Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo DS Wireless in Freefall
Nicholas Roussos writes "Wired reports about four skydivers who decided to give the Nintendo DS wireless capabilities a try while they were freefalling. 'The four sky divers proved that an ad hoc network set up using the wireless functions of a Nintendo DS works perfectly at distances of nearly 400 feet while falling 120 miles an hour,' states the article."
I'll tell you what would be cool, ultralights with automatic paintball guns, heat seeking nerf missiles, and a HUD. Then have a dogfight, and when Mr. Farmer comes out of his house yelling at you for scaring the bejesus out of his livestock you make a second pass, *thunk* *thunk* *thunk* *thunk*
Wait, what was this article about again?
In this year of the Einstein centenary, these skydivers have managed to rediscover the Principle of Relativity - that it matters not how fast you are moving, the laws of physics are the same. Indeed, if radio waves failed to propagate for skydivers the entire structure of physics would have to be re-created from scratch.
nintendo ds, cause falling 120miles/h towards the ground isent exciteing enough.
So now when they kick you and your friends off the plane for using wifi while in flight, you'll be all good.
I mean, there is no/little relative velocity, and radio waves are fast (plus there is no ether :D).
As to the whole thing... I really dont know. Its cool, but it sounds like a real potential for darwin awards ("damn, ill get you. Just a nother round..." *splash*)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
http://stashbox.fromtheshadows.tv/
or the actual torrent:
http://torrents.fromtheshadows.tv/fts_box1.0.avi.t orrent
It is good to read about some real world applications with todays technology. Usually these articles are so theoretical....
...though I'd really hate to try it. I get sucked into "the zone" when gaming and computing so tend to ignore most outside stimuli (feel free to correct spelling, etc.). Hope that my parachute would be automatically opening, otherwise...
1) Wow. Line-of-sight is line-of-site!
2) If all 4 of them are falling in the same direction at the same speed, than their velocity is irrelevant; their relative velocity is zero.
3) What networked games can you actually finish within the 60 seconds before you hit the ground?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
At speeds like that, how could the speed of light even hope to keep up?
Dude, I fragged you!
No, dude. I fragged you first!
No Way! I fragged you first.
SPLAT!
If they are all travelling at the same speed - so what? What if one was still and the other was travelling at 400mph? Could they still communicate? I know, they would be too far apart if the moving one went in a straight line. But, what if it went back and forth? The issue is the simple doppler effect. At what point is it unable to handle wireless communications?
I only ask because I feel that we will eventually have wireless transmitters in all cars to monitor traffic and assist in directing traffic away from congested areas. At what speed do cars lose effective communication with stationary antennas? Cell phones seem to work just fine at 100mph+
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
My reall worry would be paying too much attention to the game, and not enough to your altitude...
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I won't personally be trying this with my DS anytime soon. If I wanted to pee, besides in my pants while playing my DS, I'll just do it in the bathroom.
They might have hit the ground before they booted up the game and loaded the level. ;)
You don't want those UMD's to come accidentally shooting out at that height.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
it was raining PSPs and Nintendos the other night. These guys should do a better job of holding onto them.
Jimmy! PULL THE STRING!!
*waves hand* Just a second man
For the love of god! Deploy your parachute!
I just gotta get the high score, I'm almost there. *SPLAT*
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Reminds me of a bash.org IRC quote:
Zanthis(ALE): AFK, tornado
Has a whole other meaning in this context.
"The four sky divers proved that an ad hoc network set up using the wireless functions of a Nintendo DS works perfectly at distances of nearly 400 feet while falling 120 miles an hour"
I'm glad they proved it, it was really keeping me up at night.
Hopefully this encourages people to toss their X-boxen out the window.
Wonder if they were going to simulate tetris...falling out of the sky and all.
Does this somehow change the definition of "dropped packets?"
If someone skydove with airsnort to packet-sniff, does that count as a flying pig?
That's what I call hardware acceleration!
The Nintendo DS is already a hassle to control with two hands while on the ground - how the heck did these guys keep their styluses steady mid-descent?
Of course, a suitable title supporting 16 is needed.
8 obviously could be done today.
Hedley
I get pretty bored skydiving too.
Gotta love Nintendo. I supposed they will now *require* video game companies to test their new multiplayer games by having testers jump out of airplanes. God knows testing this stuff on the ground can be a major pain in the butt.
