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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
But there's the rub, people are expensive, cantankerous, and insist on frivolities like safety. 'Bots are ideal for jobs where people are too expensive or the environment too dangerous.
Go, go, Sewerbots!
That's why there's redundancy in the links. Fiber connections always have two or more links going through physically distant paths. Too many uninformed people operating backhoes around every city.
IP over rodentia carrier?
Nope, but there's IP over carrier pigeon.
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
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?
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
it's a real shitty connection :P
(sorry, i couldn't resist)
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.
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
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
What is music when you despise all sound?
How exactly, do you service a sewerpipe once it has fiber running through it?
-ted
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
...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
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.
Suddenly all that porn surfing doesn't seem so inappropriate anymore.