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Undersea Cable Repair Via 19th Century Tech
An anonymous reader writes to mention a story going across the wires about an old-fashioned way to fix a modern convenience. Taiwanese boaters are using simple hooks to fish up the fiber-optic cables damaged in an earthquake late last year. The outage that resulted kept millions of users offline in half a dozen countries around the Pacific rim. From the article: "They work 24 hours a day but the weather can hinder their progress. Walters said one ship is waiting for 30 to 40 mile-an-hour winds (48 to 64 kilometres- an-hour) to die down in the Bashi Channel. The winds have stirred up 10 to 12 metre waves ... After arriving at the scene they survey the ocean bottom to assess whether the contour has changed, and the degree of sediment movement. Then the traditional tools are brought out. A rope with a grapnel on the end is played out, down into the depths, and towed over the sea floor until tension registers on a graph on the ship, indicating contact has been made with the cable. Today's fibre optic cables are just 21 millimetres in diameter."
What, are they Amish or something? Every modern company uses sharks with friggin' lasers to repair optical cables.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I thought modern browser technology was supposed to prevent fishing?!?!
David 'Volk' Mc. Itazura!
Very charming are the noble savages who use such primitive technology to repair these so-called Optikal-Phybers. Who can imagine what these presumably sacred artifacts mean to these tribesmen?
So then we can assume that:
Theater == facility for viewing movies, plays, symphonies, etc.
Theatre == the drama and spectacle on display in a theater
Pepper == a spice
Peppre == the hot sensation you get by eating pepper
Jester == comedic performer in medieval times
Jestre == the jokes and skits he performs
Adapter == Device which connects two things which otherwise wouldn't
Adaptre == The quality of the connection being changed (e.g. gender, voltage, diameter, etc.)
Diameter == Device for measuring diametre
Diametre == Distance across something round
Hm, wait a sec...
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Disclaimer: I am an undersea fiber-optic cable.
All of the above opinions and bits of information on me and my kind are completely incorrect. I am insulted!
Take that, progressively-more-expert-series-of-experts!