Unfortunately, video game companies don't pay testers enough to go splat if the parachute doesn't open. I'm sure EA will find a way around that problem.
1) If Bob is in the baggage car of a train traveling north at 90MPH and Margaret is standing still 10 cars north of Bob, each car being approximately 40 feet long, home much time would pass before Bob crashes into Margaret? Show your work.
2) If I put two chickens in a bag and give you the bag, how many chickens do you have?
3) If radio waves from a Nintendo DS travel at roughly 186,000 miles per second, how fast would two parallel trains moving in the same direction have to travel before the conductor in each train could no longer receive signals from the other conductor's Nintendo DS?
4) If you were in a car travelling at the speed of light and you flashed your high-beams, would anything happen? Assume you're on the New Jersey Turnpike.
"The crew was so caught up in their activity and forgot to pull their ripcords, their wives will be suing Nintendo for not posting a 'warning do not get caught up playing DS whilst plummeting to the earth' sticker on the side of the module"
Four skydivers perished when they all failed to open their shutes. Videotape suggests they were all too busy playing Super Mario to notice how close they were to the ground.
All four Nintendo DS games survived the impact and were still wirelessly networked when the recovery team arrived. Final game results were not available at press time.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The skydivers experience is consistent with Galilean relativity, Einstein's special relativity wouldnt have much of an effect in this situation.
And I thought I had it bad when I drop one in the living room.
Thank you everybody, enjoy the veal.
Chika Chik-ah... do-e ow ow.
Does anyone have a link to download the file without BitTorrent? (My school blocks BitTorrent.)
Tired of free ipod spam sigs? Opt ou
It is not surprising that their wireless worked in the least, as to be able to detect any relativistic effect, their frame, determined by gamma=(1-v^2/c^2)^(-1/2) would have to be close to or greater than 1. That would be darn close to the speed of light.
Probably they mean 400 feet between skydivers. Not from the ground. 400 feet or less is the limit you can travel without a traditional pilot's license as I recall, so that would be pretty short.
They forgot the word lateral - vertical distance fallen was far more than 400', a lateral spread of approximately 400 feet was apparently between the jumpers.
(A vertical spread of 400' between jumpers was also possible, but not as much fun due to opening requirements)
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
next person to make a joke about not openning the chute or dropping the stylus is gonna get stabbed in the throat
Do you really have a network when all nodes got just got dropped?
Hur hur hur...
-Pinkoir
Personally i think this whole article should have been marked up as a troll... someone has almost certainly decided to see how many sites are willing to publish something that does nothing and proves nothing we didnt know before my own birth...
I find it highly amusing to read peoples comments though.. some of the funniest comments yet!
Now for the next experiment, lets see if the nintendo DS works across the vacuum of space!! *GASP*!! that'll make it on ripleys believe it or not!
If four skydivers were in space (exo-solar-diving) free-falling from Jupiter toward the Sun with an intent to drop into Earth after a few braking maneuvers (what a rush! Oh wait, you'd barely feel the solar wind, uh?).
So, once again if four sport-extremists were sol-exo-diving, would that 20 K-mile/per second put a dent in your line-of-sight RF communication channel?
Yes...barely I leave you to do the math.
(plus, then, no one can hear you scream in space)
Yeah yeah...but can you successfully port Linux to it at that altitude?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Skydiver 1: Is it working?
.... I feel like I forgot something... my charger .... or ....
Skydiver 2: What?
Skydiver 3: He said, IS IT WORKING?
Skydiver 4: Mine is up!
Skydiver 1: Okay, so is mine now.
Skydiver 2: What?
Skydiver 3: HE SAID, HIS IS WORKING NOW!
Skydiver 2: OKAY THANKS!
Skydiver 4: Start the game already.
Skydiver 2: What?
Skydiver 1: Okay Cool, I can see everybody!
Skydiver 3:
WHUMP!!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
I hate to break it to you guys, but so long as the people are moving at the same velocity, there isn't any kind of problem. If all of them had been moving at .999 speed of light (in our point of view), there still wouldn't be a difference, because they are all in the same frame of reference, and they would all measure the speed of light from their point of view to be 3.0x10^8 ms^-1. No doppler effect of the radio waves would be created, and no greater time lag would ensue. It's as if they aren't moving, because according to each other, they aren't!
