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A Twisty Maze Of Sewerbot Links, All Different
skids writes "Look before you sit! Sewer systems all
over the world are under seige by robots laying fiber to the curb -- and
beyond. There's even a standards body forming. (Doesn't that consitute a one-level recursion of 'pipes carrying filth'?)" It's been a while since we last mentioned these things.
they have to contend with this guy's poo on the way! Scary.
Ooooh, that's just too easy...
Banaaaana!
... a maze of twisty little passages, all alike?
Anyway, I'm glad it's robots doing that, there's no way on earth I would go down there!
RickTheWizKid
-The Terrorists
... that having an internet connection through the sewers really stinks.
...but I'll read anything that has a Tick reference in the teaser
IP over rodentia carrier?
BR RickTheWiseAss
Until a wrong turn has a battlebot crawling out of your toilet with cable laying on it's mind.
Robots lay you in the sewers.
Look before sitting? I do half my dirty work standing as it is, how bout, just don't sit!
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
All sewers lead to Slashdot.
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
"fibre optic cable laying robot". yeah, sure. we all know that robot + fibre optic connection = high bandwidth voyeur cam.
What will happen when the crocodiles attempt to eat these robots? Will we see lawsuits filed by crocodile protection groups?
Alternatively, couldn't we save money and persuade the Mutant Ninja Turtles to lay the cables? They've had nothing to do since the show got cancelled. What a group of lazy bums, especially that Splinter geezer!
It's been a while since we last mentioned these things.
:)
In other words it's a dupe in slow motion
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The bad part about this, is that the fiber will be easy to access for people who would like to do bad things to it, like chop it in half. Right now, most fiber is buried and terminates in locked buildings/closets/etc. But simply lifting a manhole cover gives an attacker access.
A few years ago, there was a guy in Fargo, ND who wanted to rob a stereo shop called Site On Sound. The shop had an alarm system, so instead of just chopping the wires on the outside of the building, he obtained some city blueprints and found where the largest bundle of phone wires went, and cut it in half with a chainsaw. Apparently, it was a 2 foot thick bundle of twisted pairs, and the entire city of Fargo was completely without phone service for nearly a week while the 2 foot thick cable was spliced back together.
Hope they don't plan on running anything too important over sewer fiber. It's cheap, but it has far greater risk than burying it.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
These sewer bots must be very resiliant animals indeed if they are to contend with the poo and filth of the sewers. I wonder if this same rugged sewer bot technology could be used by NASA or the military?
The sewer seems like such an foul environment, with numerous bacterias and small animals. Seems like a fiber laid in the sewer has a greater chance of being severed than one that's laid in dedicated pipes. What's preventing Joe Sanitation worker from cutting or tripping over these fibers?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Now, when people complain about all the filth on the Internet... They'll be correct!!
Some say its an urban legend, the stories of robots flushed down the toilets when they were just mini-battle bots, all grown up to huge proportions and laying fiber all over the city. But I know its true! I accidentally flushed by Lego Mindstorms down the toilet one day and now I have high speed internet access when I crap!
.sig: It's what's for dinner.
Figure 6 of the japanese link (the word world in the summary) explains how that was setup!
--Answer this question while on the john
Sex - Find It
Retreiving the broken robot.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
IP over rodentia carrier?
Nope, but there's IP over carrier pigeon.
Those of you following UserFriendly for some time may be aware of where internet filth comes from.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Sewer lines are dirty, nasty confined places, do we really need the roto-rooter guy taking out our broadband connection?
Everyone sees roads continually being torn up to lay cable. Why don't the municipalities lay a "data pipe" to go along with the gas and sewer lines.
That way, there's a maintained pipe for power and data to run down. The city rents space, and you don't have roads being torn up anymore. Instead of once per carrier per service, it's torn up once period! New services become a _lot_ cheaper because you don't have to pay to repave the roads!
Cities would love it because they get a steady income, companies love it because it doesn't involve insane amounts of capex... Win all around?
Jason Pollock
Look before you sit!
Thats missing an 'h', surely..
This is the coolest idea on earth. God, why don't I think of stuff like this?
