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Pigeons Faster than Internet
An anonymous reader writes "The topic of pigeons and modern technology has come up a number of times now. For instance, we have the Google pigeon rank method, and there have been several April fools hoaxes like this previous story and RFC 2549. Now the Waikato Times is reporting in this story about how pigeons are being used to transfer large amounts of data in a short amount of time. The pigeons have proven to be faster and more relieable than electronic means. However, as you will see from the story there is still the occasional packet loss. This is definitely a case of high bandwidth wireless networking."
"A pigeon can fly at a cruising speed of 65km/h, 100km/h when pushed," said Mr Andreef. "But native falcons fly at up to 250km/h."
Wow. I realise they won't be going at 250kph for very long (presumably during a swoop down from above) but that's a fantastically fast speed for something of flesh and blood...
"The terminal velocity of a falling human being with arms and legs outstretched is about 120 miles per hour (192 km per hour) - slower than a lead balloon, but a good deal faster than a feather!" (from falling feather)
So I guess until someone straps a jetpack on their back and power-dives, no human will ever experience it...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
The LUG in my area, Bergen Linux User Group, implemented RFC1149 when Alan Cox visited (of course he was a key part of the project). Pigeons were used in a real-life experiment that had IP implemented over avian carriers. See the details with pictures here.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
+4 on that post? Wow. You have singled out an author for a quote that comes in many different shapes and forms. The motivation for doing so is hard for me to comprehend, but I'd like to show you some other forms of it, including the original :
:
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station
wagon full of tapes.
- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
heres some more variations
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magtapes.";
"the highest bandwidth transatlantic data channel was a freighter fully-loaded with punch cards."
"the bandwidth of magtape and a pickup truck." (c. 1973, DEC, Maynard MA);
and,
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a kid on a moped with a backpack full of CDs.";
finally,
Dai Davies, director of Dante, which provides high-speed networks to Europe's research institutes, said that before now the highest data transfer speed was achieved by putting the tapes in a van and driving them to where they need to be analysed.
Delivery vans can carry lots of tapes at the same time which means that Europe's roads have a relatively high bandwidth. "You can send a few hundred megabytes per second through DHL," he said.
- BBC News, 16 September 2003.;
Now I thank you for finding one of the many people who have spoken a permutation of the quote, but really it is quite a superfluous and trivial effort. Especially considering we all have the same access to Google that you do. =\ Tanenbaum's version appeared in 1988, but as you can see the line was spoken as early as 1973.
In conclusion, singling out a person who might have spoken the sentance is pointless. And adds little to the conversation.
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
You laugh, but check this out. Drug cartels in Pakistan are using carrier pigeons to route messages. The logic is obvious: any landline medium is expensive and can be traced. And any RF technology can be intercepted by American spy satellites.
If a signal (ie pigeon) is caught, the signal isn't received by the intended receipient. You can also send signals without the sender knowing the physical location of the other party-- useful for security.
Actually, now what I think of it, that is the area that bin Laden is believed to be hiding out in. If I were him, I'd be using carrier pigeons and dead-drops to communicate with my followers. I'm not sure if we're even looking for them, but even if we were, finding a species of bird in those mountains? Separating it from the non-pigeon birds? Catching the RIGHT pidgeon (if too many pidgeons disappear from being intercepted, you stop talking for a while)?
Navajo was devastatingly effective in WWII. There was a plan to drop bats equipped with timed incendiaries-- a town was devastated in a test using this weapon. Don't underestimate steam-punk methods.
If a signal (ie pigeon) is caught, the signal isn't received by the intended receipient.
Or after you're done reading the message, you could just put it back on the pigeon and let the pigeon go again.....
paintball
It will be very difficult to capture a pigeon without killing it.
Special equipment could pull it off, but we'll have to build / buy that, get it to the right people, and even then we still won't know where to use it. Finally, how do you identify pigeons? Only way I know is visually. Soldiers would have to be trained to identify a pigeon themselves (or relay pictures to trained experts, in which case they'd get a response only after a long delay).
Bottom line: very tough problem to solve.