Of course [it can't]! That's why scientists increased the speed of light in 2208.
For example let's say the skydivers are playing some sort of deathmatch game on the DS; I don't if such games for DS exist but let's hypothesise. Then, if a player dies he has to drop his DS. He's out. Just uh, don't drop it by accident, or else I guess that constitutes a suicide.
Gentoo Linux - Wouldn't have it any other way. And fuck beta.
The good news was the four skydivers proved that an ad hoc wireless network using the Nintendo DS works perfectly at distances of 400 feet while falling 120 miles an hour...
.500 ain't bad.
The bad news is neither the Nintendo DS or the four skydivers bounce very well.
Meh. Batting
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
of the stylus = ?
So, from the article: "The stunt was coordinated by Los Angeles filmmaker John Hering, who was shooting material for his series of internet-only videos"
Ok, if you are into skydiving, AND, someone else (I assume) PAYS for it, the only catch is to do as directed (and, oh, yeah, you will be in a MOVIE! Yippie).
Anyhow, do you think the "models, locations, and products release" will include a kick-back from Nintendo?
As has been said before, nothing surprising that it worked. Sounds like a big ad to me. Check the sponsers of the film site when it is out...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Thank god, now I know that my two player game of mario bros. won't get screwed up as I plummet to my death
That's one way to beat the minigames where you have to blow into the mic.
Well effing DUH! The elementary laws of electromagnetism, electronics, and the principles of radio are not even taxed! Wanna test this another way? Get on a high speed train and make a cell phone call, or just drive on the freeway really fast and do the same. IT IS JUST ORDINARY RADIO!!!!!!!
Now that that is out, did they really think it might not work?
Lousy facepalm.
I hope they weren't playing yoshi's touch and go or any of the voice mini-games in warioware. How would you do that one where you can't make a noise otherwise the little critters fly off the tightrope!
my utility belt tells me its to the bar batman
You try changing your client port? Depending on the setup, it might make a difference.
They could have kept themselves up a little longer though by using UMD discs as fuel, twisting the case to eject them and thus slowing their fall ever so slightly.
Someday I imagine fleets of vehicles powered by a vast array of twistible PSP's.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
On the bright side, at least they didn't crash.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Yeah - no difference. My school doesn't actually block BT; they detect it and shape it to 1.2 KB/s.
Tired of free ipod spam sigs? Opt ou
I guess you'd have to call it war-diving.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
Wardiving?
Is this what the new Gravity games will hold? Extreme Geek Diving? Who can beat the first level of Doom III before going splat?
Are these Uber-Geeks?
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
> There are such things as aerobatics-capable ultralights....
This all depends on the speed at which the wind is blowing. Ever seen someone try to land an ultra light in a 15 kt crosswind? They can be quite aerobatic.
This sig has been removed pending an investigation.
Where is the interesting technical or scientific news in that story? Didn't they know that electromagnetic waves travel at light speed and that there is no such thing as an "ether"?
where's all that Karma?
1.001 times the speed of light. Then the radio signal'd get funky.
:)
Of course, I think they'd have bigger problems at that point. Like stopping.
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
Well, let's say you were moving at 5mph below c. Relatively speaking, wouldn't that mean that the radio signal would only be moving 5mph towards the other guy? If not, wouldn't that imply that the speed of light isn't the limit that RF can travel?
;)
Nope. It'd be moving at c with respect to you and the other guy. Where it gets really odd is that if you and the other guy happened to pass a guy who was standing still, then he'd see the RF travelling at c too. Now, he'd see some doppler effect (red-shifting/blue-shifting of the light as it moved away/towards him), but that would only change the frequency of the light, not its speed relative to him.
That's the trick. Light (any form of EM radiation) always moves along at speed c, for any observer, in any reference frame. In order for this to be true, people moving at speeds closer to c are experiencing time pass at a much slower rate. They don't notice it, obviously. But moving faster means that your personal time slows down.
This also explains why everything seems longer when you're sitting in rush hour traffic and not moving.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
When I first read the title of this article, I thought they were referring to sales figures or their market share. I figured the PSP would do at least a little better, but that line seems harsh.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds