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Snails Edge Out ADSL
Anonymous writes "Dear Sirs,
Following our experiment last year, and after long preparations, we have successfully proved that certain gastropods called African giant snails can be faster then ADSL and ... pigeons. The system we have used, called SNAP (SNAil-based data transfer Protocol), uses biological carriers (snails), and, for the first time, taking advantages of the unique merits of the wheel for data transfer. More details can be found here."
So... we can expect new snail-mail any day soon?
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Soldier 1- African giant snails CAN be faster then ADSL.
Soldier 2- Oh, yeah, an African giant snail maybe, but not a European giant snail. That's my point.
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
The perfect line to see on my ADSL line...
But I bet it is April 1 in some universe somewhere. I wonder if a grain or two of salt increases throughput or causes more transmission errors?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Yeah but the lag sucks!
I didn't see any snail recipes. Are they cooked French- or African-style? Are there any stores in the U.S. that sell these snails?
/. was turning into the Food Network. :P
I didn't know that
Nothing beats the sheer bandwidth of a 767 filled with dual-layer DVDs sent hurtling at some destination.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
The ping on that must suck really bad though.
If you want a really high bandwidth, get a truckload of hard drives.
I just don't trust anything that starts with "Dear Sir" from Africa, especially when it concerns something quite unbelievable.
Sure there's lot's of bandwidth, but the latency is horible.
Wow, Time Warner Cable is right, Road Runner Broadband is much faster than ADSL, especially since snails can outperform ADSL. ;D
He talks about an Australian lawyer who patented the wheel.
"In particular, Mr. John Keogh, a Melbourne lawyer, was issued in 2001 a patent for "a circular transportation facilitation device", more commonly known as a wheel.
And people talk trash about America's patent system. Looks like we're not the only ones with problems.
This guy is way out there
We slashdotted a snail!
Pinging www.google.com [64.233.167.147] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.233.167.147: bytes=32 time=8220000ms TTL=238
Reply from 64.233.167.147: bytes=32 time=8220000ms TTL=238
Reply from 64.233.167.147: bytes=32 time=8220000ms TTL=238
Reply from 64.233.167.147: bytes=32 time=8220000ms TTL=238
In some regions, most notably France, culinary habits may pose a denial-of-service (DOS) risk.
I don't think you are allowed to bring African Giant snails in the US without a special permit. They reproduce very quickly and are quite destructive to vegitaion.
Though I though African giant snails were the size of a fist.
Does it say "dropped packet"?
...that uses compression and decompression at the endpoints to increase bandwidth, but they're having some technical issues at the decompression step that might cause the release date to slip.
Beats the TCP-like pigeon spec RFC1149.
to beat out adsl? How many 1 GB SD Flash chips can an African giant snail carry on its back?
Ig Nobel Prize!
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Just add a little salt and down goes the network.
I for one welcome our new african snail overloards. But I wonder how the email service you get with our snail overloars would compare to my curent ADSL provider
Just load the same 767 with 500GB Hitachi hard drives.
Let's just hope these snails don't pass through France. Little fuckers won't stand a chance.
From the article: "The third and foremost [advantage] is that unlike pigeons, ADSL doesn't shit on your head, or on your car."
How does it compare to S.W.O.D.V.D.T.P?
AKA Station Wagons o' DVDs?
Oh sure, it sounds good at first, but beware of the Curse of the Fast Snails!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I think:
"In particular, French users will have to choose whether they want to be served data-ex-cargo or an escargot."
comes near the top of the list.
Oh. For a second there, I thought you might have had something important to say. But apparently I was mistaken. Of course, as they say, only time will tell.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I think if we are going to establish bandwidth records we need to establish distance too. I suggest 100kms is probably a pretty good minimum measure to make sense.
Shouldn't the time to burn the dvds be calculated and added to the transfer time?
And I'm trying so hard to take this seriously
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
"faster then"? Didn't they teach you grammar?
an Antonov AN-225 filled with blu-ray discs
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Unfortunately, some users mistook "it's cargo" for "escargot" and reported data loss.