Anyway, will water getting into the pipes holding the cables hurt anything? Make it not work? I can't imagine more than 10 miles of cable without a few leaks...
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
These robots reminded me of W.I.S.O.R., a robot built by Honeybee Robotics to repair the ancient steam pipes under New York's streets.
Very interesting to anyone reading this would be a docudrama about the creation of W.I.S.O.R. This is a cross between Pi, 2001, and Junkyard Wars.
Of peripheral, yet substantial interest is Honeybee's RoboTender, a robotic bartender.
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
I don't want even a small cable to reduce my sewer bandwidth...
I'm fat, you're ugly. I can get slimmer, and you?
....to eat more fiber so that you don't get a blockage. And now the phone company can add more fiber so the internet doesn't get a blockage.
Either way, it all ends up in the sewer.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I can already see the marketing slogans:
-We'll put your data, right where it belongs!
-Shitty Service!
-It could be worse! Your data could be travelling outside our cables.
-Your lunch and your data are now going the same way (hopefually not at the same speed though).
http://saveie6.com/
Oh, great. So now we have to install crappers in the meeting rooms to get the LAN access.
The upside is, no more toilet breaks.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
" I don't want even a small cable to reduce my sewer bandwidth..."
Switching to a low fiber diet will help.
Caller: This connection is CRAP!
Tech Support: Technically, it's IN crap.
...oOOo..'(_)'..oOOo...
user1: "my connection is going slow."
user2: "must be all that shit clogging up the lines."
user1: "yeah, must be! let me try flushing the connection." *goes to toilet and flushes several times*
it's a real shitty connection :P
(sorry, i couldn't resist)
No wonder the service stinks.
It would seem that this is a convergence of policies for the former US President and VP. Clinton wanted to make healthcare more affordable and/or free, and Gore wanted to route the internet to everyone's home, business, or public meeting place. With this system you can get the internet and a free colonoscopy at the same time!
Any of you who've been subjected to a sigmoid colonoscopy would know that you can't tell the difference between a robot shoving a fiber optic bundle from a physician shoving the fiber optic endoscope up there.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
FOR ME TO POOP ON!
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
more shitty internet service.
You may be eaten by a grue.
It cost more to dig up the streets and lay your 'data pipe' then the pipe can generate income over an acceptable period of time. Sure a city could amortize it over 100 years, and _might _ make a profit on the money equal to some other investment they could have done with the money, but there's no guarantee in 100 years this data pipe of yours will still be as usefull. Too risky, too costly, there are better ways to put tax dollars to work.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
..providers not only have to filter out a lot of spam shit, but physical shit like this.
Quit Slashdot Today!
On second thought. Bad idea.
I find it funny that the submitter's name is Skids.
...another crude attempt by those crappy life insurance companies to get the elderly to invest in "Robot Insurance"?
Grandma: You're never safe, what with those robots around! Stealing your medication and running up your long distance minutes!
Otherwise I feel incredibly sorry for the techs that have to fix that.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Why should we put money into developing robots to do this work.
Couldnt we just ask the lawyers to do it while they are down there ?
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
There are frequent news stories about the damage that underground cable installers sometimes do to sewer mains, etc., causing people's basements to be flooded with human waste.
I read an article about it very recently (I think it happened in Austin, TX), but kind find an online reference. This google cache of a page seems to list lots of similar cases, though.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
However, it is kind of fun coming out of the sedative-induced haze. I wanna take those drugs home with me :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I can see a new reality TV series..."When pop-up ads Attack"
What is music when you despise all sound?
So I guess those of us with septic tanks are ONCE AGAIN left out of the technology revolution.
Who knew the last mile the internet takes is the first mile my feces take. Hope the smile and wave at each other when passing (no pun intended).
...you might be eaten up in a gruesome corporate takeover!
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
While we're at this, why dont we string in a pipe for beer beside the cable?
Fast Internet+Beer=Happieness
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
I've always wanted to have in internet connection in the bathroom, and when these robots are done I can just pull a cable out of the bowl!
What happens to that fiber during periodic sewer maintenance? I can just imagine what those roto-rooter blades will do to your connection!
