIDDANCE!
-
Just in the US: You got lots of not-so-baby
bells who will challenge you in the courts if
you start competing with them.
Then there's the issue of giving FBI/CIA/NSA
the ability to wiretap the data flow. They
certainly like tapping Osama's satellite calls and they don't want to give up on that when he moves to voice-over-IP!
- Then there's the foreign countries. You know, most of the world. Usually the government is the phone company, and they won't like the competition nor the loss of wiretap ability one bit. So you have literally hundreds of agreements to pound out, in countries that often have barely functioning legal systems. I'm sure some big donations from Bill won't hurt the situation in many countries, but others won't be so easily convinced.
So, in my completely unprofessional opinion: Ignore the technical and financial risks. The legal risks alone will kill the project....that this thing wouldn't be common carrier? Large communication system, with Bill Gates at the helm, and no obligation to be compatible with anything would be a really good vehicle of pushing nasty stuff in protocols.
So IMHO good riddance.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Bill and MS have shown consistantly that they are not to be trusted. Every time that something new comes from them, it is about aquiring a bigger monopoly. In addition, the deals are always done to screw over the partners in the long run.
I know it is overdone but would you trust a politician? Same thing.
of hearing about "billions of people" who don't have water or electricity or somesuch shit. After what I went through to get DSL, I don't feel sorry for anybody.
Ever see an Iridium Flare?
Satellite broadband for the masses won't work. Period.
Here's the math to back that up.
Assume a bird at LEO - about 100 miles up, serving about a 500 mile footprint.
Assume said bird is running a 1 GHz wide communications channel (not a 1 GHz center frequency, 1 GHz bandwidth. That puts the center freq around 10 GHz at least, where there are very large space losses - just getting your signal down costs you a lot of signal).
Assume the protocol used by the bird gets about 4 bits per second per Hz (That's a pretty high value - the signal to noise ratio will have to be VERY low for this to work.)
Assume an overhead of 2 bits per byte transmitted. This includes all protocol below TCP/IP, error correction, collisions, retransmits, etc.
OK, given those numbers, you get about 400 Mbytes/sec downlink throughput.
Assume you want to supply everyone with DSL equivelent speeds - 40 kByte/sec.
400 Mbyte/sec divided by 40 kByte/sec = 100 thousand users per bird.
100 thousand users per 500 * pi miles = 64 users/square mile. Anyplace the user density is higher than that would swamp the system.
And remember, I've been using very LARGE (i.e. very favorable to satellite downlink) numbers.
Satellite is GREAT for wide-open, low population density areas. The problem then becomes you cannot get enough people to pay for the birds.
In high density areas, land based wireless and wireline are MUCH more cost effective. In less populated areas, ideas like the solar aircraft are more feasible than satellites. In REALLY unpopulated areas, there just ISN'T a technology that can do the job without some sort of subsidy.
www.eFax.com are spammers
"I am sad to see this happen"
Considering Bill Gates had his greedy little paw in it, I am far from sad. Does anyone here really want to see worldwide broadband in the hands of this same ethically challenged crew?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
I don't think any commercial broadband wired services would be viable if everyone used all their available bandwidth all the time. For example in the past year or so most cable companies have started putting download caps into effect, for very good reason: you cannot sell bandwidth that costs you, e.g. $600 a month for a T1 to consumers for $30 a month. Never mind that the coax they use cannot supply that much bandwidth to more than a few folks per neighborhood.
A more realistic TCP/IP-by-satellite involves intermittent (on-the-go) usage or more efficient multicast broadcasts. No, it's not a T1-type tarrifed service anymore!
It's a shame that all satellite ventures of this sort look to the Iridium failure, and do not follow through with their plans. I worked for Motorola at the Iridium operations center. Motorola's satellite construction and launches worked great. In fact they set several records for number of satellites launched in a given period of time. The hardware worked great and operations were smooth. Iridium was a BUSINESS FAILURE. The technology provided by Motorola worked but Iridium could not sell the service to enough people. They were marketing to the rich jetset crowd, when they should have been marketing to international corporations and governments. Sadly they realized this too late, and the idea of worldwide satellite communications for the masses died. :(
My boy, my boy!
That movie freakin' rocked! Yeah baby.
Now I've got to go watch it, again.
So much for the real-life Synapse project; say, I wonder if William took the idea from the movie. o_O Never know.
Informatus Technologicus
There is a lot of interest recently in stratosphereric platforms as an alternative to satellites, both heavier and lighter than air.
Geostationary satellites are too far to support high data rates to mobile terminals and also suffer from high latency. LEO satellites require an entire constellation covering most of the Earth before there is continous coverage in any part of the Earth. This all-or-nothing property makes it a dangerous business proposition.