From the snail article linked:
"If measured by the moving snail itself, times would have been a bit shorter, according to Einstein's relativity theory, resulting in slightly greater bps rates."
If measured by the moving snail itslef, the data would be moving at approximately 0 meters per second, therefore, 0 bits per second. However, the source and destination would be moving relative to the carrier.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
IBM: The world will only need five snails.
DEC: Nobody wants a snail in their home.
Microsoft: The new Longhorned snail is shipping.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Dear Editors:
Faster THAN. Faster THAN. Faster THAN.
Same as:
Smarter THAN. Better THAN. Other THAN. Fatter THAN. Uglier THAN. Costs more THAN. Performs better THAN. More difficult THAN. Takes more effort THAN. Tastes better THAN. Prints more clearly THAN. More structured THAN. More anonymous THAN. More cowardly THAN. More falsely THAN.
Basic idea:
THAN - used in comparison statements.
THEN - used to demonstrate cause-and-effect
DAMNIT!!! the snails get less ping then i do!!! Wonder if there any good at Counter Strike?
Apple: You can bring an snail home, take it out of the box, and be cruising the internet in less than ten minutes.
(or is it an iSnail?)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I can now proudly say that my school's internet connection is literally slower than a snail (10Mbps).
How long will it be until Alan Cox makes a real world implementation for Linux? :-P
shop.envescent.com - Computer hardware and more.
but 'faster than ADSL' in bandwidth only. Latency is important too- and for biological carrier class in general- sucks.
But let's see...
will easily beat that!
my sstream of consciousness
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with backup tapes.
This has nothing on an 18 wheeler full 300GB hard drives clipping down the highway. Or atleast a camel with some hard drives taped to it...
What did you have to say/contribute that merited turning on your karma bonus, hypocrite?
Bilharzia, one of Africa's nastiest "payloads".
Meanwhile, I don't think that the families of the 50,000+ "dead" (first estimates gave that as a bare minimum) would mind too much.
An idea for the SNAP experiment. What if a form of compression was used to compress the data transfered thru snap. Similar to the 5x as fast dialup proxy services!!!
Or an even larger potential increase would be to piggy back a few more data wheels on the snail cart..
I am unsure of a snails lifting capacties but I would guess based on the picture provided he is not even stressed at this point... what if you added say another 10 dvd's on his chassis?
Now if he could make the trek at the same speed this would increase the SNAP xfer speed to 222,000 a HUGE 6fold increase!!! though I could potentiall see it only being able to increase it 5fold as I would speculate he would be weighed down and incumbered. I eagerly await the test results.
(Another potential would be the travling from a higher altitude to a lower might even increase his speed more?
Turning on my karma bonus? Don't you mean turning it off? It's on by default as it should be. I have the option to not use it if I don't want to, but I only do that when posting something that is really WAYYYYY off topic. Settle down there spunky, you might bust a nut or something. Hypocrite? Care to elaborate?
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
You accused the person of having nothing important to say. I looked at your post, it was offtopic and had nothign important to say either, yet not only were you hypocritical for making an equally unimportant post by pointing that out, you left your karma bonus turned on when you had NOTHING IMPORTANT TO SAY that merited the bonus.
Moron.
The person who conducted this reasearch is quite the character...
:)
He posts anonymously, but leaves his E-mail address, not to mention the fact that he specializes in measuring the digital throughput of small animals
If DNA or Dave Barry were still writing, I'm sure they'd come up with something clever about this whole situation
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
You punch the US, they punch back harder... it's the American Way(TM)
So you actually, actively turn your karma bonus off a lot do you? I don't see the point...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
soo...bad...yes...so....awesome...
Somehow I think those who found it funny don't care.
What 50000+? Is that the number of people found in those mass graves?
In Nelson voice: Ha ha... You got schooled by an AC!
Yes, if by punch back harder you mean flip out and punch anyone at random.
