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Snails Edge Out ADSL

Posted by timothy on from the little-tiny-station-wagons dept.

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."

27 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Snails? by PunkOfLinux · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
    1. Re:Snails? by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Funny
      I'm ready for mine - got the garlic butter and everything.

      Guess you all will have to put up with significant "carrier losses".

  2. African VS European giant snails by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:African VS European giant snails by Eccles · · Score: 4, Funny

      But then African giant snails are non-migratory.

      --
      Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
  3. Today is April 26th by nizo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Today is April 26th by SuneSpeg · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes it will make a transmission error, but due to the nature of tcp/ip it wont be a big problem.
      However it means that each time you step on a snail from now on, you will have to pick it up, look at the source adress, and send back an icmp code 11,0 (time to live expired in transit).

  4. Snail recipes... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Funny

    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?

    I didn't know that /. was turning into the Food Network. :P

    1. Re:Snail recipes... by Bad+D.N.A. · · Score: 4, Funny

      Pretty soon we will hear all about how the kids-these-days have figured out that when the anus of the snail is properly licked it will induce a fantastic high.... Thus this new technology will be banned by the department of homeland security.

      --
      "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
  5. But of course... by Tuxedo+Jack · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!
    1. Re:But of course... by nebaz · · Score: 4, Funny

      There are some latency issues though.

      --
      Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
    2. Re:But of course... by Junior+J.+Junior+III · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nothing beats the sheer bandwidth of a 767 filled with dual-layer DVDs sent hurtling at some destination.

      That's how they slashdotted the WTC back in '01.

      --
      You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
    3. Re:But of course... by RaguMS · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's how they slashdotted the WTC back in '01.

      That's not cool, man. Some of those people lost a lot of data.

  6. ping sucks by nmosfet · · Score: 3, Funny

    The ping on that must suck really bad though.
    If you want a really high bandwidth, get a truckload of hard drives.

  7. I don't know about you... by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just don't trust anything that starts with "Dear Sir" from Africa, especially when it concerns something quite unbelievable.

    1. Re:I don't know about you... by WonderSnatch · · Score: 3, Funny

      This is from Israel. Israel is not in Africa, it is in Asia. Please see a map for further details.

    2. Re:I don't know about you... by Nf1nk · · Score: 3, Funny

      Africa, Asia, europe, New York, Israel, Texas all of them are a long ways east of me and outside of walking distance, I'm not planning on visiting any of them in the near future, so as far as I am concerned they all might as well be in the same place (not the peoples republic of california).

      (painfully stolen from a surfer friend of mine who commented that if it was more than three miles from a good surf break he could'nt care less where it was)

      --
      I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
  8. In the blog by LittleLebowskiUrbanA · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
    1. Re:In the blog by p0rnking · · Score: 3, Informative

      Man seeks square deal, patents wheel
      /. article

  9. Too funny! by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 4, Funny

    In some regions, most notably France, culinary habits may pose a denial-of-service (DOS) risk.

  10. Easy to DOS attack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just add a little salt and down goes the network.

  11. yes by soimless · · Score: 3, Funny

    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

  12. Actually, that's easy to beat. by melted · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just load the same 767 with 500GB Hitachi hard drives.

  13. Beware by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  14. Hang on, lets establish some standards here... by spagetti_code · · Score: 3, Informative
    The problem is that they were comparing snails travelling over very short distances (cms) to pigeons travelling 100km. To take that to its illogical conclusion, a photon (carrying, say, 8 bits of color information) travels 1um in 1/3x10^14 secs. Therefore this is carrying 3x10^14 bytes/sec or about 300Tbytes/sec. That rivals the 747 carrying DVDs.

    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.

  15. Moores Law & other predictions. by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 4, Funny
    Moores Law: Next year's snails will be faster and carry 2GB.

    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.
    1. Re:Moores Law & other predictions. by commanderfoxtrot · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think he's right on this one: eating 640K of snails would probably be enough for me.

      --
      http://blog.grcm.net/
  16. THAN, for the love of... THAN! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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