Human decisions were removed from strategic defence. Sewernet began to learn at a geometric rate...
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
I've done the corporate thing and I think my sewer skills are pretty good, but how does one get Certified in this?
With my luck I'll get the job of servicing those sewage covered robots.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
I showed this to my roommate who has had many a crap job ;) including honeydipper (cleaning out the nasty space under an outhouse when it gets full) and some sewer-side plumbing. He looked at those robots and said that they had a snowball's chance in hell of working in a real world situation. I trust his opinion over the engineers: exactly how many outhouses and sewers have they been in?
That said, I better get to work on a new packet filter. ;-)
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Well the standard says "avian carriers" - owls would fit the bill just as well as carrier pigeons
How exactly, do you service a sewerpipe once it has fiber running through it?
-ted
I work for a trenchless technology company that specialises in rehabilitating damaged sewer pipes and the like (because it's easier and cheaper than digging them up).
Many companies in the industry have been offering this for a while. Repair the sewers and at the same time expand the cable network through the existing services (rather than digging to install new services).
Pipe cleaners are generally high pressure water jetters these days, or if they are the old style chain cutters the lining system can still withstand them - so there isn't any real danger of cutting the cable.
There are endless places to put fiber because the entire country is 1 big sewer.
Especially Bangladore.
I wonder when Drano will modify their label to say 'safe for septic tanks, standard sewer, and internet enabled fiber sewer lines'.
You see, my house is located on the side of a hill, and it's actually lower in elevation than the sewer line on the street. I use an ejection pump to move the shit from a storage tank into the sewer. There is a valve in the sewer line just up from the ejection pump that prevents poo from the sewer from flowing the wrong way and erupting from the toilets. I wouldn't be very happy if a little sewer robot was going along saying "OK, 6513 is next to get a fiber connection. Hey? What's this? I'll just prop this little door open while I run the fiber line."
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
From the comments it seems like people are only seeing the comical side to all this. In countries with established broadband networks it would have an uphill fight getting established. Where it will probably make inroads, is in towns around the world that don't already have a cheap highcoverage broadband infrastructure. The cost per mile figure is the one to watch, point being is sewage companies all ready use robots to inspect sewers in many countries. If the muncipal sewerage companies see that they can increase their revenue by using this technology, without an enormouse outlay of capital they will pitch their prices to beneath the prices of existing methods and money talks.
I remember when they cabled my area, the cost must have run into millions, all those trenches, don't come cheap in terms of man hours. And is reflected in the price I pay for my broadband connection, those loans have to be paid back, plus interest.
There will obviously be technical problems but technology usually finds ways around such things, padlocked manholes and such. Also by doing this we might end up with a better system of sewers, less effluent escape in to ground water would be a good thing, by putting the cable laying robot into the sewer means you can inspect the sewer as well as lay the cable.
It will be price that will have the final say, especially in other countries that do not have a hangup about bodily functions
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
I still do not see how they splice the cable in sewer line and run a fiber line into a home through the sewer later. They certainly cannot send a robot up the later which is smaller and has bends, clean outs, vents, swipes, etc.
Smells like something Attorney General John Ashcroft would to so the government can spy on its citizens. Probably part of the "Total Information Awareness" project headed by former Adm. Poindexter.
Does that mean the homeless people will get free internet?
.. the big concern now isn't backhoes ripping up cables, it's too much bran cereal in one's diet doing the damage.
Trolling is a art,
Poor Data running fiber through poo-encrusted tunnels.. Lets just open Nemesis does well at the box office so they can retire him with dignity.
Trolling is a art,
the Sewer Alligators? [IMDB]
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
...and perhaps it shouldn't be.
... terrorists, and how they could use 'em.
But the first thing I thought of when I read the article and saw a picture of the robot was
Tell me I'm paranoid.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Haha!
When I saw their logo, with the 2 large "C"s, I first thought it said CueCat!
I thought, "That's ironic, that's the same name as that OTHER company with a shitty business model!"
http://kered.org
Does anyone else here think it would be cool to just have one of those robots? Think of the inherent untility of having a smaller version fo one for running cables inside your own home, and the joys of attaching stuff to it so it could scare your relatives out of the house when they have overstayed their welcome!
