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Real Snail Mail
A few news outlets, mostly in the UK, have picked up the story of gastropod-enabled email delivery. The RealSnailMail project out of Bournemouth University uses snails with RFID tags to deliver email. The service will officially launch at SIGGRAPH on August 11, 2008. While it's still under development, the perpetrators write, "For testing purposes some messages may be forwarded sooner than expected. Sorry we can not guarantee unreliability of service at this time. We hope to have RealSnailMail working less predictably as soon as possible."
research time well spent.
Bit of a slow day on Slashdot, isn't it?
And performance artist wonder why they get laughed at?
Can lost packets be partially attributed to interference from RFC 1149?
End of line..
This is great news! As the CIO of a well known Fortune 500 company, I can envision some innovative global solutions built on this compelling technology.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
I can see it coming already: TCP/IP over snails. A follow up to RFC-1149 A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers.
Good thing this is only in the UK, otherwise the USPS might start getting worried about the competition.
This guy's the limit!
Most everything seems to imply that the snails actually carry the message, but the fact that the snails carry RFID chips, and that one of the developers actually says the messages are tagged when a snail wanders nearby, makes me think that the actual message does indeed travel electronically only, and all the snail does is induce an artificial (albeit organic and biodegradeable) delay.
Infuriate left and right
Snails should be just another layer of slowness for
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1217.html system!
The service will officially launch at SIGGRAPH on August 11, 2008.
It will probably be delayed.
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
I was just looking for a new way to implement a tech support queue around here......
What happens if the pigeons eat the snails?
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
I mean its the UK. Shouldn't the snails all have mini crowns?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I read about this a little while back on BBC, I'm pretty sure. Maybe the submitter used the service for his submission? :)
if you load the message queue with spam, the packets tend to bottleneck around the spam until the spam in the queue is exhausted
on the plus side the spam tends to be consumed rather than multiply
however, the message trail only gets slimier during and after spam bottlenecking
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Anyone interested in investing in my new patented(pending) salt-based router technology?
What gives the snails direction? How does the snail know where to deliver to? Or is it random if they just happen to wander by the right place?
This seems to me to be in the spirit of RFC 2549, "IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service". I should suggest this as an idea for the AF09 RFC.
I wonder how the speed compares to 2549-compliant methods of delivery?
Neither rain nor snow nor sleet, but salt? Oh man.
Please try resending mail on cloudy day
Finally a failproof solution for spam! The French will gladly take care of that one for us.
And as a gardener I have only one word to say about that.
Darn!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But there are few things as rewarding as getting a hand written letter in the mail.
Especially if delivered by a snail? Well, maybe not.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
Just follow the slime.
Have gnu, will travel.
That way, when they start shipping packages, they could call it S-Cargo.
Are there any encryption options and can someone insert an extra tagging/receiving node in the path that could perform a MITM attack?
I for one welcome our new shell based overlords.
Someone should set-up a head-to-head with 'slow'hosts - my money's on the snails.
Requiem for the American Dream
I don't see this working in France...
I hope none of these snails have any implanted medical devices - the death rate could be terrible!
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/24/2152212
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
a lot of packets lost if they route them through France...
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Snails? Stupid idea. Too much overhead. They carry their homes with them. Use slugs instead.
rewriting history since 2109
I think this is probably the safest way to torrent in the UK these days
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
do they offer tracking?
I wish to remain anomalous
...Gaaaa! That's disgusting!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Someone needs to work on a similar concept with spam mail. I could use some free Hormel goodness.
by zero day DBS (Denial By Salt) attack.
This could actually come in handy... when you actually do want to delay a message but still send it. Good for excuses. For example. Yes Jill I sent you that invite a week ago, you didn't get it? How strange... or the check is in the email... =)
It would seem you've solved the RST part of the TCP puzzle.
Mod parent +1 funny
from the linked Real Snail Mail blog:
Each snail is equipped with a small glass capsule attached to its shell. The capsule contains a tiny chip and coil antenna that can be activated by a reader at a range of 3 cm.
Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two.
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
At least it doesn't block torrent traffic.
And I thought they couldn't make backscatter any more horrible.
still faster than an MS Exchange cluster.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's a good thing the site hasn't fully launched or the /. effect would have blown those little snails to pieces!