...and the giant snail with a transparant shell that transported him across the ocean? That was one cool snail. Even though my ADSL has 6mbit downstream, I'd trade a snail ride for my line anyday.
Who is Nelson? What is this "schooled" you speak of? I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
(I think that one, or something very similar, is attributed to Andrew Tanenbaum... Back in the day, when there was no easy way to UUCP stuff between America and Australia, there was a legend that newsfeeds were saved on magnetic tape, loaded into a station wagon, driven to the airport, and flown across the ocean. Personally, I don't believe it, as it would be much easier, cheaper, and faster to dial in via modem, expensive as long distance calling was in that bygone era. But it's a nice story, anyway.)
... And not a single comment that contains the string "Duke Nukem Forever"? Boys, I'm a little disappointed.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
So if I throw my CD case down the hall, do I set a data-transfer record?
Seriously though, read TFA, it's pretty funny.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
I am!
If I put {hugeamount} of {storagedevice} in/on {transportationdevice or animal} the bandwidth I get is {reallylargenumber}. The latency though I get from {transportationdevice or animal} sucks.
So if I put an even {ridiculouslyhugeammount} of {largerstoragedevice} in/on {strongeranimal or largertransportationdevice} the bandwidth is {evenlargernumber}. The latency though I get from {strongeranimal or largertransportationdevice} still sucks.
What we need is {fasteranimal or fastertransportationdevice} which also is {strongeranimal or largertransportationdevice}. That would be neat.
ps. What is it with you moderators to mod up the 10 comments with identical content!?
(I'm using the snail protocol to connect to Slashdot)
Not American giant snails because they are to fat ;-)
would be more than all those hard disks, if you count each DNA strand. Of course, there's a lot of redundancy there; but even if you don't count the redundant backups (in each cell), you've got a lot.
LuxDsl -- Slower than snails, and proud of it!
Also, they think that expressing the subscription price per day will make it look cheaper (well, at least, it's less expensive than before: it used to cost double than the current, still outrageous prices...)
There are no longer French snails in the U.S., only Freedom snails.
Would you prefer a "That's how we slashdotted those Afghan villages"?
well its nice to see snail mail is finaly getting upgraded
Does this mean I've got to learn how to write "shell" scripts to run my mail now? And what a boon to tracking spammers. Just follow that slime back to source.
Reminds me of an ancient (1970's) computer science maxim: "never underestimate the bandwidth of a Volvo wagon full of mag tapes".
... capacity about 700Mb/CD x 1000 CDs/m pile x 1m x 2m x 3m = approximately 1,120,000,000 Mb/Volvo = 1,120 Tb/Volvo @ 100 km/h = approximately 112,000 Tb-km/h per Volvo. That's a lot of data movement!
Perhaps today it would be CD's:
Hmmmm
J
Fill a Ultra-Large Crude Carrier full of 500GB harddisk.
Latency would be counted in days/weeks or months depending on location, and also fragmentation of packets may result if the location is not at a port and require the use of trucks.
"Nothing beats the sheer bandwidth of a 767 filled with dual-layer DVDs sent hurtling at some destination."
Exept an Airbus A380 filled with dual-layer DVDs sent hurtling at some destination.
So, clearly, a european airplane is better then an afri...I mean, american one.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Well, just look at it this way: by leaving his karma bonus on, eno2001 volunteered to losing 3 karma points, rather than 2 to offtopic moderations, which is a good thing, IMHO, because three thwacks with a stick hurt more than two.
On the other hand, moderators seem to be rather lazy today, the post still has its two points :(
(But I'm sure that my own post will lose 2 points within the next five minutes, for giving out advice to the moderators, which for some reason appears to be an impardonable offense here on Slashdot!)
No, the Antonov An-225 is larger than the new Airbus A380.
The A380 is the world's largest passenger aircraft, but the Antonov is much bigger. Just look at those 32 wheels!