Robots rule!
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
One of the articles mentioned a bot 6" round, 36" long. Another was 6 feet long and 8" around.
And they are intended to lay cable in pipes that are that small. So how do they go around corners?
I also wonder what happens when a fault develops in the line, in a inaccessible (can't dig it up) location. Do they rip it all out and put a new one in?
Shit(r) inside
Your connection is powered by Shit(r)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Hey, could you get free cable service by flushing a fibre router down the toilet?
STF
A lot can be told from a person from their waste. You can tell what they eat, what kind of health they're in, what kinds of drugs are in their systems and if they're pregnant.
It wouldn't take much to plant small sensors that could detect these things and more. For that matter a microphone could be run up the trap of your sink and you would never know it was there (how often do you take apart the trap?)
As we begin this new age of homeland security and goverment paranoia, I saw something like this coming a long time ago. I bet we're not too far from law enforcement using these types of robots in survelience. To a judge, it shouldn't make any difference if a person goes inside a house and plants a wireless mic, or if a robot climbs up the sewers and does it.
And these things are laying a network medium as they go, no problem reporting back to base what they've found.
Think about that for a moment, then mod me.
My DSL is slow as SHIT!!!
Insituform puts robots into sewers routinely. They have a clever technology for relining sewer pipes from the inside, without digging.
I was always curious what happens when the line clogs (as they always do) and the city has to jet (for an example http://www.vactor.com) the line or even better use a root cutter to get the grease and roots out of the line. Some of the nozzles on these things can tear anthing apart including the sewer itself. Sending robots to do the dirty work in sewers has been done for quite some time (example: http://www.rstechserv.com )
Wife: "Honey, there's some kind of robot coming out of the toilet - there's a weird-looking cable in it's mouth and -- (screams) it looks like there's an Alligator right behind it!"
Man (bored, not really paying attention): "Yes dear. I'll be in to squash it in a minute, just let me log off Slashdot..."
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Am I the only person to get the (possible unintentional) zork reference?? - Mik Mifflin mik42@adelphia.net
I think it's safe to say that thanks to these sewer-fiber-laying robots, all this plumbing is finally becoming "interactive".
I have a septic system, in my case this would only benefit my local area network..
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
This technology brings a new danger with it. What is to stop a person (or a robot-operator?) with malicious intent from splicing the (easily accessible) fiber and installing his/her own repeater station? All the traffic would be theirs....
The other obvious danger, of course, are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Suddenly all that porn surfing doesn't seem so inappropriate anymore.
oh I already do, don't I.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
to having a crappy internet connection.
Sewer systems do rely on gravity --to get them to the nearest pumping station. Now where do you go? Wastewater stations are usually in some low lying area, some are close to or even inside a 100 year floodplain. Is this really a good place for a fiber switching center?
Several of you mentioned that sewage leaks in to the ground water. Uhh folks, it goes both ways. The term we use for this phenomenon is infiltration and inflow. Often the problem isn't leakage in to the ground water, it's leakage of ground water in to the sewer and overloading wastewater treatement plants. Problems include tree roots cutting through sewer pipes, shifting soil, and pipe deterioration. I'll be impressed if a robot can negotiate all of that. We have enough trouble getting our sewer pipe TV cameras in there to investigate blockage problems.
Someone is going to have to convince the sewer company that this extra volume of fiber in the sewer pipe isn't going to cause additional grease buildup, and isn't going to restrict flow. Many new and even the not-so-new suburban areas are stressing the capacity of existing sewer systems well beyond original design limits. Unless the system is very well maintained (it almost never is) or the pipe is very new and well below designed flow limits, I don't forsee many companies agreeing to this.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Pigeon: 0.08bps
Not sure how they came up with that figure, but I'd have to say it's way off. Using every last pixel to encode a bitstream, you can squeeze more data onto a pigeonload of microfilm than a dial-up modem can carry in a week. You could do even better by coding a bitstream into a crystal lattice on the molecular level. (Using silicon (Si28=0, Si29=1) as an example, one gram would contain over 2*10^22 bits or about 20 billion terabytes.)
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!