Some links:
StratSat
CargoLifter and Boeing
Yokosuka
AeroVironment
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
When I first heard about Bill Gates' involvement in this project, I was a little worried that he'd use it to try to lock up the telecommunications market. But the project's failure just proves one thing: Bill Gates does not know how to design stuff. All of Microsoft's best-selling products are based on designs ripped off from others -- the general-purpose desktop OS (Digital Research), the GUI (Xerox/Apple), the web browser (Netscape) ... the list goes on and on. Can you recall anything that originated in Redmond that people actually wanted?
His Billness is now the "chief software architect" in Redmond, heading up the design of a "revolutionary" new product line. This is supposedly the Windows version that has databases embedded everywhere, and a line of applications that use these new API's. This isn't something customers are asking for, and it isn't something their competitors are delivering. Perhaps, by chance, it's something nobody wants? Perhaps it's just an attempt to foist ever more complex API's on the world, so both app and OS competitors will be challenged to keep up? Or perhaps Bill is just a little too overconfident?
I'm happy to see the Teledesic project die. Hopefully Bill will die soon too.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
use Airships (Blimps) instead? or weather balloons?
Sorry to disappoint all you Gates-obsessives, but his involvement was trivial - a $10M investment at the very beginning, mostly because Seattle billionaires are a cliquey bunch, and it was a polite gesture to Craig McCaw. Gates' active interest, or more accurately that of his private equity manager, dwindled to zero after a year or two.
There was never any question of Microsoft software running on the satellites, in fact we never got as far as even considering flight or communications software.
Wowbagger makes a fatal mistake in his analysis of satellite economics - the satellites in common with many others would use multiple (hundreds) spot beams, thus allowing massive frequency reuse.
My ten cents worth: Back in 1997 Boeing was ready, willing and competent to build a very capable constellation for a reasonable $US15Bn. But Motorola offered to do it for much less, so McCaw switched to them. MOT then progressively upped the price for a rudimentary system to US$20Bn. McCaw cancelled MOT in 2000, and by then all Teledesic's credibility was exhausted.
I was surprised to see that McCaw was advised by people who knew nothing of the rather specialised satellite business, and were yes-men, not even of the normal capitalist-bureaucratic type, but of a more medieval-feudal nature, which suited the atmosphere of the court of King Craig. Such poor management was the proximate reason for Teledesic's downfall. For corroboration, see the fate of ICO, another satellite company McCaw bought for US$1Bn in 2000, which is also now worthless.
As for helping poorer countries, it was an opportunity cost argument: most revenues would come from from the rural/exurban developed world and mobile users; the unused available capacity over poor countries would be heavily discounted, and so help to defuse international regulatory problems.
As you might guess, I for one am truly disappointed. Teledesic might not have ushered in a new golden age, but it could have really changed (for the better, for once) people's lives in both the rich and the poor world.
Bill, you said you were gonna give away your cash
before you died. Well, here's your chance. If you want the opportunity to change the world, give us a global and free information infrastructure. Wouldn't that take mankind to the next level?
Wouldn't that put your name in history as one of the greatest benefactors of mankind? C'mon... it'll push us gearheads that hate you into abject adoration, so you can go ahead and continue your global domination thingy.
Puh-leeeeeze!
Nearly half of these posts mention Bill Gates.
Bill Gates was just one of several investors including Craig McCaw, Prince Alwaleed, Abu Dhabi Investment Company and Boeing. I'm thinking Motorola was included later.
Do you guys really think Bill Gates architected this network? With the likes of Craig McCaw around? Who, by the way built and sold McCaw Cellular to AT&T for billions.
Okay, so Gates drops $200 million or so on this thing. That's like the equivalent of you dropping $2,000 on LNUX, SUNW or whatever the hell you're into.
This is a Teledesic story. The sheer volume of Gates posts only reveals how bad your jones is.
because what Teledesic could have offered has so much potential.
Apart from the fact that you save wiring up hundreds of countries that cannot afford it - and hence provide internet access to millions upon millions of people that previously could not get online - but what's more, for those of us road warriors, it could have been a godsend.
Yeah, it's all very well to have broadband internet - but it's only available at your desk! What happens if you're out in the field and you want to send/stream a movie back to base? At the moment, it's damn hard (and expensive) to do it... but allow for this to take off, everywhere you go, fast internet. Teledesic is to the internet what the mobile phone is to voice telephony.
I know there are still latency issues to work out, but eventually it could become like many households (especially students) where there are no landline phones, just mobiles - instead of having a fixed, wired access point, everybody has wireless, move anywhere mobile access... anywhere in the world.
I'm sure it'll happen, but minus the backing of the big guns like Gates et co, it may take a while longer.
-- james
Satellite systems are most hurt by cellular
Of course the current telecom environment is tough, but I think the most important factor is that all these systems, Teledesic, Iridium, Globalstar, Orbcomm (still going, but never became as mainstream as I hoped), were envisioned in an age when land based cellular did not have the penetration and low cost that it has today in so many of the richer countries. Sure, there will always be the user who needs 100% coverage and can pay a premium, but the market for mobile satellite communications is not turning out to be as lucrative as people hoped. It pains me to admit it (since I work in the satellite industry), that economic solutions may never include LEO constellations.
GEO is actually not as bad a solution as people are saying - Thuraya shows that you can solve some of the power issues by making an extremely high gain satellite antenna. The time delay can be annoying for voice, but if you don't have a cellular link available, you probably aren't going to complain. I'm guessing were going to see more of these types of satellites over the parts of globe where you aren't too far from the equator (how far depends on the application - for me, I want satellite access for backcountry emergency in the contiguous US - I can hopefully hike to line of site within an hour or two from most places) and the population can support it. Finally, cellular phones with very low added cost access the satellites need to be developed (Thuraya phones aren't as bad as Iridium phones - I don't have the exact figures, but I'm sure I'd want to pay less).
Atmospheric platforms sound interesting, but I'd want to see a few test reports before I got too excited. Besides, it isn't really very useful for large area coverage.
Dara Parsavand
This project was BillGatus's dream of having ubiquitous internet access for _windoze_users_only_ It was going to be a way to push Palladium off onto the rest of the world by being the only way to access the internet globally.
That the project died is a very great thing for Freedom. We should be happy because now Gates can't force people to use _his_ internet.
Do you seriously think that Gates would have allowed open source software to access his internet? Do you think we'd be able to access slashdot? Of course not.
To paraphrase Lyndon Johnson:
"I myself do not want to go to bed by the light of a Microsoft moon."
Evil is the money of root.
If the West aren't careful, India could end up owning worldwide broadband multimedia on demand.
Seastead this.
I actually wanted Bill Gates to waste billions of dollars on this. Ever since Iridium died it was obvious that satellites are a bad idea, but his continued pursuit of a financially reckless satellite network would have been proof that Bill G. was a dangerous egomaniac. Alas, he has more brains than that.
Take a map of...say for example...Alaska. One state in a "civilized" country. Make sure it's a really big map. One that covers a wall. Now draw a pencil line on it. One line. I'll even let you curve it as much as you want.
There's your fiber. Don't forget that you are paying for it by the foot. And you have to secure right of ways. Oh, yeah. Watch out for mountains. And unstable terrain (permafrost, bogs, flood plains).
The whole state (and Canada, and most of the rest of the United States) can be covered with one (1) satellite (many earth stations, but that's another story). I'll grant that the bandwidth on the satellite is less (how much so depends on how may transponders you dedicate), but so is the maintenance (per square mile covered) and it's far more backhoe resistant.
Satellite is a boon to areas with low population density. Don't write it off out of hand.
I keep seeing stories on sites like BroadbandReports that much of Japan has cheap-ass DSL, fiber optic, and cable Internet services. It certainly helps that most of Japan's population is densely concentrated, but I guess you're not in one of those areas?
Utilizing magnetic schemata since
Yes, I think that if everyone had internet access it would help humanity, but there are more pressing issues, like the original poster stated. But being a humanitarian will not make you more money, or give you more power. So Mr Bill will not be interested in things like that.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I'm sad to see this proposed system fail.
It would have opened up so many possibilities, especially for regions with no broadband, or even no internet access at all, especially because it was supposed to have been far cheaper than the current offerings.
What suprises me is all the Microsoft ranting right now. Just because Bill Gates decided to help finance this doomed project? That is plain imature. I'm not the biggest fan of Windows either, but just because Bill Gates decide to help finance something doesn't mean that it's going to be bad.
the specs probably changed considerably from when i was doing this, but at that time, they were considering a network of 840 satellites! in some areas of the world you had maybe 10 or 20 satellites visible at once. if this thing had ever got off the ground, you'd have had some pretty spectacular displays around dawn and dusk.
what an amazing waste of money. personally i think that high altitude balloons sound like an excellent idea as a cheap alternative to behemoths like teledesic.
This is a test
I can think of 2 uses for a satellite based communications system: military comm & planetary colonization. Would make a good sci-fi story, maybe it already has. Anybody read something like this?
Of course in the future Gates is going to be thought of like J.P. Morgan. No one realizes what horrors that happened under his reign, either.
What will Bill gates do now with those ex-Russian rockets he bought for Teledesic?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Comparing software engineering to classical engineering assumes that software
has the ability to wear out. Software typically behaves, or it does not. It
either works, or it does not. Software generally does not degrade, abrade,
stretch, twist, or ablate. To treat it as a physical entity, therefore, is
misapplication of our engineering skills. Classical engineering deals with
the characteristics of hardware; software engineering should deal with the
characteristics of *software*, and not with hardware or management.
-- Dan Klein
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