The Antonov can carry 250 tons; can anyone do the maths and see if 250 tons of CDs will actually fit in the hold!?!? The An-225's cargo volume is 1100m3.
http://blog.grcm.net/
nt
The initial estimates for number of dead at the WTC called for a fuckton of extra bodybags because the initial assumption was that both towers were filled to capacity when the planes hit.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
Do the numbers in the article include time to burn the snail DVDs and then read the data back off of them at the end point? What about the time required to attach the DVDs to the snail harness (I'll assume they've got a harnessed snail ready while burning the DVDs)...
Probably still several orders of magnitude faster than dial-up.
- chrish
Yes, "punching back", a la Larry McVoy's, hitting random targets.
Sorry but this isn't going to work.
The LGS is way too bug sensitive!
I can't get anthing to load... i guess the snails that they use for their web server arn't trained up to handle slashdotting yet.
The quote is in some versions of Tanenbaum's Computer Networks, and it goes like this:
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
However, the legend is of course not true. Australia has had a stable newsfeed since 1983 or thereabouts. The guy who set it up got his news from Melbourne by dialing into Berkeley, and he occassionally had tapes of his saved backup stuff mailed to him, which is likely where the legend originated.
- 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.
So, would the data carrier's illegal nature in the US prevent digital snails from being elligible for acceptance as a standard? It's not patented... it's just illegal.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Noboby mentioned to have thought about this until now: What about the transfer of small data amounts? It would be an immense waste of material and cost to transfer every data packet with _TWO_ disks. I am convinced that at a graph the data figure vs. size of datas clearly has its center at many, relatively small datas, especially at a worldwide scale. One should not only look at US-American demands and possibilities! The use of only one wheel seems to be a little instable. Is there any plan for an exchange system of publicly available, no or low cost spare-wheels only for making the value-data-transfer stable and cost-saving?
Looks like AOL is a LOT faster than we thought!
;)
Those disks really move with a good backhand
Wouldn't it be even quicker to just pick up the computer and step over/around/on the snails?
Someone with information about maximum angle of ramp to input decice out there? Just to be sure the datas can be received well and read propperly without human interference.
Why cant I get rid of the imagination of pyramid building with many workers at a ramp carryinng stones?
Or does the DVD reader have to be mounted vertical and at the floor for this new technology?
Tried to access CNN today, and while I'm sitting here tapping the mousepad, the darndest thing happens! Snail leaps in through the window, god knows how he got up there, delivers me a stack of the latest articles...good snail...this new snaip is dynamite.
Use one of these huge sons of bitches to lug around data in even larger and even more wheels at once.
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
True story, posted so late now that it probably won't be read.
I was in a meeting at work one time, and we were discussing some serious issue or another. One of the guys referred to something as a "mute" point. I thought it was kind of funny, but I held the giggle in. After all, I was in an important business meeting. Well, you know what happens when you stifle a giggle, it comes back as a full-fledged laugh, and it's MUCH hard to stifle. Still, I'm pretty good, and I managed it. Well, then I felt kind of silly, because here we were discussing the future of our company, and I'm literally biting my tongue to keep from laughing.
Well, you KNOW what happens when you stifle a full-fledged laugh, it comes back as a sudden uncontrollable fit of laughing, the kind that is simply unstiflable.
So a full minute to two after the guy's comment about a "mute" point, after someone else has starting talking about something completely different, I burst out laughing so hard I just couldn't stop. The whole room turned to me as if to say, "What the hell is WRONG with this guy!?"
I was laughing SO hard that I could barely breathe. Forget talking, all I could squeak out was, "mute point... mute point!" Well, that didn't help any, of course, because by that time, I felt like a genuine idiot, and I had stepped in so far that all I could do was get up (still laughing), walk out (still laughing), and hope for the best.
After that incident, I think I widely had the reputation as the "crazy loon who laughed his ass out of an important meeting repeatedly saying, 'mute point.'" On the bright side, my presence at future meetings was seldom required. Of course, they never let me use any scissors after that, either...
Now, whenever I hear someone say "mute" point, I feel compelled to politely correct them because I do NOT want a similar incident to happen again. People, if there is a lesson to be learned here, it is to NEVER stifle a giggle.